CHAPTER X
THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
Sullenly, persistently, the rain came down. In the harbour the wash was just sufficient to make the raveled fruit-baskets, the shredded vegetables, the crusts and offal thrown out from the galleys, heave and sway upon the oily surface of the water, while screaming gulls dropped greedily upon the floating refuse, and rising, circled over the black, liquid lanes and open spaces between the hulls of the many ships. But it was insufficient to lift the yacht, tied up to the southern quay of the Porto Grande. She lay there inert and in somewhat sorry plight under the steady downpour. For the moment all the winsome devilry of a smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel. For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern. While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized, gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow planks from the inky lighters and in over her side.
"Beastly dirty job this. Shan't get her paint clean under a week!" the first mate grumbled to his companion, the second mate—a dark-haired, dreamy-eyed, West-country lad, but just out of his teens.
The two officers, in dripping oilskins, stood at the gangway checking the tally of coal-baskets as they came on board. Just now there was a pause in the black procession, as an empty lighter sheered off, making room for a full one to come alongside, thus rendering conversation momentarily possible.
"Pity the boss couldn't have stayed on shore till we were through with it and cleaned up a bit," the speaker continued. "Makes the old man no end waxy to have any one on board when the yacht's like she is. I don't blame him. She's as neat and pretty as a white daisy in a green pasture when she's away to sea. And now, poor little soul, she's a regular slut."
"I know I'd 'ave stayed ashore fast enough if I was the boss," the boy said, half wistfully. "That villa of his is like a piece of poetry. I keep on saying over to myself how it looks."
"Oh! it's not so bad for foreign parts," the senior officer replied. "And you're young yet and soft, Penberthy. You'll come of that presently. England's best for houses, town and country, and most other things—women, and fights, and even sunshine, for when you do get sunshine at home there's no spite in it.—Hi! there you ganger," he shouted suddenly, and resentfully, leaning out over the bulwarks, "hurry 'em up a bit, can't you? You don't suppose I mean to stand here till the second anniversary of the Day of Judgment, watching your blithering, chicken-shanked macaronies suck rotten oranges, do you? Start 'em up again. Whatever are you waiting for, man? Start 'em up, I say."
The boy's dreamy eyes, full of unwritten verse, dwelt with a curious indifference upon the broken procession of ascending, black figures. He had but lately joined, and to him both the fine vessel and her owner were invested with a certain romance.
"What was the fancy for calling the yacht theReprieve?" he asked presently.
"Wait till you've had the chance to take a good look at Sir Richard, and you'll answer your question yourself," the other man answered oracularly. Then he broke out again into sustained invective:—"Hold up there, you little fool of a tight-rope-dancing,bella Napoligorilla, and don't go dropping good, honest, Welsh steam-coal overboard into your confounded, stinking local sewer! I don't care to see any of your blamed posturings, don't flatter yourself. Hold up you grimacing, great grandson of a lousy she-ape, can't you, and walk straight.—Take him all round Sir Richard Calmady's the best boss I ever sailed with—one of the sternest, but the civilest too.—Shove 'em along, ganger, will you. Shove 'em along, I say.—He's one of the few men I've loved, I'm not ashamed to say it, Mr. Penberthy, and about the only one I ever remember to have feared, in my life."
Meanwhile, if the scene to seaward was cheerless, that to landward offered but small improvement. For the murk of low-brooding cloud and falling rain blotted out the Castel S. Elmo, and the Capo di Monte and Pizzafalcone heights. Even the Castello del'Ovo down on the shore line, comparatively near at hand, loomed up but a denser mass of indigo-gray amid the all obtaining grayness. The tall multi-coloured, many-shuttered houses fronting the quays—restaurants,cafés, money-changers' bureaux, ships' chandlers, and slopshops—looked tawdry and degraded as a clown's painted face seen by daylight. Thick, malodorous vapours arose from the squalid streets, lying back on the level, and from the crowded shipping of the port. These hung in the stagnant air, about the forest of masts and the funnels of steamers. And the noise of the place was as that of Bedlam let loose.—The long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal pitched from the baskets down the echoing, iron shoots. The grate and scream of saws cutting through blocks of stone and marble. The grind of heavy wheels upon the broken, irregular flags. The struggling clatter of hoofs, lashing of whips, squeal of mules, savage voices raised in cries and imprecations. The clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner, blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this, as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting, ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid, sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities of her trade and her poverty alike disclosed, her fictions and her foulness uncondoned by reconciling sunshine, Naples had declined from radiant goddess to common drab.
