CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH DICKIE TRIES TO RIDE AWAY FROM HIS OWN SHADOW, WITH SUCH

SUCCESS AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN ANTICIPATED

That same morning Richard was up and out early. Fog had followed on the

evening's rain, and at sunrise still shrouded all the landscape.

"Let her ladyship know I breakfast at the stables and shan't be in

before luncheon," he had said to Powell while settling himself in the

saddle. Then, followed by a groom, he fared forth. The house vanished

phantom-like behind him, and the clang of the iron gates as they swung

to was muffled by the heavy atmosphere, while he rode on by invisible

ways across an invisible land, hemmed in, close-encompassed, passed

upon, by the chill, ashen whiteness of the fog.

And for the cold silence and blankness surrounding him Richard was

grateful. It was restful--after a grim fashion--and he welcomed rest,

having passed a but restless night. For Dickie had been the victim of

much travail of spirit. His imagination vexed him, pricking up

slumbering lusts of the flesh. His conscience vexed him likewise,

suggesting that his attitude had not been pure cousinly; and this

shamed him, since he was still singularly unspotted from the world,

noble modesties and decencies still paramount in him. He was keenly,

some might say mawkishly, sensible of the stain and dishonour of

turning, even involuntarily and passingly, covetous glances upon

another man's goods. In sensation and apprehension he had lived at

racing pace during the last few days. That hour in the Long Gallery

last night had been the climax. The gates of paradise had opened before

him. And, since opposites of necessity imply their opposites, the gates

of hell had opened likewise. It appeared to Dickie that the great

poets, and painters, and musicians, the great lovers even, had nothing

left to tell him--for he knew. Knew, moreover, that his Eden had come

to him with the angel of the fiery sword that "turneth every way"

standing at the threshold of it--knew, yet further, as he had never

known before, the immensity of the difficulties, disabilities,

humiliations, imposed on him by his deformity. Bitterly, nakedly, he

called his trouble by that offensive name. Then he straightened himself

in the saddle. Yes, welcome the cold weight against his chest, welcome

the silence, the blankness, the dead, ashen pallor of the fog!

But just where the tan ride, leading down across the road to the left

diverges from the main road, this source of negative consolation began

to fail him. For a draw of fresher air came from westward, causing the

blurred, wet branches to quiver and the pall of mist to gather, and

then break and melt under its wholesome breath, while the rays of the

laggard sun, clearing the edge of the fir forest, eastward, pierced it,

hastening its dissolution. Therefore it followed that by the time

Richard rode in under the stable archway, he found the great yard full

of noise and confused movement. The stable doors stood wide along one

side of the quadrangle. Stunted, boyish figures shambled hither and

thither, unwillingly deserting the remnants of half-eaten breakfasts,

among the iron mugs and platters of the long, deal tables of the

refectory. Chifney and Preiston--the head-lad--hurried them, shouting

orders, admonishing, inciting to greater rapidity of action. And the

boys were sulky. The thick morning had promoted hopes of an hour or two

of unwonted idleness. Now those poor, little hopes were summarily

blighted. Lazy, pinched with cold by the raw morning air, still a bit

hungry, sick even, or downright frightened, they must mount and

away--the long line of race-horses streaming, in single file, up the

hillside to the exercising ground--with as short delay as possible, or

Mr. Chifney and his ash stick would know the reason why.

There were elements of brutality in the scene from which Richard would,

oftentimes, have recoiled. To-day he was selfish, absorbed to the point

of callousness. If he remarked them at all, it was in bitter welcome,

as he had welcomed the chill and staring blankness of the fog. He was

indifferent to the fact that Chifney was harsh, the horses testy or

wicked, that the boys' noses were red, and that they blew their purple

fingers before laying hold of the reins in a vain attempt to promote

circulation. Dickie sat still as a statue in the midst of all the

turmoil, the handle of his crop resting on his thigh, his eyes hot from

sleeplessness and wild thoughts, his face hard as marble.--Unhappy?

Wasn't he unhappy too? Suffer? Well, let them suffer--within reasonable

limits. Suffering was the fundamental law of existence. They must bow

to the workings of it along with the rest.

