CHAPTER III

CONCERNING THAT WHICH, THANK GOD, HAPPENS ALMOST EVERY DAY

The merry spring sky was clear, save in the south where a vast

perspective of dappled cloud lay against it, leaving winding rivers of

blue here and there, as does ribbed sand for the incoming tide. As the

white gate of the inner park--the gray unpainted palings ranging far

away to right and left--swung to behind them, and Henry the groom,

after a smart run, clambered up into his place again beside Camp on the

back seat of the double dog-cart, Richard's spirits rose. Straight

ahead stretched out the long vista of that peculiar glory of

Brockhurst, its avenue of Scotch firs. The trunks of them, rough-barked

and purple below, red, smooth and glistering above, shot up some thirty

odd feet--straight as the pillars of an ancient temple--before the

branches, sweeping outward and downward, met, making a whispering,

living canopy overhead, through which the sunshine fell in tremulous

shafts, upon the shining coats and gleaming harness of the horses, upon

Ormiston's clear-cut, bronzed face and upright figure, and upon the

even, straw-coloured gravel of the road. The said road is raised by

about three feet above the level of the land on either side. On the

left, the self-sown firs grow in close ranks. The ground below them is

bare but for tussocks of coarse grass and ruddy beds of fallen fir

needles. On the right, the fir wood is broken by coppices of

silver-stemmed birches, and spaces of heather--that shows a

purple-brown against the gray of the reindeer moss out of which it

springs. Tits swung and frolicked among the tree-tops, and a jay flew

off noisily with a flash of azure wing-coverts and volley of harsh

discordant cries.

The rapid movement, the moist, pungent odour of the woodland, the

rhythmical trot of the horses, the rattle of the splinter-bar chains as

the traces slackened going downhill, above all the presence of the man

beside him, were pleasantly stimulating to Richard Calmady. The boy was

still a prey to much innocent enthusiasm. It appeared to him, watching

Ormiston's handling of the reins and whip, there was nothing this man

could not do, and do skilfully, yet all with the same easy unconcern.

Indeed, the present position was so agreeable to him that Dickie's

spirits would have risen to an unusual height, but for a certain

chastening of the flesh in the shape of the occasional pressure of a

broad strap against his middle, which brought him unwelcome remembrance

of recent discoveries it was his earnest desire to ignore, still better

to forget.

For just at starting there had been a rather bad moment. Winter, having

settled him on the seat of the dog-cart, was preparing to tuck him in

with many rugs, when Ormiston said--

"Look here, dear old chap, I've been thinking about this, and upon my

word you don't seem to me very safe. You see this is a different matter

to your donkey-chair, or the pony-carriage. There's no protection at

the side, and if the horses shied or anything--well, you'd be in the

road. And I can't afford to spill you the first time we go out

together, or there'd be a speedy end of all our fun."

Richard tried to emulate his uncle's cool indifference, and take the

broad strap as a matter of course. But he was glad the tongue of the

buckle slipped so directly into place; and that Henry's attention was

engaged with the near horse, which fretted at standing; and that

Leonard, the footman, was busy making Camp jump up at the back; and

that his mother, who had been watching him from the lowest of the wide

steps, turned away and went up to the flight to join Julius March

standing under the gray arcade. As the horses sprang forward,

clattering the little pebbles of the drive against the body of the

carriage, and swung away round the angle of the house, Katherine came

swiftly down the steps again smiling, kissing her hand to him. Still,

the strap hurt--not poor Dickie's somewhat ill-balanced body, to which

in truth it lent an agreeable sense of security, but his, just then,

all too sensitive mind. So that, notwithstanding a fine assumption of

gaiety, as he kissed his hand in return, he found the dear vision of

his mother somewhat blurred by foolish tears which he had resolutely to

wink away.

But now that disquieting incident was left nearly ten minutes behind.

