The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
"Ah! my dear," Katherine said, "I do more than believe. I know it."
The younger woman regarded her searchingly. Then she shook her charming
head.
"It's no good to arrive at a place before you've got to it," she
declared. "And I very certainly haven't got to the second half of the
lesson, let alone the doxology, yet. And then I'm so blissfully content
with the first half, that I've no disposition to hurry. No, dear Cousin
Katherine, I am afraid you must resign yourself to put up with me for a
little while longer. Your foes, unfortunately, are of your own
household in this affair. Dr. Knott has just been holding forth to
us--Julius March, and Mr. Quayle, and me--and swearing me over, not
only to stay, but to make you eat and drink and come out of doors, and
even to go away with me. Because--yes, in a sense your Thomas is right
with his pointing finger, though he got a bit muddled, good man, not
being quite up-to-date, and pointed to the wrong place----"
Honoria left her sentence unfinished. She knelt down--her tall, slender
figure, angular, more like that of a youth, than like that of a maid,
in her spare mud-stained habit and coat. Impulsively she put her hands
on Lady Calmady's hips, laid her head in her lap.
"Have you but one blessing, oh! my more than mother?" she cried. "Do we
count for nothing, all the rest of us--your household, and tenants rich
and poor, and Julius the faithful, and Ludovic the bland, and that
queer lump of sagacity and ugliness, John Knott? Why will you kill
yourself? Why will you die and leave us all, just because one person is
perverse? That's hardly the way to make us--who love you--bear with and
pity him and welcome him home.--Oh! I know I am treading on dangerous
ground and venturing to approach very close. But I don't care--not a
hang! We're at the end of our patience. We want you, and we mean to
have you back."
Honoria raised herself, knelt bolt upright, her hands on the arms of
Lady Calmady's chair, her expression full of appeal.
"Be kind to us, be kind," she said. "We only ask you, after all, to eat
and drink--to let Clara take care of you at night, and I'll do so by
day.--And then, when you are stronger, you must come away with me, up
north, to Ormiston. You have not been there for years, and its gray
towers are rather splendid overlooking that strong, uneasy, northern
sea. It stirs the Viking blood in one, and makes that which was hard
seem of less moment. Roger and Mary are there, too--will be all this
summer. And you know it refreshed you to see them last year. And if we
go pretty soon the boys will be at school, so they won't tire you with
their racketing. They're jolly monkeys, though, in my opinion, Godfrey
wants smacking. He comes the elder-brother a lot too much over poor
little Dick.--But that's neither here nor there. Oh! it's for you to
get out of the backwater into the stream, ten times more than for me.
Dearest physician, heal thyself!"
But Katherine, though deeply touched by the loving ardour of the
younger woman's appeal, and the revelation of tenderness and watchful
care, constantly surrounding her, which that appeal brought along with
it, could not rouse herself to any immediate response. Sternly,
unremittingly, since the fair July night when Richard had left her
nearly five years earlier, she had schooled herself into unmurmuring
resignation and calm. In the prosecution of such a process there must
be loss as well as gain. And Katherine had, in great measure, atrophied
impulse, and, in eradicating personal desire, had come near destroying
all spontaneity of emotion. She could still give, but the power of
receiving was deadened in her. And she had come to be jealous of the
quiet which surrounded her. It was her support and solace. She asked
little more than not to have it broken up. She dreaded even affection,
should that strive to draw her from the cloistered way of life. The
world, and its many interests, had ceased to be of any moment to her.
She asked to be left to contemplation of things eternal and to the
tragedy of her own heart. And so, though it was beautiful to know
herself to be thus cherished and held in high esteem, that beauty came
to her as something unrelated, as sweet words good to hear, yet spoken
of some person other than herself, or of a self she had ceased to be.
All privilege implies a corresponding obligation, and to the meeting of
fresh obligations Katherine felt herself not only unequal, but
indisposed. And so, she smiled now upon Honoria St. Quentin, leaning
back against the rose-silk and muslin-covered pillows, with a lovely
indulgence, yet rather hopelessly unmoved and remote.
"Ah! my dear, I am beyond all wish to be healed after the fashion you,
in your urgent loving-kindness, would have me," she said. "I look
forward to the final healing, when my many mistakes and shortcomings
shall be forgiven and the smart of them removed. And I am very tired. I
do not think it can be required of me to go back."
"I know, I know," Honoria replied.--She rose to her feet and moved
across to the fireplace, her straight eyebrows drawn together, her
expression one of perplexity. "I must seem a brute for trying to drag
you back. When Dr. Knott, and the other two men, asked me to come and
reason with you, I was on the edge of refusing. I hardly had the heart
to worry you. And yet," she added wistfully, "after all, in a way, it
is just simply your own, dear fault. For if you will be a sort of
little kingdom of heaven to us, you see, it's inevitable that, when you
threaten to slip away from us, we should play the part of the violent
and do our best to take our kingdom by force and keep it in spite of
itself."
"You overrate the heavenliness of the poor little kingdom," Katherine
said. "Its soil has become barren, its proud cities are laid waste.
