The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
silence even of this large, but half-inhabited, house, were to her big
with suggestion, disquietingly replete with possible meaning, of
exaggerated importance to her anxiously listening ears.
Lord Shotover had stopped walking. He was talking to the coachman.
Honoria entertained a conviction that, in the overflowing of his good
nature, he talked--sooner or later--to every soul whom he met. And she
derived almost childish comfort from the knowledge of the near
neighbourhood of that eminently good-natured presence. Lord Shotover's
very obvious faults faded from her remembrance. She estimated him only
by his size, his physical strength, his large indulgence of all
weaknesses--including his own. He constituted a link between her and
things ordinary and average, for which she was rather absurdly thankful
at this juncture. For the minutes passed slowly, very slowly. It must
be getting on for half an hour since little Lady Constance, trembling
and visibly affrighted, had passed out of sight, and the door of the
smoking-room had closed behind her. The nameless agitation which
possessed her earlier that same evening returned upon Honoria St.
Quentin. But its character had suffered change. The questioning of the
actual, the suspicion of universal illusion, had departed, and in its
place she suffered alarm of the concrete, of the incalculable force of
human passion, and of a manifestation of tragedy in some active and
violent form. She did not define her own fears, but they surrounded her
nevertheless, so that the slightest sound made her start.
For, indeed, how slowly the minutes did pass! Lord Shotover was walking
again. The horse rattled its bit, and pawed the ground impatient of
delay. Though lofty, the room appeared close and hot, with drawn blinds
and shut windows. Honoria began to move about restlessly, threading her
way between the pieces of shrouded furniture. A chalk drawing of Lady
Calmady stood on an easel in the far corner. The portrait emphasised
the sweetness and abiding pathos, rather than the strength, of the
original, and Honoria, standing before it, put her hands over her eyes.
For the pictured face seemed to plead with and reproach her. Then a
swift fear took her of disloyalty, of hastiness, of self-confidence
trenching on cruelty. She had announced, rather arrogantly, that
whatever balance debt remained to be paid, in respect of Sir Richard
and Lady Constance Quayle's proposed marriage, should be paid by the
man. But would the man, in point of fact, pay it? Would it not, must it
not, be paid, eventually, by this other noble and much enduring
woman--whom she had called her friend, and towards whom she played the
part, as she feared, of betrayer? In her hot espousal of Lady
Constance's cause she had only saved one woman at the expense of
another--Oh! how hot the room grew! Suffocating--Lord Shotover's steps
died away in the distance. She could look Lady Calmady in the face no
more. Secure in her own self-conceit and vanity, she had betrayed her
friend.
Suddenly the sharp peal of a bell, the opening of a door, the dragging
of silken skirts, and the hurrying of footsteps.--Honoria gathered up
her somewhat scattered courage, and swung out into the hall. Lady
Constance Quayle came towards her, groping, staggering, breathless, her
head carried low, her face convulsed with weeping. But to this, for the
moment, Miss St. Quentin paid small heed. For, at the far end of the
hall, a bright light streamed out from the open doorway. And in the
full glare of it stood a young man--his head, with its cap of
close-cropped curls proudly distinguished as that of some classic hero,
his features the beautiful features of Katherine Calmady, his height
but two-thirds the height a man of his make should be, his face drawn
and livid as that of a corpse, his arms hanging down straight at his
sides, his hands only just not touching the marble quarries of the
floor on either side of him.
Honoria uttered an exclamation of uncontrollable pity and horror,
caught Constance Quayle by the arm, and hurried out into the moonlit
square to the waiting carriage. Lord Shotover flung away the end of his
cigar and strolled towards them.
"Got through, fixed it all right--eh, Connie? Bravo--that's grand!--Oh,
you needn't tell me! I can imagine it's been a beastly piece of work,
but anyway it's over now. You must go home and go to bed, and I'll
account for you somehow to Louisa. My mind's becoming quite inventive
to-night, I promise you.--There, get in--try to pull yourself together.
Miss St. Quentin, upon my word, I don't know how to thank you. You've
been magnificent, and put us under an everlasting obligation, Con and
Decies, and my father and I.--Nice night, isn't it? You'll put us down
in Albert Gate? All right. A thousand thanks.--Yes, I'll go on the box
again. You haven't much room for my legs among all those flounces.
Bless me, it occurs to me I'm getting confoundedly hungry. I shall be
awfully glad of some supper."
CHAPTER VIII
A MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRIT
Brockhurst House had slumbered all day long in the steady warmth of the
July sun. The last three weeks had been rainless, so that the short
turf of the uplands began to grow crisp and discoloured, while the
resinous scent of the fir forest, at once stimulating and soothing, was
carried afar out over the sloping corn-fields and low-lying pastures.
Above the stretches of purple-budding heather and waste sandy places,
upon the moors, the heat-haze danced and quivered as do vapours arising
from a furnace. Along the underside of the great woods, and in the turn
of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than
blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry
fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and
chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of
the sunshine and large plenty reigning out of doors.