It was in this character that Richard Calmady, driving yesterday, and for the first time, through the streets at noon, had been fated to see his so fondly-idealised city. It was in this character that he apprehended it again to-day, waiting in his deck-cabin until cessation of the rain and on-coming of the friendly dusk should render it not wholly odious to sit out on deck. The hours lagged, and even this bright and usually spotless apartment—with its shining, white walls, its dark, blue leather and polished, mahogany fittings—the coal dust penetrated. It rimmed the edge of the books neatly ranged on the racks. It smirched the charts laid out on the square locker-table below. It drifted in at the cabin windows, along with the babel of sound and the all-pervading stench of the port. This was, in itself, sufficiently distasteful, sufficiently depressing. And to Richard, just now, the disgust of it came with the heightened sensibility of physical illness, and as accompaniment to an immense private shame and immense self-condemnation, a conviction of outlawry and a desolation passing speech. He looked for comfort, for promise of restoration, and found none, in things material or things intellectual, in others or in himself. For his mind, always prone to apprehend by images rather than by words, and to advance by analogy rather than by argument, discovered, in surrounding aspects and surrounding circumstance, a rather hideously apt parable and illustration of its present state. Just as this seemingly fair city was proven, on intimate acquaintance, repulsive beyond the worst he had ever feared and earnestly refused to know of it, so a certain fair woman, upon whom, since boyhood, his best, most chivalrous, most unselfish, affections had centred, was proven—herself, moreover, flagrantly contributing to that proving—vile beyond all that rumor, heard and passionately denied by him, had ever ventured to whisper concerning her. Nor was the misery of this revelation lessened by the knowledge that his own part in it all had been very base. He had sinned before. He would sin again probably. Richard had long ceased to regard these matters from a strictly puritanic standpoint. But this particular sinning was different to any that had gone before, or which could come after it. For it partook—so at least, it now appeared to him—of the nature of sacrilege, since he had sinned against his ideal, degrading that to gross uses which he had agreed with himself to hold sacred, defiling it and, thereby, very horribly defiling himself.
And this disgrace of their relation, his own and hers, the inherent abomination of it all and its inherent falsity, had been forced home on him with a certain violence of directness just in the common course of daily happenings. For among the letters, brought to him along with his first breakfast, yesterday, after that night of secret licence, had been three of serious import. One was from Lady Calmady, and that he put aside with a certain anger, calling himself unwilling, knowing himself unfit, to read it. Another he tore open. The handwriting was unknown to him. He began reading it in bewilderment. Then he understood.
"Monsieur,"—it ran,—"You are in process of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection with her represents the supreme passion of my passionate youth. At once a frenzy and an anodyne, I have found in it the inspiration of my genius in its later development. This work must not be put a stop to. It is too majestic, it is weighted with too serious consequences to the whole of thinking France, of thinking Europe. A less experienced woman cannot satisfy the extravagance of my desires, the demands of my all-consuming imagination. The reverence with which a person, such as yourself, must regard commanding talent, the concessions he must be willing to make to its necessities, are without limit. This I cannot doubt that you will admit. The corollary is obvious. Either,monsieur, you will immediately invite me to reside with you at your villa—thereby securing for yourself daily intercourse with a nature of distinguished merit—or you will restore Madame de Vallorbes to me without hesitation or delay. Her devotion to me is absolute. How could it fail to be so, since I have lavished upon her the treasures of my extraordinary personality? But a fear of insular prejudice on your part withholds her at this moment from full expression of that devotion. She suffers as well as myself. It will be your privilege to put a term to this suffering by requesting me to join her, or by restoring her to me. To do otherwise will be to prolong the eclipse of my genius, and thereby outrage the conscience of civilised humanity which breathlessly awaits the next utterance of its chosen poet. If you require the consolation of feminine society, marry—it would be very simple—some white-souled, English miss. But restore to me, to whom her presence is indispensable, this woman of regal passions. I shall present myself at your house to-day to receive your answer in person. The result of a refusal on your part to receive me will be attended by calamitous consequences to yourself.—Accept,monsieur, the expression of my highest consideration,
"Paul Auguste Destournelle."
