CHAPTER I

IN WHICH MISS ST. QUENTIN BEARS WITNESS TO THE FAITH THAT IS IN HER

Honoria divested herself of her traveling-cap, thrust her hands into

the pockets of her frieze ulster, and thus, bareheaded, a tall, supple,

solitary figure, paced the railway platform in the dusk. Above the

gentle undulations of the western horizon splendours of rose-crimson

sunset were outspread, veiled, as they flamed upward, by indigo cloud

of the texture and tenuity of finest gauze. And those same rose-crimson

splendours found repetition upon the narrow, polished surface of the

many lines of rails, causing them to stand out, as though of red-hot

metal, from the undeterminate gray-drab of the track where it curved

away, southeastward, across the darkening country towards the Savoy

Alps. And from out the fastnesses of these last, quick with the bleak

purity of snow, came a breathing of evening wind. To Honoria it brought

refreshing emphasis of silence, and of immunity from things human and

things mechanical. It spoke to her of virgin and unvisited spaces,

ignorant of mankind and of obligation to his so many and so insistent

needs. And there being in Honoria herself a kindred defiance of

subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical and emotional

chastity, she welcomed these intimations of the essential inviolability

of nature, finding in them justification and support of her own mental

attitude--of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned,

grown slightly suspicious of late.

And this was the more grateful to her, not only as contrast to the

noise and dust of a lengthy and hurriedly-undertaken journey, but

because that same journey had been suddenly and, in a sense violently,

imposed upon one whom she held in highest regard, by another whom she

had long since agreed with herself to hold in no sort of regard at all.

Since the highly-regarded one set forth, she--Honoria--of course, set

forth likewise. And yet, in good truth, the whole affair rubbed her not

a little the wrong way! She recognised in it a particularly flagrant

example of masculine aggression. Some persons, as she reflected, are

permitted an amount of elbow room altogether disproportionate to their

deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody

becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is,

indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispassionate onlooker.

And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened

by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not only as to

the actuality of her own dispassionateness, but, as has already been

stated, to the wisdom of her mental attitude generally. She wanted to

think and feel one way. She was more than half afraid she was much

disposed to think and feel quite another way. This was worrying. And,

therefore, it came about that Honoria hailed the present interval of

silence and solitude, striving to put from her remembrance both the

origin and object of her journey, while filling her lungs with the

snow-fed purity of the mountain wind and yielding her spirit to the

somewhat serious influences of surrounding nature. All too soon the

great Paris-express would thunder into the station. The heavy,

horse-box-like sleeping-car--now standing on the Culoz-Geneva-Bale

siding--would be coupled to the rear of it. Then the roar and rush

would begin again--from dark to dawn, and on through the long, bright

hours to dark once more, by mountain gorge, and stifling tunnel, and

broken woodland, and smiling coastline, and fertile plain, past

Chambery, and Turin, and Bologna, and mighty Rome herself, until the

journey was ended and distant Naples reached at last.

But Miss St. Quentin's communings with nature were destined to speedy

interruption. Ludovic Quayle's elongated person, clothed to the heels

in a check traveling-coat, detached itself from the company of waiting

passengers, and blue-linen-clad porters, upon the central platform

before the main block of station buildings, and made its light and

active way across the intervening lines of crimson-stained metals.

"If I am a nuisance mention that chastening fact without hesitation,"

he said, standing on the railway track and looking up at her with his

air of very urbane intelligence. "Present circumstances permit us the

privilege--or otherwise--of laying aside restraints of speech, along

with other small proprieties of behaviour commonly observed by the

polite. So don't spare my feelings, dear Miss St. Quentin. If I am a

bore, tell me so, and I will return, and that without any lurking venom

in my breast, whence I came."

"Do anything you please," Honoria replied, "except be run over by the

Paris train."

