CHAPTER II

TELLING HOW VANITY FAIR MADE ACQUAINTANCE WITH RICHARD CALMADY

There was no refusing belief to the fact. The old, cloistered life at

Brockhurst, for good or evil, was broken up. Katherine Calmady

recognised that another stage had been reached on the relentless

journey, that new prospects opened, new horizons invited her anxious

gaze. She recognised also that all which had been was dead, according

to its existing form, and should receive burial, silent, somewhat

sorrowful, yet not without hope of eventual resurrection in regard to

the nobler part of it. The fair coloured petals of the flower fall away

from the maturing fruit, the fruit rots to set free the seed. Yet the

vital principle remains, life lives on, though the material clothing of

it change. And, therefore, Katherine--an upspringing of patience and

chastened fortitude within her, the result of her reconciliation to the

Divine Light and resignation of herself to its indwelling--set herself,

not to arrest the falling of the flower, but to help the ripening of

the seed. If the old garments were out of date, too straight and narrow

for her child's growth, then let others be found him. She did not wait

to have him ask, she offered, and that without hint of reproach or of

unwillingness.

Yet so to offer cost her not a little. For it was by no means easy to

sink her natural pride, and go forth smiling with this son of hers, at

once beautiful and hideous in person, for all the world to see.

Something of personal heroism is demanded of whoso prescribes heroic

remedies, if those remedies are to succeed. At night, alone in the

darkness, Katherine, suddenly awaking, would be haunted by perception

of the curious glances, and curious comments, which must of necessity

attend Richard through all the brilliant pageant of the London season.

How would he bear it? And then--self-distrust laying fearful hands upon

her--how would she bear it, too? Would her late acquired serenity of

soul depart, her faith in the gracious purposes of Almighty God suffer

eclipse? Would she fall back into her former condition of black anger

and revolt? She prayed not. So long as these evils did not descend upon

her, she could bear the rest well enough. For, could she but keep her

faith, Katherine was beginning to regard all other suffering which

might be in store for her as a negligible quantity. With her healthy

body, and wholesome memories of a great and perfect human love, it was

almost impossible that she should adopt a morbid and self-torturing

attitude. Yet any religious ideal, worth the name, will always have in

it an ascetic element. And that element was so far present with her

that personal suffering had come to bear a not wholly unlovely aspect.

She had ceased to gird against it. So long as Richard was amused and

fairly content, so long as the evil which had been abroad in Brockhurst

House, that stormy autumn night, could be frustrated, and the

estrangement between herself and Richard,--unacknowledged, yet sensibly

present,--which that evil had begotten, might be lessened she cared

little what sacrifices she made, what fatigue, exertion, even pain, she

might be called on to endure. An enthusiasm of self-surrender animated

her.

During the last five months, slowly and with stumbling feet; yet very

surely, she had carried her life and the burden of it up to a higher

plane. And, from that more elevated standpoint, she saw both past

events and existing relationships in perspective, according to their

just and permanent values. Only one object, one person, refused to

range itself, and stood out from the otherwise calm, if pensive,

landscape as a threatening danger, a monument of things wicked and

fearful. Katherine tried to turn her eyes from that object, for it

provoked in her a great hatred, a burning indignation, sadly at

variance with the saintly ideals which had so captivated her mind and

heart. Katherine remained--always would remain, happily for

others--very much a woman. And, as woman and mother, she could not but

hate that other woman who had, as she feared, come very near seducing

her son.

Therefore very various causes combined to reconcile her to the coming

adventure. Indeed she set forth on it with so cheerful a countenance,

that Richard, while charmed, was also a trifle surprised by the

alacrity with which she embraced it. He regarded her somewhat

critically, questioning whether his mother was of a more worldly and

light-minded disposition than he had heretofore supposed.

There had been some talk of Julius March joining the contemplated

exodus. But he had declined, smiling rather sadly.

