CHAPTER V

TELLING HOW DICKIE CAME TO UNTIE A CERTAIN TAG OF RUSTY, BLACK RIBBON

Yet, as those gray, midwinter weeks went on to Christmas, and the

coming of the New Year, it became undeniable there was that in the

aspect of affairs at Brockhurst which might very well provoke curious

comment. For the rigour of Richard Calmady's self-imposed seclusion, to

which Miss St. Quentin had made allusion in her conversation with Dr.

Knott, was not relaxed. Rather, indeed, did it threaten to pass from

the accident of a first return, after long absence and illness, into a

matter of fixed and accepted habit. For those years of lonely wandering

and spasmodic rage of living, finding their climax in deepening

disappointment, disillusion, and the shock of rudely inflicted insult

and disgrace, had produced in Richard a profound sense of alienation

from society and from the amenities of ordinary intercourse. Since he

was apparently doomed to survive, he would go home--but go home very

much as some trapped or wounded beast crawls back to hide in its lair.

He was master in his own house, at least, and safe from intrusion

there. The place offered the silent sympathy of things familiar, and

therefore, in a sense, uncritical. It is restful to look on that upon

which one has already looked a thousand times. And so, after his

reconciliation with his mother, followed, in natural sequence, his

reconciliation with Brockhurst. Here he would see only those who loved

him well enough--in their several stations and degrees--to respect his

humour, to ask no questions, to leave him to himself. Richard was

gentle in manner at this period, courteous, humorous even. But a great

discouragement was upon him. It seemed as though some string had

snapped, leaving half his nature broken, unresponsive, and dumb. He had

no ambitions, no desire of activities. Sport and business, were as

little to his mind as society.

More than this.--At first the excuse of fatigue had served him, but

very soon it came to be a tacitly admitted fact that Richard did not

leave the house. Surely it was large enough, he said, to afford space

for all the exercise he needed? Refusing to occupy his old suite of

rooms on the ground-floor, he had sent orders, before his arrival, that

the smaller library, adjoining the Long-Gallery, should be converted

into a bedchamber for him. It had been Richard's practice, when on

board ship, to steady his uncertain footsteps, on the slippery or

slanting plane of the deck, by the use of crutches. And this practice

he in great measure retained. It increased his poor powers of

locomotion. It rendered him more independent. Sometimes, when secure

that Lady Calmady would not receive visitors, he would make his way by

the large library, the state drawing-room, and stair-head, to the

Chapel-Room and sit with her there. But more often his days were spent

exclusively in the Long-Gallery. He had brought home many curious and

beautiful objects from his wanderings. He would add these to the

existing collection. He would examine the books too, procure such

volumes as were needed to complete any imperfect series, and, in the

departments both of science, literature, and travel, bring the library

up to date. He would devote his leisure to the study of various

subjects--especially natural science--regarding which he was conscious

of a knowledge, deficient, or merely empirical.

"I really am perfectly contented, mother," he said to Lady Calmady more

than once. "Look at the length and breadth of the gallery! It is as a

city of magnificent distances, after the deck of the dear, old yacht

and my twelve-foot cabin. And I'm not a man calculated to occupy so

very much space after all! Let me potter about here with my books and

my _bibelots_. Don't worry about me, I shall keep quite well, I promise

you. Let me hybernate peacefully until spring, anyhow. I have plenty of

occupation. Julius is going to amend the library catalogue with me, and

there are those chests of deeds, and order-books, and diaries, which

really ought to be looked over. As it appears pretty certain I shall be

the last of the race, it would be only civil, I think, to bestow a

little of my ample leisure upon my forefathers, and set down some more

or less comprehensive account of them and their doings. They appear to

have been given to rather dramatic adventures.--Don't you worry, you

dear sweet! As I say, let me hybernate until the birds of passage come

and the young leaves are green in the spring. Then, when the days grow

long and bright, the sea will begin to call again, and, when it calls,

you and I will pack and go."