"The Paris train, so I have just learned, is an hour late, consequently

its arrival hardly enters into the question. But, since you are

graciously pleased to bid me do as I like, I stay," Mr. Quayle

returned, stepping on to the platform and turning to pace beside

her.--"What a gaol delivery it is to get into the open! That last

engine of ours threw ashes to a truly penitential extent. My mouth and

throat still claim unpleasantly close relation to a neglected, kitchen

grate. And if our much vaunted _waggon-lits_ is the last word of

civilisation in connection with travel, then all I can say is that, in

my humble opinion, civilisation has yet a most exceedingly long way to

go. It really is a miraculously uncomfortable vehicle. And how Lady

Calmady contrives to endure its eccentricities of climate and of

motion, I'm sure I don't know."

"In her case the end would make any sort of means supportable," Honoria

answered.

Her pacings had brought her to the extreme end of the platform where it

sloped to the level of the track. She stood there a moment, her head

thrown back, snuffing the wind as a hind, breaking covert, stands and

snuffs it. A spirit of questioning possessed her, though not--as in the

hind's case--of things concrete and material. It is true she could have

dispensed with Mr. Quayle's society. She did not want him. But he had

shown himself so full of resource, so considerate and helpful, ever

since the news of Sir Richard Calmady's desperate state had broken up

the peace of the little party at Ormiston Castle, now five days ago,

that she forgave him even his preciousness of speech, even his slightly

irritating superiority of manner. She had ceased to be on her guard

with him during these days of travel, had come to take his presence for

granted and to treat him with the comfortable indifference of honest

good-fellowship. So, it followed that now, speaking with him, she

continued to follow out her existing train of thought.

"I'm by no means off my head about poor Dickie Calmady," she said

presently,--"specially where Cousin Katherine is concerned. I couldn't

go on caring about anybody, irrespective of their conduct, just because

they were they. And yet I can't help seeing it must be tremendously

satisfying to feel like that."

"A thousand pardons," Ludovic murmured, "but like what?"

"Why as Cousin Katherine feels--just whole-heartedly, without analysis,

and without alloy--to feel that no distance, no fatigue, no nothing in

short, matters, so long as she gets to him in time. I don't approve of

such a state of mind, and yet"--Honoria wheeled round, facing the glory

of colour dyeing all the west--"and yet, I'm untrue enough to my own

principles rather to envy it."

She sighed, and that sigh her companion noted and filed for reference.

Indeed, an unusually expansive cheerfulness became, perceptible in Mr.

Quayle.

"By the bye, is there any further news?" she inquired.

"General Ormiston has just had a telegram."

"Anything fresh?"

"Still unconscious, strength fairly maintained."

"Oh! we know that by heart!" Honoria said.

"We do. And we know the consequences of it--the sweet little see-saw of

hope and fear, productive of unlimited discussion and anxiety. No weak

letting one stand at ease about that telegram! It keeps one's nose hard

down on the grindstone."

"If he dies," Honoria said slowly, "if he dies--poor, dear Cousin

Katherine!--When can we hear again?"

"At Turin," Mr. Quayle replied.

Then they both fell silent until the far end of the platform was

reached. And there, once more, Honoria paused, her small head carried

high, her serious eyes fixed upon the sunset. The rosy light falling

upon her failed to disguise the paleness of her face or its slight

angularity of line. She was a little worn and travel-stained, a little

disheveled even. Yet to her companion she had rarely appeared more

charming. She might be tired, she might even be somewhat untidy, but

her innate distinction remained--nay, gained, so he judged, by

suggestion of rough usage endured. Her absolute absence of affectation,

her unself-consciousness, her indifference to adventitious prettinesses

of toilet, her transparent sincerity, were very entirely approved by

Ludovic Quayle.

"Yes, that see-saw of hope and fear must be an awful ordeal, feeling as

she does," Miss St. Quentin said presently. "And yet, even so, I am

uncertain. I can't help wondering which really is best!"

"Again a thousand pardons," the young man put in, "but I venture to

remind you that I was not cradled in the forecourt of the temple of the

Pythian Apollo, but only in the nursery of a conspicuously Philistine,

English country-house."

For the first time during their conversation Honoria looked full at

him. Her glance was very friendly, yet it remained meditative, even a

trifle sad.

"Oh! I know, I'm fearfully inconsequent," she said. "But my head is

simply rattled to pieces by that beastly _waggon-lit_. I had gone back

to what I was thinking about before you joined me, and to what we were

saying just now about Cousin Katherine."