For the moment Richard saw red, mad with rage at the insolence of the writer. And then came the question, was it true, this which the letter implied? Had Helen, indeed, lied to him? And, notwithstanding its insane vanity, did this precious epistle give a more veracious account of her relation to the young poet than that which she had herself volunteered? He tried to put the thought from him. Who was he—to-day of all days—to be nice about the conduct of another? Who was he to sit in judgment? So he turned to his correspondence again, taking another letter, at random, from the pile. And then, looking at the superscription, he turned somewhat sick.
"Mon cher,"—wrote M. de Vallorbes,—"My steward informs me that he has just received your draft for a quarter's rent of the villa. I thank you a thousand times for your admirable punctuality. Decidedly you are of those with whom it is a consolation to do business. Need I assure you that the advent of this money is far from inopportune, since a grateful country, while showering distinctions upon me with one hand, with the other picks my pocket. I find it not a little expensive this famous military service! But then, ever since I can remember, I have found all that afforded me the slightest, active pleasure equally that! And this sport of war, I promise you, is the most excellent sport in which I have as yet participated. It satisfies the primitive instincts more thoroughly than even your English fox-hunting. AbattueofCommunardsis obviously superior to abattueof pheasants. To the dignity of killing one's fellow-men is added the satisfaction of ridding oneself of vermin. It becomes a matter of sanitation and self-respect. And this, indirectly, recalls to me, that report declares my wife to be with you at Naples.Mon cher je vous en fais câdeau. With you, at least, I know that my honour is safe. You may even instil into her mind some faint conception of the rudiments of morality. To be frank with you, she needs that. A couple of months ago she did me the honour to elope—temporarily, of course—with M. Paul Destournelle. You may have glanced, one day, at his crapulous verses. I suppose honour demanded that I should pursue the guilty pair and account for one, if not both, of them. But I was too busily engaged with my littleCommunards. We set these gentry up against a wall and dispose of them in batches. I have had a good deal of this, but, as I say, it has not yet become monotonous. Traits of individual character lend it vivacity. And then, putting aside the exigencies of my profession, I do not know that anything is to be gained by inviting public scandal. You have an English proverb to the effect that one should wash one's dirty linen at home. This I have tried to do, as you cannot but be aware, all along. If one has had the misfortune to marry Messalina, one learns to be philosophic. A few lovers more or less, in that connection, what, after all, does it matter? Indeed, I begin to derive ironical consolation from the fact of their multiplicity. The existence of one would have constituted a reflection upon my charms. But a matter of ten, fifteen, twenty, ceases to be in any degree personal to myself. Only I object to Destournelle. He is too young, toorococco. He represents a descent in the scale. I preferdes hommes mures, generals, ministers, princes. The devil knows we have had our share of such! Your generosity to her has saved us from Jews so far, and fromnouveaux riches, by relieving the business of commercial aspects. Give her some salutary advice, therefore,mon cher, and if she becomes inconvenient forward her to Paris. I forgive to seventy-times-seven, being still proud enough to struggle after an appearance of social and conjugal decency.Enfinit is a relief to have unburdened myself for once, and you have been the good genius of my unfortunateménage, for which heaven reward you.—Yours, in true cousinly regard and supreme reliance on your discretion,
"Luigi Angelo Francesco de Vallorbes."
That this, in any case, had a stamp of sincerity upon it, Richard could not doubt. It must be admitted that he had long ceased to accept Madame de Vallorbes' estimate of her husband with unqualified belief. But, be that as it might, whether he were a consummate, or merely an average, profligate, one thing was certain that this man trusted him—Richard Calmady,—and that he—Richard Calmady—had very vilely betrayed that trust. He stared at the letter, and certain sentences in it seemed to sear him, even as the branding-iron used on a felon might. This was a new shame, different to, and greater than, any his deformity had ever induced in him, even as evil done is different to, and greater than, evil suffered. Morality may be relative only and conventional. Honour, for all persons of a certain standing and breeding, remains absolute. And it was precisely of his own honour that he had deprived himself. Not only in body, but in character, he was henceforth monstrous. For a while Richard had remained very still, looking at this thing into which he had made himself as though it were external and physically visible to him.
