"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 s.p.a.ce, 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.

"G.o.d 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, d.i.c.k, closer."

"Thank G.o.d! 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 G.o.d! my G.o.d!--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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces. 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d, 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 cas.e.m.e.nts 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 gra.s.s, 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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-GLa.s.s TO FATE