CHAPTER II

TELLING HOW, ONCE AGAIN, KATHERINE CALMADY LOOKED ON HER SON

The bulletin received at Turin was sufficiently disquieting. Richard

had had a relapse. And when at Bologna, just as the train was starting,

General Ormiston entered the compartment occupied by the two ladies,

there was that in his manner which made Miss St. Quentin lay aside the

magazine she was reading and, rising silently from her place opposite

Lady Calmady, go out on to the narrow passageway of the long

sleeping-car. She was very close to the elder woman in the bonds of a

dear and intimate friendship, yet hardly close enough, so she judged,

to intrude her presence if evil-tidings were to be told. A man going

into battle might look, so she thought, as Roger Ormiston looked

now--very stern and strained. It was more fitting to leave the brother

and sister alone together for a little space.

At the far end of the passageway the servants were grouped--Clara,

comely of face and of person, neat notwithstanding the demoralisation

of feminine attire incident to prolonged travel. Winter, the Brockhurst

butler, clean-shaven, gray-headed, suggestive of a distinguished

Anglican ecclesiastic in mufti. Miss St. Quentin's lady's-maid,

Faulstich by name, a North-Country woman, angular of person and of

bearing, loyal of heart. And Zimmermann, the colossal German-Swiss

courier, with his square, yellow beard and hair _en brosse_. An air of

discouragement pervaded the party, involving even the polyglot

conductor of the _waggon-lits_, a small, quick, sandy-complexioned,

young fellow of uncertain nationality, with a gold band round his

peaked cap. He respected this family which could afford to take a

private railway-carriage half across Europe. He shared their anxieties.

And these were evidently great. Clara wept. The old butler's mouth

twitched, and his slightly pendulous cheeks quivered. The door at the

extreme end of the car was set wide open. Ludovic Quayle stood upon the

little, iron balcony smoking. His feet were planted far apart, yet his

tall figure swayed and curtseyed queerly as the heavy carriage bumped

and rattled across the points. High walls, overtopped by the dark

spires of cypresses, overhung by radiant wealth of lilac Wisteria, and

of roses red, yellow, and white, reeled away in the keen sunshine to

the left and right. Then, clearing the outskirts of the town, the train

roared southward across the fair, Italian landscape beneath the

pellucid, blue vault of the fair, Italian sky. And to Honoria there was

something of heartlessness in all that fair outward prospect. Here, in

Italy, the ancient gods reigned still, surely, the gods who are

careless of human woe.

"Is there bad news, Winter?" she asked.

"Mr. Bates telegraphs to the General that it would be well her ladyship

should be prepared for the worst."

"It'll kill my lady. For certain sure it will kill her! She never could

be expected to stand up against that. And just as she was getting round

from her own illness so nicely too----"

Audibly Clara wept. Her tears so affected the sandy-complexioned,

polyglot conductor that he retired into his little pantry and made a

most unholy clattering among the plates and knives and forks. Honoria

put her hand upon the sobbing woman's shoulder and drew her into the

comparative privacy of the adjoining compartment, rendered not a little

inaccessible by a multiplicity of rugs, traveling-bags, and

hand-luggage.

"Come, sit down, Clara," she said. "Have your cry out. And then pull

yourself together. Remember Lady Calmady will want just all you can do

for her if Sir Richard--if"--and Honoria was aware somehow of a sharp

catch in her throat--"if he does not live."

And, meanwhile, Roger Ormiston, now in sober and dignified middle-age,

found himself called upon to repeat that rather sinister experience of

his hot and rackety youth, and, as he put it bitterly, "act hangman to

his own sister." For, as he approached her, Katherine, leaning back

against the piled-up cushions in the corner of the railway carriage,

suddenly sat bolt-upright, stretching out her hands in swift fear and

entreaty, as in the state bedroom at Brockhurst nine-and-twenty years

ago.

"Oh, Roger, Roger!" she cried, "tell me, what is it?"

"Nothing final as yet, thank God," he answered. "But it would be cruel

to keep the truth from you, Kitty, and let you buoy yourself up with

false hopes."

"He is worse," Katherine said.

"Yes, he is worse. He is a good deal weaker. I'm afraid the state of

affairs has become very grave. Evidently they are apprehensive as to

what turn the fever may take in the course of the next twelve hours."