But one wretched, little chap fairly blubbered. He had been kicked in

the stomach some three weeks earlier, and had been in hospital. This

was his first morning out. He had grown soft, and was light-headed, his

knees all of a shake. By means of voluminous threats Preiston got him

up. But he sat his horse all of a huddle, as limp as a half-empty sack

of chaff. Richard looked on feeling, not pity, but only irritation,

finally amounting to anger. The child's whole aspect and the sniveling

sounds he made were so hatefully ugly. It disgusted him.

"Here Chifney, leave that fellow at home," he said. "He's no good."

"He's malingering, Sir Richard. I know his sort. Give in to him now and

we shall have the same game, and worse, over again to-morrow."

"Very probably," Richard answered. "Only it is evident he has no more

hand and no more grip than a sick cat to-day. We shall have some mess

with him, and I'm not in the humour for a mess, so just leave him.

There boy, stop crying. Do you hear?" he added, wheeling round on the

small unfortunate. "Mr. Chifney'll give you another day off, and the

doctor will see you. Only if he reports you fit and you give the very

least trouble to-morrow, you'll be turned out of the stables there and

then. We've no use for shirkers. Do you understand?"

In spite of his irritation, the hardness of Richard's expression

relaxed as he finished speaking. The poor, little beggar was so

abject--too abject indeed for common decency, since he too, after all,

was human. Richard's own self-respect made it incumbent upon him to

lift the creature out of the pit of so absolutely unseemly a

degradation. He looked kindly at him, smiled, and promptly forgot all

about him. While to the boy it seemed that the gods had verily

descended in the likeness of men, and he would have bartered his

little, dirty, blear-eyed rudiment of a soul thenceforward for another

such a look from Richard Calmady.

Dickie promptly forgot the boy, yet some virtue must have been in the

episode for he began to feel better in himself. As the horses filed

away through the misty sunshine--Preiston riding beside the fourth or

fifth of the string, while Richard and Chifney brought up the rear, his

chestnut suiting its paces to the shorter stride of the trainer's

cob--the fever of the night cooled down in him. Half thankfully, half

amusedly, he perceived things begin to assume their normal relations.

He filled his lungs with the pure air, felt the sun-dazzle pleasant in

his eyes. He had run somewhat mad in the last twenty-four hours surely?

He was not such a fatuous ass as to have mistaken Helen's frank

_camaraderie_, her bright interest in things, her charming little ways

of showing cousinly regard, for some deeper, more personal feeling? She

had been divinely kind, but that was just her--just the outcome of her

delightful nature. She would go away on Friday--Saturday perhaps--he

rather hoped Saturday--and be just as divinely kind to other people.

And then he shook himself, feeling the languid weight of her hands on

his shoulders again. Would she--would--? For an instant he wanted to

get at, and incontinently brain, those other people. After which,

Richard mentally took himself by the throat and proceeded to choke the

folly out of himself. Yes, she would go back to all those other people,

back moreover to the Vicomte de Vallorbes--whom, by the way, it

occurred to him she so seldom mentioned. Well, we don't continually

talk about the people we love best, do we, to comparative strangers?

She would go back to her husband--her husband.--Richard repeated the

words over to himself sternly, trying to drive them home, to burn them

into his consciousness past all possibility of forgetting.

Anyhow, she had been wonderfully sweet and charming to him. She had

shown him--quite unconsciously, of course--what life might be for--for

somebody else. She had revealed to him--what indeed had she not

revealed! He remembered the spirit of expectation that possessed him

riding back through the autumn woods the day he first met her. The

expectation had been more than justified by the sequel. Only--only--and

then Dick became stern with himself again. For, she having,

unconsciously, done so much for him, was it not his first duty never to

distress her?--never to let her know how much deeper it had all gone

with him than with her?--never to insult her beautiful innocence by a

word or look suggesting an affection less frank and cousinly than her

own?

Only, since even our strongest purposes have moments of lapse and

weakness in execution, it would be safer, perhaps, not to be much alone

with her--since she didn't know--how should she? Yes, Richard agreed

with himself not to loaf, to allow no idle hours. He would ride, he

would see to business. There were a whole heap of estate matters

claiming attention. He had neglected them shamefully of late.

