The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 20

For a while, only the whisper of Lady Calmady's skirts, the soft, even tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:--

"Dr. Knott is with Richard."

"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.

But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.

"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in her saintly resignation, and you"--Katherine turned her head, smiled at him in lovely scorn--"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church--your G.o.d--how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer--you who have never loved."

Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so lately carried.

"I too have loved," he said at last.

Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.

"Really, Julius?" she said.

Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.

"Very really," he answered.

"But when?"

"Long ago--and always."

"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of her personal distress was lifted. d.i.c.kie and Dr. Knott together in that bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black ca.s.sock.

Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.

"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times, but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us; supposed your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me this."

"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret, all these years, only too well.

Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her back.

"But, tell me--tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both.

Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"

"No, thank G.o.d, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I believe she loved me truly as a friend--and that was sufficient."

"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is never sufficient."

"In one sense, yes--in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would have become other than she was."

"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be your danger, in such a case. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_, and you would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them----"

She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face darkened somewhat.

"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one to the very quick."--Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wis.h.i.+ng all this otherwise," she said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have been very happy, dear Julius."

Their pacing had just brought them to the arched doorway of the chapel.

Katherine stopped, and raising her arm leaned her hand against the stone jamb of it above her head.

"See," she went on, "I want to be truly unselfish. I know how generous you are. Perhaps you remain here out of all too great kindness towards my poor d.i.c.k and me. You mustn't do that, Julius. You say she is still living. Consider--is it too late?"

Was it indeed too late? All the frustrated manhood cried aloud in Julius March. He covered his face with his hands. His carefully restrained imagination ran riot, presenting enchantments.

And Katherine, watching him, found herself strangely moved. For it was very startling to see this so familiar figure under so unfamiliar an aspect--to see Julius March, her everyday companion and a.s.sistant, his reticence, his priestly aloofness, his mild and courtly calm, swept under by a tide of personal emotion. Lady Calmady was drawn to him by deepened sympathy. Yet regret arose in her that this man proved to be, after all, but as other men. She was vaguely disappointed, having derived more security than she had quite realised from his apparent detachment and impa.s.sibility. And, as an indirect consequence, her revolt against G.o.d suffered access of bitterness. For not only was He--to her seeing--callous regarding the fate of the many, but He failed to support those few most devoted to His cause. In the hour of their trial He was careless even of His own elect.

"Ah! I think it is indeed by no means too late!" she exclaimed.

Julius March let his hands drop at his sides. He gazed at her and her expression was of wistful mockery--compa.s.sionate rather than ironical.

Then he looked away down the length of the chapel. In the warm afternoon light, the solid and rich brown of the arcaded stalls on either hand, emphasised the harmonious radiance of the great east window, a radiance as of clear jewels.--Ranks of kneeling saints, the gold of whose orioles rose in an upward curve to the majestic image of the Christ in the central light--a Christ risen and glorified, enthroned, His feet s.h.i.+ning forever upon heaven's sapphire floor.

Before the altar hung three silver-gilt lamps of Italian workmans.h.i.+p, in the crimson cup of each of which it had so long been Julius's pleasure to keep the tongue of flame constantly alive. The habits of a lifetime are not hastily set aside. Gazing on these things, his normal att.i.tude returned to him. Not that which he essentially was but that which, by long and careful training of every thought, every faculty, he had become, authoritatively claimed him. His eyes fell from contemplation of the glories of the window to that of the long, straight folds of the ca.s.sock which clothed him. It was hardly the garb in which a man goes forth to woo! Then he looked at Lady Calmady--she altogether seductive in her innocence and in her wistful mockery as she leaned against the jamb of the door.

"You are mistaken, dear Katherine," he said. "It has always been too late."

"But why--why--if she is free to listen?"

"Because I am not free to speak."

Julius smiled at her. His suavity had returned, and along with it a dignity of bearing not observable before.

"Let us walk," he said. And then:--"After all I have given you a very mutilated account of this matter. Soon after I took orders, before I had ever seen the very n.o.ble, to me perfect, woman who unconsciously revealed to me the glory of human love, I had dedicated my life, and all my powers--poor enough, I fear--of mind and body to the service of the Church. I was ambitious in those days. Ambition is dead, killed by the knowledge of my own shortcomings. I have proved an unprofitable servant--for which may G.o.d in His great mercy forgive me. But, while my faith in myself has withered, my faith in Him has come to maturity. I have learned to think very differently on many subjects, and to perceive that our Heavenly Father's purposes regarding us are more generous, more far-reaching, more august, than in my youthful ignorance I had ever dreamed. All things are lawful in His sight. Nothing is common or unclean--if we have once rightly apprehended Him, and He dwells in us. And yet--yet, a vow once made is binding. We may not do evil to gain however great a good."

Katherine listened in silence. The words came with the power of immutable conviction. She could not believe, yet she was glad to have him believe.

"And that vow precludes marriage?" she said at last.

"It does," Julius answered.

For a time they paced again in silence. Then Lady Calmady spoke, a delicate intimacy and affection in her manner, while once more, for a moment, she let her hand rest on his arm.

"So Brockhurst keeps you--I keep you, dear Julius, to the last?"

"Yes, if you will, to the very last."

"I am thankful for that," she said. "You must forgive me if in the past I have been inconsiderate at times. I am afraid the constant struggle, which certain circ.u.mstances of necessity create, tends to make me harsh and imperious. I carry a trouble, which calls aloud for redress, forever in my arms. They ache with the burden of it. And there is no redress. And the trouble grows stronger alas. Its voice--so dear, yet so dreaded--grows louder, till it deafens me to all other sounds. The music of this once beautiful world becomes faint. Only angry discord remains. And I become selfish. I am the victim of a fixed idea. I become heedless of the suffering of those about me. And you, my poor Julius, must have suffered very much!"

"Now, less than ever before," he answered. But even as he spoke, Katherine was struck by his pallor, by the drawn look of his features and languor of his bearing.

"Ah, you have fasted all day!" she cried.

"What matter?" he said, smiling. "The body surely can sustain a trifle of hunger, if the soul and spirit are fed. I have feasted royally to-day in that respect. I am strangely at ease. As to baser sort of food, what wonder if I forgot?"

The door of d.i.c.kie's bedchamber opened, letting in long shafts of sunlight, and Dr. Knott came slowly forward. His aspect was savage.

Even his philosophy had been not wholly proof against the pathos of his patient's case. It irritated him to fall from his usual relentlessness of common sense into a melting mood. He took refuge in sarcasm, desirous to detect weakness in others, since he was, unwillingly, so disagreeably conscious of it in himself.

"Well, we're through with our business, Lady Calmady," he said. "Eh!

Mr. March, what's wrong with you? Putty-coloured skin and shortness of breath. A little less prayer and a little more physical exercise is what you want. Successful, Lady Calmady?--Umph--I'm afraid the less said about that the better. Sir Richard will talk it out with you himself. Upset? Yes, I don't deny he is a little upset--and, like a fool, I'm upset too. You can go to him now, Lady Calmady. Keep him cheerful, please, and give him his head as much as you can."