"Is he, though?" the other exclaimed, brightening sensibly. "Thank you, Knott. It is a very great relief to me to hear that."

"Only a man with a remarkably sound const.i.tution could have pulled round. I quite own he's been very hard hit, and no wonder. Typhoid and complications----"

"Ah! complications?" inquired Lord Fallowfeild, who rarely let slip an opportunity of acquiring information of a pathological description.

"Yes, complications. Of the sort that are most difficult to deal with, emotional and moral--beginning with his engagement to Lady Constance----"

"Oh, dear me!"--this, piteously, from that lady's father.

"And ending--his Satanic Majesty knows where! I don't. It's no concern of mine, nor of any one else's in my opinion. He has paid his footing--every man has to pay it, sooner or later--to life and experience, and personal acquaintance with the _thou shalt not_ which, for cause unknown, goes for so almighty much in this very queer business of human existence. He has had a rough time, never doubt that, with his high-strung, arrogant, sensitive nature and the dirty trick played on him by that heartless jade, Dame Fortune, before his birth.

For the time, this illness had knocked the wind out of him. If he sulks for a bit, small blame to him. But he'll come round. He is coming round day by day."

As he finished speaking the doctor got on to his feet somewhat awkwardly. His subject had affected him more deeply than he quite cared either to own to himself or to have others see.

"That plaguy sciatic nerve again!" he growled.

Lord Fallowfeild had risen also.--"Capable man, Knott, but rather rough at times, rather too didactic," he said to himself, as he turned to greet Miss St. Quentin. She had strolled in from the hall. Her charming face was full of merriment. There was something altogether gallant in the carriage of her small head.

"I was so awfully glad to see Lord Shotover!" she said, as she gave her hand to that gentleman's father. "It's an age since he and I have met."

"Very pleasant hearing, my dear young lady, for Shotover, if he was here to hear it! Lucky fellow, Shotover."--The kindly n.o.bleman beamed upon her. He was nothing if not chivalrous. Mentally, all the same, he was much perplexed. "Of course, I remember who she is. But I understood it was Ludovic," he said to himself. "Made sure it was Ludovic.

Uncommonly attractive, high-bred woman. Very striking looking pair, she and Shotover. Can't fancy Shotover settled though. Say she's a lot of money. Wonder whether it is Shotover?--Uncommonly fine run, best run we've had for years," he added aloud. "Pity you weren't out, Miss St.

Quentin.--Well, good-bye, Mrs. Cathcart. I must be going. I am extremely grateful for all your kindness and hospitality. It is seldom I have the chance of meeting so many friends this side of the country.--Good-day to you, Knott--goodbye, Miss St. Quentin.--Wonder if I'd better ask her to Whitney," he thought, "on the chance of its being Shotover? Better sound him first though. Never let a man in for a woman unless you've very good reason to suppose he wants her."

Honoria, meanwhile, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her long, fur-lined, tan, cloth, driving-coat sat down on the arm of Mary Ormiston's flowery-patterned, chintz-covered chair.

"I left you all in a state of holy peace and quiet," she said, smiling, "and a fine show you've got on hand by the time I come back."

"They ran across the ten-acre field and killed in the shrubbery," Mrs.

Ormiston put in.

John Knott limped forward. He stood with his hands behind him looking down at the two ladies. Some months had elapsed since he and Miss St.

Quentin had met. He was very fond of the young lady. It interested him to meet her again. Honoria glanced up at him smiling.

"Have you been out too?" she asked.

"Not a bit of it. I'm too busy mending other people's brittle anatomy to have time to risk breaking any part of my own. I'm ugly enough already. No need to make me uglier. I came here for the express purpose of calling on you."

"You saw Katherine?" Mary asked.

"Oh yes! I saw Cousin Katherine."

"How is she?"

"An embodiment of faith, hope, and charity, as usual, but with just that pinch of malice thrown in which gives the compound a flavour. In short, she is enchanting. And then she looks so admirably well."

"That six months at sea was a great restorative," Mary remarked.

"Yet it really is rather wonderful when you consider the state she was in before we went to you at Ormiston, and how frightened we were at her undertaking the journey to Naples."

