CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH HONORIA ST. QUENTIN TAKES THE FIELD

It had been agreed that the marriage should take place, in the country,

one day in the first week of August. This at Richard's request. Then

the young man asked a further favour, namely, that the ceremony might

be performed in the private chapel at Brockhurst, rather than in the

Whitney parish church. This last proposal, it must be owned, when made

to him by Lady Calmady, caused Lord Fallowfeild great searchings of

heart.

"I give you my word, my dear boy, I never felt more awkward in my

life," he said, subsequently, to his chosen confidant, Shotover. "Can

quite understand Calmady doesn't care to court publicity. Told his

mother I quite understood. Shouldn't care to court it myself if I had

the misfortune to share his--well, personal peculiarities, don't you

know, poor young fellow. Still this seems to me an uncomfortable, hole

and corner sort of way of behaving to one's daughter--marrying her at

his house instead of from my own. I don't half approve of it. Looks a

little as if we were rather ashamed of the whole business."

"Well, perhaps we are," Lord Shotover remarked.

"For God's sake, then, don't mention it!" the elder man broke out, with

unprecedented asperity. "Don't approve of strong language," he added

hastily. "Never did approve of it, and very rarely employ it myself. An

educated man ought to be able to express himself quite sufficiently

clearly without having recourse to it. Still, I must own this

engagement of Constance's has upset me more than almost any event of my

life. Nasty, anxious work marrying your daughters. Heavy responsibility

marrying your daughters. And, as to this particular marriage, there's

so very much to be said on both sides. And I admit to you, Shotover, if

there's anything I hate it's a case where there's very much to be said

on both sides. It trips you up, you see, at every turn. Then I feel I

was not fairly treated. I don't wish to be hard on your brother Ludovic

and your sisters, but they sprung it upon me, and I am not quick in

argument, never was quick, if I am hurried. Never can be certain of my

own mind when I am hurried--was not certain of it when Lady Calmady

proposed that the marriage should be at Brockhurst. And so I gave way.

Must be accommodating to a woman, you know. Always have been

accommodating to women--got myself into uncommonly tight places by

being so more than once when I was younger----"

Here the speaker cheered up visibly, contemplating his favourite son

with an air at once humorous and contrite.

"You're well out of it, you know, Shotover, with no ties," he

continued, "at least, I mean, with no wife and family. Not that I don't

consider every man owning property should marry sooner or later. More

respectable if you've got property to marry, roots you in the soil,

gives you a stake, you know, in the future of the country. But I'd let

it be later--yes, thinking of marriageable daughters, certainly I'd let

it be later."

From which it may be gathered that Richard's demands were conceded at

all points. And this last concession involved many preparations at

Brockhurst, to effect which Lady Calmady left London with the bulk of

the household about the middle of July, while Richard remained in

Lowndes Square and the neighbourhood of his little _fiancee_--in

company with a few servants and many brown holland covers--till such

time as that young lady should also depart to the country. It was just

now that Lady Louisa Barking gave her annual ball, always one of the

latest, and this year one of the smartest, festivities of the season.

"I mean it to be exceedingly well done," she said to her sister Alicia.

"And Mr. Barking entirely agrees with me. I feel I owe it not only to

myself, but to the rest of the family to show that none of us see

anything extraordinary in Connie's marriage, and that whatever

Shotover's debts may have been, or may be, they are really no concern

at all of ours."

In obedience to which laudable determination the handsome mansion in

Albert Gate opened wide its portals, and all London--a far from

despicable company in numbers, since Parliament was still sitting and

the session promised to be rather indefinitely prolonged--crowded its

fine stairways and suites of lofty rooms, resplendent in silks and

satins, jewels and laces, in orders and titles, and manifold personal

distinctions of wealth, or office, or beauty, while strains of music

and scent of flowers pervaded the length and breadth of it, and the

feet of the dancers sped over its shining floors.

It chanced that Honoria St. Quentin found herself, on this occasion, in

a meditative, rather than an active, mood. True, the scene was

remarkably brilliant. But she had witnessed too many parallel scenes to

be very much affected by that. So it pleased her fancy to moralise, to

discriminate--not without a delicate sarcasm--between actualities and

appearances, between the sentiments which might be divined really to

animate many of the guests, and those conventional presentments of

sentiment which the manner and bearing of the said guests indicated.