"Yes--yes, exactly," Ludovic put in tentatively. She was going to give

herself away--he was sure of it. And such giving away might make for

opportunity. In spirit, the young man proceeded to take his shoes from

off his feet. The ground on which he stood might prove to be holy.

Moreover Miss St. Quentin's direct acts of self-revelation were few and

far between. He was horribly afraid those same shoes of his might

creak, so to speak, thereby startling her into watchfulness, making her

draw back. But Honoria did not draw back. She was too much absorbed by

her own thought. She continued to contemplate the glory of the flaming

west, her expression touched by a grave and noble enthusiasm.

"I suppose one can't help worrying a little at times--it's laid hold of

me very much during the last month or two--as to what is really the

finest way to take life. One wants to arrive at that fairly early; not

by a process of involuntary elimination, on the burnt-child-fears-the-fire

sort of principle, when the show's more than half over, as so many

people do. One wants to get hold of the stick by the right end now,

while one's still comparatively young, and then work straight along. I

want my reason to be the backbone of my action, don't you know, instead

of merely the push of society and friendship, and superficial odds and

ends of so-called obligation to other people."

"Yes," Mr. Quayle put in again.

"Now, it seems to me, that"--Honoria extended one hand towards the

sunset--"is Cousin Katherine's outlook on life and humanity, full of

colour, full of warmth. It burns with a certain prodigality of beauty,

a superb absence of economy in giving. And that"--with a little shrug

of her shoulders she turned towards the severe, and sombre, eastern

landscape--"that, it strikes me, comes a good deal nearer my own. Which

is best?"

Mr. Quayle congratulated himself upon the removal of his shoes. The

ground was holy--holy to the point of embarrassment even to so

unabashable and ready-tongued a gentleman as himself. He answered with

an unusual degree of diffidence.

"An intermediate position is neither wholly inconceivable nor wholly

untenable, perhaps."

"And you occupy it? Yes, you are very neatly balanced. But then, do you

really get anywhere?"

"Is not that a rather knavish speech, dear Miss St. Quentin?" the young

man inquired mildly.

"I don't know," she answered, "I wish to goodness I did."

Now was here god-given opportunity, or merely a cunningly devised snare

for the taking of the unwary? Ludovic pondered the matter. He gently

kicked a little pebble from the dingy gray-drab of the asphalt on to

the permanent way. It struck one of the metals with a sharp click. A

blue-linen-clad porter, short of stature and heavy of build, lighted

the gas lamps along the platform. The flame of these wavered at first,

and flickered, showing thin and will-o'-the-wisp-like against the great

outspread of darkening country across which the wind came with a

certain effect of harshness and barrenness--the inevitable concomitant

of its inherent purity. And the said wind treated Miss St. Quentin

somewhat discourteously, buffeting her, obliging her to put up both

hands to push back stray locks of hair. Also the keen breath of it

pierced her, making her shiver a little. Both of which things her

companion noting, took heart of grace.

"Is it permitted to renew a certain petition?" he asked, in a low

voice.

Honoria shook her head.

"Better not, I think," she said.

"And yet, dear Miss St. Quentin, pulverised though I am by the weight

of my own unworthiness, I protest that petition is not wholly foreign

to the question you did me the honour to ask me just now."

"Oh! dear me! You always contrive to bring it round to that!" she

exclaimed, not without a hint of petulance.

"Far from it," the young man returned. "For a good, solid eighteen

months, now, I have displayed the accumulated patience of innumerable

asses."

"Of course, I see what you're driving at," she continued hastily. "But

it is not original. It's just every man's stock argument."

"If it bears the hall-mark of hoary antiquity, so much the better. I

entertain a reverence for precedent. And honestly, as common sense

goes, I am not ashamed of that of my sex."

Miss St. Quentin resumed her walk.

"You really think it stands in one's way," she said reflectively, "you

really think it a disadvantage, to be a woman?"

"Oh! good Lord!" Mr. Quayle ejaculated, softly yet with an air so

humorously aghast that it could leave no doubt as to the nature of his

sentiments. Then he cursed himself for a fool. His shoes indeed had

made a mighty creaking! He expected an explosion of scornful wrath. He

admitted he deserved it. It did not come.