And Katherine yielded, being convinced that Richard could treat his own

case best. If healing, complete and radical, was to be affected, it

must come from within and not from without. Her wisdom was to wait in

faith. There was much that had never been told, and never would be

told. Much which had not been explained, and never would be explained.

For, notwithstanding the very gracious relation existing between

herself and Richard, Katherine realised that there were blank spaces

not only in her knowledge of his past action, but in her knowledge of

the sentiments which now animated him. As from a far country his mind,

she perceived, often traveled to meet hers. "There was a door to which

she found no key." But Katherine, happily, could respect the

individuality even of her best beloved. Unlike the majority of her sex

she was incapable of intrusion, and did not make affection an excuse

for familiarity. Love, in her opinion, enjoins obligation of service,

rather than confers rights of examination and direction. She had

learned the condition in which his servants had found Richard, in the

opera box of the great theatre at Naples, lying upon the floor

unconscious, his face disfigured, cut, and bleeding. But what had

produced this condition, whether accident or act of violence, she had

not learned. She had also learned that her niece, Helen de Vallorbes,

had stayed at the villa just before the commencement of Richard's

illness--he merely passing his days there, and spending his nights on

board the yacht in the harbour, where, no doubt, that same illness had

been contracted. But she resisted the inclination to attempt further

discovery. She even resisted the inclination to speculate regarding all

this. What Richard might elect to tell her, that, and that only, would

she know, lest, seeking further, bitter and vindictive thoughts should

arise in her and mar the calm, pathetic sweetness of the present and

her deep, abiding joy in the recovery of her so-long-lost delight. She

refused to go behind the fact--the glad fact that Richard once more was

with her, that her eyes beheld him, her ears heard his voice, her hands

met his. Every little act of thoughtful care, every pretty word of

half-playful affection, confirmed her thankfulness and made the present

blest. Even this somewhat morbid tendency of his to shut himself away

from the observation of all acquaintance, conferred on her such sweetly

exclusive rights of intercourse that she could not greatly quarrel with

his secluded way of life. As to the business of the estate and

household, this had become so much a matter of course to her that it

caused her but small labour. If she could deal with it when Richard was

estranged and far away, very surely she could deal with it now, when

she had but to open the door of that vast, silvery-tinted, pensively

fragrant, many-windowed room, and entering, among its many strange and

costly treasures, find him--a treasure as strange, and if counted by

her past suffering, as costly, as ever ravished and tortured a woman's

heart.

And so it came about that, to such few friends as she received,

Katherine could show a serene countenance. Shortly before Christmas,

Miss St. Quentin came to Brockhurst, and coming stayed, adapting

herself with ready tact to the altered conditions of life there.

Katherine found not only pleasure, but support, in the younger woman's

presence, in her devoted yet unexacting affection, in her practical

ability, and in the sight of so graceful a creature going to and fro.

She installed her guest in the Gun-Room suite. And, by insensible

degrees, permitted Honoria to return to many of her former avocations

in connection with the estate, so that the young lady took over much of

the outdoor business, riding forth almost daily, by herself or in

company with Julius March, to superintend matters of building or

repairing, of road-mending, hedging, copsing, or forestry, and not

infrequently cheering Chifney--a somewhat sour-minded man just now and

prickly-tempered, since Richard asked no word of him or of his

horses--by visits to the racing stables.

"I had better step down and have a crack with the poor, old dear,

Cousin Katherine," she would say, "or those unlucky little wretches of

boys will catch it double tides, which really is rather superfluous."

