CHAPTER VI
ACCIDENT OR DESTINY, ACCORDING TO YOUR HUMOUR
On the 18th of October that year, St. Luke's day, a man died, and this was the manner of his passing.
There was nothing more to be done. Dr. Knott had gone out of the red drawing-room on the ground floor into the tapestry-hung dining-room next door, which struck cold as the small hours drew on towards the dawn. And Julius March, after reciting the prayer in which the Anglican Church commends the souls of her departing children to the merciful keeping of the God who gave them, had followed him. The doctor was acutely distressed. He hated to lose a patient. He also hated to feel emotion. It made him angry. Moreover, he was intolerant of the presence of the clergy and of their ministrations in sick rooms. He greeted poor Julius rather snarlingly.
"So your work's through as well as mine," he said. "No disrespect to your cloth, Mr. March, but I'm not altogether sorry. I dare say I'm a bit of a heathen; but I can't help fancying the dying know more of death and the way to meet it, than any of us can teach them."
A group of men-servants stood about the open door, at the further end of the room, with Iles, the steward, and Mr. Tom Chifney, the trainer from the racing stables. The latter advanced a little and, clearing his throat, inquired huskily—
"No hope at all, doctor?"
"Hope?" he returned impatiently.—The lamp on the great bare dining-table burned low, and John Knott's wide mouth, conical skull and thick, ungainly person looked ogreish, almost brutal in the uncertain light.—"There never was a grain of hope from the first, except in Sir Richard's fine constitution. He is as sound as only a clean-living man of thirty can be.—I wish there were a few more like him, though your beastly diseases do put money into my pocket.—That offered us a bare chance, and we were bound to act on that chance"—his loose lips worked into a bitterly humorous smile—"and torture him. Well, I've seen a good many men under the knife before now, and I tell you I never saw one who bore himself better. Men and horses alike, it's breeding that tells when it comes to the push. You know that, eh, Chifney?"
In the red drawing-room, where the drama of this sad night centred, Roger Ormiston had dropped into a chair by the fireside, his head sunk on his chest and his hands thrust into his pockets. He was very tired, very miserable. A shocking thing had happened, and, in some degree, he held himself responsible for that happening. For was it not he who had been so besotted with the Clown, and keen about its training? Therefore the young man cursed himself, after the manner of his kind; and cursed his luck, in that, if this thing was to happen, it had not happened to him instead of to Richard Calmady.
Mrs. Denny, the housekeeper, had retired to a straight-backed chair stationed against the wall. She sat there, waiting till the next call should come for her skilful nursing, upright, her hands folded upon her silk apron, her attitude a model of discreet and self-respecting repose. Mrs. Denny knew her place, and had a considerable capacity for letting other persons know theirs. She ruled the large household with unruffled calm. But, to-night, even her powers of self-control were heavily taxed; and though she carried her head high, she could not help tears coursing slowly down her cheeks, and falling sadly to the detriment of the goffered frills of her white, lawn cross-over.
And Richard Calmady, meanwhile, lay still and very fairly peaceful upon the narrow camp-bed in the middle of the room. He had lain there, save during one hour,—the memory of which haunted Katherine with hideous and sickening persistence,—ever since Tom Chifney, the head-lad from the stables, and a couple of grooms had carried him in, on a hurdle, from the steeple-chase course four days ago.
The crimson-covered chairs and sofas, and other furniture of the large square room, had been pushed back against the walls in a sort of orderly confusion, leaving a broad passageway between the doors at either end, and a wide vacant space round the bed. At the head of this stood a high, double-shelved what-not, bearing medicine bottles, cups, basins, rolled bandages, dressings of rag and lint, a spirit-lamp over which simmered a vessel containing vinegar, and a couple of shaded candles in a tall, branched, silver candlestick. The light from these fell, in intersecting circles, upon the white bed, upon the man's brown, close curled hair, upon his handsome face—drawn and sharpened by suffering—and its rather ghastly three days' growth of beard.
It fell, too, upon Katherine, as she sat facing her husband, the side of her large easy-chair drawn up parallel to the side of the bed.
Silently, unlooked for, as a thief in the night, the end of Katherine's fair world had come. There had been no time for forethought or preparation. At one step she had been called upon to pass from the triumph to the terror of mortal life. But she was a valiant creature; and her natural courage was reinforced by the greatness of her love. She met the blow standing, her brain clear, her mind strong to help. Only once had she faltered—during the hideous hour when she waited, pacing the dining-room in the dusk, four evenings back. For, after consultation with Dr. Jewsbury and Mr. Thoms of Westchurch, John Knott had told her—with a gentleness and delicacy a little surprising in so hard-bitten a man—that, owing to the shattered condition of the bone, amputation of the right leg was imperative. He added that, only too probably, the left would have eventually to go too. They must operate, he said, and operate immediately. Katherine had pleaded to be present; but Dr. Knott was obdurate.
"My dear lady, you don't know what you ask," he said. "As you love him, let him be. If you are there it will just double the strain. He'd suffer for you as well as himself. Believe me he will be far best alone."