Katherine bowed herself together as though smitten by sharp pain. Then

she looked at him hurriedly, fresh alarms assaulting her.

"You are not trying to soften the blow to me? You are not keeping

anything back?"

"No, no, no, my dear Kitty. There--see--read it for yourself. I

telegraphed twice, so as to have the latest news. Here's the last

reply."

Ormiston unfolded the blue paper, crossed by white strips of printed

matter, and laid it upon her lap. And as he did so it struck him,

aggravating his sense of sinister repetition, that she had on the same

rings and bracelets as on that former occasion, and that she wore

stone-gray silk too--a long traveling sacque, lined and bordered with

soft fur. It rustled as she moved. A coif of black lace covered her

upturned hair, framed her sweet face, and was tied soberly under her

chin. And, looking upon her, Ormiston yearned in spirit over this

beautiful woman who had borne such grievous sorrows, and who, as he

feared, had sorrow yet more grievous still to bear.--"For ten to one

the boy won't pull through--he won't pull through," he said to himself.

"Poor, dear fellow, he's nothing left to fall back upon. He's lived too

hard." And then he took himself remorsefully to task, asking himself

whether, among the pleasures and ambitions and successes of his own

career, he had been quite faithful to the dead, and quite watchful

enough over the now dying, Richard Calmady? He reproached himself, for,

when Death stands at the gate, conscience grows very sensitive

regarding any lapses, real or imagined, of duty towards those for whom

that dread ambassador waits.

Twice Katherine read the telegram, weighing each word of it. Then she

gave the blue paper back to her brother.

"I will ask you all to let me be alone for a little while, dear Roger,"

she said. "Tell Honoria, tell Ludovic, tell my good Clara. I must turn

my face to the wall for a time, so that, when I turn it upon you dear

people again, it may not be too unlovely."

And Ormiston bent his head and kissed her hand, and went out, closing

the door behind him--while the train roared southward, through the

afternoon sunshine, southward towards Chiusi and Rome.

And Katherine Calmady sat quietly amid the noise and violent,

on-rushing movement, making up accounts with her own motherhood. That

she might never see Dickie again, she herself dying, was an idea which

had grown not unfamiliar to her during these last sad years. But that

she should survive, only to see Dickie dead, was a new idea and one

which joined hands with despair, since it constituted a conclusion big

with the anguish of failure to the tragedy of their relation, hers and

his. Her whole sense of justice, of fitness, rebelled under it,

rebelled against it. She implored a space, however brief, of

reconciliation and reunion before the supreme farewell was said. But it

had become natural to Katherine's mind, so unsparingly self-trained in

humble obedience to the divine ordering, not to stay in the

destructive, but pass on to the constructive stage. She would not

indulge herself in rebellion, but rather fashion her thought without

delay to that which should make for inward peace. And so now, turning

her eyes, in thought, from the present, she went back on the baby-love,

the child-love which, notwithstanding the abiding smart of Richard's

deformity, had been so very exquisite to her. Upon the happier side of

all that she had not dared to dwell during this prolonged period of

estrangement. It was too poignant, too deep-seated in the springs of

her physical being. To dwell on it enervated and unnerved her. But now,

Richard the grown man dying, she gave herself back to Richard the

little child. It solaced her to do so. Then he had been wholly hers.

And he was wholly hers still, in respect of that early time. The man

she had lost--so it seemed, how far through fault of her own she could

not tell. And just now she refused to analyse all that. Upon all which

strengthened endurance, upon gracious memories engendering

thankfulness, could her mind alone profitably be fixed. And so, as the

train roared southward, and the sun declined and the swift dusk spread

its mantle over the face of the classic landscape, Katherine cradled a

phantom baby on her knee, and sat in the oriel window of the

Chapel-Room, at Brockhurst, with the phantom of her boy beside her,

while she told him old-time legends of war, and of high endeavour, and

of gallant adventure, watching the light dance in his eyes as her words

awoke in him emulation of those masters of noble deeds whose exploits

she recounted. And in this she found comfort, and a chastened calm. So

that, when at length General Ormiston--incited thereto by the faithful

Clara, who protested that her ladyship must and should dine--returned

to her, he found her storm-tossed no longer, but tranquil in expression

and solicitous for the comfort of others. She had conquered nature by

grace--conquered, in that she had compelled herself to unqualified

submission. If this cup might not pass from her, still would she praise

Almighty God and bless His Holy Name, asking not that her own, but His

will, be done.