She assured Lord Shotover she would rather not dance, that she

preferred the attitude of spectator, whereupon that gentleman proposed

to her to take sanctuary in a certain ante-chamber, opening off Lady

Louisa Barking's boudoir, which was cool, dimly lighted, and agreeably

remote from the turmoil of the entertainment now at its height.

The acquaintance of these two persons was, in as far as time and the

number of their meetings went, but slight, and, at first sight, their

tastes and temperaments would seem wide asunder as the poles. But

contrast can form a strong bond of union. And the young man, when his

fancy was engaged, was among those who do not waste time over

preliminaries. If pleased, he bundled, neck and crop, into intimacy.

And Miss St. Quentin, her fearless speech, her amusingly detached

attitude of mind, and her gallant bearing, pleased him mightily from a

certain point of view. He pronounced her to be a "first-rate sort," and

entertained a shrewd suspicion that, as he put it, Ludovic "was after

her." He commended his brother's good taste. He considered she would

make a tip-top sister-in-law. While the young lady, on her part,

accepted his advances in a friendly spirit. His fraternal attitude and

unfailing good-temper diverted her. His rather doubtful reputation

piqued her curiosity. She accepted the general verdict, declaring him

to be good-for-nothing, while she enjoyed the conviction that, rake or

no rake, he was incapable of causing her the smallest annoyance, or

being guilty,--as far as she herself was concerned,--of the smallest

indiscretion.

"You know, Miss St. Quentin," he remarked, as he established himself

comfortably, not to say cosily, on a sofa beside her,--"over and above

the pleasure of a peaceful little talk with you, I am not altogether

sorry to seek retirement. You see, between ourselves, I'm not,

unfortunately, in exactly good odour with some members of the family

just now. I don't think I'm shy----"

Honoria smiled at him through the dimness.

"I don't think you're shy," she said.

"Well, you know, when you come to consider it from an unprejudiced

standpoint, what the dickens is the use of being shy? It's only an

inverted kind of conceit at best, and half the time it makes you stand

in your own light."

"Clearly it's a mistake every way," the young lady asserted. "And,

happily, it's one of which I can entirely acquit you of being guilty."

Lord Shotover threw back his head and looked sideways at his

companion.--Wonderfully, graceful woman she was certainly! Gave you the

feeling she'd all the time there was or ever would be. Delightful thing

to see a woman who was never in a hurry.

"No, honestly I don't believe I'm weak in the way of shyness," he

continued. "If I had been, I shouldn't be here to-night. My sister

Louisa didn't press me to come. Strange as it may appear to you, Miss

St. Quentin, I give you my word she didn't. Nor has she regarded me

with an exactly favourable eye since my arrival. I am not abashed, not

a bit. But I can't disguise from myself that again I have gone, and

been, and jolly well put my foot in it."

He whistled very softly under his breath.--"Oh! I have, I promise you,

even on the most modest computation, very extensively and

comprehensively put my foot in it!"

"How?" inquired Honoria.

Lord Shotover's confidences invariably amused her, and just now she

welcomed amusement. For crossing her hostess' boudoir she had

momentarily caught sight of that which changed the speculative sarcasm

of her meditations to something approaching pain--namely, a pretty,

wide-eyed, childish face rising from out a cloud of white tulle, white

roses, and diamonds, the expression of which had seemed to her

distressingly remote from all the surrounding gaiety and splendour.

Actualities and appearances here were surely radically at variance?

And, now, she smilingly turned on her elbow and made brief inquiry of

her companion, promising herself good measure of superficial

entertainment which should serve to banish that pathetic countenance,

and allay her suspicion of a sorrowful happening which she was

powerless alike to hinder or to help.

Lord Shotover pushed his hands into his trousers pockets, leaned far

back on the sofa, turning his head so that he could look at her

comfortably without exertion and chuckling, a little, as he spoke.

"Well, you see," he said, "I brought Decies. No, you're right, I'm not

shy, for to do that was a bit of the most barefaced cheek. My sister

Louisa hadn't asked him. Of course she hadn't. At bottom she's awfully

afraid he may still upset the apple-cart. But I told her I knew, of

course, she had intended to ask him, and that the letter must have got

lost somehow in the post, and that I knew how glad she'd be to have me

rectify the little mistake. My manner was not jaunty, Miss St. Quentin,

or defiant--not a bit of it. It was frank, manly, I should call it

manly and pleasing. But Louisa didn't seem to see it that way somehow.

