"He shall run, and he shall swim, he shall fence, and he shall row," he said. "He shall learn all gallant sports, as becomes an English gentleman. And he shall ride,—not as I ride, God forbid! like a monkey strapped on a dog at a fair, but as a centaur, as a young demigod. We will set him, stark naked, on a bare-backed horse, and see that he's clean-limbed, perfect, without spot or blemish, from head to heel."
And once more Katherine Calmady held her peace, somewhat amazed, somewhat tremulous, since it seemed to her the young man was drawing a cheque upon the future which might, only too probably, be dishonoured and returned marked no account. For who dare say that this child would ever come to the birth, or coming, what form it would bear? Yet, even so, she rejoiced in her son and the high spirit he displayed, while the instinct of romance which inspired his speech touched an answering chord in, and uplifted, her.
By now the brief June night was nearly spent. The blind still creaked against the open window sash, but the thud of horse-hoofs and beat of passing footsteps had become infrequent, while the roar of the mighty city had dwindled to a murmur, as of an ebbing tide upon a shallow, sand-strewn beach. The after-light of the sunset, walking the horizon, beneath the Pole star from west to east, broadened upward now towards the zenith. Even here, in the heart of London, the day broke with a spacious solemnity. Richard raised himself, and, sitting up, blew out the candles placed on the table at the bedside.
"Mother," he said, "will you let in the morning?"
Lady Calmady was pale from her long vigil, and her unspoken, yet searching, emotion. She appeared very tall, ghostlike even, in her soft, white raiment, as she moved across and drew up the sucking blind. Above the gray parapets of the houses, and the ranks of contorted chimney-pots, the loveliness of the summer dawn grew wide. Warm amber shaded through gradations of exquisite and nameless colour into blue. While, across this last, lay horizontal lines of fringed, semi-transparent, opalescent cloud. To Katherine those heavenly blue interspaces spoke of peace, of the stilling of all strife, when the tragic, yet superb, human story should at last be fully told and God be all in all. She was very tired. The struggle was so prolonged. Her soul cried out for rest. And then she reminded herself, almost sternly, that the kingdom of God and the peace of it is no matter of time or of place, but is within the devout believer, ever present, immediate, possessing his or her soul, and by that soul in turn possessed. Just then the sparrows, roosting in the garden of the square, awoke with manifold and vociferous chirping and chattering. The voice from the bed called to her.
"Mother," it said imperatively, "come to me. You are not angry at what I have told you? You understand? You will find her for me?"
Lady Calmady turned away from the open window and the loveliness of the summer dawn. She was less tired somehow. God was with her, so she could not be otherwise than hopeful. Moreover, the world had proved itself very kind towards her son. It would not deny him this last request, surely?
"My dearest, I think I have found her already," Lady Calmady answered.
Yet, even as she spoke, she faltered a little, recognising the energy and strength manifest in the young man's countenance, remembering his late discourse, and the pent-up fires of his nature to which that discourse had borne only too eloquent testimony. For who was a young girl, but just out of the schoolroom, a girl in pretty, fresh frocks—the last word of contemporary fashion,—whose baby face and slow, wide-eyed gaze bore witness to her entire innocence of the great primitive necessities, the rather brutal joys, the intimate vices, the far-ranging intellectual questionings which rule and mould the action of mankind,—who was she, indeed, to cope with a nature such as Richard's?
"Mother, tell me, who is it?"