"Her affections are satisfied," Dr. Knott said, and his loose lips worked into a smile, half sneering, half tender. "I am an old man, and I have had a good lot to do with women--at second hand. Feed their hearts, and the rest of the mechanism runs easy enough. Anything short of organic disease can be cured by that sort of nourishment. Even organic disease can be arrested by it. And what's more, I have known disease develop in an apparently perfectly healthy subject simply because the heart was starved. Oh! I tell you, you're marvelous beings."

"And yet you know I feel so abominably sold," Honoria declared, "when I consider the way in which we all--Roger, Mr. Quayle, and I--acted bodyguard, attended Cousin Katherine to Naples, wrapped her in cotton wool, dear thing, sternly determined to protect her at all costs and all hazards from--well, I am ashamed to say I had no name bad enough at that time for Richard Calmady! And then this very person, whom we regarded as her probable destruction, proves to be her absolute salvation, while she proceeds to turn the tables upon us in the smartest fashion imaginable. She showed us the door and entreated us, in the most beguiling manner, to return whence we came and leave her wholly at the mercy of the enemy. I was furious"--Miss St. Quentin laughed--"downright furious! And Roger's temper, for all his high-mightiness, was a thing to swear at, rather than swear by, the morning he and I left Naples. With the greatest difficulty we persuaded her even to keep Clara. She had a rage, dear thing, for getting rid of the lot of us. Oh! we had a royal skirmish and no mistake."

"So Roger told me."

Honoria stretched herself a little, lolled against the back of the chair, steadying herself by laying one hand affectionately on the other woman's shoulder. And John Knott, observing her, noted not only her nonchalant and almost boyish grace, but a swift change in her humour from light-hearted laughter to a certain, and as he fancied, half-unwilling enthusiasm.

"But to-day," she went on, "when Cousin Katherine told me about it, I confess the whole situation laid hold of me. I could not help seeing it must have been finely romantic to go off like that--those two alone--caring as she cares, and after the long separation. It sounds like a thing in some Elizabethan ballad. There's a rhythm in it all which stirs one's blood. She says the yacht's crew were delightful to her, and treated her as a queen. One can fancy that--the stately, lovely queen-mother, and that strange only son!--They called in at the North African ports, and at Gib and Madeira, and the Cape de Verds, and then ran straight for Rio. Then they steamed up the coast to Pernambuco, and on to the West Indies. Richard never went ash.o.r.e, Cousin Katherine only once or twice. But they squattered about in the everlasting summer of tropic harbours, fringed with palms and low, dim, red-roofed, tropic houses--just sampled it all, the colour, and light, and beauty, and far awayness of it--and then, when the fancy took them, got up steam and slipped out again to sea. And the name of the yacht is the _Reprieve_. That's in the picture, isn't it?"

Honoria paused. She leaned forward, her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees. She looked up at John Knott, and there was a singular expression in her clear and serious eyes.

"I used to pity Cousin Katherine," she said. "I used to break my heart over her. And now--now, upon my word, I believe I envy her.--And see here, Dr. Knott, she has asked me to go on to Brockhurst from here. It seems that though Richard refuses to see any one, except you of course, and Julius March, he fusses at his mother being so much alone. What ought I to do? I feel rather uncertain. I have fought him, I own I have. We have never been friends, he and I. He doesn't like me. He's no reason to like me--anything but! What do you say? Shall I refuse or shall I go?"

And the doctor reflected a little, drawing his great, square hand down over his mouth and heavy, bristly chin.

"Yes, go," he answered. "Go and chance it. Your being at Brockhurst may work out in more of good than we now know."

CHAPTER V

TELLING HOW d.i.c.kIE CAME TO UNTIE A CERTAIN TAG OF RUSTY, BLACK RIBBON

Yet, as those gray, midwinter weeks went on to Christmas, and the coming of the New Year, it became undeniable there was that in the aspect of affairs at Brockhurst which might very well provoke curious comment. For the rigour of Richard Calmady's self-imposed seclusion, to which Miss St. Quentin had made allusion in her conversation with Dr.

