The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 81

"Oh, well, the tracks were too big for a fallow-deer to begin with. And then there's a difference, you can't mistake it if you've ever compared the two, in the cleft of the hoof."

"And you have compared the two?"

"Oh, certainly," Honoria answered.--She was beginning to recover her nonchalance of manner and indolent slowness of speech. "I lose no opportunity of acquiring odds and ends of information. One never knows when they may come in handy."

She looked at him as she spoke, and her upper lip shortened and her eyes narrowed into a delightful smile--a smile, moreover, which had the faintest trace of an asking of pardon in it. And it struck Richard that there was in her expression and bearing a transparent sincerity, and that her eyes--now narrowed as she smiled--were not the clear, soft brown they appeared at a distance to be, but an indefinable colour, comparable only to the dim, yet clear, green gloom which haunts the under-s.p.a.ces of an ilex grove upon a summer day. He turned his head rather sharply. He did not want to think about matters of that sort. He was grateful to this young lady for the devoted care she had bestowed on his mother--but, otherwise her presence was only a part of that daily discipline which must be cheerfully undertaken in obedience to the exigencies of his new and fair idea.

"Probably it is a deer that has broken out of Windsor Great Park and traveled," he said. "They do that sometimes, you know."

But here small d.i.c.k Ormiston, whose spirits, lately pirouetting on giddy heights of felicity, had suffered swift declension bootwards at mention of his thrilling adventure in which, alas, he had neither lot nor part, projected himself violently into the conversational arena.

"Mother," he piped, his words tumbling one over the other in his eagerness--"Mother, I expect it's the same deer that grandpapa was talking about when Lord Shotover came over to tea last Friday, and wanted to know if Honoria wasn't back at Newlands again. And then he and grandpapa yarned, don't you know. Because, Cousin Richard--it must have been while you were away last year--the buckhounds met at Bagshot and ran through Frimley and right across Spendle Flats----"

"No, they didn't, Cousin Richard," G.o.dfrey interrupted. "They ran through the bottom of Sandyfield Lower Wood."

"But they lost--any way they lost, Cousin Richard," the younger boy cried.--"You weren't there, G.o.dfrey, so you can't know what grandpapa said. He said they lost somewhere just into Brockhurst, and he told Lord Shotover how they beat up the country for nearly a week, and how they never found it, and had to give it up as a bad job and go home again. And--and--Lord Shotover said, rotten bad sport, stag-hunting, unless you get it on Exmoor, where they're not carted and they don't saw their antlers off. He said meets of the buckhounds ought to be called Stockbroker's Parade, that was about all they amounted to. And so, Cousin Richard, I think,--don't you, mother--that this must be that same deer?"

Whereat the elder d.i.c.k's expression, which had grown somewhat dark at the mention of Lord Shotover, brightened sensibly again. And, for cause unknown, he looked at Honoria, smiling amusedly, before saying to the very voluble small sportsman:--

"To be sure, d.i.c.k. Your arguments are unanswerable, convincingly sound.

No reasonable man could have a doubt about it! Of course it's the same deer."

And so the luncheon finished gaily enough, though Miss St. Quentin was conscious her contributions to the cultivation of that same gaiety were but spasmodic. She dreaded the conclusion of the meal, fearing lest then she might be called upon to behold Richard Calmady once again, as she had beheld him--now just on six years ago--in the half dismantled house in Lowndes Square, on the night of Lady Louisa Barking's ball.

And from that she shrank, not with her former physical repulsion towards the man himself, but with the moral repulsion of one compelled against his will to gaze upon a pitifully cruel sight, the suffering of which he is powerless to lessen or amend. The short, light-made crutches, lying on the floor by the young man's chair, shocked her as the callous exhibition of some unhappy prisoner's shackling-irons might. It const.i.tuted an indignity offered to the Richard sitting here beside her, so much as to think of, let alone look at, that same Richard when on foot. Therefore it was with an oddly mingled relief and sense of playing traitor, that she rose with the rest of the little company and left him by himself. She was thankful to escape, though all the while her inherent loyalty tormented her with accusation of meanness, as of one who deserts a comrade in distress.

