The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance

things. I must be very bad. I wanted to run away. I wanted to die----" "There, you hear, you hear," Decies cried hoarsely, spreading abroad his hands, in sudden violence of appeal to Honoria. "For God's sake help us! I am not aware whether you are a relation, or a friend, or what. But I am convinced you can help, if only you choose to do so. And I tell you she is just killing herself over this accursed marriage. Some one's got at her and talked her into some wild notion of doing her duty, and marrying money for the sake of her family." "Oh! I say, damn it all," Lord Shotover exclaimed, smitten with genuine remorse. "And so she believes she's committing the seven deadly sins, and I don't know what besides, because she rebels against this marriage and is unhappy. Tell her it's absurd, it's horrible, that she should do what she loathes and detests. Tell her this talk about duty is a blind, and a fiction. Tell her she isn't wicked. Why, God in heaven, if we were none of us more wicked than she is, this poor old world would be so clean a place that the holy angels might walk barefoot along the Piccadilly pavement there, outside, without risking to soil so much as the hem of their garments! Make her understand that the only sin for her is to do violence to her nature by marrying a man she's afraid of, and for whom she does not care. I don't want to play a low game on Sir Richard Calmady and steal that which belongs to him. But she doesn't belong to him--she is mine, just my own. I knew that from the first day I came to Whitney, and looked her in the face, Shotover. And she knows it too, only she's been terrorised with all this devil's talk of duty." So far the words had poured forth volubly, as in a torrent. Now the speaker's voice dropped, and they came slowly, defiantly, yet without hesitation. "And so I asked her to go away with me, now, to-night, and marry me to-morrow. I can make her happy--oh, no fear about that! And she would have consented and gone. We'd have been away by now--if you and this lady had not come just when you did, Shotover." The gentleman addressed whistled very softly. "Would you, though?" he said, adding meditatively:--"By George now, who'd have thought of Connie going the pace like that!" "Oh, Shotover, never tell, promise me you will never tell them!" the poor child cried again. "I know it was wicked, but----" "No, no, you are mistaken there," Honoria put in, holding her still closer. "You were tempted to take a rather desperate way out of your difficulties. It would have been unwise, but there was nothing wicked in it. The wrong thing is--as Mr. Decies tells you--to marry without love, and so make all your life a lie, by pretending to give Richard Calmady that which you do not, and cannot, give him." Then the young soldier broke in resolutely again. "I tell you I asked her to go away, and I ask her again now----" "The deuce you do!" Lord Shotover exclaimed, his sense of amusement getting the better alike of astonishment and of personal regrets. "Only now I ask you to sanction her going, Shotover. And I ask you"--he turned to Miss St. Quentin--"to come with her. I am not even sure of your name, but I know by all that you've said and done in the last half-hour, I can be very sure of you. And, I perceive, that if you come nobody will dare to say anything unpleasant--there'll be nothing, indeed, to be said." Honoria smiled. The magnificent egoism of mankind in love struck her as distinctly diverting. Yet she had a very kindly feeling towards this black-haired, bright-eyed, energetic, young lover. He was in deadly earnest--to the removing even of mountains. And he had need to be so, for that mountains immediately blocked the road to his desires was evident even to her enthusiastic mind. She looked across compellingly at Lord Shotover. Let him speak first. She needed time, at this juncture, in which to arrange her ideas and to think. "My dear good fellow," that gentleman began obediently, patting Decies on the shoulder, "I'm all on your side. I give you my word I am, and I've reason to believe my father will be so too. But you see, an elopement--specially in our sort of highly respectable, humdrum family--is rather a strong order. Upon my honour, it is, you know, Decies. And, even though kindly countenanced by Miss St. Quentin, and sanctioned by me, it would make a precious undesirable lot of talk. It really is a rather irregular fashion of conducting the business you see. And then--advice I always give others and only wish I could always remember to take myself--it's very much best to be off with the old love before you're on with the new." "Yes, yes," Miss St. Quentin put in with quick decision. "Lord Shotover has laid his finger on the heart of the matter. It is just that.--Lady Constance's engagement to Richard Calmady must be cancelled before her engagement to you, Captain Decies, is announced. For her to go away with you would be to invite criticism, and put herself hopelessly in the wrong. She must not put herself in the wrong. Let me think! There must be some way by which we can avoid that." An exultation, hitherto unexperienced by her, inspired Honoria St. Quentin. Her attitude was slightly unconventional. She sat on the stone balustrade, with long-limbed, lazy grace, holding the girl's hand, forgetful of herself, forgetful, in a degree, of appearances, concerned only with the problem of rescue presented to her. The young man's honest, wholehearted devotion, the young girl's struggle after duty and her piteous desolation, nay, the close contact of that soft, maidenly body that she had so lately held against her in closer, more intimate, contact than she had ever held anything human before, aroused a new class of sentiment, a new order of emotion, within her. She realised, for the first time, the magnetism, the