Unquestionably Helen counted for very much, would continue to do so. He

supposed he would carry the ache of certain memories about with him

henceforth and forever. She had become part of the very fibre of his

life. He never doubted that. And yet, he told himself--assuming a

second-hand garment of slightly cynical philosophy which suited

singularly ill with the love-light in his eyes, there radiantly

apparent for all the world to see--that woman, even the one who first

shows you you have a heart--and a body too, worse luck--even she is but

a drop in the vast ocean of things. There remains all The Rest. And

with praiseworthy diligence Dickie set himself to reckon how immensely

much all The Rest amounts to. There is plenty, exclusive of her, to

think about. More than enough, indeed, to keep one hard at work all

day, and send one to bed honestly tired, to sleeping-point, at night.

Politics for instance, science, literature, entertaining little

controversial rows of sorts--the simple, almost patriarchal duties of a

great land-owner; pleasant hobbies such as the collection of first

editions, or a pretty taste in the binding of favourite books--the

observation of this mysterious, ever young, ever fertile nature around

him now, immutable order underlaying ceaseless change, the ever new

wonder and beauty of all that, and:--"I say, Chifney, isn't the brown

Lady-Love filly going rather short on the off foreleg? Anything wrong

with her shoulder?"--and sport. Yes, thank God, in the name of

everything healthy and virile, sport and, above all, horses--yes,

horses.

Thus did Richard Calmady reason with and essay to solace himself for

the fact that some fruits are forbidden to him who holds honour dear.

Reasoned with and solaced himself to such good purpose, as he fondly

imagined, that when, an hour and a half later, he established himself

in the trainer's dining-room, a mighty breakfast outspread before him,

he felt quite another man. Racing cups adorned the chimneypiece and

sideboard, portraits of race-horses and jockeys adorned the walls. The

sun streamed in between the red rep curtains, causing the pot-plants in

the window to give off a pleasant scent, and the canary, in his

swinging blue and white painted cage above them, to sing. Mrs. Chifney,

her cheeks pink, her manner slightly fluttered,--as were her lilac cap

strings,--presided over the silver tea and coffee service, admonished

the staid and bulky tom-cat who, jumping on the arm of Dickie's chair,

extended a scooping tentative paw towards his plate, and issued gentle

though peremptory orders to her husband regarding the material needs of

her guest. To Mrs. Chifney such entertainings as the present marked the

red-letter days of her calendar. Temporarily she forgave Chifney the

doubtful nature of his calling and his occasional outbreaks of profane

swearing alike. She ceased to regret that snug might-have-been, little,

grocery business in a country town. She forgot even to hanker after

prayer meetings, anniversary teas, and other mild, soul-saving

dissipations unauthorised by the Church of England. She ruffled her

feathers, so to speak, and cooed to the young man half in feudal, half

in unsatisfied maternal affection--for Mrs. Chifney was childless. And

it followed that as he teased her a little, going back banteringly on

certain accepted subjects of difference between them, praised, and made

a hole, in her fresh-baked rolls, her nicely browned, fried potatoes,

her clear, crinkled rashers, assuring her it gave one an appetite

merely to sit down in a room so shiningly clean and spick and span, she

was supremely happy. And Dickie was happy too, and blessed the

exercise, the food, and the society of these simple persons, which,

after his evil night, seemed to have restored to him his wiser and

better self.

"He always was the noblest looking young gentleman I ever saw," Mrs.

Chifney remarked subsequently to her husband. "But here at breakfast

this morning, when he said, 'If you won't be shocked, Mrs. Chifney, I

believe I could manage a second helping of that game pie,' his face was

like a very angel's from heaven. Unearthly beautiful, Thomas, and yet a

sort of pain at the back of it. It gave me a regular turn. I had to

shed a few tears afterwards when I got alone by myself."

"You're one of those that see more than's there, half your time,

Maria," the trainer answered, with an unusual effort at sarcasm, for he

was not wholly easy about the young man himself.--"There's something up

with him, and danged if I know what it is." But these reflections he

kept to himself.

Dr. Knott, later that same day, made reflections of a similar nature.

