The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
IN WHICH JULIUS MARCH BEHOLDS THE VISION OF THE NEW LIFE
He was aroused from these austere, yet, to him, inspiring reflections
by the click of an opening door and the sound of women's voices.
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt paused on the threshold, one hand raised in
quick admiration, the other resting on Lady Calmady's arm.
"But this is superb," she cried gaily. "Your charming King Richard,
_Coeur d' Or_, has given you a veritable palace to inhabit!"
"Ah yes! King Richard has indeed given me a palace to live in. But,
better still, he has given me his dear heart of gold in which to hide
the life of my heart forever and a day."
Katherine's words came triumphantly, more as song than as speech. She
caught the elder woman's upraised hand gently and kissed it, looking
her, meanwhile, full in the face.--"I am happy, very, very happy, best
and dearest," she said. "And it is so delicious to be happy."
"Ah, my child, my beautiful child," Mademoiselle de Mirancourt cried.
There were tears in her pretty, patient eyes. For if youth finds age
pathetic with the obvious pathos of spent body and of tired mind which
has ceased to greatly hope, how far more deeply pathetic does age, from
out its sad and settled wisdom, find poor gallant youth and all its
still unbroken trust in the beneficence of destiny, its unbroken faith
in the enchantments of earth!
Meanwhile, Julius March--product as he was of an arbitrary system of
thought and training, and by so much divorced from the natural
instincts of youth and age alike, the confident joy of the one, the
mature acquiescence of the other--in overhearing this brief
conversation suffered embarrassment amounting almost to shame. For not
only Katherine's words, but the vital gladness of her voice, the sweet
exuberance of her manner as she bent, in all her spotless bravery of
white and rose, above the elder woman's hand and kissed it, came to him
as a revelation before which he shrank with a certain fearful modesty.
Julius had read of love in the poets, of course; but, in actual fact,
he had never wooed a woman, nor heard from any woman's lips the
language of intimate devotion. The cold embraces of the Church--a
church, as he too often feared, rendered barren by schism and
heresy--were the only embraces he had ever suffered. Things read of and
things seen, moreover, are singularly different in power. And so he
trembled now at the mystery of human love, actual and concrete, here
close beside him. He was, indeed, moved to the point of losing his
habitual suavity of demeanour. He rose hastily and descended the
library steps, forgetful of the handful of chap-books, which fell in
tattered and dusty confusion upon the floor.
Katherine looked round. Until now she had been unobservant of his
presence, innocent of other audience than the old friend, to whom it
was fitting enough to confide dear secrets. For an instant she
hesitated, embarrassed too, her pride touched to annoyance, at having
laid bare the treasures of her heart thus unwittingly. She was tempted
to retreat through the still open door, into the library, and leave the
review of the Long Gallery and its many relics to a more convenient
season. But it was not Katherine's habit to run away, least of all from
the consequences of her own actions. And her sense of justice compelled
her to admit that, in this case, the indiscretion--if indiscretion
indeed there was--lay with her, in not having seen poor Julius; rather
than with him, in having overheard her little outburst. So she called
to him in friendly greeting, and came swiftly towards him down the
length of the great room.
And Julius stood waiting for her, leaning against the frame of the
library ladder; a spare, black figure, notably at variance with the
broad glory of sunshine and colour reigning out of doors.
His usually quick instinct of courtesy was in abeyance, shaken, as he
still was, and confused by the revelation that had just come to him. He
looked at Lady Calmady with a new and agitated understanding. She made
so fair a picture that he could only gaze dumbly at it. Tall in fact,
Katherine was rendered taller by the manner--careless of passing
fashion--in which her hair was dressed. The warm, brown mass of it,
rolled up and back from her forehead, showed all the perfect oval of
her face. Tender, lovely, smiling, her blue-brown eyes soft and
lustrous, with a certain wondering serenity in their depths, there was
yet something majestic about Katherine Calmady. No poor or unworthy
line marred the nobility of her face or figure. The dark, arched
eyebrows, the well-chiselled and slightly aquiline nose, the firm chin
and throat, the shapely hands, all denoted harmony and completeness of
development, and promised a reserve of strength, ready to encounter and
overcome if danger were to be met. Years afterwards, the remembrance of
Katherine as he just then saw her would return upon Julius, as
prophetic of much. Quailing in spirit, still reluctant, in his
asceticism, to comprehend and reckon with her personality in the
fulness of its present manifestation, he answered her at random, and
with none of the pause and playful evasiveness usual to his speech.
"I am very glad we have found you," Katherine said frankly. "I was
afraid, by the fact of your not coming to breakfast, that you were
overtired. We talked late last night. Did we weary you too much?"
"Existence in itself is vexatiously wearisome at times--at least to
feeble persons, like myself."
Katherine's smile faded. She looked at him with charming solicitude.
"Ah! you are not well," she declared. "Go out and enjoy the sunshine.
Leave all those stupid books. Go," she repeated, "order one of the
horses. Go and meet Richard. He has gone over to look at the new lodge.
You could ride all the way through the east woods in the cool. See, I
will put these tidy."