And all the while, amid her very varied interests and occupations,

remembrance of that hidden, twilight life, going forward up-stairs in

the well-known rooms which she now never entered, came to Honoria as

some perpetually recurrent and mournful harmony, in an otherwise not

ungladsome piece of music, might have come. It exercised a certain

dominion over her mind. So that Richard Calmady, though never actually

seen by her, was never wholly absent from her thought. All the orderly

routine of the great house, all the day's work and the sentiment of it,

was subtly influenced by awareness of the actuality of his invisible

presence. And this affected her strongly, causing her hours of

repulsion and annoyance, and again hours of abounding, if reluctant

pity, when the unnatural situation of this man--young as herself,

endowed with a fine intelligence, an aptitude for affairs, the craving

for amusement common to his age and class--and the pathos inherent in

that situation, haunted her imagination. His self-inflicted

imprisonment appeared a reflection upon, in a sense a reproach to, her

own freedom of soul and pleasant liberty of movement. And this troubled

her. It touched her pride somehow. It produced in her a false

conscience, as though she were guilty of an unkindness, a lack of

considerateness and perfect delicacy.

"Whether he behaves well or ill, whether he is good or bad, Richard

Calmady invariably takes up altogether too much room," she would tell

herself half angrily--to find herself within half an hour, under plea

of usefulness to his mother, warmly interested in some practical matter

from which Richard Calmady would derive, at least indirectly, distinct

advantage and benefit!

This, then, was the state of affairs one Saturday afternoon at the

beginning of February. With poor Dickie himself the day had been marked

by abundant discouragement. He was well in body. The restfulness of one

quiet, uneventful week following another had steadied his nerves,

repaired the waste of fever, and restored his physical strength. But,

along with this return of health had come a growing necessity to lay

hold of some idea, to discover some basis of thought, some incentive to

action, which should make life less purposeless and unprofitable.

Richard, in short, was beginning to generate more energy than he could

place. The old order had passed away, and no new order had, as yet,

effectively disclosed itself. He had not formulated all this, or even

consciously recognised the modification of his own attitude.

Nevertheless he felt the gnawing ache of inward emptiness. It

effectually broke up the torpor which had held him. It made him very

restless. It reawoke in him an inclination to speculation and

experiment.

Snow had fallen during the earlier hours of the day, and, the surface

of the ground being frost-bound, it, though by no means deep, remained

unmelted. The whiteness of it, given back by the ceiling and pale

paneling of walls of the Long-Gallery, notwithstanding the generous

fires burning in the two ornate, high-ranging chimney-places, produced,

as the day waned, an effect of rather stark cheerlessness in the great

room. This was at once in unison with Richard's somewhat bleak humour,

and calculated to increase the famine of it.

All day long he had tried to stifle the cry of that same famine, that

same hunger of unplaced energy, by industrious work. He had examined,

noted, here and there transcribed, passages from deeds, letters,

order-books, and diaries offering first-hand information regarding

former generations of Calmadys. It happened that studies he had

recently made in contemporary science, specially in obtaining theories

of biology, had brought home to him what tremendous factors in the

development and fate of the individual are both evolution and heredity.

At first idly, and as a mere pastime, then with increasing

eagerness--in the vague hope his researches might throw light on

matters of moment to himself and of personal application--he had tried

to trace out tastes and strains of tendency common to his ancestors.

But under this head he had failed to make any very notable discoveries.

For these courtiers, soldiers, and sportsmen were united merely by the

obvious characteristics of a high-spirited, free-living race. They were

raised above the average of the country gentry, perhaps, by a greater

appreciation, than is altogether common, of literature and art. But as

Richard soon perceived it was less any persistent peculiarity of mental

and physical constitution, than a similarity of outward event united

them. The perpetually repeated chronicle of violence and accident which

he read, in connection with his people, intrigued his reason, and

called for explanation. Was it possible, he began to ask himself, that

a certain heredity in incident, in external happening, may not cling to

a race? That these may not by some strange process be transmissible, as

are traits of character, temperament, stature, colouring, feature, and

face? And if this--as matter of speculation merely--was the case, must

there not exist some antecedent cause to which could be referred such

persistent effect? Might not an hereditary fate in external events take

its rise in some supreme moral or spiritual catastrophe, some violation

of law? The Greek dramatists held it was so. The writers of the Old

Testament held it was so, too.

