On one hand rose the dark, rectangular ma.s.ses of the house, crowned by its stacks of slender, twisted chimneys. On the other lay the indefinite and dusky expanse of the park and forest. The night was very clear. The stars were innumerable--fierce, cold points of pulsing light.--Orion's jeweled belt and sword flung wide against the blue-black vault. Ca.s.siopeia seated majestic in her golden chair.

Northward, above the walled gardens, the Bear pointing to the diamond flashing of the Pole star. While across all high heaven, dusty with incalculable myriads of worlds, stretched the awful and mysterious highroad of the Milky-Way. The air was keen and tonic though so still.

An immense and fearless quiet seemed to hold all things--a quiet not of sleep, but of conscious and perfect equilibrium, a harmony so sustained and complete that to human ears it issued, of necessity, in silence.

And that silence Lady Calmady was in no haste to break. Twice she and her companion walked the length of the terrace, and back, before she spoke. She paused, at length, just short of the arcade of the further garden-hall.

"This great peace of the night puts all violence of feeling to the blush," she said. "One perceives that a thousand years are very really as one day. That calms one--with a vengeance."

Katherine waited, looking out over the vague landscape, clasping the fur-bordered edges of her cloak with either hand. It appeared to Julius that both her voice and the expression of her face were touched with irony.

"There is nothing new under the sun," she went on, "nor under the 'visiting moon,' nor under those somewhat heartless stars. Does it occur to you, Julius, how hopelessly unoriginal we are, how we all follow in the same beaten track? What thousands of men and women have stood, as you and I stand now, at once calmed--as I admit that I am--and rendered not a little homeless by the realisation of their own insignificance in face of the sleeping earth and this brooding immensity of s.p.a.ce! _A quoi bon, a quoi bon?_ Why can't one learn to harden one's poor silly heart, and just move round, stone-like, with the great movement of things accepting fate and ceasing to struggle or to care?"

"Just because, I think," he answered, "the converse of that same saying is equally true. If, in material things, a thousand years are as one day, in the things of the spirit one day is as a thousand years.

Remember the Christ crying upon the cross--'My G.o.d, My G.o.d, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' and suffering during that brief utterance the sum of all the agony of sensible insignificance and sensible homelessness human nature ever has borne or will bear."

"Ah, the Christ! the Christ!" Lady Calmady exclaimed, half wistfully as it seemed to Julius March, and half impatiently. She turned and paced the pale pavement again.

"You are too courteous, my dear friend, and cite an example august out of all proportion to my little lament." She looked round at him as she spoke, smiling; and in the uncertain light her smile showed tremulous, suggestive of a nearness to tears. "Instinctively you scale Olympus,--Calvary?--yes, but I am afraid both those heights take on an equally and tragically mythological character to me--and would bring me consolation from the dwelling-places of the G.o.ds. And my feet, all the while, are very much upon the floor, alas! That is happening to me which never yet happened to the G.o.ds, according to the orthodox authorities. Just this--a commonplace--dear Julius, I am growing old."

Katherine drew her cloak more severely about her and moved on hastily, her head a little bent.

"No, no, don't protest," she added, as he attempted to speak. "We can be honest and dispense with conventional phrases, here, alone, under the stars. I am growing old, Julius--and being, I suppose, but a vain, doting woman, I have only discovered what that really means to-day! But there is this excuse for me. My youth was so blessed, so--so glorious, that it was natural I should strive to delude myself regarding its pa.s.sing away. I perceive that for years I have continued to call that a bride-bed which was, in truth, a bier. I have struggled to keep my youth in fancy, as I have kept the red drawing-room in fact, unaltered.

Is not all this pitifully vain and self-indulgent? I have solaced myself with the phantom of youth. And I am old--old."

"But you are yourself, Katherine, yourself. Nothing that has been, has ceased to be," Julius broke in, unable in the fulness of his reverent honour of his dear lady to comprehend the meaning of her present bitterness. "Surely the mere adding of year to year can make no so vital difference?"

"Ah! you dear stupid creature," she cried,--"stupid, because, manlike, you are so hopelessly sensible--it makes just all the difference in the world. I shall grow less alert, less pliable of mind, less quick of sympathy, less capable of adjusting myself to altered conditions, and to entertaining new views. And, all the while, the demand upon me will not lessen."

Katherine stopped suddenly in her swift walk. The two stood facing one another.

"The demand will increase," she declared. "Richard is not happy."