She withered me, she scorched me, reduced me to a cinder, though she

never uttered one blessed syllable. The hottest corner of the infernal

regions resided in my sister's eye at that moment, and I resided in

that hottest corner, I tell you. Of course I knew I risked losing the

last rag of her regard when I brought Decies. But you see, poor chap,

it is awfully rough on him. He was making the running all through the

winter. I could not help, feeling for him, so I chucked discretion----"

"For the first and only time in your life," put in Honoria gently. "And

pray who and what is this disturber of domestic peace, Decies?"

"Oh! you know the whole affair grows out of this engagement of my

little sister Connie's. By the way, though, the Calmadys are great

friends of yours, aren't they, Miss St. Quentin?"

The young man regarded her anxiously, fearful least he should have

endangered the agreeable intimacy of their present relation by the

introduction of an unpalatable subject of conversation. Even in this

semi-obscurity he perceived that her fine smile had vanished, while the

lines of her sensitive face took on a certain rigidity and effect of

sternness. Lord Shotover regretted that. For some reason, he knew not

what, she was displeased. He, like an ass, evidently had blundered.

"I'm awfully sorry," he began, "perhaps--perhaps----"

"Perhaps it is very impertinent for a mere looker-on like myself to

have any views at all about this marriage," Honoria put in quickly.

"Bless you, no, it's not," he answered. "I don't see how anybody can

very well be off having views about it--that's just the nuisance. The

whole thing shouts, confound it. So you might just as well let me hear

your views, Miss St. Quentin. I should be awfully interested. They

might help to straighten my own out a bit."

Honoria paused a moment, doubting how much of her thought it would be

justifiable to confide to her companion. A certain vein of

knight-errantry in her character inclined her to set lance in rest and

ride forth, rather recklessly, to redress human wrongs. But in

redressing one wrong it too often happens that another wrong--or

something perilously approaching one--must be inflicted. To save pain

in one direction is, unhappily, to inflict pain in the opposite one.

Honoria was aware how warmly Lady Calmady desired this marriage. She

loved Lady Calmady. Therefore her loyalty was engaged, and yet----

"I am no match-maker," she said at last, "and so probably my view is

unnecessarily pessimistic. But I happened to see Lady Constance just

now, and I cannot pretend that she struck me as looking conspicuously

happy."

Lord Shotover flattened his shoulders against the back of the sofa,

expanding his chest and thrusting his hands still farther into his

pockets with a movement at once of anxiety and satisfaction.

"I don't believe she is," he asserted. "Upon my word you're right. I

don't believe she is. I doubted it from the first, and now I'm pretty

certain. Of course I know I'm a bad lot, Miss St. Quentin. I've been

very little but a confounded nuisance to my people ever since I was

born. They're all ten thousand times better than I am, and they're

doing what they honestly think right. All the same I believe they're

making a ghastly mistake. They're selling the poor, little girl against

her will, that's about the long and short of it."

He bowed himself together, looking at his companion from under his

eyebrows, and speaking with more seriousness than she had ever heard

him yet speak.

"I tell you it makes me a little sick sometimes to see what excellent,

well-meaning people will do with girls in respect of marriage. Oh, good

Lord! it just does! But then a high moral tone doesn't come quite

gracefully from me. I know that. I'm jolly well out of it. It's not for

me to preach. And so I thought for once I'd act--defy authority, risk

landing myself in a worse mess than ever, and give Decies his chance.

And I tell you he really is a charming chap, a gentleman, you know, and

a nice, clean-minded, decent fellow--not like me, not a bit. He's

awfully hard hit too, and would be as steady as old time for poor

little Con's sake if----"

"Ah! now I begin to comprehend," Honoria said.

"Yes, don't you see, it's a perfectly genuine, for-ever-and-ever-amen

sort of business."

Lord Shotover leaned back once more, and turned a wonderfully pleasant,

if not preeminently responsible, countenance upon his companion.

"I never went in for that kind of racket myself, Miss St. Quentin," he

continued. "Not being conspicuously faithful, I should only have made a

_fiasco_ of it. But I give you my word it touches me all the same when

I do run across it. I think it's awfully lucky for a man to be made

that way. And Decies is. So there seemed no help for it. I had to chuck

discretion, as I told you, and give him his chance."

He paused, and then asked with a somewhat humorous air of

self-depreciation:--"What do you think now, have I done more harm than

good, made confusion worse confounded, and played the fool generally?"