Then, suddenly, he had reached out his hand for his mother's letter. A decision of great moment was impending. He would know what she had to say before finally making that decision. He wondered bitterly, grimly, whether her words would plunge him yet deeper in this abyss of self-hatred and self-contempt.
My Darling,"—she wrote,—"I am foolishly glad to learn that you are back at Naples. It gives me comfort to know you are even thus much nearer home and in a country where I too have traveled and of which I retain many dear and delightful recollections. You may be surprised, perhaps, to see the unaccustomed address upon my note-paper and may wonder what has made me guilty of deserting my post. Now, since the worst of it is certainly over, I may tell you that my health has failed a good deal of late. Nothing of a really serious nature—you need not be alarmed about me. But I had got into a rather weak and unworthy state, from which it became very desirable I should rouse myself. Selfishness is insidious, but none the less reprehensible because it takes the apparently innocent form of sitting in a chair with one's eyes shut! However, that best of men, John Knott, brought very bracing influences to bear on me, convincing me of sin—in the gentlest way in the world—by means of Honoria St. Quentin. And so I picked myself up, dear Dickie,—picked the whole of myself up, as I hope, always saving and excepting my self-indulgent inertia,—and came away here to Ormiston. At first, I confess, I felt very much like a dog at a fair, or the proverbial mummy at a feast. But they all bore with me in the plenty of their kindness, and, in the last week, I have banished the mummy and trained the scared dog to altogether polite and pretty behaviour. Till I came back to it, I hardly realised how truly I loved this place. How should it be otherwise? I met your father first here after his third term at Eton. I remember he snubbed me roundly. I met him again the year before our marriage. Without vanity I declare that then he snubbed me not one little bit. These things are very far away. But to me, though far away, they are very vivid and very lovely. I see them as you, when you were small, so often pleaded to see a fairy landscape by looking through the large end of the gold and tortoise-shell spy-glass upon my writing-table. All of which may seem to you somewhat childish and trivial, but I grow an old woman and have a fancy for toys and tender make-believes—such as fairy landscapes seen through the big end of a spy-glass. The actual landscape, at times, is a trifle discouragingly rain-washed and cloudy!—-Roger and Mary are here. Their two boys are just gone back to school again. They are fine, courteous, fearless, little fellows. Roger makes a rather superb middle-aged man. He has much of my father—your grandfather's reticence and dignity. Indeed, he might prove slightly alarming, was one not so perfectly sure of him, dear creature. Mary remains, as of old, the most wholesome and helpful of women. Yes, it is good to dwell, for a time, among one's own people. And I cannot but rejoice that my eldest brother has come to an arrangement by which, at his death, your Uncle William will receive a considerable sum of money in lieu of the property. This last will go direct to Roger, and eventually to his boys. If your Uncle William had a son, the whole matter would be different. But I own it would hurt me that in the event of his death there would be no Ormiston at Ormiston after these many generations. In all probability the place would be sold immediately, moreover, for it is an open secret that, through no fault of his own, poor man, William is sadly embarrassed in money matters. And he has other sorrows—of a rather terrible nature, since they are touched with disgrace. But here you will probably detect a point of prejudice, so I had better stop!—I look out upon a gray, northern sea, where 'the white horses fume and fret' under a cold, gray, northern sky. The oaks in the park are just thickening with yellow-green buds. And there, close to my window, perched on a topmost twig, a missel-thrush is singing, facing the wind like a gentleman. You look out upon a purple sea, I suppose, beneath clear skies and over orange trees and palms. I wonder if any brave bird pipes to you as my storm-cock to me? It brings up one's courage to hear his song, so strong and wild and sweet, in the very teeth of the gale too! But now you will have had enough of my news and more than enough. I write to you more freely, you see, than for a long time past, being myself more free of spirit. And therefore I dare add this, in all and every case, my darling, God keep you. And remember, should you weary of wandering, that not only the doors of Brockhurst, but the doors of my heart, stand forever wide open to welcome you home.—Yours always,