But here the small d.i.c.k, to whom such complex refinements of sensibility were as yet wholly foreign, created a diversion by prancing round from the far side of the table and forcibly seizing her hand. He was jealous of the large share G.o.dfrey had to-day secured of her society. He meant to have his innings. So he rubbed his curly head against her much braided elbow, b.u.t.ting her lovingly in the exuberance of his affection as some nice, little ram-lamb might. But just as they reached the door, through which Lady Calmady and the rest of the party had already pa.s.sed, the boy drew up short.

"I say, hold on half a minute, Honoria, please," he said.

And then, turning round, his cheeks red as peonies, he marched back to where Richard sat alone at the head of the table.

"In case--in case, don't you know," he began, stuttering in the excess of his excitement--"in case, Cousin Richard, mummy didn't quite take in what you said at the beginning of luncheon--you did mean for really that I was to come and stay here in the summer holidays, and that you'd take me out, don't you know, and show me your horses?"

And to Honoria, glancing at them, there was a singular, and almost tragic, comment on life in the likeness, yet unlikeness, of those two faces.--The features almost identical, the same blue eyes, the two heads alike in shape, each with the same close-fitted, bright-brown cap of hair. But the boy's face flushed, without afterthought or qualification of its eager happiness--the man's colourless, full of reserve, almost alarmingly self-contained and still.

Yet, when the elder Richard's answer came, it was altogether gentle and kindly.

"Yes, most distinctly _for really_, d.i.c.k," he said. "Let there be no mistake about it. Let it be clearly understood I want to have you here just as long, and just as often, as your mother and father will spare you. I'll show you the horses, never fear, and let you ride them too."

"A--a--a real big one?"

"Just as big a one as you can straddle." Richard paused.--"And I'll show you other things, if all goes well, which I'm beginning to think--and perhaps you'll think so too some day--are more important even than horses."

He put his hand under the boy's chin, tipped up the ruddy, beaming, little face and kissed it.

"It's a compact," he said.--"Now cut along, old chap. Don't you see you're keeping Miss St. Quentin waiting?"

Whereupon the small Richard started soberly enough, being slightly impressed by something--he knew not quite what--only that it made him feel awfully fond, somehow, of this newly discovered cousin and namesake. But, about half-way down the room, that promise of a horse, a thorough-bred, and just as big as he could straddle, swept all before it, rendering his spirits uncontrollably explosive. So he made a wild rush and flung himself headlong upon the waiting Honoria.

"Oh! you want to bear-fight, do you? Two can play at that game," she cried, "you young rascal!"

Then without apparent effort, or diminution of her lazy grace, the elder Richard saw her pick the boy up by his middle, and, notwithstanding convulsive wrigglings on his part, throw him across her shoulder and bear him bodily away through the lobby, into the hall, and out of sight.

Hence it fell out that not until quite late that evening did the moment so dreaded by Miss St. Quentin actually arrive. In furtherance of delay she practised a diplomacy not altogether flattering to her self-respect, coming down rather late for dinner, and retiring immediately after that meal to the Gun-Room, under plea of correspondence which must be posted at Farley in time for to-morrow's day mail. She was even late for prayers in the chapel, so that, taking her accustomed place next to Lady Calmady in the last but one of the stalls upon the epistle-side, she found all the members of the household, gentle and simple alike, already upon their knees. The household mustered strong that night, a testimony, it may be supposed, to feudal as much as to religious feeling. In the seats immediately below her were an array of women-servants, declining from the high dignities of Mrs. Reynolds the housekeeper, the faithful Clara, and her own lanky and loyal north-country woman Faulstich, to a very youthful scullery maid, sitting just without the altar rails at the end of the long row. Opposite were not only Winter, Bates the steward, Powell, Andrews, and the other men-servants, but Chaplin, heading a detachment from the house stables, and--unexampled occurrence!--Gnudi the Italian _chef_, with his air of gentle and philosophic melancholy and his anarchic sentiments in theology and politics, liable,--these last--when enlarged on, to cause much fluttering in the dove-cote of the housekeeper's room.--"To hear Signer Gnudi talk sometimes made your blood run cold. It seemed as if you couldn't be safe anywhere from those wicked foreign barricades and ma.s.sacres," as Clara put it. And yet, in point of fact, no milder man ever larded a woodc.o.c.k or stuffed it with truffles.