It followed that the evening, spent in that strangely noisy,

oscillating, onward-rushing dwelling-place of a railway-carriage, was

not without a certain subdued brightness of intercourse and

conversation. Katherine was neither preoccupied nor distrait, or

unamused even by the small accidents and absurdities of travel. Later,

while preparations were being made by the servants for the coming

night, she went out, with the two gentlemen and Honoria St. Quentin, on

to the iron platform at the rear of the swaying car, and stood there

under the stars. The mystery of these last, and of the dimly discerned

and sleeping land, offered penetrating contrast to the sleeplessness of

the hurrying train with its long, sinuous line of lighted windows, and

to the sleeplessness of her own heart. The fret of human life is but as

a little island in the great ocean of eternal peace--so she told

herself--and then bade that sleepless heart of hers both still its

passionate beating and take courage. And when, at length, she was

alone, and lay down in her narrow berth, peace and thankfulness

remained with Katherine. The care and affection of brother, friends,

and servants, was very grateful to her, so that she composed herself to

rest, whether slumber was granted her or not. The event was in the

hands of God--that surely was enough.

And in the dawn, reaching Rome, the news was so far better that it was

not worse. Richard lived. And when, some seven hours later, the train

steamed into Naples station, and Bates, the house-steward--the marks of

haste and keen anxiety upon him--pushed his way up to the carriage

door, he could report there was this amount of hope even yet, that

Richard still lived, though his strength was as that of an infant and

whether it would wax or wane wholly none as yet could say.

"Then we are in time, Bates?" Lady Calmady had asked, desiring further

assurance.

"I hope so, my lady. But I would advise your coming as quickly as

possible."

"Is he conscious?"

"He knew Captain Vanstone this morning, my lady, just before I left."

The man-servant shouldered the crowd aside unceremoniously, so as to

force a passage for Lady Calmady.

"Her ladyship should go up to the villa at once, sir," he said to

General Ormiston. "I had better accompany her. I will leave Andrews to

make all arrangements here. The carriage is waiting."

Then, Honoria beside her, Katherine was aware of the hot glare and hard

shadow, the grind and clatter, the violent colour, the strident

vivacity of the Neapolitan streets, as with voice and whip, Garcia

sprung the handsome, long-tailed, black horses up the steep ascent.

This, followed by the impression of a cool, spacious, and lofty

interior, of mild-diffused light, of pale, marble floors and stairways,

of rich hangings and distinguished objects of art, of the soft, green

gloom of ilex and myrtle, the languid drip of fountains. And this last

served to mark, as with raised finger, the hush,--bland, yet very

imperative--which held all the place. After the ceaseless jar and

tumult of that many-days' journey, here, up at the villa, it seemed as

though urgency were absurd, hot haste of affection a little vulgar, a

little contemptible, all was so composed, so urbane.

And that urbanity, so bland, so, in a way, supercilious, affected

Honoria St. Quentin unpleasantly. She was taken with unreasoning

dislike of the place, finding something malign, trenching on cruelty

even, in its exalted serenity, its unchanging, inaccessible, mask-like

smile. Very certainly the ancient gods held court here yet, the gods

who are careless of human tears, heedless of human woe! And she looked

anxiously at Lady Calmady, penetrated by fear that the latter was about

to be exposed to some insidious danger, to come into conflict with

influences antagonistic and subtly evil. Wicked deeds had been

committed in this fair place, wicked designs nourished and brought to

fruition here. She was convinced of that. Was convinced further that

those designs had connection with and had been directed against Lady

Calmady. The thought of Helen de Vallorbes, exquisite and vicious,--as

she now reluctantly admitted her to be,--was very present to her. As

far as she knew, it was quite a number of years since Helen had set

foot in the villa. Yet it spoke of her, spoke of the more dangerous

aspects of her nature.--Honoria sighed over her friend. Helen had gone,

latterly, very much to the bad, she feared. And as all this passed

rapidly through her mind it aroused all her knight-errantry, raising a

strongly protective spirit in her. She questioned just how much active

care she might take of Lady Calmady without indiscretion of

over-forwardness.

