The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
to expend its tenderness--Katherine, just now, regretted to be alone.
The scene was so beautiful, she would gladly have had some one look on
it beside herself, and share its charm. Then thoughts of the future
obtruded themselves. How would little Constance Quayle view Brockhurst?
Would it claim her love? Would she embrace the spirit of it, and make
it not only the home of her fair young body, but the home of her
guileless heart? Katherine yearned in spirit over this girl standing on
the threshold of all the deeper experiences of a woman's life, of those
amazing revelations which marriage holds for an innocent and modest
maiden.--But oh! how lovely are such revelations when the lover is also
the beloved!
Katherine moved on a few paces. The thought of all that, even now at
forty-eight, cut her a little too sharply. It is not wise to call up
visions of joys that are dead. She would think of something else, so
she told herself, as she paused in her rustling gray dress upon the
dry, gravel path, the surface of which still sensibly held the warmth
of the sun, while Camp squatted soberly on his haunches beside her.
But, at first, only worrying thoughts responded to her call.--It was
not quite kind, surely, of Julius to have left home just now. It was a
little inconsiderate of him. If she dwelt on the thought of that,
clearly it would vex her--so it must be banished. Reynolds, the
housekeeper, had really been very perverse about the turning of the two
larger china-closets into extra dressing-rooms for the week of the
wedding, and Clara showed an inclination to back her up in opposition.
Of course the maids would give in--they always did, and that without
any subsequent attempt at small reprisals. Still the thought of that,
too, was annoying and must be banished. At dinner she had received a
singular letter from Honoria St. Quentin. It contained what appeared to
Katherine as rather over-urgent protestations of affection and offers
of service, if at any future time she--the writer--could be of use. The
letter was charming in its slight extravagance. But it struck Katherine
as incomprehensibly penitent in tone--the letter of one who has not
treated a friend quite loyally and is hot with anxiety to atone. It was
dated this morning too, and must have been posted at some surprisingly
early hour to have thus reached Brockhurst by the day mail. Lady
Calmady did not quite relish the missive, somehow, notwithstanding its
affection. It lacked the perfection of personal dignity which had
pleased her heretofore in Honoria St. Quentin. She felt vaguely
disappointed. And it followed that this thought, therefore, must go
along with the rest. For she refused to be disquieted. She would compel
herself to be at peace.
So, putting these small sources of discomfort from her, as unworthy
both of her better understanding and of this fair hour and fair place,
Katherine yielded herself wholly to the influences of her surroundings.
The dew was rising--promise of another hot, clear day to-morrow--and
along with it rose a fragrance of wild thyme from the grass slopes
immediately below. That fragrance mingled with the richer scents of
jasmine, full-cupped, July roses, scarlet, trumpet-flowered
honeysuckle, tall lilies, and great wealth of heavy-headed, clove
carnations, veiling the red walls or set in the trim borders of the
gardens behind. A strangely belated nightingale still sang in the big,
Portugal laurel beside the quaint, pepper-pot summer-house in the far
corner of the troco-ground, where the twenty-foot brick wall dips, in
steps of well-set masonry, to the gray three-foot balustrade. She never
remembered to have heard one sing so late in the summer. The bird was
answered moreover by another singer from the coppice, bordering the
trout-stream which feeds the Long Water, away across the valley. In
each case the song was, note for note, the same. But the chant of the
near bird was hotly urgent in its passion of "wooing and winning,"
while the song of the answerer came chastened and etherealised by
distance. A fox barked sharply on the left, out in the Warren. And the
churring of the night-jars, as they flitted hither and thither over the
beds of bracken and dog-roses, like gigantic moths, on swift, silent
wings, formed a continuous accompaniment, as of a spinning-wheel, to
the other sounds.
Never, as she watched and listened, had the genius of Brockhurst
appeared more potent or more enthralling. For a space she rested in it,
asking nothing beyond that which sight and hearing could give. It was
very good to breathe the scented air and be lulled by the inarticulate
music of nature. It was good to cease from self and from all individual
striving, to become a part merely of the universal movement of things,
a link merely in the mighty chain of universal being. But such an
impersonal attitude of mind cannot last long, least of all in the case
of a woman! Katherine's heart awoke and cried again for some human
object on which to expend itself, some kindred intelligence to meet and
reflect her own. Ah, were she but better, more holy and more wise,
these cravings would doubtless not assail her! The worship of the
Indwelling Light would suffice, and she would cease from desire of the
love of any creature. But she had not journeyed so far upon the road of
perfection yet, as she sadly told herself. Far from it. The nightingale
sang on, sang of love, not far hence, not far above, not within the
spirit only, but here, warm, immediate, and individual. And, do what
she would, the song brought to her mind such love, as she herself had
known it during the few golden months of her marriage--of meetings at
night, sweet and sacred, of partings, sweet and sacred too, at morning,
of secret delights, of moments, at once pure and voluptuous, known only
to virtuous lovers. It was not often that remembrance of all this came
back to her, save as a faint echo of a once clear-sounding voice.