It's an unprofitable place, believe me, dearest child. Let it be. Seek
your fortune in some kingdom from which the glory has not departed and
whose motto is not _Ichabod_."
"Unfortunately, I can't do that," the younger woman answered. "I've
explained why already. Where my heart is, there, you see, my kingdom is
also."
"Ah! my dear, my dear," Katherine said, touched, yet somewhat weary.
"And after all it is not wholly for our own sakes we make this fight to
keep you."--Miss St. Quentin's voice sank. She spoke slowly and as
though with reluctance. "We do it for the sake of the person you love
best in the world. I don't say we love him very much, but that is
beside the mark. We owe him a certain duty--I, because I am living in
his house, the others because they are his friends. When he comes
home--as come he surely will--they all say that, even while they blame
him--would it not be an almost too cruel punishment if he found
Brockhurst empty of your presence? You would not wish that. It's not a
question of me, of course. I don't count. But you gone, no one--not
even the old servants, I believe--would stay. Blame would be turned
into something awkwardly near to hatred."
Lady Calmady's serenity did not desert her, but a touch of her old
loftiness of manner was apparent. And Miss St. Quentin was very glad.
Anything, even anger, would be welcome if it dissipated that unnatural,
paralysing calm.
"You forget Julius, I think," she said. "He will be faithful to the
very end, faithful unto death. And so will another friend of happier
days, poor, blind, old Camp."
A sudden inspiration came to Honoria St. Quentin.
"You must only count on Julius, I am afraid, Cousin Katherine--not on
Camp."
And to her immense relief she perceived Lady Calmady's serenity give a
little. It was as though she came nearer. Her sweet face was troubled,
her eyes full of questioning.
"Camp grew a little too tired of waiting about three weeks ago. You did
not ask for him----"
"Didn't I?" Katherine said, smitten by self-reproach.
"Never once--and so we did not tell you, fearing to distress you."
Miss St. Quentin came over and sat down on the end of the sofa again.
She rested her hands on her knees. Her feet were rather far apart. She
fixed her eyes upon the small prophets and patriarchs anticking upon
the hearth.
"But it wasn't really so very bad," she said reflectively. "And we did
all we could to smooth his passage, poor, dear beast, to the place
where all good dogs go. We had the vet out from Westchurch two or three
times, but there was nothing much he could do. And I thought him a bit
rough. Nervousness, I fancy. You see the dog did not like being handled
by a stranger, and made it rather hot for him once or twice. I could
not let him be worried, poor old man, and so Julius March, and Winter,
and I, took turn and turn about with him."
"Where did he die?"
"In the Gun-Room, on the tiger-skin."--Honoria did not look round. Her
voice grew perceptibly husky. "Chifney and I sat up with him that last
night."
"You and Chifney?" Lady Calmady exclaimed, almost in protest.
"Yes. Of course the men would have been as kind as kind could be. Only
I had a feeling you would be glad to know I was there, later, when we
told you. You see Chifney's as good as any vet, and I had to have
somebody. The dog was rather queer. I did not quite know how to manage
him alone."
Lady Calmady put out her hand. Honoria took it silently, and fell to
stroking it once more. It was a declaration of peace, she felt, on the
part of the obstinate well-beloved--possibly a declaration of something
over and above peace.
"Winter saw to our creature comforts," the young lady continued. "Oh,
we weren't starved, I promise you! And Chifney was excellent company."
She hesitated a moment.
"He told me endless yarns about horses--about Doncaster and Newmarket,
and Goodwood. I was greatly flattered at being regarded sufficiently of
the equestrian order to hear all that.--And he told me stories about
Richard, when he was quite a little boy--and about his father also."
Honoria had a conviction the tears were running down Lady Calmady's
cheeks, but she would not look round. She only stroked the hand she
held softly, and talked on.
"They were fine," she said, "some of those stories. I am glad to have
heard them. They went home to me. When all is said and done, there is
nothing like breeding and pluck, and the courtesy which goes along with
them. But after midnight Camp grew very restless. He had his blanket in
the big armchair--you know the one I mean--as usual. But he wouldn't
stay there. We had to lift him down. You see his hindquarters were
paralysed, and he couldn't help himself much. It was pathetic. I can't
forget the asking look in his half-blind eyes. But we couldn't make out
what he wanted. At last he dragged himself as far as the door, and we
set it open and watched him, poor, dear beast. He got across the lobby
to the bottom of the little staircase----"
The speaker's breath caught.
"Then we made out what it was. He wanted to get up here, to come to
you.--Well, I could understand that! I should want just that myself,
shall want it, when it comes to the last. He whimpered when Chifney
carried him back into the Gun-Room."
Honoria turned her head and looked Lady Calmady in the face. Her own
was more than commonly white and very gentle in expression.
"He died in the gray of the morning, with his great head on my lap. I
fancy it eased him to have something human, and--rather pitiful--close
against him. Julius had just come in to see how we were getting on, I
won't declare he did not say a prayer--I think he did. But I wasn't
quite as steady as I might have been just then."
She turned her head, looking back at the figures upon the hearth. She
was satisfied. Lady Calmady's long-sustained calm had given way, and
she wept.
"We buried him, in his blanket, under the big Portugal-laurel, where