For though Dickie adhered valiantly to his good resolutions--going out

with the second lot of horses between ten and eleven o'clock, riding on

to Banister's farm to inspect the new barn and cowsheds in course of

erection, then hurrying down to Sandyfield Street and listening to long

and heated arguments regarding a right-of-way reported to exist across

the meadows skirting the river just above the bridge, a right strongly

denied by the present occupier. Notwithstanding these improving and

public-spirited employments, the love-light grew in his eyes all

through the long morning, causing his appearance to have something, if

not actually angelic, yet singularly engaging, about it. For,

unquestionably, next to a fortunate attachment, an unfortunate one, if

honest, is among the most inspiring and grace-begetting of possessions

granted to mortals. Helen must never know--that was well understood.

Yet the more Dickie thought the whole affair over, the more he

recognised the fine romance of thus cherishing a silent and secret

devotion. He was very young in this line as yet, it may be observed.

Meanwhile it was nearly two o'clock. He would need to ride home sharply

if he was to be in time for luncheon. And at luncheon he would meet

her. And remembering that, his heart--traitorous heart--beat quick, and

his lips--traitorous lips--began to repeat her name. Thus do the gods

of life and death love to play chuck-farthing with the wise purposes of

men, the theory of the eternal laughter having a root of truth in it,

as it would seem, after all! And there ahead of him, under the

shifting, dappled shadow of the overarching firs, Dr. Knott's broad,

cumbersome back, and high, two-wheeled trap blocked the road, while

Timothy, the old groom,--stiff-kneed now and none too active,--slowly

pushed open the heavy, white gate of the inner park.

As Richard rode up, the doctor turned in his seat and looked at him

from under his rough eyebrows, while his loose lips worked into a

half-ironical smile. He loved this lad of great fortune, and great

misfortune, more tenderly than he quite cared to own. Then, as Dick

checked his horse beside the cart, he growled out:--

"No need to make anxious inquiries regarding your health, young sir.

What have you been doing with yourself, eh? You look as fit as a fiddle

and as fresh as paint."

"If I look as I feel I must look ravenously hungry," Richard answered,

flushing up a little. "I've been out since six."

"Had some breakfast?"

"Oh dear, yes! Enough to teach one to know what a jolly thing a good

meal is, and make one wish for another."

"Hum!" Dr. Knott said. "That's a healthy state of affairs, anyhow.

Young horses going well?"

"Famously."

"Bless me, everything's beer and skittles with you just at present

then!"

Richard looked away down the smooth yellow road whereon the dappled

shadows kissed and mingled, mingled and kissed, and his heart cried

"Helen, Helen," once again.

"Oh! I don't know about that," he said. "I get my share as well as the

rest I suppose--at least--anyway the horses are doing capitally this

season."

"I should like to have a look at them."

"Oh, well you've only got to say when, you know. I shall be only too

delighted to show them you."

As he walked the trap through the gateway, Dr. Knott watched Richard

riding alongside.--"What's up with the boy," he thought. "His face is

as keen as a knife, and as soft as--God help us, I hope there's no

sweethearting on hand! It's bound to come sooner or later, but the

later the better, for it'll be a risky enough set out, come when it

may.--Ah, look out there now, you old fool,"--this to Timothy,--"don't

go missing the step and laying yourself up with broken ribs for another

three months, just when my work's at its heaviest. Be careful, can't

you?"

"But why not come in to luncheon now?" Richard said, wisdom whipping up

good resolutions once more, and bidding him check the gladness that

gained on him at thought of that approaching meeting. Oh yes! he would

be discreet, he would erect barriers, he would flee temptation. Knott's

presence offered a finely rugged barrier, surely. Therefore, he

repeated, "Come in now. My mother will be delighted to see you, and we

can have a look round the stables afterwards."

"I'll come fast enough if Lady Calmady will take me as I am. Workaday

clothes, and second best lot at that. You're alone, I suppose?"

He watched the young man as he spoke. Noted the lift of his chin, and

the slightly studied indifference of his manner.

"No, for once we're not. But that doesn't matter. My Uncle William

Ormiston is with us. You remember him?"

"I remember his wife."

"Oh! she's not here," Dickie said. "Only he and his daughter, Madame de

Vallorbes. You'll come?"

"Oh! dear yes, I'll come, if you'll be good enough to prepare your

ladies for a rough-looking customer. Don't let me keep you. Wonder what

the daughter's like?" he added to himself. "The mother was a bit of a

baggage."