The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
"You have a great deal to offer," Katherine said, adding: "You can care
for her, Dickie?"
He turned his head, his lips working a little, his flushed face very
young and bright.
"Oh yes! I can care fast enough," he said. "And I think--I think I
could make her happy. And you see, already she worships you. We would
pet her, mother, and give her all manner of pretty things, and make a
little queen of her--and she would be pleased--she's a child, such a
child."
Richard remained awake far into the morning, till the rose had died out
of the sky, and the ascending smoke of many kitchen-chimneys began to
stain the expanse of heavenly blue. The thought of his possible bride
was very sweet to him. But when at last sleep came, dreams came
likewise. Helen de Vallorbes' perfect face arose, in reproach, before
him, and her azure and purple draperies swept over him, stifling and
choking him as the salt waves of an angry sea. Then some one--it was
the comely, long-limbed young soldier, Mr. Decies--whom he had seen
last night at the Barkings' great party when Morabita sang--and the
soprano's matchless voice was mixed up, in the strangest fashion, with
all these transactions--lifted Helen and all her magic sea-waves from
off him, setting him free. But even as he did so, Dickie perceived that
it was not Helen, after all, whom the young soldier carried in his
arms, but little Lady Constance Quayle. Whereupon Richard, waking with
a start, conceived a wholly unreasoning detestation of Mr. Decies,
while, along with that, his purpose of marrying Lady Constance
increased notably, waxed strong and grew, putting forth all manner of
fair flowers of promise and of hope.
CHAPTER IV
A LESSON UPON THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT--"PARENTS OBEY YOUR CHILDREN"
A family council was in course of holding in the lofty, white-and-gold
boudoir, overlooking the Park, in Albert Gate. Lady Louisa Barking had
summoned it. She had also exercised a measure of selection among
intending members. For instance Lady Margaret and Lady Emily,--the
former having a disposition, in the opinion of her elder sister, to put
herself forward and support the good cause with more zeal than
discretion, the latter being but a weak-kneed supporter of the cause at
best,--were summarily dismissed.
"It was really perfectly unnecessary to discuss this sort of thing
before the younger girls," she said. "It put them out of their place
and rather rubbed the freshness off their minds. And then they would
chatter among themselves. And it all became a little foolish and missy.
They never knew when to stop."
One member of the Quayle family, and that a leading one, had taken his
dismissal before it was given and, with a nice mixture of defective
moral-courage and good common-sense, had removed himself bodily from
the neighbourhood of the scene of action. Lord Shotover was still in
London. Along with the payment of his debts had come a remarkable
increase of cheerfulness. He made no more allusions to the unpleasant
subject of cutting his throat, while the proposed foreign tour had been
relegated to a vague future. It seemed a pity not to see the season
out. It would be little short of a crime to miss Goodwood. He might go
out with Decies to India in the autumn, when that young soldier's leave
had expired, and look Guy up a bit. He would rather like a turn at
pig-sticking--and there were plenty of pig, he understood, in the
neighbourhood of Agra, where his brother was now stationed. On the
morning in question, Lord Shotover, in excellent spirits, had walked
down Piccadilly with his father, from his rooms in Jermyn Street to
Albert Gate. The elder gentleman, arriving from Westchurch by an early
train, had solaced himself with a share of the by no means ascetic
breakfast of which his eldest son was partaking at a little after
half-past ten. It was very much too good a breakfast for a person in
Lord Shotover's existing financial position--so indeed were the
rooms--so, in respect of locality, was Jermyn Street itself. Lord
Fallowfeild knew this, no man better. Yet he was genuinely pleased,
impressed even, by the luxury with which his erring son was surrounded,
and proceeded to praise his cook, praise his valet's waiting at table,
praise some fine old sporting prints upon the wall. He went so far,
indeed, as to chuckle discreetly--immaculately faithful husband though
he was--over certain photographs of ladies, more fair and kind than
wise, which were stuck in the frame of the looking-glass over the
chimneypiece. In return for which acts of good-fellowship Lord Shotover
accompanied him as far as the steps of the mansion in Albert Gate.
There he paused, remarking with the most disarming frankness:--
"I would come in. I want to awfully, I assure you. I quite agree with
you about all this affair, you know, and I should uncommonly like to
let the others know it. But, between ourselves, Louisa's been so short
with me lately, so infernally short--if you'll pardon my saying
so--that it's become downright disagreeable to me to run across her. So
I'm afraid I might only make matters worse all round, don't you know,
if I put in an appearance this morning."
"Has she, though?" ejaculated Lord Fallowfeild, in reference presumably
to his eldest daughter's reported shortness. "My dear boy, don't think
of it. I wouldn't have you exposed to unnecessary unpleasantness on any
account."
Then, as he followed the groom-of-the-chambers up the bare, white,
marble staircase--which struck almost vaultlike in its chill and
silence, after the heat and glare and turmoil of the great thoroughfare
without--he added to himself:--
"Good fellow, Shotover. Has his faults, but upon my word, when you come
to think of it, so have all of us. Very good-hearted, sensible fellow
at bottom, Shotover. Always responds when you talk rationally to him.