The last park gate and its cluster of mellow-tinted thatched cottages

was past. Not only out-of-doors and all the natural exhilaration of it,

but the spectacle of the world beyond the precincts of the park--into

which world he, in point of fact, so rarely penetrated--wooed him to

interest and enjoyment. To Dickie, whose life through his mother's

jealous tenderness and his own physical infirmity had been so

singularly circumscribed, there was an element, slightly pathetic, of

discovery and adventure in this ordinary afternoon drive.

He did not want to talk. He was too busy simply seeing, everything food

for those young eyes and brain so greedy of incident and of beauty. He

sat upright and stared at the passing show.--At the deep lane, its

banks starred with primroses growing in the hollows of the gnarled

roots of oaks and ash trees. At Sandyfield rectory, deep-roofed,

bow-windowed, the red walls and tiles of it half smothered in ivy and

coton-easter. At the low, squat-towered, Georgian church, standing in

its acre of close-packed graveyard, which is shadowed by yew trees and

by the clump of three enormous Scotch firs in the rectory garden

adjoining. At the Church Farm, just beyond--a square white house, the

slated roofs of it running up steeply to a central block of chimneys,

it having, in consequence, somewhat the effect of a monster

extinguisher. At the rows of pale, wheat stacks, raised on granite

straddles; at the prosperous barns, yards, and stables, built of wood

on brick foundations, that surround it, presenting a mass of rich,

solid colour and of noisy, crowded, animal life. At the fields, plough

and pasture, marked out by long lines of hedgerow trees, broken by

coppices--these dashed with tenderest green--stretching up and back to

the dark purple-blue range of the moorland. At scattered cottages, over

the gates of whose gardens gay with daffodils and polyanthus, groups of

little girls and babies, in flopping sunbonnets and scanty lilac

pinafores, stared back at the passing carriage, and then bobbed the

accustomed curtsy. In the said groups were no boys, save of infant

years. The boys were away shepherding, or to plough, or bird-minding.

For as yet education was free indeed--in the sense that you were free

to take it, or leave it, as suited your pocket and your fancy.

Richard stared too at the pleasant, furze-dotted commons, spinning away

to right and left as the horses trotted sharply onward--commons whereon

meditative donkeys endured rather than enjoyed existence, after the

manner of their kind; and prodigiously large families of yellow-gray

goslings streeled after the flocks of white geese, across spaces of

fresh sprung grass around shallow ponds, in which the blue and dapple

of the sky was reflected. He stared at Sandyfield village too--a

straight street of detached houses, very diverse in colour and in

shape, standing back, for the most part, amid small orchards and

gardens that slope gently up from the brook, which last, backed, here

by a row of fine elms, there by one of Lombardy poplars, borders the

road. Three or four shops, modest in size as they are ambitious in the

variety of objects offered for sale in them, advance their windows

boldly. So does the yellow-washed inn, the Calmady arms displayed upon

its swinging sign-board. A miller's tented waggon, all powdery with

flour, and its team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells,

a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the

half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door,

came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer.

And Richard had uninterrupted leisure to bestow on all this seeing, for

his companion, Colonel Ormiston, was preoccupied and silent. Once or

twice he looked down at the boy as though suddenly remembering his

presence and inquired if he was "all right." But it was not until they

had crossed the long, white-railed bridge, at the end of Sandyfield

street--which spans not only the little brown river overhung by

black-stemmed alders, but a bit of marsh, reminiscent of the ancient

ford, lush with water grasses, beds of king-cups, and broad-leaved

docks--not until then did Colonel Ormiston make sustained effort at

conversation. Beyond the bridge the road forks.

"Left to Newlands, isn't it?" he asked sharply.

Then, as the carriage swept round the turn, he woke up from his long

reverie; waking Richard up also, from his long dream of mere seeing, to

human drama but dimly apprehended close there at his side.

"Oh, well, well!" the man exclaimed, throwing back his head in sharp

impatience, as a horse will against the restraint of the bearing-rein.

He raised his eyebrows, while his lips set in a smile the reverse of

gay. Then he looked down at Richard again, an unwonted softness in his

expression.

"Been happy?" he said. "Enjoyed your drive? That's right. You

understand the art of being really good company, Dick."

"What's that?"

