The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
long swinging stride she outdistanced his hesitating steps, and stood,
in the doorway, her arms extended--as to stop a runaway horse--her
clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale,
delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of
contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite
perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern
angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional
fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that
comfortably conventional, worldly paradise to which he, just now, so
warmly desired to regain admittance.
"No, no," she said, with a certain vibration in her quiet voice, "you
are not to go! You are not to desert her. It would be unworthy, Lord
Shotover. You brought Mr. Decies here and so you are mainly responsible
for the present situation. And think, just think what it means. All the
course of her life will be affected by that which takes place in the
next half-hour. You would never cease to reproach yourself if things
went wrong."
"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.
"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria asserted. "Having it in your power to
help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of
you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty
and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if
she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You
are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't
desert me and I intend to stay."
"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling
his father's.
Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.
"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no
particular faith in or admiration for marriage----"
"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised,
slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no
equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a
little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good
fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.
"No, I don't believe very much in marriage--modern, upper-class
marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems
to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk
marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though
it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a--a--loveless
marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge
and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with
the whole thing."
"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.--The infinite variety of the
feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck
him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their
relentless application of logic--as they apprehended it--which
staggered him.
Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on
his arm.
"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come--you
must know what is happening. You must comfort her."
The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of
good-humoured and despairing resignation.
"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin,
you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."
"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said.
"Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you.
And then you might cut and run, don't you know."
CHAPTER VII
RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL MOUSE IN
A CORNER
As Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by
side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the
pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle,
altogether forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty
correctness of demeanour, uttered an inarticulate cry--a cry, indeed,
hardly human in its abandon and unreasoning anguish, resembling rather
the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it
across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and
roses, and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face
downwards, across the coping of the balustrade, her bare arms
outstretched, her hands clasped above her head. Mr. Decies, blue-eyed,
black-haired, smooth of skin, looking noticeably long and lithe in his
close-fitting, dress clothes, made a rapid movement as though to lay
hold on her and bear her bodily away. Then, recognising the futility of
any such attempt, he turned upon the intruders, his high-spirited
Celtic face drawn with emotion, his attitude rather dangerously
warlike.
"What do you want?" he demanded hotly.
"My dear good fellow," Lord Shotover began, with the most assuaging air
of apology. "I assure you the very last thing I--we--I mean I--want is
to be a nuisance. Only Miss St. Quentin thought--in fact, Decies, don't
you see--dash it all, you know, there seemed to be some sort of worry
going on out here and so----"
But Honoria did not wait for the conclusion of elaborate explanations,
for that cry and the unrestraint of the girl's attitude not only
roused, but shocked her. It was not fitting that any man, however
kindly or even devoted, should behold this well-bred, modest and
gentle, young maiden in her present extremity. So she swept past Mr.
Decies and bent over Lady Constance Quayle, raised her, strove to
soothe her agitation, speaking in tones of somewhat indignant
tenderness.
But, though deriving a measure of comfort from the steady arm about her
waist, from the strong, protective presence, from the rather stern
beauty of the face looking down into hers, Lady Constance could not
master her agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and
the result was confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of
mind. She suffered that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a
part of the misery of all apparently irretrievable disaster, whether
moral or physical, and places the victim of it, in imagination at all
events, rather terribly beyond the pale.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "you ought not to be so kind to me. I am very wicked.
I never supposed I could be so wicked. What shall I do? I am so
frightened at myself and at everything. I did not recognise you. I
didn't see it was only Shotover."
"Well, but now you do see, my dear Con, it's only me," that gentleman
remarked, with a cheerful disregard of grammar. "And so you mustn't
upset yourself any more. It's awfully bad for you, and uncomfortable
for everybody else, don't you know. You must try to pull yourself
together a bit and we'll help you--of course, I'll help you. We'll all
help you, of course we will, and pull you through somehow."
But the girl only lamented herself the more piteously.
"Oh no, Shotover, you must not be so kind to me! You couldn't if you
knew how wicked I have been."
"Couldn't I?" Lord Shotover remarked, not without a touch of humorous
pathos. "Poor little Con!"