K. C."
Reading which gentle, yet in a sense daring, words, Richard's shame took on another complexion, but one by no means calculated to mitigate the burning of it. His treachery towards de Vallorbes became almost vulgar and of small moment beside his cruelty to this superbly magnanimous woman, his mother. For, all these years, determinately and of set purpose, defiant of every better impulse, he had hardened his heart against her. To differ from her, to cherish that which was unsympathetic to her, to put aside every tradition in which she had nurtured him, to love that which she condemned, to condemn that which she loved—and this, if silently, yet unswervingly—had been the ruling purpose of his action. That which had its origin in passionate revolt against his own unhappy disfigurement, had come to be an interest and object in itself. In this quarrel with her—a quarrel, intimate, pre-natal, anterior to consciousness and to volition—he found the justification of his every lapse, his every crookedness of conduct and of thought. Since he could not reach Almighty God, and strike at the eternal First Cause which he held responsible for the inalienable wrong done to him, he would strike, with cold-blooded persistence, at the woman whom Almighty God had permitted to be His instrument in the infliction of that wrong. And to where had that sustained purpose of striking led him? Even—so he judged just now—to the dishonour and desolation of to-day, following upon the sacrilegious licence of last night.
All this Richard saw with the alternately groping, benumbed, mental vision and the glaring, mental nakedness of breeding fever. Small wonder that looking for comfort, for promise of restoration, he found none in things material, in things intellectual, in others, or in himself! He felt outcasted beyond hope of redemption, but not repentant, hardly remorseful even, only aware of all that which had happened, and of his own state. For Lady Calmady's letter was to him little more, as yet, than a placing of facts. To trade upon her magnificent generosity of affection, and seek refuge in those outstretched arms now, with the mark of the branding-iron so sensibly upon him, appeared to him of all contemptible doings the most radically contemptible. Obviously it was impossible to go back. He must go on rather—out of sight, out of mind. Fantastic schemes of disappearing, of losing himself, far away, in remote and nameless places, among the coral islands of the Pacific or the chill majesty of the Antarctic seas, offered themselves to his imagination. The practical difficulties presented by such schemes, their infeasibility, did not trouble him. He would sever all connection with that which had been, with that which had made for good equally with that which had made for evil. By his own voluntary act and choice he would become as a man dead, the disgrace of his malformed body, the closer and more hideous disgrace of his defiled and prostituted soul, surviving in legend merely, as might some ugly, old-time fable useful for the frightening of unruly babies.
And to that end of self-obliteration he instantly applied himself, with outward calm, but with the mental hurry and restlessness of increasing illness. His first duty was to end the whole matter of his relation to Helen,—Helen shorn of her divinity, convicted liar and wanton, yet mistress still for him, as he feared, of mighty enchantments. So he wrote to her very briefly. The note should be given her later in the day. In it he stated that he should have left the villa before this announcement reached her, left it finally and without remotest prospect of return, since he could not doubt that she recognised, as he did, how impossible it had become that he and she should meet again. He added that he would communicate with her shortly as to business arrangements. That done, he summoned Powell, his valet, bidding him pack. He would go down to the yacht at once. He had received information which made it imperative that he should quit Naples immediately.
To be out of all this, rid of it, fairly started on the road of negation of social being, negation of recognised existence, infected him like a madness. But even the most forceful human will must bend to stupidities of detail and of material fact. Unexpected delays had occurred. The yacht was not ready for sea, neither coaled, nor provisioned, nor sound of certain small damages to her machinery. Vanstone, the captain, might mislay his temper, and the first mate expend himself in polysyllabic invective, young Penberthy cease to dream, stewards, engineers, carpenters, cooks, quartermasters, seamen, firemen, do their most willing and urgent best, nevertheless the morning of next day, and even the afternoon of it, still found Richard Calmady seated at the locker-table of the white-walled deck-cabin, his voyage towards self-obliteration not yet begun.