And, as she spoke, Katherine stooped to pick up the scattered
chap-books from the ground. But, in the last few moments, while looking
at her, yet further understanding had overtaken Julius March. Not only
the mystery of human love, but the mystery of dawning motherhood had
come close to him. And he put Lady Calmady aside with a determination
of authority somewhat surprising.
"No, no, pardon me! They are dusty, they will soil your hands. You must
not touch those books," he said.
Katherine straightened herself up. Her face was slightly flushed, her
expression full of kindly amusement.
"Dear Julius, you are very imperative. Surely I may make my hands
dirty, once in a way, in a good cause? They will wash, you know, just
as well as your own, after all."
"A thousand times better. Still, I will ask you not to touch those
books. I have valid reasons. For one, an evil beast in the form of a
spider has dwelt among them. I disturbed it and it fled, looking as
though it had grown old in trespasses and sins. It seemed to me a thing
of ill omen."
He tried to steady himself, to treat the matter lightly. Yet his speech
struck Katherine as hurried and anxious, out of all proportion to the
matter in hand.
"Poor thing--and you killed it? Yet it couldn't help being ugly, I
suppose," she answered, not without a touch of malice.
Julius was on his knees, his long, thin fingers gathering up the
tattered pages, ranging them into a bundle, tying them together with
the tag of rusty, black ribbon aforesaid. For an unreasoning, fierce
desire was upon him--very alien to his usual gentle attitude of
mind--to shield this beautiful woman from all acquaintance with the
foul story set forth in those little books. To shield her, indeed, from
more than merely that.--For a vague presentiment possessed him that she
might, in some mysterious way, be intimately involved in the final
developments of that same story which, though august, were so full of
suffering, so profoundly sad. Meanwhile, in his excitement, he replied
less to her gently mocking question than to the importunities of his
own thought.
"No," he said, "I let it go. I begin to fear it is useless to attempt
to take short-cuts to the extinction of what is evil. It does not
cease, but merely changes its form. Unwillingly I have learned that. No
violent death is possible to things evil."
Julius rose to his feet.
"They must go on," he continued, "till, in the merciful providence of
God, their term is reached, till their power is exhausted, till they
have worn themselves out."
Lady Calmady turned and moved thoughtfully towards the far end of the
room, where the sunshine still slanted in through the open casements of
the bay window, and where the delicate, little spinster lady stood
awaiting her. Amorous pigeons cooed below on the string-course. Bees
droned sleepily against the glass.
"But," she said, in gentle remonstrance, "that is a rather terrible
doctrine, Julius. Surely it is not quite just; for it would seem to
leave us almost hopelessly at the mercy of the wrong-doing of others."
"Yes, but are we not, just that--all of us at the mercy of the
wrong-doing of others?--The courageous forever suffering for the
cowardly, the wise for the ignorant and brutish, the just for the
unjust? Is not this, perhaps, the very deepest lesson of our religion?"
"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried incredulously. "There is something at once
deeper and more comforting than that. Remember, in the beginning, when
God created all things and reviewed His handiwork, He pronounced it
very good."
Julius was recovering his suavity. The little packet of chap-books
rested safely in the pocket of his coat.
"But that was a long time ago," he said, smiling.
They reached the bay window. Katherine took her old friend's hand once
again and laid it caressingly upon her arm.
"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, dearest," she said. "Julius is in
fault. He will argue with me about the date of the creation, and that
takes time. He declares it was so long ago that everything has had time
to grow very old and go very wrong. But, indeed, he is mistaken. Agree
with me, tell him he is mistaken! The world is deliciously young yet.
It was only made a little over twenty-two years ago. I must know, for I
came into it then. And I found it all as new as I was myself, and a
thousand times prettier--quite adorably gay, adorably fresh."
Katherine's voice sank, grew fuller in tone. She gazed out over the
brilliant garden to the woodland shimmering in the noontide heat. Then
she looked at Julius March, her eyes and lips eloquent with joyous
conviction.
"Indeed, I think, God makes His whole creation over again for each one
of us, it is so beautiful. As in the beginning, so now," she said;
"behold it is very good--ah yes! who can doubt that--it is very good!"
"Amen. To you may it ever so continue," Julius murmured, bowing his
head.
That evening there was a dinner party at Brockhurst. Lord Denier
brought his handsome second wife. She was a Hellard, and took the judge
_faute de mieux_, so said the wicked world, rather late in life. The
Cathcarts of Newlands and their daughter Mary came; and Roger Ormiston
too, who, being off duty, had run down from London for a few days'
partridge shooting, bringing with him his cousin Colonel St.
Quentin--invalided home, to his own immense chagrin, in the midst of
the Afghan war. On the terrace, after dinner, for the night was warm
enough for the whole company to take coffee out of doors, Lady
Calmady--incited thereunto by her brother--had persuaded Mary Cathcart
to sing, accompanying herself on her guitar. The girl's musical gifts
were of no extraordinary order; but her young contralto was true and
sweet. The charm of the hour and the place, moreover, was calculated to
heighten the effect of the Jacobite songs and old-world love ditties
which she selected.