CHAPTER IV

RAISING PROBLEMS WHICH IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY TO RESOLVE

It was not without a movement of inward thanksgiving that, the

festivities connected with Sir Richard and Lady Calmady's home-coming

being over, Julius March returned to his labours in the Brockhurst

library. Humanity at first hand, whatever its social standing or its

pursuits, was, in truth, always slightly agitating to him. He felt more

at home when dealing with conclusions than with the data that go to

build up those conclusions, with the thoughts of men printed and bound,

than with the urgent raw material from which those thoughts arise.

Revelation, authority--these were still his watchwords; and in face of

them even the harmless spectacle of a country neighbourhood at play,

let alone the spectacle of the human comedy generally, is singularly

confusing.

He sought the soothing companionship of books with even heightened

relief one fair morning some three weeks later. For Mrs. St. Quentin

and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had arrived at Brockhurst the day

previously, and Julius had been sensible of certain perturbations of

mind in meeting these two ladies, one of whom was a devout Catholic by

inheritance and personal conviction; while the other, though nominally

a member of his own communion, was known to temper her religion with a

wide, if refined, philosophy. Conversation had drifted towards serious

subjects in the course of the evening, and Mrs. St. Quentin had

admitted, with a playful deprecation of her dear friend's rigid

religious attitude, that no one creed, no one system, offered an

adequate solution of the infinite mystery and complexity of life--as

she knew it. The serene adherence of one charming and experienced woman

to an authority which he had rejected, the almost equally serene

indifference on the part of the other to the revelation he held as

absolute and final, troubled Julius. Small wonder then, that early,

after a solitary breakfast, he retired upon the society of the odd

volumes cluttering the shelves of the Long Gallery, that he sorted,

arranged, catalogued, grateful for that dulling of thought which

mechanical labour brings with it.

But fate was malicious, and elected to make a sport of Julius this

morning. Unexpectedly importunate human drama obtruded itself, the deep

places of the story--such as, in the innocence of his ascetic

refinement, he had never dreamed of--began to reveal themselves.

He had climbed the wide, carpeted steps of the library ladder and

seated himself on the topmost one, at right angles to a topmost shelf

the contents of which he proposed to investigate, duster and note-book

in hand. The vast perspective of the gallery lengthened out before him,

cool, faint-tinted, full of a diffused and silvery light. The

self-coloured, unpainted paneling of the walls and bookcases--but one

shade warmer in tone than that of the stone mullions and transomes of

the lofty windows--gave an indescribable delicacy of effect to the

atmosphere of the room. Through the many-paned, leaded lights of the

eastern bay, the sunshine--misty, full of dancing notes--streamed in

obliquely, bringing into quaint prominence of light and shadow a very

miscellaneous collection of objects.--A marble Buddha, benign of

aspect, his right hand raised in blessing, seated, cross-legged upon

the many-petalled lotus. A pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just

below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged,

leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe

paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb,

but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints,

softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull,

from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian

snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, placed at regular

intervals, were consol tables bearing tall oriental jars and huge bowls

of fine porcelain, filled with potpourri; so that the scent of dried

rose leaves, bay, verbena, and many spices impregnated the air. The

place was, in short, a museum. Whatever of strange, grotesque, and

curious, Calmadys of past generations had collected in their

wanderings, by land and sea, found lodgment here. It was a home of

half-forgotten histories, of valorous deeds grown dim through the lapse

of years; a harbour of refuge for derelict gods, derelict weapons,

derelict volumes, derelict instruments which had once discoursed sweet

enough music, but the fashion of which had now passed away. The

somewhat obsolete sentiment of the place harmonised with the thin,

silvery light and the thin sweetness of spices and dead roses which

pervaded it. It seemed to smile, as with the pitying tolerance of the

benign image of Buddha, at the heat and flame, the untempered scarlet

and purple of the fleeting procession of individual lives, that had

ministered to its furnishing. For how much vigorous endeavour, now over

and done with, never to be recalled, had indeed gone to supply the

furnishing of that room!--And, after all, is not the most any human

creature dare hope for the more or less dusty corner of some museum

shelf at last? The passion of the heart testified to by some battered

trinket, the sweat of the brain by some maggot-eaten manuscript, the

agony of death, at best, by some round shot turned up by the

ploughshare? And how shall any one dare complain of this, since have

not empires before now only been saved from oblivion by a few buried

potsherds, and whole races of mankind by childish picture-scratchings

on a reindeer bone? _Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse._ The

individual--his arts, his possessions, his religion, his

civilisation--is always as an envelope, merely, to be torn asunder and

cast away. Nothing subsists, nothing endures but life itself, endlessly

self-renewed, endlessly one, through the endless divergencies of its

manifestations. And, as Julius March was to find, hide from it, deny

it, strive to elude it as we may, the recognition of just that is bound

to grip us sooner or later and hold us with a fearful and dominating

power from which there is no escape.