Charts were outspread before him, upon which, at weary intervals, he essayed to trace the course of his coming wanderings. But his brain was dull, he had no power of consecutive thought. That same madness of going was upon him with undiminished power, yet he knew not where he wanted to go, hardly why he wanted to go, only that a blind obsession of going drove him. He was miserably troubled about other matters too—about that same brief letter he had written to Helen before leaving the villa. He was convinced that he had written such a letter, but struggle as he might to remember the contents of it they remained to him a blank. He was haunted by the fear that in that letter he had committed some irremediable folly, had bound himself to some absurdly unworthy course of action. But what it might be escaped and, in escaping, tortured him. And then, this surely was Friday, and Morabita sang at the San Carlo to-night? And surely he had promised to be there, and to meet the famousprima donnaand sup with her after the performance, as in former days at Vienna? He had not always been quite kind to her, poor, dear, fat, good-natured, silly soul! He could not fail her now.—And then he went back to a chart of the South Pacific again. Only he could not see it plainly, but saw, instead of it, the great folio of copper-plate engravings lying on the broad window-seat of the eastern bay of the Long Gallery at home. He was sitting there to watch for the race-horses coming back from exercise, Tom Chifney pricking along beside them on his handsome cob. And the long-ago, boyish desperation of longing for wholeness, for freedom, brought a moistness to his eyes, and a lump into his throat. And all the while the coal dust drifted in at each smallest crevice and aperture, and the air was vibrant with rasping, jarring uproar and nauseous with the stale, heavy odours of the city and the port. And steadily, ceaselessly, the descending rain drummed upon the roofing overhead.
At length a stupor took him. His head sunk upon his arms, folded upon those outspread charts, while the noise of all the rude activities surrounding him subtly transformed itself into that of a great orchestra. And above this, superior to, yet nobly supported by it, Morabita's voice rose in the suave and passionate phrases of the glorious cavatina—"Ernani, Ernani, involami, all aborito ampleso."—Yes, her voice was as good as ever! Richard drew a long breath of relief. Here, at least, was something true to itself, and amid so much of change, so much of spoiling, still unspoilt! He raised his head and listened. For something must have happened, something of serious moment. The orchestra, for some unaccountable reason, had suddenly broken down. Yes, it must be the orchestra which disaster had overtaken, for a voice very certainly continued. No, not a voice, but voices—those of Vanstone the captain, and Price the first mate, and old Billy Tinn the boatswain—loud, imperative, violently remonstrant, but swept under and swamped at moments by cries and volleys of foulest, Neapolitanargotfrom hoarse, Neapolitan throats. And that abruptly silenced orchestra?—Richard came back to himself, came back to actualities of environment and prosaic fact. An infinitely weariful despair seized him. For the sound that had reached so sudden a termination was not that of cunningly-attuned, musical instruments, but the long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal, pitched from the baskets down the echoing, iron shoots.
The cabin door opened discreetly and Powell, incarnation of decorous punctualities even amid existing tumultuously discomposing circumstances, entered.
"From the villa, sir," he said, depositing letters and newspapers upon the table.
Richard put out his hand, turned them over mechanically. For again, somehow, notwithstanding the babel without, that exquisite invitation—"Ernani, Ernani, involami,"—assailed his ears.
The valet waited a little, quiet and deferential in bearing, yet observing his master with a certain keenness and anxiety.
"I saw Mr. Bates, as you desired, sir," he said at last.
Richard looked up at him vaguely. And it struck him that while Powell was on shore to-day he had undoubtedly had his hair cut. This interested him—though why, he would have found it difficult to say.
"Mr. Bates thought you should be informed that a gentleman called early yesterday afternoon, as he said by appointment."
Yes—certainly Powell had had his hair cut.—"Did the gentleman give his name?"
"Yes, sir, M. Paul Destournelle."
Powell spoke slowly, getting his tongue carefully round the foreign syllables, and, for all the confusion of his hearer's mind, the name went home. Vagueness passed from Richard's glance.
"He was refused, of course."
"Her ladyship had given orders that should any person of that name call he was to be admitted."—Powell spoke with evident reluctance. "Consequently Mr. Bates was uncertain how to act, having received contrary orders from you, sir, the day before yesterday. He explained this to her ladyship, but she insisted."
Richard's mind had become perfectly lucid.
"Very well," he said coldly.
"Mr. Bates also thought you should know, sir, that after M. Destournelle's visit her ladyship announced she should not remain at the villa. She left about five o'clock, taking her maid. Charles followed with all the baggage."