Miss St. Quentin looked at him, for a moment, almost piteously. He

fancied her mouth quivered and that her eyes filled with tears. Then

she turned and swung away with her long, easy, even stride. Mentally

the young man took himself by the throat, conscience-stricken at having

humiliated her, at having caused her to fall, even momentarily, from

the height of her serene, maidenly dignity. For once he became

absolutely uncritical, careless of appearances. He fairly ran after her

along the platform.

"Dear Miss St. Quentin," he called to her, in tones of most persuasive

apology.

But Honoria's moment of piteousness was past. She had recovered all her

habitual lazy and gallant grace when he came up with her.

"No--no," she said. "Hear me. I began this rather foolish conversation.

I laid myself open to--well to a snubbing. I got one, anyhow!"

"In mercy don't rub it in!" Mr. Quayle murmured contritely.

"But I did," Honoria returned. "Now it's over and I'm going to pick up

the pieces and put them back in their places--just where they were

before."

"But I protest!--I hailed a new combination. I discover in myself no

wild anxiety to have the pieces put back just where they were before."

"Oh! yes, you do," Honoria declared. "At least, you certainly will when

I explain it to you."--She paused.--"You see," she said, "it is like

this. Living with and watching Cousin Katherine, I have come to know

all that side of things at its very finest."

"Forgive me.--It? What? May I recall to you the fact of the Philistine

nursery?"

The young lady's delicate face straightened.

"You know perfectly well what I mean," she said.--"That which we all

think about so constantly, and yet affect to speak of as a joke or a

slight impropriety--love, marriage, motherhood."

"Yes, Lady Calmady is a past-master in those arts," Mr. Quayle

replied.--Again the ground was holy. He was conscious his pulse

quickened.

"The beauty of it all, as one sees it in her case, breaks one up a

little. There is no laugh left in one about those things. One sees that

to her they are of the nature of religion--a religion pure and

undefiled, a new way of knowing God and of bringing oneself into line

with the truth as it is in Him. But, having once seen that, one can

decline upon no lower level. One grows ambitious. One will have it that

way or not at all."

Honoria paused again. The bleak wind buffeted her. But she was no

longer troubled or chilled by it, rather did it brace her to greater

fearlessness of resolve and of speech.

"You are contemptuous of women," she said.

"I have betrayed characteristics of the ass, other than its patience,"

Ludovic lamented.

"Oh! I didn't mean that," Honoria returned, smiling in friendliest

fashion upon him. "Every man worth the name really feels as you do, I

imagine. I don't blame you. Possibly I am growing a trifle shaky as to

feminine superiority, and woman spelled with a capital letter, myself.

I'm awfully afraid she is safest--for herself and others--under slight

restraint, in a state of mild subjection. She's not quite to be

trusted, either intellectually or emotionally--at least, the majority

of her isn't. If she got her head, I've a dreadful suspicion she would

make a worse hash of creation generally than you men have made of it

already, and that"--Honoria's eyes narrowed, her upper lip shortened,

and her smile shone out again delightfully--"that's saying a very great

deal, you know."

"My spirits rise to giddy heights," Mr. Quayle exclaimed. "I endorse

those sentiments. But whence, oh, dear lady, this change of front?"

"Wait a minute. We've not got to the end of my contention yet."

"The Paris train is late. There is time. And this is all excellent

hearing."

"I'm not quite so sure of that," Honoria said. "For, you see, just in

proportion as I give up the fiction of her superiority, and admit that

woman already has her political, domestic, and social deserts, I feel a

chivalry towards her, poor, dear thing, which I never felt before. I

even feel a chivalry towards the woman in myself. She claims my pity

and my care in a quite new way."

"So much the better," Mr. Quayle observed, outwardly discreetly urbane,

inwardly almost riotously jubilant.