"Only, only please do not tell Louisa. It would be too dreadful if she
knew--she, and Alicia, and the others. Don't tell her, and I will be
good. I will be quite good, indeed I will."
"Bless me, my dear child, I won't tell anybody anything. To begin with
I don't know anything to tell."
The girl's voice had sunk away into a sob. She shuddered, letting her
pretty, brown head fall back against Honoria St. Quentin's bare
shoulder,--while the moonlight glinted on her jewels and the night wind
swayed the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums. Along with the
warmth and scent of flowers, streaming outward through the open
windows, came a confused sound of many voices, of discreet laughter,
mingled with the wailing sweetness of violins. Then the pleading,
broken, childish voice took up its tale again:--
"I will be good. I know I have promised, and I have let him give me a
number of beautiful things. He has been very kind to me, because he is
clever, and of course I am stupid. But he has never been impatient with
me. And I am not ungrateful, indeed, Shotover, I am not. It was only
for a minute I was wicked enough to think of doing it. But Mr. Decies
told me he--asked me--and--and we were so happy at Whitney in the
winter. And it seemed too hard to give it all up, as he said it was
true. But I will be good, indeed I will. Really it was only for a
minute I thought of it. I know I have promised. Indeed, I will make no
fuss. I will be good. I will marry Richard Calmady."
"But this is simply intolerable!" Honoria said in a low voice.
She held herself tall and straight, looking gallant yet pure, austere
even, as some pictured Jeanne d'Arc, a great singleness of purpose, a
high courage of protest, an effect at once of fearless challenge and of
command in her bearing.--"Is it not a scandal," she went on, "that in a
civilised country, at this time of day, woman should be allowed,
actually forced, to suffer so much? You must not permit this martyrdom
to be completed--you can't!"
As she spoke Decies watched her keenly. Who this stately, young
lady--so remarkably unlike the majority of Lord Shotover's intimate,
feminine acquaintance--might be, he did not know. But he discerned in
her an ally and a powerful one.
"Yes," he said impulsively, "you are right. It is a martyrdom and a
scandalous one. It's worse than murder, it's sacrilege. It's not like
any ordinary marriage. I don't want to be brutal, but it isn't. There's
something repulsive in it, something unnatural."
The young man looked at Honoria, and read in her expression a certain
agreement and encouragement.
"You know it, Shotover--you know it just as well as I do. And that
justified me in attempting what I suppose I would not otherwise have
felt it honourable to attempt.--Look here, Shotover, I will tell you
what has just happened. I would have had to tell you to-morrow, in any
case, if we had carried the plan out. But I suppose I have no
alternative but to tell you now, since you've come."
He ranged himself in line with Miss St. Quentin, his back against one
of the big stone vases. He struggled honestly to keep both temper and
emotion under control, but a rather volcanic energy was perceptible in
him.
"I love Lady Constance," he said. "I have told her so, and--and she
cares for me. I am not a Croesus like Calmady. But I am not a pauper.
I have enough to keep a wife in a manner suitable to her position, and
my own. When my Uncle Ulick Decies dies--which I hope he'll not hurry
to do, since I am very fond of him--there'll be the Somersetshire
property in addition to my own dear, old place in County Cork. And your
sister simply hates this marriage----"
"Lord bless me, my dear fellow, so do I!" Lord Shotover put in with
evident sincerity.
"And so, when at last I had spoken freely, I asked her to----"
But the young girl cowered down, hiding her face in Honoria St.
Quentin's bosom.
"Oh! don't say it again--don't say it," she implored. "It was wicked of
me to listen to you even for a minute. I ought to have stopped you at
once and sent you away. It was very wrong of me to listen, and talk to
you, and tell you all that I did. But everything is so strange, and I
have been so miserable. I never supposed anybody could ever be so
miserable. And I knew it was ungrateful of me, and so I dared not tell
anybody. I would have told papa, but Louisa never let me be alone with
him. She said papa indulged me, and made me selfish and fanciful, and
so I have never seen him for more than a little while. And I have been
so frightened."--She raised her head, gazing wide-eyed first at Miss
St. Quentin and then at her brother. "I have thought such dreadful