But again Honoria vouchsafed him no immediate reply. The meditative

mood still held her, and the present conversation offered much food for

meditation. Her companion's confession of faith in true love, if you

had the good fortune to be born that way, had startled her. That the

speaker enjoyed the reputation of being something of a profligate lent

singular point to that confession. She had not expected it from Lord

Shotover, of all men. And, as coming from him, the sentiment was in a

high degree arresting and interesting. Her own ideals, so far, had a

decidedly anti-matrimonial tendency, while being in love appeared to

her a much overrated, if not actively objectionable, condition.

Personally she hoped to escape all experience of it. Then her thought

traveled back to Lady Calmady,--the charm of her personality, her

sorrows, her splendid self-devotion, and to the object of that

devotion--namely, Richard Calmady, a being of strange contrasts, at

once maimed and beautiful, a being from whom she--Honoria--shrank in

instinctive repulsion, while unwillingly acknowledging that he

exercised a permanent and intimate fascination over her imagination.

She dwelt, in quick pity, too, upon the frightened, wide-eyed, childish

face recently seen rising from out its diaphanous cloud of tulle, the

prettiness of it heightened by fair wealth of summer roses and flash of

costly diamonds, and upon Mr. Decies, the whole-hearted, young soldier

lover, whose existence threatened such dangerous complications in

respect of the rest of this strangely assorted company. Finally her

meditative survey returned to its point of departure. In thought she

surveyed her present companion,--his undeniable excellence of sentiment

and clear-seeing, his admittedly defective conduct in matters ethical

and financial. Never before had she been at such close quarters with

living and immediate human drama, and, notwithstanding her detachment,

her lofty indifference and high-spirited theories, she found it

profoundly agitating. She was sensible of being in collision with

unknown and incalculable forces. Instinctively she rose from her place

on the sofa, and, moving to the open window, looked out into the night.

Below, the Park, now silent and deserted, slept peacefully, as any

expanse of remote country pasture and woodland, in the mildly radiant

moonlight. Here and there were blottings of dark shadow cast by the

clumps or avenues of trees. Here and there the timid, yellow flame of

gas lamps struggled to assert itself against the all-embracing silver

brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale,

glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing

from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging

clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the

stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently

caressed the girl's bare arms and shoulders.

Seen under these unaccustomed conditions familiar objects assumed a

fantastic aspect. For the night is a mighty magician, with power to

render even the weighty brick and stone, even the hard, uncomprising

outlines of a monster, modern city, delicately elusive, mockingly

tentative and unsubstantial. Meanwhile, within, from all along the

vista of crowded and brilliantly illuminated rooms, came the subdued,

yet confused and insistent, sound of musical instruments, of many

voices, many footsteps, the hush of women's trailing garments, the rise

and fall of unceasing conversation. And to Honoria standing in this

quiet, dimly-seen place, the sense of that moonlit world without, and

this gas and candle-lit world within, increased the nameless agitation

which infected her. A haunting persuasion of the phantasmagoric

character of all sounds that saluted her ears, all sights that met her

eyes, possessed her. A vast uncertainty surrounded and pressed in on

her, while those questionings of appearances and actualities, of truth

and falsehood, right and wrong, justice and injustice, with which she

had played idly earlier in the evening, took on new and almost terrible

proportions, causing her intelligence, nay, her heart itself, to reach

out, as never before, in search of some sure rock and house of defense

against the disintegrating apprehension of universal instability and

illusion.

"Ah! it is all very difficult, difficult to the point of alarm!" she

exclaimed suddenly, turning to Lord Shotover and looking him straight

in the face, with an unself-consciousness and desire of support so

transparent, that that gentleman found himself at once delighted and

slightly abashed.

"Bless my soul, but Ludovic is a lucky devil!" he said to

himself.--"What's--what's so beastly difficult, Miss St. Quentin?" he

asked aloud. And the sound of his cheery voice recalled Honoria to the

normal aspects of existence with almost humorous velocity. She smiled

upon him.

"I really believe I don't quite know," she said. "Perhaps that the two

people, of whom we were speaking, really care for each other, and that

this engagement has come between them, and that you have chucked

discretion and given him his chance. Tell me, what sort of man is

he--strong enough to make the most of his chance when he's got it?"

But at that moment Lord Shotover stepped forward, adroitly planting

himself right in front of her and thus screening her from observation.

"By George!" he said under his breath, in tones of mingled amusement

and consternation, "he's making the most of his chance now Miss St.

Quentin, and that most uncommonly comprehensively, unless I'm very much

mistaken."