"Allowing other people to be just as bad company as they like."

"I--I don't see how you could be bad company," Dickie said, flushing at

the audacity of his little compliment.

"Don't you, dear old chap? Well, that's very nice of you. All the same,

I find, at times, I can be precious bad company to myself."

"Oh! but I don't see how," the boy argued, his enthusiasm protesting

against all possibility of default in the object of it. Richard wanted

to keep his hands down,--unconsciousness, if only assumed, told for

personal dignity--but in the agitation of protest, spite of himself, he

laid hold of the top edge of that same chastening strap. "It must be so

awfully jolly to be like you--able to do everything and go everywhere.

There must be such a lot to think about."

The softness was still upon Ormiston's face. "Such a lot?" he said. "A

jolly lot too much, believe me, very often, Dick."

He looked away up the copse-bordered road, over the ears of the

trotting horses.

"You've read the story of Blue Beard and that unpleasant locked-up room

of his, where the poor little wives hung all of a row? Well, I'm sorry

to say, Dick, most men when they come to my age have a room of that

sort. It's an inhospitable place. One doesn't invite one's friends to

dine and smoke there. At least no gentleman does. I've met one or two

persons who set the door open and rather gloried in inviting

inspection--but they were blackguards and cads. They don't count. Still

each of us is obliged to go in there sometimes himself. I tell you it's

anything but lively. I've been in there just now."

The dappled cloud creeping upward from the southern horizon veiled the

sun, the light of which grew pale and thin. The scent of the larch

wood, on the right, hung in the air. Richard's eyes were wide with

inquiry. His mind suffered growing-pains, as young minds of any

intellectual and poetic worth needs must. The possibility of moral

experience, incalculable in extent as that golden-gray outspread of

creeping, increasing vapour overhead, presented itself to him. The

vastness of life touched him to fear. He struggled to find a limit,

clothing his effort in childish realism of statement.

"But in that locked-up room, Uncle Roger, you can't have dead

women--dead wives."

Ormiston laughed quietly.

"You hit out pretty straight from the shoulder, master Dick," he said.

"Happily I can reassure you on one point. All manner of things are hung

up in there--some ugly--almost all ugly, now, to my eyes, though some

of them had charming ways with them once upon a time. But, I give you

my word, neither ugly nor charming, dead nor alive, are there any

wives."

The boy considered a moment, then said stoutly, "I wouldn't go in there

again. I'd lock the door and throw away the key."

"Wait till your time comes! You'll find that is precisely what you

can't do."

"Then I'd fetch them out, once and for all, and bury them."

The carriage had turned in at the lodge gate. Soon a long, low, white

house and range of domed conservatories came into view.

"Heroic remedies!" Ormiston remarked, amused at the boy's vehemence.

"But no doubt they do succeed now and then. To tell you the truth,

Dick, I have been thinking of something of the kind myself. Only I'm

afraid I shall need somebody to help me in carrying out so extensive a

funeral."

"Anybody would be glad enough to help you," Richard declared, with a

strong emphasis on the pronoun.

"Ah! but the bother is anybody can't help one. Only one person in all

this great rough and tumble of a world can really help one. And often

one finds out who that person is a little bit too late. However, here

we are. Perhaps we shall know more about it all in the next half hour,

if these good people are at home."

In point of fact the good people in question were not at home.

Ormiston, holding reins and whip in one hand, felt for his card-case.

"So we've had our journey for nothing you see, Dick," he said.

And to Richard the words sounded regretful. Moreover, the drama of this

expedition seemed to him shorn of its climax. He knew there should be

something more, and pushed for it.

"You haven't asked for Mary," he said. "And I thought we came on

purpose to see Mary. She won't like us to go away like this. Do ask."

Colonel Ormiston's expression altered, hardened. And Richard, in his

present hypersensitive state, remembered the cool scrutiny bestowed on

the winged sea-gull of his dream last night. This man had seemed so

near him just now, while they talked. Suddenly he became remote again,

all understanding of him shut away by that slight insolence of bearing.