Meanwhile, his occupation was tranquil enough, comfortably remote, as

it seemed, from all such profound and disquieting matters. For the top

shelf proved not very prolific of interest; and one book after another,

examined and rejected as worthless, was dropped--with a reproachful

flutter of pages and final thud--into the capacious paper-basket

standing on the floor below. Then, at the far end of the said shelf, he

came unexpectedly upon a collection of those quaint chap-books which

commanded so wide a circulation during the eighteenth century.

Julius, with the true bibliophile's interest in all originals, examined

his find carefully. The tattered and dogs-eared, little volumes,

coarsely printed and embellished by a number of rough, square woodcuts,

had, he knew, a distinct value. He soon perceived that they formed a

very representative selection. He glanced at _The famous History of Guy

of Warwick_; at that of _Sir Bevis of Southampton_; at _Joaks upon

Joaks_, a lively work regarding the manners and customs of the

aristocracy at the period of the Restoration; at the record of the

amazing adventures of that lusty serving-wench _Long Meg of

Westminster_; and at that refreshing piece of comedy known as _Merry

Tales concerning the Sayings and Doings of the Wise Men of Gotham_.

Finally, hidden behind the outstanding frame of the bookcase, he

discovered four tiny volumes tied together with a rusty, black ribbon.

A heavy coating of dust lay upon them. A large spider, moreover, darted

from behind them. Dust clung unpleasantly to its hairy and ill-favoured

person. It was a matter of principle with Julius never to take life;

yet instinctively he drew back his hand from the book in disgust.

"_Araignee du matin, chagrin_," he said, involuntarily, while he

watched the insect make good its escape over the top of the bookcase.

Then he flicked uneasily at the little parcel with his duster, causing

a cloud of gray atoms to float up and out into the room. Julius was

perhaps absurdly open to impressions. It took him some seconds to

recover from his sense of repulsion and to untie the rusty ribbon

around the little books. They proved all to be ragged and imperfect

copies of the same work. The woodcuts in them were splotched with crude

colour. The title-page was printed in assorted type--here a line of

Roman capitals, there one in italics or old English letters. The

inscription, consequently, was difficult to decipher, causing him to

hold the tattered page very close to his short-sighted eyes. It ran

thus--

"Setting forth a true and particular account of the dealings of

Sir Thomas Calmady with the forester's daughter and the bloody

death of her only child. To which is added her prophecy and curse."

Julius had been standing, so as to reach the length of the shelf. Now

he sat down on the top step of the ladder again. A whole rush of

memories came upon him. He remembered vaguely how, long ago, in his

childhood, he had heard legends of this same curse. Staying here at

Brockhurst, as a baby-child with his mother, maids had hinted at it,

gossiping over the nursery fire at night; and his mind, irresistibly

attracted, even then, by the supernatural, had been filled at once by

desperate curiosity and by panic fear. He paused, thinking back,

singularly moved, as one on the edge of the satisfaction of

long-desired knowledge, yet slightly self-contemptuous, both of his own

emotion and of the rather vulgar means by which that knowledge promised

to be obtained.

The shafts of sunshine fell more obliquely across the eastern end of

the gallery. Benign Buddha had passed into shadow; while a painting by

Murillo, standing on an easel near by caught the light, starting into

arresting reality. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf,

holding a couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash--an unhappy creature

who had made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and

whose gorgeous garments were ingeniously designed to emphasise the

physical degradation of his contorted body. This painting, appearing to

Julius too painful for habitual contemplation, had, at his request,

been removed from his study down-stairs to its present station. Just

now he fancied it looked forth at him queerly insistent. At this

distance he could distinguish little more than a flare of scarlet and

cloth-of-gold, and the white of the hounds' flanks and bellies under

the strong sunlight. But he knew the picture in all its details; and

was oppressed by the remembrance of tragic eyes in a brutal face, eyes

that protested dumbly against cruelty inflicted by nature and by

mankind alike. He, Julius, was not, so he feared, quite guiltless in

this matter. For had there not been a savour of cruelty in his ejection

of the portrait of this unhappy being from his peaceful study?