"No, no," he said. "To go would be a mistake and a weakly selfish one

on my part. I have long ceased to be a man of cities, and am best

employed, and indeed am most at my ease, herding my few sheep here in

the wilderness. I am part and parcel of just all that which we have

agreed it is wise you shall leave behind you for a while. My presence

would lessen the thoroughness of the change of scene and of thought.

You take up a way of life which was familiar to you years ago. The

habits of it will soon come back. I have never known them. I should be

a hindrance, rather than a help. No, I will wait and keep the lamps

burning before the altar, and the fire burning upon the hearth

until--and, please God, it may be in peace, crowned with good

fortune--you both come back."

But the adventure, fairly embarked on, displayed quite other

characteristics--as is the way with such skittish folk--than Katherine

had anticipated. Against possibilities of mortification, against

possibilities of covert laughter and the pointing fingers of the crowd,

she had steeled herself. But it had not occurred to her that both

Richard's trial and her own might take the form of an exuberant and

slightly vulgar popularity, and that, far from being shoved aside into

the gutter, the young man might be hoisted, with general acclamation,

on to the very throne of Vanity Fair.

The Brockhurst establishment moved up to town at the beginning of

April. And by the end of the month, Sir Richard Calmady, his wealth,

his house, his horses, his dinners, his mother's gracious beauty, and a

certain mystery which surrounded him, came to be in every one's mouth.

A new star had arisen in the social firmament, and all and sundry

gathered to observe the reported brightness of its shining. Rich,

young, good-looking, well-connected, and strangely unfortunate, here

indeed was a novel and telling attraction among the somewhat fly-blown

shows of Vanity Fair! Many-tongued rumour was busy with Dickie's name,

his possessions and personality. The legend of the man--a thing often

so very other than the man himself--grew, Jonah's gourd-like, in wild

luxuriance. All those many persons who had known Lady Calmady before

her retirement from the world, hastened to renew acquaintance with her.

While a larger, and it may be added less distinguished, section of

society, greedy of intimacy with whoso, or whatsoever, might represent

the fashion of the hour, crowded upon their heels. Invitations showered

down thick as snowflakes in January. To _get_ Sir Richard and Lady

Calmady was to secure the success of your entertainment, whatever that

entertainment might be--to secure it the more certainly because the two

persons in question exercised a rather severe process of selection, and

were by no means to be had for the asking.

All these things Ludovic Quayle noted, in a spirit which he flattered

himself was cynical, but which was, in point of fact, rather anxiously

affectionate. It had occurred to him that this sudden and unlooked-for

popularity might turn Richard's head a little, and develop in him a

morbid self-love, that _vanite de monstre_ not uncommon to persons

disgraced by nature. He had feared Richard might begin to plume

himself--as is the way of such persons--less upon the charming

qualities and gifts which he possessed in common with many other

charming persons, than upon those deplorable peculiarities which

differentiated him from them. And it was with a sincerity of relief, of

which he felt a trifle ashamed, that, as time went on, Mr. Quayle found

himself unable to trace any such tendency, that he observed his

friend's wholesome pride and carefulness to avoid all exposure of his

deformity. Richard would drive anywhere, and to any festivity, where

driving was possible. He would go to the theatre and opera. He would

dine at a few houses, and entertain largely at his own house. But he

would not put foot to ground in the presence of the many women who

courted him, or in that of the many men who treated him with rather

embarrassed kindness and courtesy to his face and spoke of him with

pitying reserve behind his back.