penetrating and poetic splendour of human love. To witness the spectacle of it, to be thus in touch with it, excited her almost as sailing a boat in a heavy sea, or riding to hounds in a stiff country, excited her. And it followed that now, while she perched aloft boy-like on the balustrade, her delicate beauty took on a strange effulgence, a something spiritual, mysterious, elusive, and yet dazzling as the moonlight which bathed her charming figure. Seeing which, it must be owned that Lord Shotover's attitude towards her ceased to be strictly fraternal, while the attractions of ladies more fair and kind than wise paled very sensibly. "I wish I hadn't been such a fool in my day, and run amuck with my chances," he thought. But Miss St. Quentin was altogether innocent of his observation or any such thinkings. She looked up suddenly, her face irradiated by an exquisite smile. "Yes, I have it," she cried. "I see the way clear." "But I can't tell them," broke in Lady Constance. Honoria's hand closed down on hers reassuringly. "No," she said, "you shall not tell them. And Lord Shotover shall not tell them. Sir Richard Calmady shall tell Lord Fallowfeild that he wishes to be released from his engagement, as he believes both you and he will be happier apart. Only you must be brave, both for your own sake, and for Mr. Decies', and for Richard Calmady's sake, also.--Lady Constance," she went on, with a certain gentle authority, "do you want to go back to Whitney to-morrow, or next day, all this nightmare of an unhappy marriage done away with and gone? Well, then, you must come and see Sir Richard Calmady to-night, and, like an honourable woman, tell him the whole truth. It must be done at once, or your courage may fail. We will come with you--Lord Shotover and I----" "Good Lord, will we though!" the young man ejaculated, while the girl's great, heifer's eyes grew strained with wonder at this astounding announcement. "I know it will be rather terrible," Honoria continued calmly. "But it is a matter of a quarter of an hour, as against a lifetime, and of honour as against a lie. So it's worth while, don't you think so, when your whole future, and Mr. Decies'"--she pressed the soft hand again steadily--"is at stake? You must be brave now, and tell him the truth--just simply that you do not love him enough--that you have tried,--you have, I know you have done that,--but you have failed, that you love some one else, and that therefore you beg him, in mercy, before it is too late, to set you free." Fascinated both by her appearance and by the simplicity of her trenchant solution of the difficulty, Lord Shotover stared at the speaker. Her faith was infectious. Yet it occurred to him that all women, good and bad, are at least alike in this--that their methods become radically unscrupulous when they find themselves in a tight place. "It is a fine plan. It ought to work, for--cripple or not--poor Calmady's a gentleman," he said, slowly. "But doesn't it seem just a trifle rough, Miss St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?" Honoria had slipped down from the balustrade, and stood erect in the moonlight. "I think not," she replied. "The woman pays, as a rule. Lady Constance has paid already quite heavily enough, don't you think so? Now we will have the exception that proves the rule. The man shall pay whatever remains of the debt. But we must not waste time. It is not late yet, we shall still find him up, and my brougham is here. I told Lady Aldham I should be home fairly early. Get a cloak Lady Constance and meet us in the hall. I suppose you can go down by some back way so as to avoid meeting people. Lord Shotover, will you take me to say good-night to your sister, Lady Louisa?" The young man fairly chuckled. "And you, Mr. Decies, must stay and dance."--She smiled upon him very sweetly. "I promise you it will come through all right, for, as Lord Shotover says, whatever his misfortunes may be, Richard Calmady is a gentleman.--Ah! I hope you are going to be very happy. Good-bye." Decies' black head went down over her hand, and he kissed it impulsively. "Good-bye," he said, the words catching a little in his throat. "When the time comes, may you find the man to love you as you deserve--though I doubt if there's such a man living, or dead either, for that matter! God bless you." Some half-hour later Honoria stood among the holland-shrouded furniture in Lady Calmady's sitting-room in Lowndes Square. The period of exalted feeling, of the conviction of successful attainment, was over, and her heart beat somewhat painfully. For she had had time, by now, to realise the surprising audacity of her own proceedings. Lord Shotover's parley with Richard Calmady's man-servant, on the door-step, had brought that home to her, placing what had seemed obvious, as a course of action to her fervid imagination, in quite a new light.--Sir Richard Calmady was at home? He was still up?--To that, yes. Would he see Lady Constance Quayle upon urgent business?--To that again, yes--after a rather lengthy delay, while the valet, inscrutable, yet evidently highly critical, made inquiries.--The trees in the square had whispered together uncomfortably, while the two young ladies waited in the carriage. And Lord Shotover's shadow, which had usually, very surely, nothing in the least portentous about it, lay queerly, three ways at once, in varying degrees of density, across the gray pavement in the conflicting gas and moonlight. And now, as she stood among the shrouded furniture, which appeared oddly improbable in shape seen in the flickering of two hastily lighted candles, Honoria could hear Shotover walking back and forth, patiently, on that same gray pavement outside. She was overstrained by the emotions and events of the past hours. Small matters compelled her attention. The creaking of a board, the rustle of a curtain, the