It must be remembered that in 1842 anæsthetics had not robbed the operating-room of half its horrors. The victim went to execution wide-awake, with no mercy of deadened senses and dulled brain. And so Katherine had paced the dining-room, hearing at intervals, through the closed doors, the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, fearing she heard more and worse sounds than those. They were hurting him, sorely, sorely, dismembering and disfiguring the dear, living body which she loved. A tempest of unutterable woe swept over her. Breaking fiercely away from her brother and Denny—who strove to comfort her—she beat her poor, lovely head against the wall. But that, so far, had been her one moment of weakness. Since then she had fought steadily, with a certain lofty cheerfulness, for the life she so desired to save. The horror of the second operation had been spared her; but only because it might but too probably hasten, rather than retard, the approaching footsteps of death. Mortification had set in, in the bruised and mangled limb forty-eight hours ago. And now the scent of death was in the air. The awful presence drew very near. Yet only when doctor and priest alike rose and went, when her brother moved away, and even the faithful housekeeper stepped back from the bedside, did Katherine's mind really grasp the truth. Her well-beloved lay dying; and human tenderness, human skill, be they never so great, ceased to avail.
She was worn by the long vigil. Her face was colourless. Yet perhaps Katherine's beauty had never been more rare and sweet than as she sat there, leaning a little forward in the eagerness of her watchfulness. The dark circles about her eyes made them look very large and sombre. The corners of her mouth turned down and her under-lip quivered now and then, giving her expression a childlike piteousness of appeal. There was no trace of disorder in her appearance. Her white dressing-gown and all its pretty ribbons and laces were spotlessly fresh. Her hair was carefully dressed as usual—high at the back, showing the nape of her neck, her little ears, and the noble poise of her head. Katherine was not one of those women who appear to imagine that slovenliness is the proper exponent of sorrow.
Still, for all her high courage, as the truth came home to her, her spirit began to falter for the second time. It is comparatively easy to endure while there is something to be done; but it is almost intolerable, specially to the young when life is strong in them, merely to sit by and wait. Katherine's overwrought nerves began to play cruel tricks upon her, carrying her back in imagination to that other hideous hour of waiting, in the dining-room, four evenings ago. Again she seemed to hear the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, and those worse things—the stifled groan of one in the extremity of physical anguish, and the grate of a saw. These maddened her with pity, almost with rage. She feared that now, as then, she might lose her self-mastery and do some wild and desperate thing. She tried to keep her attention fixed on the quick irregular rise and fall of the linen sheet expressing the broad, full curve of the young man's chest, as he lay flat on his back, his eyes closed, but whether in sleep or in unconsciousness she did not know. As long as the sheet rose and fell he was alive at all events, still with her. But she was too exhausted for any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the foot of the bed.
The air of the room seemed to grow more oppressive, the silence to deepen, and with it the terrible tension of her mind increased. Suddenly she started to her feet. The logs burning in the grate had fallen together with a crash, sending a rush of ruddy flame and an innumerable army of hurrying sparks up the wide chimney. All the mouldings of the ceiling—all the crossing bars and sinuous lines of the richly-worked pattern, all the depending bosses and roses of it, all the foliations of the deep cornice—sprang into bold relief, outlined, splashed, and stained with living scarlet. And this universal redness of carpet, curtains, furniture, and now of ceiling, even of white-draped bed, suggested to Katherine's distracted fancy another thing—unseen, yet known during her other hour of waiting—namely blood.
Roused by the crash of the falling logs and the rustle of Katherine's garments as she sprang up, Richard Calmady opened his eyes. For a few seconds his glance wavered in vague distress and perplexity. Then as fuller consciousness returned of how it all was with him, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows his glance steadied upon Katherine and he smiled.
"Ah! my poor Kitty," he whispered, "it takes a long time, doesn't it, this business of dying?"
Katherine's evil fancies vanished. As soon as the demand for action came she grew calm and sane. The ceiling and sheets were white again and her mind was clear.
"Are you easy, my dearest?" she asked; "in less pain?"
"No," he said, "no, I'm not in pain. But everything seems to sink away from me, and I float right out. It's all dream and mist—except—except just now your face."
Katherine's lips quivered too much for speech. She moved swiftly across to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and inadequate weapons are all—even the most gallant—reduced to fighting death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's heart. And, on the other hand, ranged against this pitiful display of absurdly limited resources,—as the hosts of the Philistines against the little army of Israel,—resistless laws of nature, incalculably far-reaching forces, physical and spiritual, the interminable progression of cause and effect.
Denny joined Lady Calmady at the table. The two women held brief consultation. Then the housekeeper went round to the farther side of the bed, and slipping her arm under the pillows gently raised Richard's head and shoulders, while Katherine kneeling beside him held the spout of the feeding-cup to his lips.
"Must I? I don't think I can manage it," he said, drawing away slightly and closing his eyes.
But Katherine persisted.
"Oh! try to drink it," she pleaded, "never mind how little—only try. Help me to keep you here just as long as I can."
The young man's glance steadied on to her once again, and his eyes and lips smiled the same faint, wholly gracious smile.
"All right, my beloved," he said. "A little higher, Denny, please."
Not without painful effort and a choking contraction of the throat, he swallowed a few drops. But the greater part of the draught spilt out sideways, and would have dribbled down on to the pillows had not Katherine held her handkerchief to his mouth.
Ormiston, who had been standing at the foot of the bed in the hope of rendering some assistance, ground his teeth together with a half-audible imprecation, and went slowly over to the fireplace again. He had supposed himself as miserable as he well could be before. But this incident of the feeding-cup was the climax, somehow. It struck him as an intolerable humiliation and outrage that Richard Calmady, splendid fellow as he was, gifted, high-bred gentleman, should, of all men, come to this sorry pass! He was filled with impotent fury. And was it this pass, indeed, he asked himself, to which every human creature must needs come one day? Would he, Roger Ormiston, one day, find himself thus weak and broken; his body—now so lively a source of various enjoyment—degraded into a pest-house, a mere dwelling-place of suffering and corruption? The young man gripped the high, narrow mantel-shelf with both hands and pressed his forehead down between them. He really had not the nerve to watch what was going forward over there any longer. It was too painful. It knocked all the manhood out of him. But for very shame, before those two calm, devoted women, he would have broken down and wept.