Other persons, besides Mr. Quayle, watched Richard Calmady's social

successes with interest. Among them was Honoria St. Quentin. That young

lady had been spending some weeks with Sir Reginald and Lady Aldham in

Midlandshire, and had now accompanied them up to town. Lady Aldham's

health was indifferent, confining her often for days together to the

sofa and a darkened room. Her husband, meanwhile, possessed a craving

for agreeable feminine society, liable to be gratified in a somewhat

errant manner abroad, unless gratified in a discreet manner at home. So

Honoria had taken over the duty, for friendship's sake, of keeping the

well-favoured, genial, middle-aged gentleman innocently amused. To

Honoria, at this period, no experience came amiss. For the past three

years, since the death of her godmother, Lady Tobermory, and her

resultant access of fortune, she had wandered from place to place,

seeing life, now in stately English country houses, now among the

overtaxed, under-fed women-workers of Whitechapel and Soho, now in some

obscure Italian village among the folds of the purple Apennines. Now

she would patronise a middle-class British lodging-house, along with

some girl friend richer in talent than in pence, in some seaside town.

Now she would fancy the stringent etiquette of a British embassy at

foreign court and capital. Honoria was nothing if not various. But,

amid all mutations of occupation and of place, her fearlessness, her

lazy grace, her serious soul, her gallant bearing, her loyalty to the

oppressed, remained the same. "Chaste and fair" as Artemis,

experimental as the Comte de St. Simon himself, Honoria roamed the

world--fascinating yet never quite fascinated, enthusiastic yet

evasive, seeking earnestly to live yet too self-centred as yet to be

able to recognise in what, after all, consists the heart of living.

She and Mr. Quayle had met at Aldham Revel during the past winter. She

attracted, while slightly confusing, that accomplished young

gentleman--confusing his judgment, well understood, since Mr. Quayle

himself was incapable of confusion. Her views of men and things struck

him as distinctly original. Her attitude of mind appeared

unconventional, yet deeply rooted prejudices declared themselves where

he would least have anticipated their existence. And so it became a

favourite pastime of Mr. Quayle's to present to her cases of

conscience, of conduct, of manners or morals--usually those of a common

acquaintance--for discussion, that he might observe her verdict. He

imagined this a scientific, psychologic exercise. He desired, so he

supposed, to gratify his own superior, masculine intelligence, by

noting the aberrations and arriving at the rationale of her thought.

From which it may be suspected that even Ludovic Quayle had his hours

of innocent self-deception. Be that, however, as it may, certain it is

that in pursuit of this pastime he one day presented to her the

peculiar case of Richard Calmady for discussion, and that, not without

momentous, though indirect, result.

It happened thus. One noon in May, Ludovic had the happiness of finding

himself seated beside Miss St. Quentin in the Park, watching the

endless string of passing carriages and the brilliant crowd on foot.

Sir Reginald Aldham had left his green chair--placed on the far side of

the young lady's--and leaned on the railings talking to some

acquaintance.

"A gay maturity," Ludovic remarked with his air of patronage,

indicating the elder gentleman's shapely back. "The term 'old boy' has,

alas, declined upon the vernacular, and been put to base uses of

jocosity, so it is a forbidden one. Else, in the present instance, how

applicable, how descriptive a term! Should we, I wonder, give thanks

for it, Miss St. Quentin, that the men of my generation will mature

according to a quite other pattern?"

"Will not ripen, but sour?" Honoria asked maliciously. Her companion's

invincible self-complacency frequently amused her. Then she

added:--"But, you know, I'm very fond of him. It isn't altogether easy

to keep straight as a young boy, is it? Depend upon it, it is ten times

more difficult to keep straight as an old one. For a man of that

temperament it can't be very plain sailing between fifty and sixty."

Mr. Quayle looked at her in gentle inquiry, his long neck directed

forward, his chin slightly raised.

"Sailing? The yacht is?"--

"The yacht is laid up at Cowes. And you understand perfectly well what

I mean," Honoria replied, somewhat loftily. Her delicate face

straightened with an expression of sensitive pride. But her anger was

short-lived. She speedily forgave him. The sunshine and fresh air, the

radiant green of the young leaves, the rather superb spectacle of

wealth, vigour, beauty, presented to her by the brilliant London world

in the brilliant, summer noon was exhilarating, tending to lightness of

heart. There was poetry of an opulent, resonant sort in the brave show.