Alone, behind all these, in the first of the row of stalls with their carven spires and dark vaulted canopies, sat Richard Calmady, whom all his people had thus come forth silently to welcome. But, through prayer and psalm and lesson alike, as Miss St. Quentin noted, he remained immovable, to her almost alarmingly cold and self-concentrated. Only once he turned his head, leaning a little forward and looking towards the purple, and silver, and fair, white flowers of the altar, and the clear s.h.i.+ning of the altar lights.

"Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee? or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

The words were given out by Julius March, not only with an exquisite distinctness of enunciation, but with a ring of a.s.surance, of sustaining and thankful conviction. Richard leaned back in his stall again, looking across at his mother. While Honoria, taken with a sensitive fear of inquiring into matters not rightfully hers to inquire into, hastily turned her eyes upon her open prayer-book. They must have many things to say to one another, that mother and son, as she divined, to-day,--far be it from her to attempt to surprise their confidence!

She rose from her knees, cutting her final pet.i.tions somewhat short, directly the last of the men-servants had filed out of the chapel, and, crossing the Chapel-Room, a tall, pale figure in her trailing, white, evening dress, she pulled back the curtain of the oriel window, opened one of the curved, many-paned cas.e.m.e.nts and looked out. She was curiously moved, very sensible of a deeper drama going forward around her, going forward in her own thought--subtly modifying and trans.m.u.ting it--than she could at present either explain or place. The night was cloudy and very mild. A soft, sobbing, westerly wind, with the smell of coming rain in it, saluted her as she opened the cas.e.m.e.nt. The last of the frost must be gone, by now, even in the hollows--the snow wholly departed also. The spring, though young and feeble yet, puling like some ailing baby-child in the voice of that softly-complaining, westerly wind, was here, very really present at last. Honoria leaned her elbows on the stone window-ledge. Her heart went out in strong emotion of tenderness towards that moist wind which seemed to cry, as in a certain homelessness, against her bare arms and bare neck.--"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren----"

But just then Katherine Calmady called to her, and that in a sweet, if rather anxious, tone.

"Honoria, dear child, come here," she said. "Richard is putting me through the longer catechism regarding those heath fires in August year, and the state of the woods."

Then, as the young lady approached her, Lady Calmady laid one hand on her arm, looking up in quick and loving appeal at the serious and slightly troubled face.

"My answers only reveal the woeful greatness of my ignorance. My geography has run mad. I am planting forests in the midst of corn-fields, so d.i.c.kie a.s.sures me, and making hay generally--as you, my dear, would say--of the map."

Still her eyes dwelt upon Honoria's in insistent and loving appeal.

"Come," she said, "explain to him, and save me from further exposition of my own ignorance."

Thus admonished the young lady sat down on the low sofa beside Richard Calmady. As she did so Katherine rose and moved away. Honoria determined to see only the young man's broad shoulders, his irreproachable dress clothes, his strangely still and very handsome face. But, since there was no concealing rug to cover them, it was impossible that she should long avoid also seeing his shortened and defective limbs and oddly shod feet. And at that she winced and shrank a little, for all her high spirit and inviolate, maidenly strength.

"Oh yes! those fires!" she said hurriedly. "There were several--you remember, Cousin Katherine?--or I dare say you don't, for you were ill all the time. But the worst was on Spendle Flats. You know that long three-cornered bit"--she looked Richard bravely in the face again--"which lies between the Portsmouth Road and our crossroad to Farley? It runs into a point just at the top of Star Hill."