Presently Richard's voice reached him, feeble yet uncomplaining.
"I am so sorry, but you see it's no use, Kitty. The machinery won't work. Let me lie flat again, Denny, please. That's better, thanks."
Then after a few moments of laboured breathing, he added—
"You mustn't trouble any more, it only disappoints you. We have just got to submit to fact, my beloved, I've taken my last fence."
Ormiston's shoulders heaved convulsively as he leaned his forehead against the cold, marble edge of the chimneypiece. His brother-in-law's words brought the whole dreadful picture up before him. Oh! that cursed slip and fall, that struggling, plunging, frenzied horse! And how the horse had plunged and struggled, good God! It seemed as though Chifney, the grooms, all of them, would never get hold of it or draw Richard out from beneath the pounding hoofs. And then Ormiston went over his own share in the business again, lamenting, blaming himself. Yet what more natural, after all, than that he should have set his affections on the Clown? Chifney believed in the horse too—a five-year-old brother of Touchstone, resembling, in his black-brown skin and intelligent, white-reach face, that celebrated horse; and inheriting—less enviable distinction—the high shoulders and withers of his sire Camel. If the Clown did not make a name, Captain Ormiston had sworn, by all the gods of sport, he would never judge a horse again. And, heaven help us, was this the ghastly way the Clown's name was to be made then?
The room grew very quiet again, save for a strange gurgling, rattling sound Richard Calmady made, at times, in breathing. Mrs. Denny had retired beyond the circle of firelight. And Katherine, having drawn her chair a little further forward, so that the foot of the bed might be out of sight, sat holding her husband's hand, softly caressing his wrist and palm with her finger-tips. Soon the slow movement of her fingers ceased, while she felt, in quick fear, for the fluttering, intermittent pulse. Richard's breathing had become more difficult. He moved his head restlessly and plucked at the sheet with his right hand. It was a little more than flesh and blood could bear.
Katherine called to him softly under her breath,—"Richard, Dick, my darling."
"All right, I'm coming."
He opened his eyes wide, as in sudden terror.
"Oh! I say though, what's happened? Where am I?"
Katherine leant down, kissed his hand, caressed it.
"Here, my dearest," she said, "at home, at Brockhurst, with me."
"Ah yes!" he said, "of course, I remember, I'm dying." He waited a little space, and then, turning his head on the pillow so as to have a better view of her, spoke again:—"I was floating right out—the under-tow had got me—it was sucking me down into the deep sea of mist and dreams. I was so nearly gone—and you brought me back."
"But I wanted you so—I wanted you so," Katherine cried, smitten with sudden contrition. "I could not help it. Do you mind?"
"You silly sweet, could I ever mind coming back to you?" he asked wistfully. "Don't you suppose I would much rather stay here at Brockhurst, at home, with you—than sink away into the unknown?"
"Ah! my dear," she said, swaying herself to and fro in the misery of tearless grief.
"And yet I have no call to complain," he went on. "I have had thirty years of life and health. It is not a small thing to have seen the sun, and to have rejoiced in one's youth. And I have had you"—his face hardened and his breath came short—"you, most enchanting of women."
"My dear, my dear!" Katherine cried, again bowing her head.
"God has been so good to me here that—I hope it is not presumptuous—I can't be much afraid of what is to follow. The best argument for what will be, is what has been. Don't you think so?"
"But you go and I stay," she said. "If I could only go too, go with you."
Richard Calmady raised himself in the bed, looked hard at her, spoke as a man in the fulness of his strength.
"Do you mean that? Would you come with me if you could—come through the deep sea of mist and dreams, to whatever lies beyond?"
For all answer Katherine bent lower, her face suddenly radiant, notwithstanding its pallor. Sorrow was still so new a companion to her that she would dare the most desperate adventures to rid herself of its hateful presence. Her reason and moral sense were in abeyance, only her poor heart spoke. She laid hold of her husband's hands and clasped them about her throat.
"Let us go together, take me," she prayed. "I love you, I will not be left. Closer, Dick, closer."
"Thank God! I am strong enough even yet," he said fiercely, while his jaw set, and his grasp tightened somewhat dangerously upon her throat. Katherine looked into his eyes and laughed. The blood was tingling through her veins.
"Ah! dear love," she panted, "if you knew how delicious it is to be a little hurt!"
But her ecstasy was short-lived, as ecstasy usually is. Richard Calmady unclasped his hands and dropped back against the pillows, putting her away from him with a certain authority.
"My beloved one, do not tempt me," he said, "we must remember the child. The devil of jealousy is very great, even when one lies, as I do now, more than half dead." He turned his head away, and his voice shook. "Ten years hence, twenty years hence, you will be as beautiful—more so, very likely—than ever. Other men will see you, and I——"
"You will be just what you were and always have been to me," Katherine interrupted. "I love you, and shall love."
She answered bravely, taking his hand again and caressing it, while he looked round and smiled at her. But she grew curiously cold. She shivered, and had a difficulty in controling her speech. Her new companion, Sorrow, refused to be tricked and to leave her, and the breath of sorrow is as sharp as a wind blowing over ice.