Sitting at the low writing-table, near the blazing fire, that stark

whiteness reflected from off the snow-covered land all around him,

Richard debated this point with himself. He admitted the theory was not

scientific, according to the reasoning of modern physical science. It

approached an outlook theological rather than rationalistic, yet he

could not deny the conception, admission. The vision of a doomed family

arose before him--starting in each successive generation with brilliant

prospects and high hope, only to find speedy extinction in some more or

less brutal form of death--a race dwindling, moreover, in numbers as

the years passed, until it found representation in a single individual,

and that individual maimed, and incomplete! Heredity of accident,

heredity of disaster, finding final expression in himself--this

confronted Richard.--He had reckoned himself, heretofore, a solitary

example of ill-fortune. But, mastering the contents of these records,

he found himself far from solitary. He merely participated, though

under a novel form, in the unlucky fate of all the men of his race. And

then arose the question--to him, under existing circumstances, of vital

importance--what stood behind all that--blind chance, cynical

indifference, wanton and arbitrary cruelty, or some august,

far-reaching necessity of, as yet, unsatisfied justice?

Richard pushed the crackling, stiffly-folded parchments, the letters

frayed and yellow with age, the broken-backed, discoloured diaries and

order-books, away from him, and sat, his elbows on the table, his chin

in his hands, thinking. And the travail of his spirit was great, as it

needs must be, at times, with every human being who dares live at

first, not merely at second hand--who dares attempt a real, and not

merely a nominal assent--who dares deal with earthly existence, the

amazing problems and complexities of it, immediately, refusing to

accept--with indolent timidity--tradition, custom, hearsay,

convenience, as his guides.--Oh! for some sure answering, some

unimpeachable assurance, some revelation not relative and symbolic, but

absolute, some declaration above all suspicion of cunningly-devised

opportunism, concerning the dealings of the unknown force man calls

God, with the animal man calls man!--And then Richard turned upon

himself contemptuously. For it was childish to cry out thus. The

heavens were dumb above him as the snow-bound earth was dumb beneath.

There was no sign!--Never had been. Never would be, save in the fond

imaginations of religious enthusiasts, crazed by superstition, by

austerities, and hysteria, duped by ignorance, by hypocrites and

quacks.

With long-armed adroitness he reached down and picked up those

light-made, stunted crutches, slipped from his chair and adjusted them.

For a long while he had used them as a matter of course without

criticism or thought. But now they produced in him a swift disgust. His

hands, grasping the lowest crossbar of them, were in such

disproportionate proximity to the floor! For the moment he was disposed

to fling them aside. Then again he turned upon himself with scathing

contempt. For this too was childish. What did the use of them matter,

since, used or not, the fact of his crippled condition remained? And

so, with a renewal of bitterness and active rebellion, lately unknown

to him, he moved away down the great room--past bronze athlete and

marble goddess, past oriental jars, tall as himself, uplifted on the

squat, carven, ebony stands, past strangely-painted, half-fearful,

lacquer cabinets, past porcelain bowls filled with faint sweetness of

dried rose-leaves, bay, lavender, and spice, past trophies of savage

warfare and, hardly less savage, civilised sport, towards the wide

mullion-window of the eastern bay. But just before reaching it, he came

opposite to a picture by Velasquez, set on an easel across the corner

of the room. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf, holding a

couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash--an unhappy creature who had

made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and whose

gorgeous garments, of scarlet and gold, were ingeniously designed so as

to emphasise the physical degradation of its contorted person. Richard

had come, of late, to take a sombre pleasure in the contemplation of

this picture. The desolate eyes, looking out of the marred and brutal

face, met his own with a certain claim of kinship. There existed a

tragic freemasonry between himself and this outcasted being, begotten

of a common knowledge, a common experience. As a boy Richard hated this

picture, studiously avoided the sight of it. It had suggested

comparisons which wounded his self-respect too shrewdly and endangered

his self-security. He hated it no longer, finding grim solace, indeed,

in its sad society.