Just then a company of Life Guards clattered by, in splendour of white

and scarlet and shining helmets. The rattle of accoutrements, and thud

of the hoofs of their trotting horses, detached itself arrestingly from

the surrounding murmur of many voices and ceaseless roar of the traffic

at Hyde Park Corner. A light came into Honoria's eyes. It was good to

be alive on such a day! Moreover, in her own purely platonic fashion,

she really entertained a very great liking for the young man seated at

her side.

"You have missed your vocation," she said, while her eyes narrowed and

her upper lip shortened into a delightful smile. "You were born to be a

schoolmaster, a veritable pedagogue and terror of illiterate youth. You

love to correct. And my rather sketchy English gives you an opportunity

of which I observe you are by no means slow to take advantage. You care

infinitely more for the manner of saying, than for the thing said.

Whereas I"--she broke off abruptly, and her face straightened, became

serious, almost severe, again. "Do you see who Sir Reginald is speaking

to?" she added. "There are the Calmadys."

A break had come in the loitering procession of correctly clothed men

and gaily clothed women, of tall hats and many coloured parasols, and

in the space thus afforded, the Brockhurst mail-phaeton became apparent

drawn up against the railings. The horses, a noticeably fine and

well-matched pair of browns, were restless, notwithstanding the groom

at their heads. Foam whitened the rings of their bits and falling

flakes of it dabbled their chests. Lady Calmady leaned sideways over

the leather folds of the hood, answering some inquiry of Sir Reginald,

who, hat in hand, looked up at her. She wore a close-fitting, gray,

velvet coat, which revealed the proportions of her full, but still

youthful figure. The air and sunshine had given her an unusual

brightness of complexion, so that in face as well as in figure, youth

still, in a sensible measure, claimed her. She turned her head,

appealing, as it seemed, to Richard, and the nimble breeze playing

caressingly with the soft white laces and gray plumes of her bonnet

added thereby somehow to the effect of glad and gracious content

pervading her aspect. Richard looked round and down at her, half

laughing. Unquestionably he was victoriously handsome, seen thus,

uplifted above the throng, handling his fine horses, all trace of

bodily disfigurement concealed, a touch of old-world courtliness and

tender respect in his manner as he addressed his mother.

Ludovic Quayle watched the little scene with close attention. Then, as

the ranks of the smart procession closed up again, hiding the carriage

and its occupants from sight, he leaned back with a movement of quiet

satisfaction and turned to his companion. Miss St. Quentin sat round in

her chair, presenting her long, slender, dust-coloured lace-and-silk-clad

person in profile to the passers-by, and so tilting her parasol as to

defy recognition. The expression of her pale face and singular eyes was

far from encouraging.

"Indeed--and why?" Ludovic permitted himself to remark, in tones of

polite inquiry. "I had been led to believe that you and Lady Calmady

were on terms of rather warm friendship."

"We are," Honoria answered, "that is, at Brockhurst."

"Forgive my indiscretion--but why not in London?"

The young lady looked full at him.

"Mr. Quayle," she asked, "is it true that you are responsible for this

new departure of theirs, for their coming up, I mean?"

"Responsible? You do me too great an honour. Who am I that I should

direct the action of my brother man? But Lady Calmady is good enough to

trust me a little, and I own that I advocated a modification of the

existing _regime_."--Ludovic crossed his long legs and fell to nursing

one knee. "It is not breach of confidence to tell you--since you know

the fact already--that fate decreed an alien element should obtrude

itself into the situation at Brockhurst last autumn. I need name no

names, I think?"

Honoria's head was raised. She regarded him steadfastly, but made no

sign.

"Ah! I need not name names," he repeated; "I thought not. Well, after

the alien element removed itself--the two facts may have no

connection--Lady Calmady very certainly never implied that they

had--but, as I remarked, after the alien element removed itself, it was

observable that our poor, dear Dickie Calmady became a trifle

difficult, a trifle distrait, in plain English most remarkably grumpy,

and far from delightful to live with. And his mother----"

"It's too bad, altogether too bad!" broke out Honoria hotly.