"You have made me perfectly content," Richard Calmady said presently. "There is nothing I would have changed. No hour of day—or night—ah, my God! my God!—which I could ask to have otherwise." He paused, fighting a sob which rose in his throat. "Still you are quite young——"
"So much the worse for me," Katherine said.
"Oh! I don't know about that," he put in quietly. "Anyhow, remember that you are free, absolutely and unconditionally free. I hold a man a cur who, in dying, tries to bind the woman he loves."
Katherine shivered. Despair had possession of her.
"Why reason about it?" she asked. "Don't you see that to be bound is the only comfort I shall have left?"
"My poor darling," Richard Calmady almost groaned.
His own helplessness to help her cut him to the quick. Wealth, and an inherent graciousness of disposition, had always made it so simple to be of service and of comfort to those about him. It was so natural to rule, to decide, to alleviate, to give little trouble to others and take a good deal of trouble on their behalf, that his present and final incapacity in any measure to shield even Katherine, the woman he worshipped, amazed him. Not pain, not bodily disfigurement,—though he recoiled, as every sane being must, from these,—not death itself, tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant, kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the affairs of living men. The desolation of impotence was upon him.
For a little time he lay very still, looking up at the firelight playing upon the mouldings of the ceiling, trying to reconcile himself to this. His mind was clear, yet, except when actually speaking, he found it difficult to keep his attention fixed. Images, sensations began to chase each other across his mental field of vision; and his thought, though definite as to detail, grew increasingly broken and incoherent, small matters in unseemly fashion jostling great. He wondered concerning those first steps of the disembodied spirit, when it has crossed the threshold of death; and then, incontinently, he passed to certain time-honoured jokes and impertinent follies at Eton, over which he, and Roger and Major St. Quentin had laughed a hundred times. They amused him greatly even yet. But he could not linger with them. He was troubled about the attics of the new lodge, now in building at the entrance to the east woods. The windows were too small, and he disliked that blind north gable. There were letters to be answered too. Lord Fallowfeild wanted to know about something—he could not remember what—Fallowfeild's inquiries had a habit of being vague. And through all these things—serious or trivial—a terrible yearning over Katherine and her baby—the new, little, human life which was his own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves and muscles, flitting pains in the limb of which, though it was gone, he had not ceased to be aware.—He dozed off, and mortal weakness closed down on him, floating him out and out into vague spaces. And then suddenly, once more, he felt a horse under him and gripped it with his knees. He was riding, riding, whole and vigorous, with the summer wind in his face, across vast, flowering pastures towards a great light on the far horizon, which streamed forth, as he knew, from the throne of Almighty God.
Choking, with the harsh rattle in his throat, he awoke to the actual and immediate—to the familiar square room and its crimson furnishings, to Katherine's sweet, pale face and the touch of her caressing fingers, to some one standing beside her, whom he did not immediately recognise. It was Roger—Roger worn with watching, grown curiously older. But a certain exhilaration, born of that strange ride, remained by Richard Calmady. Both ache of body and distress of mind had abated. He felt a lightness of spirit; an eagerness, as of one setting forth on a promised journey, who—not unlovingly, yet with something of haste—makes his dispositions before he starts.
"Look here, darling," he said, "you'll let the stables go on just as usual. Chifney will take over the whole management of them. You can trust him implicitly. And—that is you, Roger, isn't it?—you'll keep an eye on things, won't you, so that Kitty shall have no bother? I should like to know nothing was changed at the stables. They've been a great hobby of mine, and if—if the baby is a boy, he may take after me and care for them. Make him ride straight, Roger. And teach him to care for sport for its own sake, dear old man, as a gentleman should, not for the money that may come out of it."
He waited, struggling for breath, then his hand closed on Katherine's.
"I must go," he said. "You'll call the boy after me, Kitty, won't you? I want there to be another Richard Calmady. My life has been very happy, so, please God, the name will bring luck."
A spasm took him, and he tried convulsively to push off the sheet. Katherine was down on her knees, her right arm under his head, while with her left hand she stripped the bedclothes away from his chest and bared his throat.
"Denny, Denny!" she cried, "come—tell me—is this death?"
And Ormiston, impelled by an impulse he could hardly have explained, crossed the room, dragged back the heavy curtains, and flung one of the casements wide open.
The soft light of autumn dawn flowed in through the great mullioned window, quenching the redness of fire and candles, spreading, dim and ghostly, over the white dress and bowed head of the woman, over the narrow bed and the form of the maimed and dying man. The freshness of the morning air, laden with the soothing murmur of the fir forest swaying in the breath of a mild westerly breeze, laden too with the moist fragrance of the moorland, of dewy grass, of withered bracken and fallen leaves, flowed in also, cleansing the tainted atmosphere of the room. While, from the springy turf of the green ride—which runs eastward, parallel to the lime avenue—came the thud and suck of hoofs and the voices of the stable boys, as they rode the long string of dancing, snorting race-horses out to the training ground for their morning exercise.
Richard Calmady opened his eyes wide.
"Ah, it's daylight!" he cried, in accents of joyfulness. "I am glad. Kiss me, my beloved, kiss me.—You dear—yes, once more. I have had such a queer night. I dreamt I had been fearfully knocked about somehow, and was crippled, and in pain. It is good to wake, and find you, and know I'm all right after all. God keep you, my dearest, you and the boy. I am longing to see him—but not just now—let Denny bring him later. And tell them to send Chifney word I shall not be out to see the gallops this morning. I really believe those dreams half frightened me. I feel so absurdly used up. And then—Kitty, where are you?—put your arms round me and I'll go to sleep again."