Indeed she had supposed it all laid away forever, done with, even as
the bright colours it had once so pleased her to wear were laid away in
high mahogany presses that lined one side of the lofty state-bedroom
up-stairs. But now remembrance laid violent hands on her, shaking both
mind and body from their calm. The passion of the bird's song, the
caressing suavity of the summer night, the knowledge, too, that so soon
another bride and bridegroom would dwell here at Brockhurst, worked
upon her strangely. She struggled with herself, surprised and half
angered by the force of her own emotion, and pleaded at once against,
and for, the satisfaction of the immense nostalgia which possessed her.
"Ah! it is bitter, very bitter, to have had at once so much and so
little. Bow my proud neck, O Lord, to Thy yoke. If my beloved had but
been spared to me I had never walked in darkness, far from the way of
faith, and my child had never suffered bodily disfigurement. Perfect
me, O God, even at the cost of further suffering. It is sad to be shut
away from the joys of my womanhood, while my life is still strong in
me. Break me, O Lord, even as the ploughshare breaks the reluctant
clod. Hold not Thy hand till the work be fully accomplished, and the
earth be ready for the sowing which makes for harvest. Give me back the
beloved of my youth, the beloved of my life, if only for an hour. Teach
me to submit. Show me, beyond all dread of contradiction that vows,
truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave.
Show me that though the body--dear home and vehicle of love--may die,
yet love in its essence remains everlastingly conscious, faithful and
complete. Bend my will to harmony with Thine, O Lord, and cleanse me of
self-seeking. Ah! but still let me see his face once again, once again,
oh, my God--and I will rebel no more. Let me look on him, once again,
if only for a moment, and I shall be content. Hear me, I am greatly
troubled, I am athirst--I faint----"
Katherine's prayer, which had risen into audible speech, sank away into
silence. The near nightingale had fallen silent also. But from across
the valley, chastened and etherealised by distance, still came the song
of the answering bird. To Katherine those fine and delicate notes were
full of promise. They bore testimony to the soul which dwells forever
behind the outward aspect and sense. Whether she fainted in good truth,
or whether she passed, for a while, into that sublimated state of
consciousness wherein the veils of habit cease to blind and something
of the eternal essence and values of things is revealed, perception
overstepping, for once, the limits of ordinary, earth-bound
apprehension and transcending ordinary circumscription of time and
place, she could not tell. Nor did she greatly care. For a great peace
descended upon her, accompanied by a gentle, yet penetrating
expectancy. She stood very still, her feet set on the warm gravel, the
night air wrapping her about as with a fragrant garment, the ghostly
sweetness of that far-away bird-song in her ears, while momentarily the
conviction of the near presence of the man who had so loved her, and
whom she had so loved, deepened within her. And therefore it was
without alarm, without any shock of amazement, that gradually she found
her awareness of that presence change from something felt, to something
actually seen.
He came towards her--that first Richard Calmady, her husband and
lover--across the smooth, green levels of the troco-ground which lay
dusky in the mingling half-lights of the nearly departed sunset and the
rising moon, as he had come to her a hundred times in life, back from
the farms or the moorlands, from sport or from business, or from those
early morning rides, the clean freshness of the morning upon him, after
seeing his race-horses galloped. He came bareheaded, in easy
workmanlike garments, short coat, breeches, long boots and spurs. He
came with the repose of movement which is born of a well-knit frame,
and a temperate life, and the grace of gentle blood. He came with the
half smile on his lips, and the gladness in his eyes when they first
met hers, which had always been there however brief the parting. And
Katherine perceived it was just thus our beloved dead must needs return
to us--should they return at all--laying aside the splendours of the
spirit in tenderness for mortal weakness. Even as the Christ laid aside
the visible glory of the Godhead, and came a babe among men, so must
they come in humble, every-day fashion, graciously taking on the manner
and habit common to them during earthly life. Therefore she suffered no
shrinking, but turned instinctively, as she had turned a hundred times,
laughing very softly in the fulness of content, raising her hands,
throwing back her head, knowing that he would come behind her and take
her hands in his, and kiss her, so, bending down over her shoulder.
And, when he came, she did not need to speak, but only to gaze into the
well-beloved face, familiar, yet touched--as it seemed to her--with a
mysterious and awful beauty, beholding which she divined the answer to
many questions.
For she perceived, as one waking from an uneasy dream perceives the
comfortable truth of day, that her love was not given back to her, for
the dear reason that her love had never been taken away. The fiction of
Time ceased to rule in her, so that the joy of bride and new-wed wife,
the strange, sweet perplexities of dawning motherhood were with her
now, not as memories merely, but as actual, ever present, deathless
fact--the culminating, and therefore permanent, revelation of her
individual experience. She perceived this continued and must continue,
since it was the fine flower of her nature, the unit of her personal
equation, the realisation of the eternal purpose concerning her of