Knott, was not relaxed. Rather, indeed, did it threaten to pa.s.s from the accident of a first return, after long absence and illness, into a matter of fixed and accepted habit. For those years of lonely wandering and spasmodic rage of living, finding their climax in deepening disappointment, disillusion, and the shock of rudely inflicted insult and disgrace, had produced in Richard a profound sense of alienation from society and from the amenities of ordinary intercourse. Since he was apparently doomed to survive, he would go home--but go home very much as some trapped or wounded beast crawls back to hide in its lair.

He was master in his own house, at least, and safe from intrusion there. The place offered the silent sympathy of things familiar, and therefore, in a sense, uncritical. It is restful to look on that upon which one has already looked a thousand times. And so, after his reconciliation with his mother, followed, in natural sequence, his reconciliation with Brockhurst. Here he would see only those who loved him well enough--in their several stations and degrees--to respect his humour, to ask no questions, to leave him to himself. Richard was gentle in manner at this period, courteous, humorous even. But a great discouragement was upon him. It seemed as though some string had snapped, leaving half his nature broken, unresponsive, and dumb. He had no ambitions, no desire of activities. Sport and business, were as little to his mind as society.

More than this.--At first the excuse of fatigue had served him, but very soon it came to be a tacitly admitted fact that Richard did not leave the house. Surely it was large enough, he said, to afford s.p.a.ce for all the exercise he needed? Refusing to occupy his old suite of rooms on the ground-floor, he had sent orders, before his arrival, that the smaller library, adjoining the Long-Gallery, should be converted into a bedchamber for him. It had been Richard's practice, when on board ship, to steady his uncertain footsteps, on the slippery or slanting plane of the deck, by the use of crutches. And this practice he in great measure retained. It increased his poor powers of locomotion. It rendered him more independent. Sometimes, when secure that Lady Calmady would not receive visitors, he would make his way by the large library, the state drawing-room, and stair-head, to the Chapel-Room and sit with her there. But more often his days were spent exclusively in the Long-Gallery. He had brought home many curious and beautiful objects from his wanderings. He would add these to the existing collection. He would examine the books too, procure such volumes as were needed to complete any imperfect series, and, in the departments both of science, literature, and travel, bring the library up to date. He would devote his leisure to the study of various subjects--especially natural science--regarding which he was conscious of a knowledge, deficient, or merely empirical.

"I really am perfectly contented, mother," he said to Lady Calmady more than once. "Look at the length and breadth of the gallery! It is as a city of magnificent distances, after the deck of the dear, old yacht and my twelve-foot cabin. And I'm not a man calculated to occupy so very much s.p.a.ce after all! Let me potter about here with my books and my _bibelots_. Don't worry about me, I shall keep quite well, I promise you. Let me hybernate peacefully until spring, anyhow. I have plenty of occupation. Julius is going to amend the library catalogue with me, and there are those chests of deeds, and order-books, and diaries, which really ought to be looked over. As it appears pretty certain I shall be the last of the race, it would be only civil, I think, to bestow a little of my ample leisure upon my forefathers, and set down some more or less comprehensive account of them and their doings. They appear to have been given to rather dramatic adventures.--Don't you worry, you dear sweet! As I say, let me hybernate until the birds of pa.s.sage come and the young leaves are green in the spring. Then, when the days grow long and bright, the sea will begin to call again, and, when it calls, you and I will pack and go."

And Katherine yielded, being convinced that Richard could treat his own case best. If healing, complete and radical, was to be affected, it must come from within and not from without. Her wisdom was to wait in faith. There was much that had never been told, and never would be told. Much which had not been explained, and never would be explained.