He smiled at her quite naturally and stroked her cheek.
"My sweet, your face is all wet and cold!" he said. "Make Richard a good boy. After all that is what matters most—Julius will help you—— Ah! look at the sunrise—why—why——"
An extraordinary change passed over him. To Katherine it seemed like the upward leap of a livid flame. Then his head fell back and his jaw dropped.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. WILLIAM ORMISTON SACRIFICES A WINE-GLASS TO FATE
Mrs. St. Quentin's health became increasingly fragile that autumn; and the weight of the sorrow which had fallen upon Brockhurst bowed her to the earth. Her desire was to go to Lady Calmady, wrap her about with tenderness and strengthen her in patience. But, though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Daily she assured Mademoiselle de Mirancourt that she was better, that she would be able to start for England in the course of the next week. Yet day after day, week after week passed by, and still the two ladies lingered in the pretty apartment of the rue de Rennes. Day by day, and week by week, moreover, the elder lady grew more feeble, left her bed later in the morning, sought it earlier at night, finally resigned the attempt to leave it at all. The keepers of Lucia St. Quentin's house of life trembled, desire—even of gentle ministries—began to fail, the sound of the grinding was low. Yet neither she, nor her lifelong friend, nor her doctor, nor the few intimate acquaintances who were still privileged to visit her, admitted that she would never go forth on that journey to England at all; but only on that quite other journey,—upon which Richard Calmady had already set forth in the fulness of his manhood,—and upon which, the manifold uncertainties of human existence notwithstanding, we are, each one of us, so perfectly certain to set forth at last. Silently they agreed with her to treat her increasing weakness with delicate stoicism, to speak of it—if at all—merely as a passing indisposition, so allowing no dreary, lamentable element to obtrude itself. Sad Mrs. St. Quentin might be, bitterly sad at heart, perplexed by the rather incomprehensible dealings of God with man. Yet, to the end, she would remain charming, gently gay even, both out of consideration for others and a fine self-respect, since she held it the mark of a cowardly and ignoble nature to let anything squalid appear in her attitude towards grief, old age, or death.
But Brockhurst she would never see again. The way was too great for her. And so it came about that when Lady Calmady's child was born, towards the end of the following March, no more staid and responsible woman creature of her family was at hand to support her than that lively, young lady, her brother, William Ormiston's wife.
Meanwhile, the parish of Sandyfield rejoiced. Thomas Caryll, the rector, had caused the church bells to be rung immediately on receipt of the good news; while he selected, as text for his Sunday morning sermon, those words, usually reserved to another and somewhat greater advent—"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Good Mr. Caryll was innocent of the remotest intention of profanity. But his outlook was circumscribed, his desire to please abnormally large, and his sense of relative values slight. While that Lady Calmady should give birth to a son and heir was, after all, a matter of no small moment—locally considered at all events.
Brockhurst House rejoiced also, yet it did so not without a measure of trembling. For there had been twenty-four hours of acute anxiety regarding Katherine Calmady. And even now, on the evening of the second day, although Dr. Knott declared himself satisfied both as to her condition and that of the baby, an air of mystery surrounded the large state-bedroom,—where she lay, white and languid, slowly feeling her way back to the ordinary conditions of existence,—and the nursery next door. Mrs. Denny, who had taken possession by right divine of long and devoted service, not only did not encourage, but positively repulsed visitors. Her ladyship must not be disturbed. She, the nurse, the baby, in turn, were sleeping. According to Denny the god of sleep reigned supreme in those stately, white-paneled chambers, looking away, across the valley and the long lines of the elm avenue, to the faint blue of the chalk downs rising against the southern sky.
John Knott had driven over, for the second time that day, in the windy March sunset. He fell in very readily with Mrs. Ormiston's suggestion that he should remain to dinner. That young lady's spirits were sensibly on the rise. It is true that she had wept copiously at intervals while her sister-in-law's life appeared to be in danger—keeping at the same time as far from the sick room as the ample limits of Brockhurst House allowed, and wishing herself a thousand and one times safe back in Paris, where her devoted and obedient husband occupied a subordinate post at the English Embassy. But Mrs. Ormiston's tears were as easily staunched as set flowing. And now, in her capacity of hostess, with three gentlemen—or rather "two and a half, for you can't," as she remarked, "count a brother-in-law for a whole one"—as audience, she felt remarkably cheerful. She had been over to Newlands during the afternoon, and insisted on Mary Cathcart returning with her—Mrs. Ormiston was a Desmolyns. The Cathcarts are distantly connected with that family. And, when the girl had protested that this was hardly a suitable moment for a visit to Brockhurst, Charlotte Ormiston had replied, with that hint of a brogue which gave her ready speech its almost rollicking character:—
"But, my dear child, propriety demands it. I depart myself to-morrow. And now that we're recovering our tone I daren't be left with such a houseful of men on my hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature, Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails. Scourge?—Yes, of course, but it's all the same in the application of the instrument, you know. And then in your secret soul, Mary dear," she added, not unkindly, "there's no denying it's far from obnoxious to you to spend a trifle of time in the society of Roger."