"Yes, I know," d.i.c.kie said.

He had seen her wince.--Well, that wasn't wonderful! She could not very well do otherwise, if she had eyes in her head. He did not blame her.

And then, though it was not easy to do so with entire serenity, this was precisely one of those small unpleasant incidents which, in obedience to his new code, he was bound to accept calmly, good-temperedly, just as part of the day's work, in fact. He had done with malingering. He had done with the egoism of sulking and hiding--even to the extent of a _couvre-pieds_. All right, here it was!--Richard settled his shoulders squarely against the straight, stuffed back of the Chippendale sofa, and talked on.

"It's a pity that bit is burnt," he said. "I haven't been over that ground for nearly six years, of course. But I remember there were very good trees there--a plantation at the top end, just before you come to the big gravel-pits, and the rest self-sown. Are they all gone?"

"Licked as clean as the back of your hand," Honoria replied, warming to her subject. "They hardly repaid felling for firewood. It made me wretched. Some idiot threw down a match, I suppose. There had been nearly a month's drought, and the whole place was like so much tinder.

There was an easterly breeze too. You can imagine the blaze! We hadn't the faintest chance. Poor, old Iles lost his head completely, and sat down with his feet in a dry ditch and wept. There must be over two hundred acres of it. It's a dreadful eyesore, perfectly barren and useless, but for a little sour gra.s.s even a gipsy's donkey has to be hard up before he cares to eat!"--Miss St. Quentin s.h.i.+fted her position with a certain impatience. "I can't bear to see the land doing no work," she said.

"Doing no work?" d.i.c.kie inquired. He began to be interested in the conversation from other than a purely practical and local standpoint.

"Of course," she a.s.serted. "The land has no more right to lie idle than any of the rest of us--unless it's a bit of tilth sweetening in fallow between two crops. That is reasonable enough. But for the rest," she said, a certain brightness and self-forgetting gaining on her--"let it contribute its share all the while, like an honest citizen of the universe. Let it work, most decidedly let it work."

"And what about such trifles as the few hundred square miles of desert or mountain range?" Richard inquired, half amused, half--and that rather unwillingly--charmed. "They are liable to be a thorn in the side of the--well, socialist."

"Oh, I've no quarrel with them. They come under a different head."--Honoria's manner had ceased to be in any degree embarra.s.sed, though a slight perplexity came into her expression. For just then she remembered, somehow, her pacings of the station platform at Culoz, the salutation of the bleak, pure, evening wind from out the fastnesses of the Alps, and all her conversation there with her faithful admirer, Ludovic Quayle. And it occurred to her what singular contrast in sentiment that bleak evening wind offered to the mild, moist, westerly wind--complaint of the homeless baby, Spring--which had just now cried against her bosom! And again Honoria became conscious of being in contact, both in herself and in her surroundings, with more coercing, more vital drama than she could either interpret or place. Again something of fear invaded her, to combat which she hurried into speech.--"No, I haven't any quarrel with deserts and so on," she repeated. "They're uncommonly useful things for mankind to knock its head against--invincible, unnegotiable, splendidly competent to teach humanity its place. You see we've grown not a little conceited--so at least it seems to me--on our evolutionary journey up from the primordial cell. We're too much inclined to forget we've developed soul quite comparatively recently, and, therefore, that there is probably just as long a journey ahead of us--before we reach the ultimate of intellectual and spiritual development--as there is behind us physically from, say the parent ascidian, to you and me. And--and somehow"--Honoria's voice had become full and sweet, and she looked straight at d.i.c.kie with a rare candour and simplicity--"somehow those big open s.p.a.ces remind one of all that. They drive one's ineffectualness home on one. They remind one that environment, that mechanical civilisation, all the short cuts of applied science, after all count for little and inevitably come to the place called _stop_.

And that braces one. It makes one the more eager after that which lies behind the material aspects of things, and to which these merely act as a veil."

Honoria had bowed herself together. Her elbows were on her knees, her chin in her two hands, her charming face alight with a pure enthusiasm.