And thinking of this his discomfort augmented. He was assailed by an

unreasoning nervousness of something malign, something sinister, about

to befall or to become known to him.

"_Araignee du matin, chagrin_," he repeated involuntarily.

He laid the four little chap-books back hastily behind the outstanding

woodwork of the bookshelf, descended the steps, walked the length of

the gallery, and leaning against one of the stone mullions of the

great, eastern bay window looked out of the wide, open casement.

The prospect was, indeed, reassuring enough. The softly green square of

the troco-ground, the brilliant beds and borders of the brick-walled

gardens, the gray flags of the great terrace--its rows of little orange

trees, heavy with flower and fruit, set in blue painted tubs--lay below

him in a blaze of August sunshine. From the direction of the Long Water

in the valley, Richard Calmady rode up, between the thorn trees and the

beds of bracken, across the turf slopes of the park. It was a joy to

see him ride. The rider and horse were one, in vigour and in the repose

which comes of vigour--a something classic in the natural beauty and

sympathy of rider and of horse. Half-way up the slope Richard swerved,

turned towards the house, sat looking up, hat in hand, while Katherine

stood at the edge of the terrace looking down, speaking with him. The

warm breeze fluttered her full muslin skirts, rose and white, and the

white lace of her parasol. The rich tones of her voice and the ring of

her laughter came up to Julius, as he leant against the stone mullion,

along with the droning of innumerable bees, and the cooing of the

pink-footed pigeons--that bowed to one another, spreading their tails,

drooping their wings amorously, upon the broad, gray string-course

running along the house front just beneath. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt,

a small, neat, gray and black figure, was beside Katherine, and, now

and again, he heard the pretty staccato of her foreign speech. Then

Richard Calmady rode onward, turning half round in the saddle, looking

up for a moment at the woman he loved. His horse broke into a canter,

bearing him swiftly in and out of the shadow of the glistening, domed

oaks and ancient, stag-headed, Spanish chestnuts which crowned the

ascent, and on down the long, softly-shaded vista of the lime avenue.

While Camp, the bulldog, who had lain panting in the bracken, streaked

like a white flash up the hillside in pursuit of his well-beloved

master.

And Julius March moved away from the open window with a sigh. Yet what,

after all, of malign or sinister was perceptible, conceivable even, in

respect of this glorious morning and these happy people--unless, as he

reflected, something of pathos is of necessity ever resident in all

beauty, all happiness, the world being sinful, and existence so

prolific of pain and melancholy happenings? So he went back, climbed

the library steps again, and taking the little bundle of chap-books

from their dusty resting-place, set himself, in a somewhat penitential

spirit, to master their contents. If the occupation was distasteful to

him, the more wholesome to pursue it! So, supplying the deficiencies of

torn or defaced pages by reference to another of the copies, he arrived

by degrees at a clear understanding of the whole matter. The story was

set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of

melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of

diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly

admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from

the very homeliness of the language in which it was chronicled.

Thus Julius learned how, during the closing years of the Commonwealth,

the young royalist gentleman, Sir Thomas Calmady, dwelling in enforced

seclusion at Brockhurst, relieved the tedium of country life by

indulgence in divers amours. He was large-hearted, apparently, and

could not see a comely face without attempting intimate acquaintance

with the possessor of it. Among other damsels distinguished by his

attentions was his head forester's handsome daughter, whom, under

reiterated promise of marriage, he seduced. In due time she bore him a

child, ideally beautiful, according to the poet of the chap-book,

blessed with "red-gold hair and eyes of blue," and many charms of

infantile healthfulness. And yet, notwithstanding the noble looks of

her little son, the forester's daughter still remained unwed. For just

now came the Restoration, and along with it a notable change in the

outlook of Sir Thomas Calmady and many another lusty young gallant,

since the event in question not only restored Charles the Second to the

arms of his devoted subjects, but restored such loyal gentlemen to the

by no means too strait-laced society of town and court. Thence, some

few years later, Sir Thomas--amiably willing in all things to oblige

his royal master--brought home a bride, whose rank and wealth,

according to the censorious chap-book, were extensively in excess of

her youth and virtue.