Mrs. Ormiston carried her point. It may be stated, in passing, that this sprightly, young matron was brilliantly pretty, though her facial angle might be deemed too acute, leaving somewhat to be desired in the matter of forehead and of chin. She was plump, graceful, and neat waisted. Her skin was exquisitely white and fine, and a charming colour flushed her cheeks under excitement. Her hair was always untidy, her hairpins displaying abnormal activity in respect of escape and independent action. Her eyes were round and very prominent, suggestive of highly-polished, brown agates. She was not the least shy or averse to attracting attention. She laughed much, and practised, as prelude to her laughter, an impudently, coquettish, little stare. And finally, as he sat on her right at dinner, her rattling talk and lightness of calibre generally struck John Knott as rather cynically inadequate to the demands made by her present position. Not that he underrated her good nature or was insensible to her personal attractions. But the doctor was in search of an able coadjutor just then, blessed with a steady brain and a tongue skilled in tender diplomacies. For there were trying things to be said and done, and he needed a woman of a fine spirit to do and say them aright.
"Head like an eft," he said to himself, as course followed course, and, while bandying compliments with her, he watched and listened. "As soon set a harlequin to lead a forlorn hope. Well it's to be trusted her husband's some use for her—that's more than I have anyhow, so the sooner we see her off the premises the better. Suppose I shall have to fall back on Ormiston. Bit of a rake, I expect, though in looks he is so curiously like that beautiful, innocent, young thing upstairs. Wonder how he'll take it? No mistake, it's a facer!"
Dr. Knott settled himself back squarely in his chair and pushed his cheese-plate away from him, while his shaggy eyebrows drew together as he fixed his eyes on the young man at the head of the table.
"A facer!" he repeated to himself. "Yes, the ancients knew what they were about in these awkward matters. The modern conscience is disastrously anæmic."
Although it looks on to the terrace, the dining-room at Brockhurst is among the least cheerful of the living rooms. The tapestry with which it is hung—representing French hunting scenes, each panel set in a broad border pattern of birds, fruits and leaves, interspersed with classic urns and medallions—is worked in neutral tints of brown, blue, and gray. The chimneypiece, reaching the whole height of the wall, is of liver-coloured marble. At the period in question, it was still the fashion to dine at the modestly early hour of six; and, the spring evenings being long, the curtains had been left undrawn, so that the dying daylight without and the lamplight within contended rather mournfully for mastery, while a wild, southeasterly wind, breaking in gusts against the house front, sobbed at the casements and made a loose pane, here and there, click and rattle.
And it was in the midst of a notably heavy gust, when dessert had been served and the servants had left the room, that Captain Ormiston leaned across the table and addressed his sister-in-law.
The young soldier had been somewhat gloomy and silent during dinner. He was vaguely anxious about Lady Calmady. The news of Mrs. St. Quentin was critical, and he cherished a very true affection for his great-aunt. Had she not been his confidant ever since his first term at Eton? Had she not, moreover, helped him on several occasions when creditors displayed an incomprehensibly foolish pertinacity regarding payment for goods supplied? He was burdened, too, by a prospective sense of his own uncommon righteousness. For, during the past five months, while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine to master the details of the very various business of the estate, Ormiston had revised his position and decided on heroic measures of reform. He would rid himself of debt, forswear expensive London habits, and those many pleasant iniquities which every great city offers liberally to such handsome, fine gentlemen as himself. He actually proposed, just so soon as Katherine could conveniently spare him, to decline from the splendid inactivity of the Guards, upon the hard work of some line regiment under orders for foreign service. Ormiston was quite affected by contemplation of his own good resolutions. He appeared to himself in a really pathetic light. He would like to have told Mary Cathcart all about it and have claimed her sympathy and admiration. But then, she was just precisely the person he could not tell, until the said resolutions had, in a degree at all events, passed into accomplished fact! For—as not infrequently happens—it was not so much a case of being off with the old love before being on with the new; as being off with the intermediate loves, before being on with the old one again. To announce his estimable future, was, by implication at all events, to confess a not wholly estimable past. And so Roger Ormiston, sitting that night at dinner beside the object of his best and most honest affections, proved but poor company; and roused himself, not without effort, to say to his sister-in-law:—
"It's about time to perform the ceremony of the evening, isn't it, Ella, and drink that small boy's health?"
"By all manner of means. I'm all for the observance of ancient forms and ceremonies. You can never be sure how much mayn't lie at the bottom of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers. You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"—She took a grape skin from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.—"So, for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a piebald; and bless my neighbour devoutly if he sneezes."
At the commencement of this harangue she met her brother-in-law's rather depreciative scrutiny with her bold little stare—in his present mood Ormiston found her vivacity tedious, though he was usually willing enough to laugh at her extravagancies—then she whipped Julius in with a side glance, and concluded with her round eyes set on Dr. Knott's rough-hewn and weather-beaten countenance.
"I'm afraid you are disgracefully superstitious, Mrs. Ormiston," the latter remarked.
She was a feather-headed chatterbox, he reflected; but her chatter served to occupy the time. And the doctor was by no means anxious the time should pass too rapidly. He felt slightly self-contemptuous; but in good truth he would be glad to put away some few glasses of sound port before administering the aforementioned facer to Captain Ormiston.
"Superstitious?" she returned. "Well I trust my superstition is not chronic, but nicely intermittent like all the rest of my many virtues. Charity begins at home, you know, and I would not like to keep any of the poor, dear creatures on guard too long for fear of tiring them out. But I give every one of them a turn, Dr. Knott, I assure you."
"And that's more than most of us do," he said, smiling rather savagely. "The majority of my acquaintance have a handsome power of self-restraint in the practice of virtue."