Still he did as Richard prayed him. Miss Cathcart was at home. She had

just come in from riding.

"Tell her Sir Richard Calmady is here, and would like, if he may, to

see her."

Without waiting for a reply, Ormiston unbuckled that same chastening

strap silently, quickly. He got down and, coming round to the farther

side of the carriage, lifted Richard out; while Camp, who had jumped

off the back seat, stood yawning, whining a little, shaking his heavy

head and wagging his tail in welcome on the door-step. With the

bull-dog close at his heels, Ormiston carried the boy into the house.

The inner doors were open, and, up the long, narrow, pleasantly

fresh-tinted drawing-room, Mary Cathcart came to meet them. The folds

of her habit were gathered up in one hand. In the other she carried a

bunch of long-stalked, yellow and scarlet tulips. Her strong, supple

figure stood out against the young green of the lawns and shrubberies,

seen through the French windows behind her. She walked carefully, with

a certain deliberation, thanks to her narrow habit and top-boots. The

young lady carried her thirty-one years bravely. Her irregular features

and large mouth had always been open to criticism. But her teeth, when

her lips parted, were white and even, and her brown eyes frankly honest

as ever.

"Why, Dickie dear, it is simply glorious to have you and Camp paying

visits on your own account."--Her speech broke into a little cry, while

her fingers closed so tightly on the tulips that the brittle stalks

snapped, and the gay-coloured bells of them hung limply, some falling

on to the carpet about her feet. "Roger--Colonel Ormiston--I didn't

know you were home--were here!" Her voice was uncontrollably glad.

Still carrying the boy, Ormiston stood before her, observing her

keenly. But he was no longer remote. His insolence, which, after all,

may have been chiefly self-protective, had vanished.

"I'm very sorry--I mean for those poor tulips. I came to pay my

respects to Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart, and not finding them was preparing

to drive humbly home again. But----" Certainly she carried her years

well. She looked absurdly young. The brown and rose-red of her

complexion was clear as that of the little maiden who had fought with,

and overcome, and kissed the rough Welsh pony refusing the grip by the

roadside long ago. The hint of a moustache emphasised the upturned

corners of her mouth--but that was rather captivating. Her eyes danced,

under eyelids which fluttered for the moment. She was not beautiful,

not a woman to make men run mad. Yet the comeliness of her body, and

the spirit to which that body served as index, was so unmistakably

healthful, so sincere, that surely no sane man, once gathering her into

his arms, need ask a better blessing.--"But," Ormiston went on, still

watching her, "nothing would satisfy Dick but he must see you. With

many injunctions regarding his safety, Katherine made him over to me

for the afternoon. I'm on duty, you see. Where he goes, I'm bound to go

also--even to the destruction of your poor tulips."

Miss Cathcart made no direct answer.

"Sit here, Dickie," she said, pointing to a sofa.

"But you don't really mind our coming in, do you?" he asked, rather

anxiously.

The young lady placed herself beside him, drew his hand on to her knee,

patted it gently.

"Mind? No; on the whole, I don't think I do mind very much. In fact, I

think I should probably have minded very much more if you had gone away

without asking for me."

"There, I told you so, Uncle Roger," the boy said triumphantly. Camp

had jumped up on to the sofa too. He put his arm comfortably around the

dog's neck. It was as well to acquire support on both sides, for the

surface of the glazed chintz was slippery, inconveniently unsustaining

to his equilibrium. "It's an awfully long time since I've seen Mary,"

he continued, "more than three weeks."

"Yes, an awfully long time," Ormiston echoed, "more than six years."

"Dear Dickie," she said; "how pretty of you! Do you always keep count

of my visits?"

"Of course I do. They were about the best things that ever happened,

till Uncle Roger came home."

Forgetting herself, Mary Cathcart raised her eyes to Ormiston's in

appeal. The boy's little declaration stirred all the latent motherhood

in her. His fortunes at once passed so very far beyond, and fell so far

short of, the ordinary lot. She wondered whether, and could not but

trust that, this old friend and newcomer was not too self-centred, too

hardened by ability and success to appreciate the intimate pathos of

the position. Ormiston read and answered her thought.