And thereupon--since, even in the most devout and holy, the old Adam dies extremely hard--Julius March fell a prey to very lively irritation. While she talked of herself, bestowing unreserved confidence upon him, he could listen gladly, forever. But if that most welcome subject of conversation should be dropped, let her give him that which he craved to-night, so specially--a word for himself. Let her deal, for a little s.p.a.ce, with his own private needs, his own private joys and sorrows.

"Ah! Richard is not happy!" he exclaimed, his irritation finding voice.

"We reach the root of the matter. Richard is not happy. Alas, then, for Richard's mother!"

"Are you so much surprised?" Katherine asked hotly. "Do you venture to blame him? If so, I am afraid religion has made you rather cruel, Julius. But that is not a new thing under the sun either. Those who possess high spiritual consolations--unknown to the rank and file of us--have generally displayed an inclination to take the misfortunes of others with admirable resignation. Dearest Marie de Mirancourt was an exception to that rule. You might do worse perhaps than learn to follow her example."

As she finished speaking Lady Calmady turned from him rather loftily, and prepared to move away. But even in so doing she received an impression which tended to modify her resentful humour.

For an instant Julius March stood, a tall, thin, black figure, rigid and shadowless upon the pallor of the gray pavement, his arms extended wide, as once crucified, while he looked, not at her, not out into the repose of the night-swathed landscape, but up at the silent dance of the eternal stars in the limitless fields of s.p.a.ce. As Katherine, earlier in the evening, had taken up the momentarily rejected burden of her motherhood, so Julius now, with a movement of supreme self-surrender, took up the momentarily rejected burden of the isolation of the religious life. Self-wounded by self-love, he had sought comfort in the creature rather than the creator. And the creature turned and rebuked him. It was just. Now Julius gave himself back, bowed himself again under the dominion of his fixed idea; and, so doing, gained, unconsciously, precisely that which he had gone forth to seek. For Katherine, struck alike by the strange vigour, and strange resignation, of his att.i.tude, suffered quick fear, not only for, but of him. His aloofness alarmed her.

"Julius! dear Julius!" she cried. "Come, let us walk. It grows cold. I enjoy that, but it is not very safe for you. And, pardon me, dear friend, I spoke harshly just now. I told you I was getting old. Put my words down to the peevishness of old age then."

Katherine smiled at him with a sweet, half-playful humility. Her face was very wan. And speech not coming immediately to him, she spoke again.

"You have always been very patient with me. You must go on being so."

"I ask nothing better," Julius said.

Lady Calmady stopped, drew herself up, shook back her head.

"Ah! what sorry creatures we all are," she cried, rather bitterly.

"Discontented, unstable, forever kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks, and fighting against the inevitable. Always crying to one another, 'See how hard this is, know how it hurts, feel the weight!' My poor darling cries to me--that is natural enough"--Katherine paused--"and as it should be. But I must needs run out and cry to you. In this we are like links of an endless chain. What is the next link, Julius? To whom will you cry in your turn?"

"The chain is not endless" he replied. "The last link of it is riveted to the steps of the throne of G.o.d. I will make my cry there--my threefold cry--for you, for Richard, and for myself, Katherine."

Lady Calmady had reached the arched side-door leading from the terrace into the house. She paused, with her hand on the latch.

"Your G.o.d and I quarreled nearly four-and-twenty years ago--not when Richard, my joy, died, but when Richard, my sorrow, was born," she said. "I own I see no way, short of miracle, of that quarrel being made up."

"Then a miracle will be worked," he answered.

"Ah! You forget I grow old," Katherine retorted, smiling; "so that for miracles the time is at once too long and too short."