But even while she thus debated, opportunity of action was lost.

Quietly, a great simplicity and singleness of purpose in her demeanour,

without word spoken, without looking back, Katherine followed the

house-steward across the cool, spacious hall, through a doorway and out

of sight.

And that singleness of purpose, so discernible in her outward

demeanour, possessed Katherine's being throughout. She was as one who

walks in sleep, pushed by blind impulse. She was not conscious of

herself, not conscious of joy or fear, or any emotion. She moved

forward dumbly, and without volition, towards the event. Her senses

were confused by this transition to stillness from noise, by the

immobility of all surrounding objects after the reeling landscape on

either hand the swaying train, by the bland and tempered light after

the harsh contrasts of glare and darkness so constantly offered to her

vision of late. She was dazed and faint, moreover, so that her knees

trembled, her sensibility, her powers of realisation and of sympathy,

for the time being, atrophied.

The house-steward ushered her into a large, square room. The low,

darkly-painted, vaulted ceiling of it produced a cavernous effect. An

orderly disorder prevailed, and a somewhat mournful dimness of closed,

green-slatted shutters and half-drawn curtains. The furniture, costly

in fact, but dwarfed, in some cases actually legless, was ranged

against the squat, carven bookcases that lined the walls, leaving the

middle of the room vacant save for a low, narrow camp-bed. The bed

stood at right angles to the door by which Katherine entered, the head

of it towards the shuttered, heavily-draped windows, the foot towards

the inside wall of the room. At the bedside a man knelt on one knee,

and his appearance aroused, in a degree, Katherine's dormant powers of

observation. He had a short, crisp, black beard and crisp, black hair.

He was alert and energetic of face and figure, a man of dare-devil,

humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit with brass buttons

to it. He was in his stocking-feet. The wristbands and turn-down collar

of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the

support of the habitual taken from her, a stranger in a strange land,

liked the man. He appeared so admirable an example of physical health.

He inspired her with confidence, his presence seeming to carry with it

assurance of that which is wholesome, normal, and sane. He glanced at

her sharply, not without hint of criticism and of command.

Authoritatively he signed to her to remain silent, to stand at the head

of the bed, and well clear of it, out of sight. Katherine did not

resent this. She obeyed.

And standing thus, rallying her will to conscious effort, she looked

steadily, for the first time, at the bed and that which lay upon it.

And so doing she could hardly save herself from falling, since she saw

there precisely that which the shape of the room and the disarray of

it, along with vacant space and the low camp-bed in the centre of that

space, had foretold--for all her dumbness of feeling, deadness of

sympathy--she must assuredly see.--All these last four-and-twenty hours

she had solaced herself with the phantom society of Dickie the

baby-child, of Dickie the eager boy, curious of many things. But here

was one different from both these. Different, too, from the young man,

tremendous in arrogance, and in revolt against the indignity put on him

by fate, from whom she had parted in such anguish of spirit nearly five

years back. For, in good truth, she saw now, not Richard Calmady her

son, her anxious charge, whose debtor--in that she had brought him into

life disabled--she held herself eternally to be, but Richard Calmady

her husband, the desire of her eyes, the glory of her youth--saw him,

worn by suffering, disfigured by unsightly growth of beard, pallid,

racked by mortal weakness, the sheet expressing the broad curve of his

chest, the sheet and light blanket disclosing the fact of that hideous

maiming he had sustained--saw him now as on the night he died.

Captain Vanstone, meanwhile reassured as to the newcomer's discretion

and docility, applied his mind to his patient.

"See here, sir," he said, banteringly yet tenderly, "we were just

getting along first-rate with these uncommonly mixed liquors. You

mustn't cry off again, Sir Richard."

He slipped his arm under the pillows, dexterously raising the young

man's head, and held the cup to his lips.

"My dear good fellow, I wish you would let me be," Dickie murmured.

He spoke courteously, yet there were tears in his voice for very

weakness. And, hearing him, it was as though something stirred within

Katherine which had long been bound by bitterness of heavy frost.