Julius lingered a little in contemplation of the quaint wood-cut

representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a

bottle-green bodice--very generously _decolletee_, her head adorned by

a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour

on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family

coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of

persons--presumably footmen--clad in canary-coloured coats and armed

with long staves. With these last, they treated a female figure in blue

to, as it seemed, sadly rough usage. And the context informed Julius,

in jingling verse, how that poor Hagar, the forester's daughter,

inconveniently defiant of custom and of common sense, had stoutly

refused to be cast forth into the social wilderness, along with her

small Ishmael and a few pounds sterling as price of her honour and

content, until she had stood face to face with Sarah, the safely

church-wed, if none too reputable, wife. It informed him, further, how

the said small Ishmael--whether alarmed by the violence of my lady's

men-servants, or wanting merely, childlike, to welcome his returning

father--ran to the coach door and clambered on the step; whence, thanks

to a vicious thrust--so declares the chap-book--from "the painted

Jezebel within," he fell, while the horses plunging forward caused the

near hind wheel of the heavy, lumbering vehicle to pass over his legs,

almost severing them from his body just above the knee.

Thereupon--and here the homely language of the gutter poet rose to a

level of rude eloquence--the outraged mother, holding the mangled and

dying child in her arms, cursed the man who had brought this ruin upon

her. Cursed him and his descendants, to the sixth and seventh

generations, good and bad alike. Declaring, moreover, that as judgment

on his perfidy and lust, no owner of Brockhurst should reach the life

limit set by the Psalmist, and die quiet and Christianly in his bed,

until a somewhat portentous event should have taken place--namely,

until, as the jingling rhyme set forth:--

"--a fatherless babe to the birth shall have come,

Of brother or sister shall he have none,

But red-gold hair and eyes of blue

And a foot that will never know stocking or shoe.

If he opens his purse to the lamenter's cry,

Then the woe shall lift and be laid for aye."

Julius March, his spare, black figure crouched together, sat on the top

step of the library ladder musing. His first movement had been one of

refined and contemptuous disgust. Sensuality and the tragedies

engendered by it were so wholly foreign to his nature and mental

outlook, that it was difficult to him to reckon with them seriously and

admit the very actual and permanent part which they play and always

have played in the great drama of human life. It distressed, it, in a

sense, annoyed him that the legend of Brockhurst, which had caused him

elaborate imaginative terrors during his childhood, should belong to

this gross and vulgar order of history. Yet indubitably--as he

reluctantly admitted--each owner of Brockhurst had very certainly found

death in the midst of life, and that according to some rather brutal

and bloody pattern. This might, of course, be judged the result of

merest coincidence. Had he leisure and opportunity to search them out,

he could find, no doubt, plausible explanation of the majority of

cases. Only that fact of persistent violence, persistent accident, did

remain. It stared him in the face, so to speak, defiant of denial. And

the deduction, consequent upon it, stared him in the face likewise. He

was constrained to confess that the first clause of the deeply wronged

mother's prediction had found ample fulfilment.--Julius paused, shifted

his position uneasily, somewhat fearful of the conclusions of his own

reasoning.

For how about the second clause of that same prediction? How about the

advent of that strange child of promise, who preordained in his own

flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive

justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself

and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the

chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral

and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by

triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a

self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the base things of the

world and those which are despised--yea, and the things which are not,

to bring to nought the things which are.--His heart, hungry of all

martyrdom, all saintly doings, went forth to welcome the idea. But

then, he asked himself almost awed, in this sceptical, rationalistic

age, are such semi-miraculous moral examples still possible? And

answered, with strong exultation--as one finding practical

justification of a long, though silently, cherished conviction--yes,

that even now, nineteen centuries after the death of that divine Saving

Victim to whose service he had devoted his life and the joys of his

manhood, such nobly sad and strange happenings may still be.

And even while he thus answered, his eyes were drawn involuntarily to

the portrait of the unsightly dwarf, painted by Velasquez. The broad

shaft of sunlight had crept backward, away from it, leaving the canvas

unobtrusive, no longer harshly evident either in violence of colour or

grotesqueness of form. It had become part of the great whole, merely

modulated to gracious harmony with the divers objects surrounding it,

and like them softly overlaid by a diffused and silvery light.