And it was thus, in silent parley with this rather dreadful companion,

as the blear February twilight descended upon the bare, black trees and

snow-clad land without, and upon the very miscellaneous furnishings of

the many-windowed gallery within, that Julius March now discovered

Richard Calmady. He had returned, across the park, from one of the

quaint brick-and-timber cottages just without the last park gate, at

the end of Sandyfield Church-lane. A labourer's wife was dying,

painfully enough, of cancer, and he had administered the Blessed

Sacrament to her, there, in her humble bedchamber. The august promises

and adorable consolations of that mysterious rite remained very

sensibly present to him on his homeward way. His spirit was uplifted by

the confirmation of the divine compassion therein perpetually renewed,

perpetually made evident. And, it followed, that coming now upon

Richard Calmady alone, here, in the stark, unnatural pallor of the

winter dusk, holding silent communion with that long-ago victim of

merciless practices and depraved tastes, not only caused him a painful

shock, but also moved him with fervid desire to offer comfort and

render help.--Yet, what to say, how to approach Richard without risk of

seeming officiousness and consequent offense, he could not tell. The

young man's experiences and his own were so conspicuously far apart.

For a moment he stood uncertain and silent, then he said:--

"That picture always fills me with self-reproach."

Richard looked round with a certain lofty courtesy by no means

encouraging. And, as he did so, Julius March was conscious of receiving

a further, and not less painful impression. For Richard's face was very

still, not with the stillness of repose, but with that of fierce

emotion held resolutely in check, while in his eyes was a desolation

rivalling that of the eyes portrayed by the great Spanish artist upon

the canvas close at hand.

"When I first came to Brockhurst, that picture used to hang in the

study," he continued, by way of explanation.

"Ah! I see, and you turned it out!" Richard observed, not without an

inflection of irony.

"Yes. In those days I am afraid I did not discriminate very justly

between refinement of taste and self-indulgent fastidiousness. While

pluming myself upon an exalted standard of sensibility and sentiment, I

rather basely spared myself acquaintance with that, both in nature and

in art, which might cause me distress or disturbance of thought. I was

a mental valetudinarian, in short. I am ashamed of my defect of moral

courage and charity in relation to that picture."

Richard shifted his position slightly, looked fixedly at the canvas and

then down at his own hands in such disproportionate proximity to the

floor.

"Oh! you were not to blame," he said. "It is obviously a thing to laugh

at, or run from, unless you happen to have received a peculiar mental

and physical training. Anyhow the poor devil has found his way home now

and come into port safely enough at last?"

He glanced back at the picture, over his shoulder, as he moved across

the room.

"Perhaps he's even found a trifle of genuine sympathy--so don't vex

your righteous soul over your repudiation of him, my dear Julius. The

lapses of the virtuous may make, indirectly, for good. And your

instinct, after all, was both the healthy and the artistic one.

Velasquez ought to have been incapable of putting his talent to such

vile uses, and the first comer with a spark of true philanthropy in him

ought to have knocked that poor little monstrosity on the head."

Richard came to the writing-table, glanced at the papers which

encumbered it, made for an armchair drawn up beside the fire.

"Sit down, Julius," he said. "There is something quite else about which

I want to speak to you. I have been working through all these

documents, and they give rise to speculations neither strictly

scientific nor strictly orthodox, yet interesting all the same. You are

a dealer in ethical problems. I wonder if you can offer any solution of

this one, of which the basis conceivably is ethical. As to these

various owners of Brockhurst--Sir Denzil, the builder of the house, is

a delightful person, and appears to have prospered mightily in his

undertakings, as so liberal-minded and ingenious a gentleman had every

right to prosper. But after him--from the time, at least, of his

grandson, Thomas--everything seems to have gone to rather howling grief

here. We have nothing but battle, murder, and sudden death. These

become positively monotonous in the pertinacity of their repetition. Of

course one may argue that adventurous persons expose themselves to an

uncommon number of dangers, and consequently pay an uncommon number of

forfeits. I dare say that is the reasonable explanation. Only the

persistence of the thing gets hold of one rather. The manner of their

dying is very varied, yet there are two constant quantities in each

successive narrative, namely, violence and comparative youth."