The valet paused. Richard's manner was decidedly discouraging, yet, something further must at least be intimated.
"Her ladyship gave no address to Mr. Bates for the forwarding of her letters."
But here the cabin door, left slightly ajar by Powell, was opened wide, and that with none of the calm and discretion displayed by the functionary in question. A long perspective of grimy deck behind him, his oilskins shiny from the wet, with trim, black beard, square-made, bold-eyed, hot-tempered, warm-hearted, alert, humorous—typical West Countryman as his gentle dreamy cousin, Penberthy, the second mate, though of a very different type—stood Captain Vanstone. His easily-ruffled temper suffered from the after effects of what is commonly known as a "jolly row," and his speech was curt in consequence thereof.
"Sorry to disturb you, Sir Richard," he said, "and still more sorry to disappoint you, but it can't be helped."
Dickie turned upon him so strangely drawn and haggard a countenance, that Vanstone with difficulty repressed an exclamation. He looked in quick inquiry at the valet, who so far departed from his usual decorum as to nod his head in assent to the silent questioning.
"What's wrong now?" Richard said.
"Why, these beggarly rascals have knocked off. Price offered them a higher scale of pay. I had empowered him to do so. But they won't budge. The rain's washed the heart out of them. We've tried persuasion and we've tried threats—it's no earthly use. Not a basket more coal will they put on board before five to-morrow morning."
"Can't we sail with what we have got?"
"Not enough to carry us to Port Said."
"What will be the extent of the delay this time?" Richard asked. His tone had an edge to it.
Again Captain Vanstone glanced at the valet.
"With luck we may get off to-morrow about midnight."
He stepped back, shook himself like a big dog, scattering the water off his oilskins in a shower upon the slippery deck. Then he came inside the cabin and stood near Richard. His expression was very kindly, tender almost.
"You must excuse me, sir," he said. "I know it doesn't come within my province to give you advice. But you do look pretty ill, Sir Richard. Every one's remarking that. And you are ill, sir—you know it, and I know it, and Mr. Powell here knows it. You ought to see a doctor, sir—and if you'll pardon plain language, this beastly cess-pit of a harbour is not a fit place for you to sleep in."
And poor Dickie, after an instant of sharp annoyance, touched by the man's honest humanity smiled upon him—a smile of utter weariness, utter homelessness.
"Perfectly true. Get me out to sea then, Vanstone. I shall be better there than anywhere else," he said.
Whereupon the kindly sailor-man turned away, swearing gently into his trim, black beard.
But the valet remained, impassive in manner, actively anxious at heart.
"Have you any orders for the carriage, sir?" he asked. "Garçia drove me down. I told him to wait until I had inquired."
Richard was long in replying. His brain was all confused and clouded again, while again he heard the voice of the famous soprano—"Ernani, Ernani, involami."
"Yes," he said at last. "Tell Garçia to be here in good time to drive me to the San Carlo. I have an appointment at the opera to-night."
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH DICKIE GOES TO THE END OF THE WORLD AND LOOKS OVER THE WALL
The opera box, which Richard Calmady had rented along with the Villa Vallorbes, was fifth from the stage on the third tier, to the right of the vast horseshoe. Thus situated, it commanded a very comprehensive view of the interior of the house. Theparterre—its somewhat comfortless seats, rising as on iron stilts, as they recede, row by row, from the proscenium—was packed. While, since the aristocratic world had not yet left town, the boxes—piled, tier above tier, without break of dress-circle or gallery, right up to the lofty roof—were well-filled. And it was the effect of these last that affected Richard oddly, displeasingly, as, helped by Powell and Andrews,—the first footman, who acted as his table-steward on board theReprieve,—he made his way slowly down to the chair, placed on the left, at the front of the box. For the accepted aspects and relations of things seen were remote to him. He perceived effects, shapes, associations of colour, divorced from their habitual significance. It was as though he looked at the written characters of a language unknown to him, observing the form of them, but attaching no intelligible meaning to that form. And so it happened that those many superimposed tiers of boxes were to him as the waxen cells of a gigantic honeycomb, against the angular darknesses of which little figures, seen to the waist, took the light—the blond face, neck and arms of some woman, the fair colours of her dress—and showed up with perplexing insistence. For they were all peopled, these cells of the honeycomb, and—so it seemed to him—with larvæ, bright-hued, unworking, indolent, full-fed. Down there upon theparterre, in the close-packed ranks of students, of men and women of the middle-class, soberly attired in walking costume, he recognised the working bees of this giant hive. By their unremitting labour the dainty waxen cells were actually built up, and those larvæ were so amply, so luxuriously, fed. And the working bees—there were so many, so very many of them! What if they became mutinous, rebelled against labour, plundered and destroyed the indolent, succulent larvæ of which he—yes, he, Richard Calmady—was unquestionably and conspicuously one?