CHAPTER V

TELLING HOW QUEEN MARY'S CRYSTAL BALL CAME TO FALL ON THE GALLERY FLOOR

This world is unquestionably a vastly stimulating and entertaining place if you take it aright--namely, if you recognise that it is the creation of a profound humorist, is designed for wholly practical and personal uses, and proceed to adapt your conduct to that knowledge in all light-heartedness and good faith. Thus, though in less trenchant phrase since she was still happily very young, meditated Madame de Vallorbes, while standing in the pensive October sunshine upon the wide flight of steps which leads down from the main entrance of Brockhurst House. Tall, stone pinnacles alternating with seated griffins--long of tail, fierce of beak and sharp of claw--fill in each of the many angles of the descending stone bal.u.s.trade on either hand. Behind her, the florid, though rectangular, decoration of the house front ranged up, storey above storey, in arcade and pilaster, heavily mullioned window, carven plaque and string course, to pairs of matching pinnacles and griffins--these last rampant, supporting the Calmady shield and coat-of-arms--the quaint forms of which break the long line of the pierced, stone parapet in the centre of the facade, and rise above the rusty red of the low-pitched roofs, until the spires of the one and crested heads of the other are outlined against the sky. About her feet the pea-fowl stepped in mincing and self-conscious elegance--the c.o.c.ks with rustlings of heavy trailing quills, the hens and half-grown chicks with squeakings and whifflings--subdued, conversational--accompanied by the dry tap of many bills picking up the glossy grains of Indian-corn which she let dribble slowly down upon the shallow steps from between her pretty fingers. She had huddled a soft sable tippet about her throat and shoulders. The skirt of her indigo-coloured, poplin dress, turning upon the step immediately above that on which she stood, showed some inches of rose-scarlet, silken frill lining the hem of it.

Helen de Vallorbes had a lively consciousness of her surroundings. She enjoyed every detail of them. Enjoyed the gentle, southwesterly wind which touched her face and stirred her bright hair, enjoyed the plaintive, autumn song of a robin perched on a rose-grown wall, enjoyed the impotent ferocity of the guardian griffins, enjoyed the small sounds made by the feeding pea-fowl, the modest quaker grays and the imperial splendours of their plumage. She enjoyed the turn of her own wrist, its gold chain-bracelet and the handsome lace falling away from and displaying it, as she held out the handfuls of corn. She enjoyed even that s.p.a.ce of rose-scarlet declaring itself between the dull blue of her dress and the gray, weathered surface of the stone.

But all these formed only the accompaniment, the ground-tone, to more reasoned, more vital enjoyments. Before her, beyond the carriage sweep, lay the square lawn enclosed by red walls and by octagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses, whereon--unwillingly, yet in obedience to the wild justice of revenge--Roger Ormiston had shot the Clown, half-brother to Touchstone, race-horse of mournful memory. As a child Helen had heard that story. Now her somewhat light, blue-gray eyes, their beautiful lids raised wide for once, looked out curiously upon the s.p.a.ce of dew-powdered turf; while the corners of her mouth--a mouth a trifle thin lipped, yet soft and dangerously sweet for kissing--turned upward in a reflective smile. She, too, knew what it was to be angry, to the point of revenge; had indeed come to Brockhurst not without purpose of that last tucked away in some naughty convolution of her active brain.

But Brockhurst and its inhabitants had proved altogether more interesting than she had antic.i.p.ated. This was the fourth day of her visit, and each day had proved more to her taste than the preceding one. So she concluded this matter of revenge might very well stand over for the moment, possibly stand over altogether. The present was too excellent, of its kind, to risk spoiling. Helen de Vallorbes valued the purple and fine linen of a high civilisation; nor did she disdain, within graceful limits, to fare sumptuously every day. She valued all that is beautiful and costly in art, of high merit and distinction in literature. Her taste was sure and just, if a little more disposed towards that which is sensuous than towards that which is spiritual.

And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury--waste. Appreciated these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very finest ironies of the great comedy of existence. It heightened, it accentuated the drama. And among the many good things of life, drama, come how and where and when it might, seemed to her supremely the best.

She desired it as a lover his mistress. To detect it, to observe it, gave her the keenest pleasure. To take a leading part in and shape it to the turn of her own heart, her own purpose, her own wit was, so far, her ruling pa.s.sion.

And of potential drama, of the raw material of it, as the days pa.s.sed, she found increasingly generous store at Brockhurst. It invaded and held her imagination, as the initial conception of his poem will that of the poet, or of his picture that of the painter. She brooded over it, increasingly convinced that it might be a masterpiece. For the drama--as she apprehended it--contained not only elements of virility and strength, but an element, and that a persistent one, of the grotesque. This put the gilded dome to her silent, and perhaps slightly unscrupulous, satisfaction. How could it be otherwise, since the presence of the grotesque is, after all, the main justification of the theory on which her philosophy of life was based--namely, the belief that above all eloquence of human speech, behind all enthusiasm of human action or emotion, the ear which hears aright can always detect the echo of eternal laughter? And this grim echo did not affect the charming young lady to sadness as yet. Still less did it make her mad, as the mere suspicion of it has made so many, and those by no means unworthy or illiterate persons. For the laugh, so far, had appeared to be on her side, never at her expense--which makes a difference. And the chambers of her house of life were too crowded by health and agreeable sensations, mental activities and sparkling audacities, to have any one of them vacant for reception, more than momentary, of that thrice-blessed guest, pity.