For, notwithstanding the very gracious relation existing between herself and Richard, Katherine realised that there were blank s.p.a.ces not only in her knowledge of his past action, but in her knowledge of the sentiments which now animated him. As from a far country his mind, she perceived, often traveled to meet hers. "There was a door to which she found no key." But Katherine, happily, could respect the individuality even of her best beloved. Unlike the majority of her s.e.x she was incapable of intrusion, and did not make affection an excuse for familiarity. Love, in her opinion, enjoins obligation of service, rather than confers rights of examination and direction. She had learned the condition in which his servants had found Richard, in the opera box of the great theatre at Naples, lying upon the floor unconscious, his face disfigured, cut, and bleeding. But what had produced this condition, whether accident or act of violence, she had not learned. She had also learned that her niece, Helen de Vallorbes, had stayed at the villa just before the commencement of Richard's illness--he merely pa.s.sing his days there, and spending his nights on board the yacht in the harbour, where, no doubt, that same illness had been contracted. But she resisted the inclination to attempt further discovery. She even resisted the inclination to speculate regarding all this. What Richard might elect to tell her, that, and that only, would she know, lest, seeking further, bitter and vindictive thoughts should arise in her and mar the calm, pathetic sweetness of the present and her deep, abiding joy in the recovery of her so-long-lost delight. She refused to go behind the fact--the glad fact that Richard once more was with her, that her eyes beheld him, her ears heard his voice, her hands met his. Every little act of thoughtful care, every pretty word of half-playful affection, confirmed her thankfulness and made the present blest. Even this somewhat morbid tendency of his to shut himself away from the observation of all acquaintance, conferred on her such sweetly exclusive rights of intercourse that she could not greatly quarrel with his secluded way of life. As to the business of the estate and household, this had become so much a matter of course to her that it caused her but small labour. If she could deal with it when Richard was estranged and far away, very surely she could deal with it now, when she had but to open the door of that vast, silvery-tinted, pensively fragrant, many-windowed room, and entering, among its many strange and costly treasures, find him--a treasure as strange, and if counted by her past suffering, as costly, as ever ravished and tortured a woman's heart.

And so it came about that, to such few friends as she received, Katherine could show a serene countenance. Shortly before Christmas, Miss St. Quentin came to Brockhurst, and coming stayed, adapting herself with ready tact to the altered conditions of life there.

Katherine found not only pleasure, but support, in the younger woman's presence, in her devoted yet unexacting affection, in her practical ability, and in the sight of so graceful a creature going to and fro.

She installed her guest in the Gun-Room suite. And, by insensible degrees, permitted Honoria to return to many of her former avocations in connection with the estate, so that the young lady took over much of the outdoor business, riding forth almost daily, by herself or in company with Julius March, to superintend matters of building or repairing, of road-mending, hedging, copsing, or forestry, and not infrequently cheering Chifney--a somewhat sour-minded man just now and p.r.i.c.kly-tempered, since Richard asked no word of him or of his horses--by visits to the racing stables.

"I had better step down and have a crack with the poor, old dear, Cousin Katherine," she would say, "or those unlucky little wretches of boys will catch it double tides, which really is rather superfluous."

And all the while, amid her very varied interests and occupations, remembrance of that hidden, twilight life, going forward up-stairs in the well-known rooms which she now never entered, came to Honoria as some perpetually recurrent and mournful harmony, in an otherwise not ungladsome piece of music, might have come. It exercised a certain dominion over her mind. So that Richard Calmady, though never actually seen by her, was never wholly absent from her thought. All the orderly routine of the great house, all the day's work and the sentiment of it, was subtly influenced by awareness of the actuality of his invisible presence. And this affected her strongly, causing her hours of repulsion and annoyance, and again hours of abounding, if reluctant pity, when the unnatural situation of this man--young as herself, endowed with a fine intelligence, an apt.i.tude for affairs, the craving for amus.e.m.e.nt common to his age and cla.s.s--and the pathos inherent in that situation, haunted her imagination. His self-inflicted imprisonment appeared a reflection upon, in a sense a reproach to, her own freedom of soul and pleasant liberty of movement. And this troubled her. It touched her pride somehow. It produced in her a false conscience, as though she were guilty of an unkindness, a lack of considerateness and perfect delicacy.

"Whether he behaves well or ill, whether he is good or bad, Richard Calmady invariably takes up altogether too much room," she would tell herself half angrily--to find herself within half an hour, under plea of usefulness to his mother, warmly interested in some practical matter from which Richard Calmady would derive, at least indirectly, distinct advantage and benefit!

This, then, was the state of affairs one Sat.u.r.day afternoon at the beginning of February. With poor d.i.c.kie himself the day had been marked by abundant discouragement. He was well in body. The restfulness of one quiet, uneventful week following another had steadied his nerves, repaired the waste of fever, and restored his physical strength. But, along with this return of health had come a growing necessity to lay hold of some idea, to discover some basis of thought, some incentive to action, which should make life less purposeless and unprofitable.