Upon Honoria—her circulation quickened by recent exercise, her cheeks still tingling from the stinging sleet, her retina still retaining impressions of the stern grandeur of the wide-ranging fir woods and gray-brown desolation of the moors—this extreme quiet produced an extremely disquieting effect. Passing from the Chapel-Room and the society of her late companions—all three persons of distinct individuality, all three possessing, though from very differing standpoints, a definitely masculine outlook on life—into this silent bedchamber, she seemed to pass with startling abruptness from the active to the passive, from the objective to the subjective side of things, from the world that creates to that which obeys, merely, and waits. The present and masculine, with its clear practical reason, its vigorous purposes, was exchanged for a place peopled by memories only, dedicated wholly to submissive and patient endurance. And this fell in extremely ill with Honoria's present humour, while the somewhat unseemly antics of the small, scriptural personages, pictured upon the chimney-space and hearth, troubled her imagination, in that they added a point of irony to this apparent triumph of the remote over the immediate, of tradition over fact.
Nor as, stung with unspoken remonstrance, she approached Lady Calmady was this sense of intrusion into an alien region lessened, or her appreciation of the difficulties of the mission she had been deputed by doctor, priest, and amiable young fine gentleman—her late companions—to fulfil, by any means lightened.
For Katherine lay back in the great rose-silk and muslin-covered armchair, at right angles to the fireplace, motionless, not a participant merely, so it seemed to the intruder, in that all-embracing quiet, but the very source and centre of it, its nucleus and heart. The lines of her figure were shrouded in a loose, wadded gown of dove-coloured silk, bordered with swan's-down. A coif of rare, white lace covered her upturned hair. Her eyes were closed, the rim of the eye-socket being very evident. While her face, though smooth and still graciously young, was so attenuated as to appear almost transparent. Now, as often before, it struck Honoria that a very exquisite spiritual quality was present in her aspect—her whole bearing and expression betraying, less the languor and defeat of physical illness, than the exhaustion of long sustained moral effort, followed by the calm of entire self-dedication and renunciation of will.
On the table at her elbow were a bowl of fresh-picked violets and greenhouse-grown tea-roses, some books of the hour, both English and French, a miniature of Dickie at the age of thirteen—the proud, little head and its cap of close-cropped curls showing up against a background of thick-set foliage. On the table, too, lay a well-worn, vellum-bound copy of that holiest of books ever, perhaps, conceived by the heart and written by the hand of man—Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ. It was open at the chapter which is thus entitled—"Of the Zealous Amendment of our Whole Life." While close against it was a packet of Richard's letters—those curt, businesslike communications, faultlessly punctual in their weekly arrival, which, while they relieved her anxiety as to his material well-being, stabbed his mother's heart only less by the little they said, than by all they left unsaid.
And looking upon that mother now, taking cognisance of her surroundings, Honoria St. Quentin's young indignation, once again, waxed hot. While, since it was the tendency of her mind to run eagerly towards theory, to pass from the particular to the general, and instinctively to apprehend the relation of the individual to the mass, looking thus upon Katherine, she rebelled, not only against the doom of this one woman, but against that doom of universal womanhood of which she offered, just now, only too eloquent an example. And a burning compassion animated Honoria for feminine as against all masculine creatures, for the bitter patience demanded of the passive, as against the large latitude permitted the active principle; for the perpetual humiliation of the subjective and spiritual under the heavy yoke of the objective and practical,—for the brief joy and long barrenness of all those who are condemned to obey and to wait, merely, as against those who are born to command and to create.
From a child she had been aware of the element of tragedy inherent in the fact of womanhood. It had quickened exaggerations of sentiment in her at times, and pushed her into not a little knight-errantry,—witness the affair of Lady Constance Quayle's engagement. But, though more sober in judgment than of old and less ready to get her lance in rest, the existence of that tragic element had never disclosed itself more convincingly to her than at the present moment, nor had the necessity to attempt the assuaging of the smart of it called upon her with more urgent voice. Yet she recognised that such attempt taxed all her circumspection, all her imaginative sympathy and tact. Very free criticism of the master of the house, of his sins of omission and commission alike, were permissible in the Chapel-Room and in the presence of her late companions. The subject, unhappily, had called for too frequent mention, by now, for any circumlocution to be incumbent in the discussion of it. But here, in the brooding quiet of this bedchamber, and in Lady Calmady's presence, all that was changed. Trenchant statements of opinion, words of blame, were proscribed. The sinner, if spoken of at all, must be spoken of with due reticence and respect, his wilfulness ignored, the unloveliness of his conduct gently, even eagerly, explained away.
And, therefore, it came about that this fair champion of much-wronged womanhood, though fired with the zeal of righteous anger, had to go very softly and set a watch before her lips. But as she paused, fearful to break in too abruptly upon Lady Calmady's repose, she began to question fearfully whether speech was, in truth, still available as a means of communication between herself and the object of her solicitude. For Lady Calmady lay so very still, her sweet face showed so transparent against the rose-silk, muslin-covered pillows, that the younger woman was shaken by a swift dread that Dr. Knott's melancholy predictions had already found fulfilment, and that the lovely, labour-wasted body had already let the valiant, love-wasted soul depart.
"Cousin Katherine, dear Cousin Katherine," she called very gently, under her breath, and then waited almost awestricken, sensible, to the point of distress, alike of the profound quiet, which it seemed as an act of profanity to have even assayed to break, and of the malign activity of those little, scriptural figures anticking so wildly in the chimney-space and on the hearth.
Seconds, to Honoria of measureless duration, elapsed before Lady Calmady gave sign of life. At length she moved her hands, as though gathering, with infinite tenderness, some small and helpless creature close and warm against her bosom. Honoria's vision grew somewhat blurred and misty. Then, with a long-drawn, fluttering sigh, Katherine looked up at the tall, straight figure.
"Dick—ah, you've come in! My beloved—have you had good sport?" she said.