"Too bad of whom?" Mr. Quayle asked, with the utmost suavity. "Of the

nameless, obtrusive, alien element, or of poor, dear Dick?"

The young lady closed her parasol slowly, and turning, faced the

sauntering crowd again.

"Of Sir Richard Calmady, of course," she said.

Her companion did not answer immediately. His eyes pursued a receding

carriage far down the string, amid the gaily shifting sunshine and

shadow, and the fluttering lace and gray feathers of a woman's bonnet.

When he spoke, at last, it was with an unusual trace of feeling.

"After all, you know, there are a good many excuses for Richard

Calmady."

"If it comes to that there are a good many excuses for Helen de

Vallorbes," Honoria put in quickly.

"For? For?" the young man repeated, relaxing into the blandest of

smiles. "Yes, thanks--I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name

names.--Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid

description, were they needed--were they not swallowed up in the

single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a supremely

clever and captivating person."

"You think so?" said Honoria.

"Think so? Show me the man so indifferent to his reputation for taste

that he could venture to think otherwise!"

"Still she should have left him alone."--Honoria's indolent, reflective

speech took on a peculiar intonation, and she pressed her long-fingered

hands together, as though controlling a shudder. "I--I'm ashamed to

confess it, I do not like him. But, as I told you, just on that

account----"

"Pardon me, on what account?"

Miss St. Quentin was quick to resent impertinence, and now momentarily

anger struggled with her natural sincerity. But the latter conquered.

Again she forgave Mr. Quayle. But a dull flush spread itself over her

pale skin, and he perceived that she was distinctly moved. This piqued

his curiosity.

"I know I'm awfully foolish about some things," she said. "I can't bear

to speak of them. I dread seeing them. The sight of them takes the

warmth out of the sunshine."

Again Ludovic fell to nursing his knee.--What an amazing invention is

the feminine mind! What endless entertainment is derivable from

striving to follow its tergiversations!

"And you saw that which takes the warmth out of the sunshine just now?"

he said. "Ah! well--alas, for Dickie Calmady!"

"Still I can't bear any one not to play fair. You should only hit a man

your own size. I told Helen de Vallorbes so. I'm very, very fond of

her, but she ought to have spared him."--She paused a moment. "All the

same if I had not promised Lady Aldham to stay on--as she's so poorly I

should have gone out of town when I found the Calmadys had come up."

"Oh! it goes as far as that, does it?" Ludovic murmured.

"I don't like to see them with all these people. The extent to which he

is petted and fooled becomes rather horrible."

"Are you not slightly--I ask it with all due deference and

humility--just slightly merciless?"

"No, no," the girl answered earnestly. "I don't think I'm that. The

women who run after him, and flatter him so outrageously, are really

more merciless than I am. I do not pretend to like him--I can't like

him, somehow. But I'm growing most tremendously sorry for him. And

still more sorry for his mother. She was very grand--a person

altogether satisfying to one's imagination and sense of fitness, at

home, with that noble house and park and racing stable for setting. But

here, she is shorn of her glory somehow."

The girl rose to her feet with lazy grace.

"She is cheapened. And that's a pity. There are more than enough pretty

cheap people among us already.--I must go. There's Sir Reginald looking

for me.--If I could be sure Lady Calmady hated it all I should be more

reconciled."

"Possibly she does hate it all, only that it presents itself as the

least of two evils."

"There is a touch of dancing dogs about it, and that distresses me,"

Miss St. Quentin continued. "It is Lady Calmady's _role_ to be apart,

separate from and superior to the rest."

"The thing's being done as well as it can be," Mr. Quayle put in

mildly.

"It shouldn't be done at all," the girl declared.--"Here I am, Sir

Reginald. You want to go on? I'm quite ready."