"Oh! we are going to do something to change all that," he said

confidently. "We are going to enlarge our borders a bit; aren't we,

Dick? Only, I think, we should manage matters much better if Miss

Cathcart would help us, don't you?"

Richard remembering the locked-up room of evil contents and that

proposal of inclusive funeral rites, gave this utterance a wholly

individual application. His face grew bright with intelligence. But,

greatly restraining himself, he refrained from speech. All that had

been revealed to him in confidence, and so his honour was engaged to

silence.

Ormiston pulled forward a chair and sat down by him, leaning forward,

his hands clasped about one knee, while he gazed at the tulips

scattered on the floor.

"So tell Miss Cathcart we all want her to come over to Brockhurst just

as often as she can," he continued, "and help us to make the wheels go

round a little faster. Tell her we've grown very old, and discreet, and

respectable, and that we are absolutely incapable of doing or saying

anything foolish or naughty, which she would object to--and----"

But Richard could restrain himself no longer. "Why don't you tell her

yourself, Uncle Roger?"

"Because, my dear old chap, a burnt child fears the fire. I tried to

tell Miss Cathcart something once, long ago. She mayn't remember----"

"She does remember," Mary said quietly, looking down at Richard's hand

and patting it as it lay on her lap.

"But she stopped me dead," Ormiston went on. "It was quite right of

her. She gave the most admirable reasons for stopping me. Would you

care to hear them?"

"Oh! don't, pray don't," Mary murmured. "It is not generous."

"Pardon me, your reasons were absolutely just--true in substance and in

fact. You said I was a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift, and

so----"

"I was odious," she broke in. "I was a self-righteous little

Pharisee--forgive me----"

"Why--there's nothing to forgive. You spoke the truth."

"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.

"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.

Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further

forward.

"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to

make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of

good, though--I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I

run through the list of my titles again to make sure this transaction

is fair and square and above-board."

A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point

of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's

still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile,

vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be

at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his

impatience touched on anger.

"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how

anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."

Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.

"I don't think--perhaps--Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered

very gently.

"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You

understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got

to go the whole hog or none."

She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing

sigh.

"Oh, dear me! what a plague of a hurry you are in!" she said.

"Well--then--then--I suppose I must--it is hardly a graceful

expression, but it is of your choosing, not of mine--I suppose I must

go the whole hog."

Roger Ormiston rose, treading the fallen tulips under foot. And

Richard, watching him, beheld that which called to his remembrance, not

the hopeless and impotent battle under the black polished sky of his

last night's dream, but the gallant stories he had heard, earlier last

night, of the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah, of the swift

dangers of sport, and large daring of travel. Here he beheld--so it

seemed to his boyish thought--the aspect of a born conqueror, of the

man who can serve and wait long for the good he desires, and who

winning it, lays hold of it with fearless might. And this, while

causing Richard an exquisite delight of admiration, caused him also a

longing to share those splendid powers so passionate that it amounted

to actual pain.

Mary Cathcart's hand slid from under his hand. She too rose to her

feet.

"Then you have actually cared for me all along, all these years,"

Ormiston declared in fierce joy.

"Of course--who else could I care for? And--and--you've loved me,

Roger, all the while?"

And Ormiston answered "Yes,"--speaking the truth, though with a

difference. There had been interludes that had contributed somewhat

freely to the peopling of that same locked-up room. But it is possible

for a man to love many times, yet always love one woman best.

All this, however, Dickie did not know. He only knew they dazzled

him--the man triumphantly strong, the woman so bravely glad. He could

not watch them any longer. He went hot all over, and his heart beat. He

felt strangely desolate too. They were far away from him in thought, in

fact, though so close by. Dickie shut his eyes, put his arms round the

bull-dog, pressed his face hard against the faithful beast's shoulder;

while Camp, stretching his short neck to the uttermost, nuzzled against

him and essayed to lick his cheek.

Thus did Richard Calmady gain yet further knowledge of things as they

are.