Her companion's tall person and the folds of a heavy curtain, while

screening Honoria from observation, also, in great measure, obscured

her view of the room. Yet not so completely but that she saw two

figures cross it, one black, one white, those of a man and a girl. They

were both speaking, the man apparently pleading, the girl protesting

and moving hurriedly, the while, as though in actual flight. She must

have been moving blindly, at random, for she stumbled against the

outstanding, gilded leg of a consol table, set against the further

wall, causing the ornaments on it to rattle. And so doing, she gave a

plaintive exclamation of alarm, perhaps even of physical pain. Hearing

which, that nameless agitation, that sense of collision with unknown

and incalculable forces, seized hold on Honoria again, while Lord

Shotover's features contracted and he turned his head sharply.

"By George!" he repeated under his breath.

But the girl recovered herself, and, followed by her companion,--he

still pleading, she still protesting,--passed by the further window on

to the balcony and out of sight. There followed a period of embarrassed

silence on the part of the usually voluble Shotover, while his pleasant

countenance expressed a certain half-humorous concern.

"Really, I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I'd not the slightest intention

of landing you in for the thick of the brown like this.".

"Or yourself either," she replied, smiling, though, with that sense of

nameless agitation still upon her, her heart beat rather quick.

"Well, perhaps not. Between ourselves, moral courage isn't my strong

point. There's nothing I funk like a row. I say, what shall we do?

Don't you think we'd better quietly clear out?"

But just then a sound caught Honoria's ear before which all vague

questions of ultimate truth and falsehood, right and wrong fled away.

Whatever might savour of illusion, here was something real and actual,

something pitiful, moreover, arousing the spirit of knight-errantry in

her, pushing her to lay lance in rest and go forth, reckless of

conventionalities, reckless even of considerations of justice, to the

succour of oppressed womanhood. What words the man, on the balcony

without, was saying she could not distinguish--whether cruel or kind,

but that the young girl was weeping, with the abandonment of

long-resisted tears, she could not doubt.

"No, no, listen Lord Shotover," she exclaimed authoritatively. "Don't

you hear? She is crying as if her poor heart would break. You must

stay. If I understand you rightly your sister has only got you to

depend on. Whatever happens you must stand by her and see her through."

"Oh! but, my dear Miss St. Quentin----" The young man's aspect was

entertaining. He looked at the floor, he looked at Honoria, he rubbed

the back of his neck with one hand as though there might be placed the

seat of fortitude. "You're inviting me to put my head into the

liveliest hornet's nest. What the deuce--excuse me--am I to say to her

and all the rest of them? Decies, even, mayn't quite understand my

interference and may resent it. I think it is very much safer, all

round, to let them--him and her--thrash it out between them, don't you

know. I say though, what a beastly thing it is to hear a woman cry! I

wish to goodness we'd never come into this confounded place and let

ourselves in for it."

As he spoke, Lord Shotover turned towards the door, meditating escape

in the direction of that brilliant vista of crowded rooms. But Honoria

St. Quentin, her enthusiasm once aroused, became inexorable. With her

long swinging stride she outdistanced his hesitating steps, and stood,

in the doorway, her arms extended--as to stop a runaway horse--her

clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale,

delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of

contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite

perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern

angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional

fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that

comfortably conventional, worldly paradise to which he, just now, so

warmly desired to regain admittance.

"No, no," she said, with a certain vibration in her quiet voice, "you

are not to go! You are not to desert her. It would be unworthy, Lord

Shotover. You brought Mr. Decies here and so you are mainly responsible

for the present situation. And think, just think what it means. All the

course of her life will be affected by that which takes place in the

next half-hour. You would never cease to reproach yourself if things

went wrong."

"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.

"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria asserted. "Having it in your power to

help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of

you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty

and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if

she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You

are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't

desert me and I intend to stay."

"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling

his father's.

Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.

"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no

particular faith in or admiration for marriage----"

"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised,

slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no

equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a

little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good

fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.

"No, I don't believe very much in marriage--modern, upper-class

marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems

to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk

marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though

it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a--a--loveless

marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge

and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with

the whole thing."

"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.--The infinite variety of the

feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck

him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their

relentless application of logic--as they apprehended it--which

staggered him.

Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on

his arm.

"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come--you

must know what is happening. You must comfort her."

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of

good-humoured and despairing resignation.

"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin,

you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."

"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said.

"Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you.

And then you might cut and run, don't you know."