"And I'm the happy exception! Well, now that's an altogether pretty speech," Mrs. Ormiston cried, laughing. "But to return to the matter in hand, to this hero of a baby—— I dote on babies, Dr. Knott. I've one of my own of six months old, and she's a charming child I assure you."
"I don't doubt that for an instant, having the honour of knowing her mother. Couldn't be otherwise than charming if she tried," the doctor said, reaching out his hand again to the decanter.
Mrs. Ormiston treated him to her little stare, and then looked round the table, putting up one plump, bare arm as she pushed in a couple of hairpins.
"Ah! but she's a real jewel of a child," she said audaciously. "She's the comfort of my social existence. For she doesn't resemble me in the least, and therefore my reputation's everlastingly safe, thanks to her. Why, before the calumniating thought has had time to arise in your mind, one look in that child's face will dissipate it, she's so entirely the image of her father."
There was a momentary silence, but for the sobbing of the gale and rattling of the casements. Then Captain Ormiston broke into a rather loud laugh. Even if they sail near the wind, you must stand by the women of your family.
"Come, that will do, I think, Ella," he said. "You won't beat that triumphant bull in a hurry."
"But, my dear boy, so she is. Even at her present tender age, she's the living picture of your brother William."
"Oh! poor William," Roger said hastily.
He turned to Mary Cathcart. The girl had blushed up to the roots of her crisp, black hair. She did not clearly understand the other woman's speech, nor did she wish to do so. She was admirably pure-minded. But like all truly pure-minded persons, she carried a touchstone that made her recoil, directly and instinctively, from that which was of doubtful quality. The twinkle in Dr. Knott's gray eyes, as he sipped his port, still more the tone of Roger Ormiston's laugh, she did understand somehow. And this last jarred upon her cruelly. It opened the flood-gates of doubt which Mary—like so many another woman in respect of the man she loves—had striven very valiantly to keep shut. All manner of hints as to his indiscretions, all manner of half-told tales as to his debts, his extravagance, which rumour had conveyed to her unwilling ears, seemed suddenly to gather weight and probability, viewed in the moral light—so to speak—of that laugh. Great loves mature and deepen under the action of sorrow and the necessity to forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all, feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain labourer's family that had lately migrated from Newlands to Sandyfield. But Ormiston's voice broke in upon the inquiries with a determination to claim her attention.
"Miss Cathcart," he said, "forgive my interrupting you. I can tell you more about the Spratleys than March can. They're all right. Iles has taken the man on as carter at the home-farm, and given the eldest boy a job with the woodmen. I told him to do what he could for them as you said you were interested in them. And now, please, I want you to drink my small nephew's health."
The girl pushed forward her wine-glass without speaking; and as he filled it Ormiston added in a lower tone:—
"He, at all events, unlike some of his relations, is guiltless of foolish words or foolish actions. I don't pretend to share Ella's superstitions, but some people's good wishes are very well worth having."
Unwillingly Mary Cathcart raised her eyes. Her head was still carried a little high and her cheeks were still glowing. Her god might not be of pure gold throughout—such gods rarely are unfortunately—yet she was aware she still found him a very worshipful kind of deity.
"Very well worth having," he repeated. "And so I should like that poor little chap to have your good wishes, Miss Cathcart. Wish him all manner of nice things, for his mother's sake as well as his own. There's been a pretty bad run of luck here lately, and it's time it changed. Wish him better fortune than his forefathers. I'm not superstitious, as I say, but Richard Calmady's death scared one a little. Five minutes beforehand it seemed so utterly improbable. And then one began to wonder if there could be any truth in the old legend. And that was ugly, you know."
Dr. Knott glanced at the speaker sharply.—"Oh! that occurred to you, did it?" he said.
"Bless me! why, it occurred to everybody," Ormiston answered impatiently. "Some idiot raked the story up, and it was canvassed from one end of the county to the other last autumn till it made me fairly sick."
"Poor boy!" cried Mrs. Ormiston, "and what is this wonderful story that so nauseates him, Dr. Knott?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," the doctor answered slowly. A nervous movement on the part of Julius March had attracted his attention. "I have never managed to get hold of the story as a whole, but I should like to do so uncommonly."
Julius pushed back his chair, and groped hurriedly for the dinner napkin which had slipped to the ground from his knees. The subject of the conversation agitated him. The untidy, little chap-books, tied together with the tag of rusty ribbon, had lain undisturbed in the drawer of his library table ever since the—to him—very memorable evening, when, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead Christ, he had found the man's heart under the priest's cassock and awakened to newness of life. Much had happened since then; and Julius had ranged himself, accepting, open-eyed, the sorrows and alleviations of the fate he had created for himself. But to-night he was tired. The mental and emotional strain of the last few days had been considerable. Moreover, John Knott's presence always affected him. The two men stood, indeed, at opposing poles of thought—the one spiritual and ideal, the other material and realistic. And, though he struggled against the influence, the doctor's rather brutal common sense and large knowledge of physical causes, gained a painful ascendency over his mind at close quarters. Knott, it must be owned, was slightly merciless to his clerical acquaintances. He loved to bait them, to impale them on the horns of some moral or theological dilemma. And it was partly with this purpose of harrying and worrying, that he continued now:—
"Yes, Mrs. Ormiston, I should like to hear the story just as much as you would. And—it strikes me, if he pleased, Mr. March could tell it to us. Suppose you ask him to!"
