CONCERNING A DAY OF HONEST WARFARE AND A SUNSET HARBINGER NOT OF THE NIGHT BUT OF THE DAWN
That episode, upon the bridge spanning the Long Water, brought Richard would-be saint, Richard pilgrim along the great white road which leads onward to Perfection, into lively collision with Richard the natural man, not to mention Richard the "wild bull in a net." These opposing forces engaged battle, with the consequence that the carriage horses took the hill at a rather breakneck pace. Not that Dickie touched them, but that, he being vibrant, they felt his mood down the length of the reins and responded to it.
"Ludovic need hardly have been in such a prodigious hurry," he broke out. "He might have allowed one a few days' grace. It was a defect of taste to come over immediately—but then all that family's taste is liable to lapses."
Promptly he repented, ashamed both of his anger and such self-revealing expression of it.
"I dare say it's all for the best though. Better a thing should be nipped in the bud than in the blossom. And this puts it all on a right footing. One might easily drift into depending too much upon Honoria. I own I was dangerously near doing that this spring. I don't mind telling you so now, mother, because this, you see, disposes finally of the matter."
His voice contended oddly with the noise of the wheels, rattle of the pole-chains, pounding of the hoofs of the pulling horses. The sentences came to Lady Calmady's ears disjointed, difficult to follow and interpret. Therefore she answered slightly at random.
"My dearest, I could have kept her longer in the spring if I had only known," she said, a disquieting suspicion of lost opportunity assailing her. "But, from certain things which you said, I thought you preferred our being alone."
"So I did. I wanted her to go because I wanted her to stay. Do you see?"
"Ah, yes! I see," Katherine replied. And at that moment, it must be conceded, her sentiments were not conspicuously pacific towards her faithful adherent, Mr. Quayle.
"We've a good many interests in common," Dickie went on, "and there seemed a chance of one's settling down into a rather charming friendship with her. It was a beguiling prospect. And for that very reason, it was best she should depart. The prospect, in all its beguilingness, renewed itself to-day after luncheon."—He paused, handling the plunging horses.—"And so after all Ludovic shall be reckoned welcome. For, as I say, I might have come to depend on her. And one's a fool—I ought to have learnt that salutary lesson by this time—a rank fool, to depend on anybody, or anything, save oneself, simply and solely oneself"—his tone softened—"and upon you, most dear and long-suffering mother.—Therefore the dream of friendship goes overboard after all, along with the rest of one's little illusions. And every illusion one rids oneself of is so much to the good. It lightens the ship. It lessens the chances of sinking. Clearly it is so much pure gain."