No nonsense about him."--His lordship sighed as he climbed the marble
stair. "Great comfort to me at times Shotover. Shows very proper
feeling on the present occasion, but naturally feels a diffidence about
expressing it."
Thus, in the end, it happened that the family council consisted only of
the lady of the house, her sister Lady Alicia Winterbotham, Mr. Ludovic
Quayle, and the parent whom all three of them were, each in their
several ways, so perfectly willing to instruct in his duty towards his
children.
Ludovic, perhaps, displayed less alacrity than usual in offering good
advice to his father. His policy was rather that of masterly
inactivity. Indeed, as the discussion waxed hot--his sisters' voices
rising slightly in tone, while Lord Fallowfeild's replies disclosed a
vein of dogged obstinacy--he withdrew from the field of battle and
moved slowly round the room staring abstractedly at the pictures. There
was a seductive, female head by Greuze, a couple of reposeful
landscapes by Morland, a little Constable--waterways, trees, and
distant woodland, swept by wind and weather. But upon these the young
man bestowed scant attention. That which fascinated his gaze was a
series of half-length portraits in oval frames, representing his
parents, himself, his sisters, and brothers. These portraits were the
work of a lady whose artistic gifts, and whose prices, were alike
modest. They were in coloured chalks, and had, after adorning her own
sitting-room for a number of years, been given, as a wedding present,
by Lady Fallowfeild to her eldest daughter. Mr. Quayle reviewed them
leisurely now, looking over his shoulder now and again to note how the
tide of battle rolled, and raising his eyebrows in mute protest when
the voices of the two ladies became more than usually elevated.
"You see, papa, you have not been here"--Lady Louisa was saying.
"No, I haven't," interrupted Lord Fallowfeild. "And very much I regret
that I haven't. Should have done my best to put a stop to this
engagement at the outset--before there was any engagement at all, in
fact."
"And so you cannot possibly know how the whole thing--any breaking off
I mean--would be regarded."
"Can't I, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. "I know perfectly well how I
should regard it myself."
"You do not take the advantages sufficiently into consideration, papa.
Of course with their enormous wealth they can afford to do
anything."--Mr. Winterbotham's income was far from princely at this
period, and Lady Alicia was liable to be at once envious of, and
injured by, the riches of others. Her wardrobe was limited. She was,
this morning, vexatiously conscious of a warmer hue in the back pleats
than in the front breadth of her mauve, cashmere dress, sparsely
decorated with bows of but indifferently white ribbon. "It has enabled
them to make an immense success. One really gets rather tired of
hearing about them. But everybody goes to their house, you know, and
says that he is perfectly charming."
"Half the parents in London would jump at the chance of one of their
girls making such a marriage,"--this from Lady Louisa.
Mr. Quayle looked over his shoulder and registered a conviction that
his father did not belong to that active, parental moiety. He sat
stubbornly on a straight-backed, white-and-gold chair, his hands
clasped on the top of his favourite, gold-headed walking-stick. He had
refused to part with this weapon on entering the house. It gave him a
sense of authority, of security. Meanwhile his habitually placid and
infantile countenance wore an expression of the acutest worry.
"Would they, though?" he said, in response to his daughter's
information regarding the jumping moiety.--"Well, I shouldn't. In point
of fact, I don't. All that you and Alicia tell me may be perfectly
true, my dear Louisa. I would not, for a moment, attempt to discredit
your statements. And I don't wish to be intemperate.--Stupid thing
intemperance, sign of weakness, intemperance.--Still I must repeat, and
I do repeat, I repeat clearly, that I do not approve of this
engagement."
"Did not I prophesy long, long ago what my father's attitude would be,
Louisa?" Mr. Quayle murmured gently, over his shoulder.
Then he fell to contemplating the portrait of his brother Guy, aged
seven, who was represented arrayed in a brown-holland blouse of
singular formlessness confined at the waist by a black leather belt,
and carrying, cupid-like, in his hands a bow and arrows decorated with
sky-blue ribbons.--"Were my brothers and I actually such appallingly
insipid-looking little idiots?" he asked himself. "In that case the
years do bring compensations. We really bear fewer outward traces of
utter imbecility now."
"I don't wish to be harsh with you, my dears--never have been harsh, to
my knowledge, with any one of my children. Believe in kindness. Always
have been lenient with my children----"
"And as indirect consequence thereof note my eldest brother's frequent
epistles to the Hebrews!" commented Mr. Quayle softly. "The sweet
simplicity of this counterfeit presentment of him, armed with a
pea-green bait-tin and jointless fishing-rod, hardly shadows forth the
copious insolvencies of recent times!"
"Never have approved of harshness," continued Lord Fallowfeild. "Still
I do feel I should have been given an opportunity of speaking my mind
sooner. I ought to have been referred to in the first place. It was my
right. It was due to me. I don't wish to assert my authority in a
tyrannical manner. Hate tyranny, always have hated parental tyranny.
Still I feel that it was due to me. And Shotover quite agrees with me.
Talked in a very nice, gentlemanly, high-minded way about it all this
morning, did Shotover."
The two ladies exchanged glances, drawing themselves up with an
assumption of reticence and severity.
"Really!" exclaimed Lady Alicia. "It seems a pity, papa, that
Shotover's actions are not a little more in keeping with his