For Katherine the day in question had passed in Martha-like
occupations.--A day of organising, of ordering and countermanding, a
day of much detail, much interviewing of heads of departments, a day of
meeting respectful objections, enlightening thick understandings,
gently reducing decorously opposing wills. Commissariat, transport,
housing of guests, and the servants of guests--all these entered into
the matter of the coming wedding. To compass the doing of all things,
not only decently and in order, but handsomely, and with a becoming
dignity, this required time and thought. And so, it was not until after
dinner that Katherine found herself at leisure to cease taking thought
for the morrow. Too tired to rest herself by reading, she wandered out
on the troco-ground followed by Camp.
London had not altogether suited the bull-dog as the summer wore on.
Now, in his old age, so considerable a change of surroundings put him
about both in body and mind. Seeing which, Richard had begged his
mother to take the dog with her on leaving town. Camp benefited,
unquestionably, by his return to country air. His coat stared less. He
carried his ears and tail with more sprightliness and conviction. Still
he fretted after his absent master, and followed Katherine's footsteps
very closely, his forehead more than ever wrinkled, and his unsightly
mouth pensive notwithstanding its perpetual grin. He attended her now,
squatting beside her when she paused, trotting slowly beside her when
she moved, a silent, persistent, and, as it might seem, somewhat
fatefully faithful companion.
Yet the occasion was to all appearances far from fateful, the night and
the scene, alike, being very fair. The moon had not yet risen, but a
brightness behind the sawlike edge of the fir woods eastward heralded
its coming, while sufficient light yet remained in the western and
northern sky for the mass of the house, its ruddy walls and ranges of
mullioned windows, its pierced, stone parapet and stacks of slender,
twisted chimneys, to be seen with a low-toned distinctness of form and
colour infinitely charming. Soft and rich as velvet, it rose, with a
certain noble serenity, above its terraces and fragrant, red-walled
gardens, under the enormous dome of the tranquil, far-off, evening sky.
Every aspect of this place, in rain and shine, summer and winter, from
dawn to dark and round to dawn again, was familiar to Katherine
Calmady. Coming here first, as a bride, the homely splendour of the
house, and the gladness of its situation crowning the ridge of hill,
appealed strongly to her imagination. Later it sheltered her long
sorrow, following so hard on the heels of her brief joy. But in both
alike, during all the vicissitudes of her thought and of her career,
the face of Brockhurst remained as that of a friend, kindly,
beneficent, increasingly trusted and beloved. And so she had come to
know every stick and stone of it, from spacious, vaulted cellar to
equally spacious, low-roofed, sun-dried attic--the outlook from each
window, the character of each room, the turn of each stairway, the
ample proportions of each lobby and stairhead, all the pleasant scents,
and sounds, and colours, that haunted it both within and without. It
might have been supposed that after so many years of affectionate
observation and commerce, Brockhurst could have no new word in its
tongue, could hold no further self-revelation, for Lady Calmady. Yet,
as she passed now from the arcaded garden-hall, supporting the eastern
bay of the Long Gallery, on to the level, green square of the
troco-ground, and stood gazing out over the downward sloping park--the
rough, short turf of it dotted with ancient thorn trees and broken by
beds of bracken and dog-roses--to the Long Water, glistening like some
giant mirror some quarter-mile distant in the valley, she became
sensible of a novel element in her present relation to this place.
For the first time, in all her long experience, she was at Brockhurst
quite alone. The house was vacant even of a friend. For Julius March
had, rather to Katherine's surprise, selected just this moment for the
paying of his yearly visit to a certain college friend, a scholarly and
godly person, now rector of a sleepy, country parish away in the heart
of the great, Midlandshire grasslands. Katherine experienced a
momentary sense of injury at his going. Yet perhaps it was as well.
Between the turmoil of the past London season, the coming turmoil of
the wedding, and the large and serious issues which that wedding
involved, this time of solitude might be salutary. To Katherine, just
now, it seemed as a bridge carrying her over from one way of life to
another. A but slightly known country lay ahead. Solitude and
self-recollection are good for the soul if it would possess itself in
peace. The fair brightness of the Indwelling Light had not been
obscured in her during these months devoted to the world and to
society. But it was inevitable that her consciousness of it, and
consequently its clear-shining, should have suffered diminution at
times. The eager pressure of things to be done, things to be seen, of
much conversation, the varied pageant of modern life perpetually
presented to her eyes and her intelligence, could not but crowd out the
spiritual order somewhat. Of late she had had only time to smile upon
her God in passing, instead of spending long hours within the courts of
His temple. This she knew. It troubled her a little. She desired to
return to a condition of more complete self-collectedness. And so, the
first movement of surprise past, she hailed her solitude as a means of
grace, and strove, in sweet sincerity, to make good use of it.
And yet--since the human heart, if sound and wholesome, hungers, even
when penetrated by Godward devotion, for some fellow-creature on whom