Vanstone shook his head.--"Very sorry, Sir Richard," he replied.

"Daren't let you off. I've got my orders, you see."

The bold and kindly eyes had a certain magnetic efficacy of compulsion

in them. The sick man drank, swallowed with difficulty, yet drank

again. Then he lay back, for a while, his eyes closed, resting. And

Katherine stood at the head of the bed, out of sight, waiting till her

time should come. She folded her hands high upon her bosom. Her thought

remained inarticulate, yet she began to understand that which she had

striven so sternly to uproot, that which she had supposed she had

extirpated, still remained with her. Once more, with a terror of joyful

amazement, she began to scale the height and sound the depth of human

love.

Presently the voice--whether that of husband or of son she did not stay

to discriminate--it gripped her very vitals--reached her from the bed.

She fancied it rang a little stronger.

"It is contemptibly futile, and therefore conspicuously in keeping with

the rest, to have taken all this trouble about dying only, in the end,

to sneak back."

"Oh! well, sir, after all you're not so very far on the return voyage

yet!" Vanstone put in consolingly.

Richard opened his eyes. Katherine's vision was blurred. She could not

see very clearly, but she fancied he smiled.

"Yes, with luck, I may still give you all the slip," he said.

"Now, a little more, sir, please. Yes, you can if you try."

"But I tell you I don't care about this business of sneaking back. I

don't want to live."

"Very likely not. But I'm very much mistaken if you want to die, like a

cat in a cupboard, here ashore. Mend enough to get away on board the

yacht to sea. There'll be time enough then to argue the question out,

sir. Half a mile of blue water under your feet sends up the value of

life most considerably."

As he spoke the sailor looked at Katherine Calmady. His glance enjoined

caution, yet conveyed encouragement.

"Here, take down the rest of it, Sir Richard," he said persuasively.

"Then I swear I won't plague you any more for a good hour."

Again he raised the sick man dexterously, and as he did so Katherine

observed that a purple scar, as of a but newly healed wound, ran right

across Dickie's cheek from below the left eye to the turn of the lower

jaw. And the sight of it moved her strangely, loosening that last

binding as of frost. A swift madness of anger against whoso had

inflicted that ugly hurt arose in Katherine, while her studied

resignation, her strained passivity of mental attitude, went down

before a passion of fierce and primitive emotion. The spirit of battle

became dominant in her along with an immense necessity of loving and of

being loved. Tender phantoms of past joy ceased to solace. The actual,

the concrete, the immediate, compelled her with a certain splendour of

demand. Katherine appeared to grow taller, more regal of presence. The

noble energy of youth and its limitless generosity returned to her.

Instinctively she unfastened her pelisse at the throat, took the lace

coif from her head, letting it fall to the ground, and moved nearer.

Richard pushed the cup away from his lips.

"There's some one in the room, Vanstone!" he said, his voice harsh with

anger. "Some woman--I heard her dress. I told you all--whatever

happened--I would have no woman here."

But Katherine, undismayed, came straight on to the bedside. She loved.

She would not be gainsaid. With the whole force of her nature she

refused denial of that love.--For a brief space Richard looked at her,

his face ghastly and rigid as that of a Corpse. Then he raised himself

in the bed, stretching out both arms, with a hoarse cry that tore at

his throat and shuddered through all his frame. And, as he would have

fallen forward, exhausted by the effort to reach her and the lovely

shelter of her, Katherine caught and, kneeling, held him, his poor

hands clutching impotently at her shoulders, his head sinking upon her

breast. While, in that embrace, not only all the motherhood in her

leapt up to claim the sonship in him, but all the womanhood in her

leapt up to claim the manhood in him, thereby making the broken circle

of her being once more wholly perfect and complete, so that carrying

the whole dear burden of his fever-wasted body in her encircling arms

and upon her breast, even as she had carried, long since, that dear

fruit of love, the unborn babe, within her womb, Katherine was taken

with a very ecstasy and rapture of content.

"My beloved is mine--is mine!" she cried,--"and I am his."

Captain Vanstone was on his feet and half-way across the room.

"Man alive, but it hurts like merry hell!" he said, as he softly closed

the door.