And so it followed that, as she fed the mincing pea-fowl, Madame de Vallorbes' smile changed in character from reflection to impatience. A certain heat running through her, she set her pretty teeth and fell to pelting the pea-hens and chicks mischievously, breaking up all their aristocratic reserve and making them jump and squeak to some purpose.

For this precious, this very masterpiece of a drama was not only here potentially, but actually. It was alive. She had felt it move under her hand--or under her heart, which was it?--yesterday evening. Again this morning, just now, she had noted signs of its vitality, wholly convincing to one skilled in such matters. Impatience, then, became very excusable.

"For my time is short and the action disengages itself so deplorably slowly!" she exclaimed. "Pah! you greedy, conceited birds, which do you hold dearest after all, the filling of your little stomachs, or the supporting of your little dignities? Be advised by a higher intelligence. Revenge yourselves on the grains that hit and sting you by gobbling them up. It is a venerable custom that of feasting upon one's enemies. And has been practised, in various forms, both by nations and individuals. There, I give you another chance of displaying wisdom--there--there!--La! la! what an absurd commotion! You little idiots, don't flutter. Agitation is a waste of energy, and advances nothing. I declare peace. I want to consider."

And so, letting the remaining handfuls of corn dribble down very slowly, while the sunshine grew warmer and the shadows of the guardian griffins more distinct upon the lichen-encrusted stones, Helen de Vallorbes sank back into meditation--Yes, unquestionably the drama was alive. But it seemed so difficult to bring it to the birth. And she wanted, very badly, to hear its first half-articulate cries and watch its first staggering footsteps. All that is so entertaining, you yourself safely grown-up, standing very firm on your feet, looking down! And it would be a l.u.s.ty child, this drama, very soon reaching man's estate and man's inspiring violence of action, striking out like some blind, giant Samson, blundering headlong in its unseeing, uncalculating strength.--Helen laid her hands upon her bosom, and threw back her head, while her throat bubbled with suppressed laughter. Ah!

it promised to be a drama of ten thousand, if she knew her power, and knew her world--and she possessed considerable confidence in her knowledge of both. Only, how on earth to set the crystal free of the matrix, how to engage battle, how to get this thing fairly and squarely born? For, as she acknowledged, in the flotation of all such merry schemes as her present one, chance encounters, interludes, neatly planned evasions and resultant pursuits, play so large and important a part. But at Brockhurst this whole chapter of accidents was barred, and received rules of strategy almost annihilated, by the fact of Richard Calmady's infirmity and the hard-and-fast order of domestic procedure, the elaborate system of etiquette, which that infirmity had gradually produced. At Brockhurst there were no haphazard exits and entrances.

These were either hopelessly official and public, or guarded to an equally hopeless point of secrecy. A contingent of tall, civil men-servants was always on duty. Richard was invariably in his place at table when the rest of the company came down. The ladies took their after-dinner coffee in the drawing-room, and joined the gentlemen in the Chapel-Room, library, or gallery, as the case might be. If they rode, Richard was at the door ready mounted, along with the grooms and led-horses. If they drove, he was already seated in the carriage.

"And how, how in the name of common sense," Madame de Vallorbes exclaimed, stamping her foot, and thereby throwing the now thoroughly nervous pea-fowl into renewed agitation, "are you to establish any relation worth mentioning with a man who is perpetually being carried in procession like a Hindu idol? My good birds, one's never alone with him--whether by design and arrangement, I know not. But, so far, never, never, picture that! And yet, don't tell me, matchless mixture of pride and innocence though he is, he wouldn't like it!"

However, she checked her irritation by contemplation of yesterday. Ah!

that had been very prettily done a.s.suredly. For riding in the forenoon along the road skirting the palings of the inner park, while they walked their horses over the soft, brown bed of fallen fir-needles,--she, her father, and d.i.c.k,--the conversation dealt with certain first editions and their bindings, certain treasures, unique in historic worth, locked in the gla.s.s tables and fine Florentine and _pietra dura_ cabinets of the Long Gallery. Mr. Ormiston was a connoisseur and talked well. And Helen had sufficient acquaintance with such matters both to appreciate, and to add telling words to the talk.

"Ah! but I cannot go without seeing those delectable things, Richard,"