"Ah! wait a minute," she repeated. Her tone changed, sobered. "I don't

want to spread myself, but you know I can meet men pretty well on their

own ground. I could shoot and fish as well as most of you, only that I

don't think it right to take life except to provide food, or in

self-defense. There's not so much happiness going that one's justified

in cutting any of it short. Even a jack-snipe may have his little

affairs of the heart, and a cock-salmon his gamble. But I can ride as

straight as you can. I can break any horse to harness you choose to put

me behind. I can sail a boat and handle an axe. I can turn my hand to

most practical things--except a needle. I own I always have hated a

needle worse--well, worse than the devil! And I can organise, and can

speak fairly well, and manage business affairs tidily. And have I not

even been known--low be it spoken--to beat you at lawn tennis, and Lord

Shotover at billiards?"

"And to overthrow my most Socratic father in argument. And outwit my

sister Louisa in diplomacy--_vide_ our poor, dear Dickie Calmady's

broken engagement, and the excellent, scatter-brain Decies' marriage."

"But Lady Constance is happy?" Honoria put in hastily.

"Blissful, positively blissful, and with twins too! Think of

it!--Decies is blissful also. His sense of humour has deteriorated

since his marriage, from constant association with good, little Connie

who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards

those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified

complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit

blunted."

"I wonder if it does?" Miss St. Quentin observed reflectively. Whereat

Mr. Quayle permitted himself a sound as nearly approaching a chuckle as

was possible to so superior a person.

"A thousand pardons," he murmured, "but really, dear lady, you are so

very much off on the other tack."

"Am I?" Miss St. Quentin said. "Well, you see--to go back to my

demonstration--I've none of the quarrel with your side of things most

women have, because I'm not shut out from it, and so I don't envy you.

I can amuse and interest myself on your lines. And therefore I can

afford to be very considerate and tender of the woman in me. I grow

more and more resolved that she shall have the very finest going, or

that she shall have nothing, in respect of all which belongs to her

special province--in regard to love and marriage. In them she shall

have what Cousin Katherine has had, and find what Cousin Katherine has

found, or all that shall be a shut book to her forever. Even if

discipline and denial make her a little unhappy, poor thing, that's far

better than letting her decline upon the second best."

Honoria's voice was full and sweet. She spoke from out the deep places

of her thought. Her whole aspect was instinct with a calm and seasoned

enthusiasm. And, looking upon her, it became Ludovic Quayle's turn to

find the evening wind somewhat bleak and barren. It struck chill, and

he turned away and moved westwards towards the sunset. But the

rose-crimson splendours had become faint and frail, while the indigo

cloud had gathered into long, horizontal lines as of dusky smoke, so

that the remaining brightness was seen as through prison bars. A

sadness, indeed, seemed to hold the west, even greater than that which

held the east, since it was a sadness not of beauty unborn, but of

beauty dead. And this struck home to the young man. He did not care to

speak. Miss St. Quentin walked beside him in silence, for a time. When

at last she spoke it was very gently.

"Please don't be angry with me," she pleaded. "I like you so much

that--that I'd give a great deal to be able to think less of my duty to

the tiresome woman in me."

"I would give a great deal too," he declared, regardless of grammar.

"But I'm not the only woman in the world, dear Mr. Quayle," she

protested presently.

"But I, unfortunately, have no use for any other," he returned.

"Ah, you distress me!" Honoria cried.

"Well, I don't know that you make me superabundantly cheerful," he

answered.

Just then the far-away shriek of a locomotive and dull thunder of an

approaching train was heard. Mr. Quayle looked once more towards the

western horizon.

"Here's the Paris-express!" he said. "We must be off if we mean to get

round before our horse-box is shunted."

He jumped down on to the permanent way. Miss St. Quentin followed him,

and the two ran helter-skelter across the many lines of metals, in the

direction of the Culoz-Geneva-Bale siding. That somewhat childish and

undignified proceeding ministered to the restoration of good

fellowship.

"Great passions are rare," Mr. Quayle said, laughing a little. His

circulation was agreeably quickened. How surprisingly fast this

nymph-like creature could get over the ground, and that gracefully,

moreover, rather in the style of a lissome, long-limbed youth than in

that of a woman.

"Rare? I know it," she answered, the words coming short and sharply.

"But I accept the risk. A thousand to one the book remains shut

forever."

"And I, meanwhile, am not too proud to pass the time of day with the

second best, and take refuge in the accumulated patience of innumerable

asses."

And, behind them, the express train thundered into the station.