Promptly the young lady fell upon Julius, regardless of Ormiston's hardly concealed displeasure.
"Oh! you bad man, what are you doing," she cried, "trying to conceal thrilling family legends from the nearest relatives? Tell us all about it, if you know, as Dr. Knott declares you do. I dote on terrifying stories—don't you, Mary?—that send the cold shivers all down my back. And if they deal with the history of my nearest and dearest, why, there's an added charm to them. Now, Mr. March, we're all attention. Stand and deliver, and make it all just as bad as you can."
"I am afraid I am not an effectiveimprovisatore" he replied; "and the subject, if you will pardon my saying so, seems to me too intimate for mirth. A curse is supposed to rest on this place. The owners of Brockhurst die young and by violent means."
"We know that already, and look to you to tell us something more, Mr. March," Dr. Knott said dryly.
Julius was slightly nettled at the elder man's tone and manner. He answered with an accentuation of his usual refinement of enunciation and suavity of manner.
"There is a term to the curse, a saviour who, according to the old prediction, has the power, should he also have the will, to remove it altogether."
"Oh, really, is that so! And when does this saviour put in an appearance?" the doctor asked again.
"That is not revealed."
Julius would very gladly have said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting them to more declared hostilities, while she bit her lips in her effort to avoid spoiling sport by untimely laughter or speech.
"But unhappily," Julius proceeded, yielding under protest to these opposing forces, "the saviour comes in so questionable a shape, that I fear, whenever the appointed time may be, his appearance will only be welcomed by the discerning few."
"That's a pity," Dr. Knott said. He paused a minute, passed his hand across his mouth. "Still, if we are to believe the Bible, and other so-called, sacred histories, it's been the way of saviours from the beginning to try the faith of ordinary mortals by presenting themselves under rather queer disguises." He paused again, drawing in his wide lips, moistening them with his tongue. "But since you evidently know all about it, Mr. March, may I make bold to inquire in what special form of fancy dress the saviour in question is reported as likely to present himself?"
"He comes as a child of the house," Julius answered, with dignity. "A child who in person—if I understand the wording of the prophecy aright—is half angel, half monster."
John Knott opened his mouth as though to give passage to some very forcible exclamation. Thought better of it and brought his jaws together with a kind of grind. His heavy figure seemed to hunch itself up as in the recoil from a blow.
"Curious," he said quietly. Yet Julius, looking at him, could have fancied that his weather-beaten face went a trifle pale.
But Mrs. Ormiston, in the interests of a possible fight, had contained herself just as long as was possible. Now she clapped her hands, and broke into a little scream of laughter.
"That's just the most magnificently romantic thing I ever heard," she cried. "Come now, this requires further investigation. What's our baby like, Dr. Knott? I've seen nothing but an indistinguishable mass of shawls and flannels. Have we, by chance, got an angelic monstrosity up-stairs without being aware of it?"
"Charlotte!" Roger Ormiston called out sternly. The young man looked positively dangerous. "This conversation has gone quite far enough. I agree with March, it may all be stuff and nonsense, not worth a second thought, still it isn't a thing to joke about."
"Very well, dear boy, be soothed then," she returned, making a little grimace and putting her head on one side coquettishly. "I'll be as solemn as nine owls. But you must excuse a momentary excitement. It's all news to me, you know. I'd no notion Katherine had married into such a remarkable family. I'm bound to learn a little more. Do you believe it's possible at all, Dr. Knott, now tell me?"
"The fulfilment of prophecy is rather a wide and burning question to embark on," he said. "With Captain Ormiston's leave, I think we'd better go back to the point we started from and drink the little gentleman's health. I have my patient to see again, and it is getting rather late."
The lady addressed, laughed, held up her glass, and stared round the table with a fine air of bravado, looking remarkably pretty.
"Fire away, Roger, dear fellow," she said. "We're loaded, and ready."
Thus admonished, Ormiston raised his glass too. But his temper was not of the sweetest, just then; he spoke forcedly.
"Here's to the boy," he said; "good luck, and good health, and," he added hastily, "please God he'll be a comfort to his mother."
"Amen," Julius said softly.
Dr. Knott contemplated the contents of his glass, for a moment, whether critically or absently it would have been difficult to decide. But all the harshness had gone out of his face, and his loose lips worked into a smile pathetic in quality.
"To the baby.—And I venture to add a clause to your invocation of that heartless jade, Dame Fortune. May he never lack good courage and good friends. He will need both."
Julius March set down his wine untasted. He had received a very disagreeable impression.
"Come, come, it appears to me, we are paying these honours in a most lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and traditions belonging to his paternal ancestry. Go on, Mr. March, you're shamefully neglecting your duty. No heel taps."
She threw back her head showing the whole of her white throat, drained her glass and then flung it over her shoulder. It fell on the black, polished boards, beyond the edge of the carpet, shivered into a hundred pieces, that lay glittering, like scattered diamonds in the lamplight. For the day had died altogether. Fleets of dark, straggling cloud chased each other across spaces of pallid sky, against the earthward edge of which dusky tree-tops strained and writhed in the force of the tearing gale.
Ella Ormiston rose laughing from her place at table.
"That's the correct form," she said, "it ensures the fulfilment of the wish. You ought all to have cast away your glasses regardless of expense. Come, Mary, we will remove ourselves. Mind and bid me good-bye before you go, Dr. Knott, and report on Lady Calmady. It's probably the last time you'll have the felicity of seeing me. I'm off at cockcrow to-morrow morning."