Richard's speech had become rapid and imperative. Now he paused.

"Think of my father's death, for instance----" he said.

His narrow, black figure crouched together, Julius March knelt on one

knee before the fire. He held his thin hands outspread, so as to keep

the glow of the burning logs from his face. He was deeply moved,

debating a certain matter with himself.

"To all questions supremely worth having answered, there is no

answer--I take that for granted," the young man continued. "And yet one

is so made that it is impossible not to go on asking. I can't help

wanting to get at the root of this queer recurrence of accident, and

all the rest of it, which clings to my people. I can't help wanting to

make out whether there was any psychological moment which determined

the future, and started them definitely on the down-grade. What

happened--that's what I want to arrive at--what happened at that

moment? Had it any reasonable and legitimate connection with all which

has followed?"

As he held them outspread, between his face and the glowing fire,

Julius March's hands trembled. He found himself confronted by a

situation which he had long foreseen, long and earnestly prayed to

avoid. The responsibility was so great of either giving or withholding

the answer, as he knew it, to that question of Dickie's. A way of

rendering possible help opened before him. But it was a way beset with

difficulties, a way at once fantastic and coarsely realistic, a way

along which the sublime and the ridiculous jostled each other with

somewhat undignified closeness of association, a way demanding

childlike faith, not to say childish credulity, coupled with a great

fearlessness and self-abnegation before ever a man's steps could be

profitably set in it. If presented to Richard, would he not turn

angrily from it as an insult offered to his intellect and his breeding

alike? Indeed, the hope of effecting good showed very thin. The danger

of provoking evil bulked very big. What was his duty? He suffered an

agony of indecision. And again with a slight inflection of mockery in

his tone, Richard spoke.

"All blind chance, Julius? I declare I get a little weary of this Deity

of yours. He neglects his business so flagrantly. He really is rather

scandalously much of an absentee. And He would be so welcome if He

would condescend to deal a trifle more openly with one, and satisfy

one's intelligence and moral sense. If, for instance, He would afford

me some information regarding this same psychological moment which I

need so badly just now as a peg to hang a theory of casualty upon. I am

ambitious--as much in the interests of His reputation as in those of my

own curiosity--to get at the logic of the affair, to get at the why and

wherefore of it, and lay my finger on the spot where differentiation

sets in."

Julius March stood upright. Richard's scorn hurt him. It also

terminated his indecision. For a little space he looked out into the

stark whiteness of the snowy dusk, and then down at the young man,

leaning back in the low chair, there close before him. To Julius'

short-sighted eyes, in the uncertain light, Dickie's face bore

compelling resemblance to Lady Calmady's. This touched him with the

memory of much, and he went back on the thought of the divine

compassion, perpetually renewed, perpetually made evident in the

Eucharistic Sacrifice. Man may rail, yet God is strong and faithful to

bless. Perhaps that way was neither too fantastic, nor too humble,

after all, for Richard to walk in.

"Has no knowledge of the received legend about this subject ever

reached you?"

"No--never--not a word."

"I became acquainted with it accidentally, long ago, before your birth.

It is inadmissible, according to modern canons of thought, as such

legends usually are. And events, subsequent to my acquaintance with it,

conferred on it so singular and painful a significance that I kept my

knowledge to myself. Perhaps when you grew up I ought to have put you

in possession of the facts. They touch you very nearly."

Richard raised his eyebrows.

"Indeed," he said coldly.

"But a fitting opportunity--at least, so I judged, being, I own,

backward and reluctant in the matter--never presented itself. In this,

as in much else, I fear I have betrayed my trust and proved an

unprofitable servant--if so may God forgive me."

"It would have gone hard with Brockhurst without you, Julius," Richard

said, a sudden softening in his tone.

"I will bring you the documents the last thing to-night, when--when

your mother has left you. They are best read, perhaps, in silence and

alone."