He leaned back in his chair, pulled forward the velvet drapery so as to shut out the view of the house, and fixed his eyes upon the heads of the musicians in the orchestra. The overture was nearly over. The curtain would very soon go up. Then he observed that Powell still stood near him. The man was strangely officious to-day, he thought. Could that be connected in any way with the fact he had had his hair cut? For a moment the notion appeared to Dickie quite extravagantly amusing. But he kept his amusement, as so much else, to himself. And again the working bees, down in theparterre, attracted his attention. They were buzzing, buzzing angrily, displeased with the full-fed larvæ in the boxes, because these last were altogether too social, talked too loud and too continuously, drowning the softer passages of the overture. Those dull-coloured insects had expended store of hard-earnedlireupon the queer seats they occupied, mounted as upon iron stilts. They meant to have the whole of that which they had paid for, and hear every note. If they swarmed, now, swarmed upward, clung along the edges of those many tiers of boxes, punished inconsiderate insolence with stings?—-It would hardly be unjust.—But there was Powell still, clad in sober garments. He belonged to the working bees. And Richard became aware of a singular diffidence and embarrassment in thinking of that. If they should swarm, those workers, he would rather the valet did not see it, somehow. He was a good fellow, a faithful servant, a man of nice feeling, and such an incident would place him in an awkward position. He ought to be spared that. Carefully Dickie reasoned it all out.
"You need not stay here any longer, Powell," he said.
"When shall I return, sir?"
The curtain went up. A roll of drums, a chorus of men's voices, somewhat truculent, in the drinking song.
"At the end of the performance, of course."
But the valet hesitated.
"You might require to send some message, sir."
Richard stared at the chorus. The opera being performed but this once, economy prevailed. Costumiers had ransacked their stock for discovery of garments not unpardonably inappropriate. The result showed a fine superiority to details of time and place. One Spanish bandit, a portlybasso, figured in a surprising variety of Highland dress designed, and that locally, for a chieftain in the opera ofLucia di Lammermoor. His acquaintance with the eccentricities of a kilt being of the slightest, consequences ensued broadly humorous.—Again Dickie experienced great amusement. But that message?—Had he really one to send? Probably he had. He could not remember, and this annoyed him. Possibly he might remember later. He turned to Powell, forgetting his amusement, forgetting the too intimate personal revelations of the unhappybasso.
"Yes—well—come back at the end of the second act, then," he said.
If the bees swarmed it would be over by that time, he supposed, so Powell's return would not matter much one way or the other. A persuasion of something momentous about to be accomplished deepened in him. The madness of going, which had so pushed him earlier in the day, fell dead before it. For this concourse of living creatures must be gathered together to witness some event commensurate in importance with the greatness of their number. He felt sure of that. Yes—before long they would swarm. Incontestably they would swarm!—Again he drew aside the velvet drapery and looked down curiously upon the arena and its occupants. For a new idea had come to him regarding these last. They still presented the effect of a throng of busy, angry insects. But Richard knew better. He had penetrated their disguise, a disguise assumed to insure their ultimate purpose with the greater certainty. He knew them to be human. He knew their purpose to be a moral one. And, looking upon them, recognising the spirit which animated them, he was taken with a reverence and sympathy for average, toiling humanity unfelt by him before. For he saw that by these, the workers, the final issues are inevitably decided, by these the final verdict is pronounced. Individually they may be contemptible, but in their corporate intelligence, corporate strength, they are little short of majestic. Of art, letters, practical civilisation, even religion, even, in a degree, nature herself, they are alike architects and judges. It must be so. It always has been so time out of mind in point of fact. And then he wondered why they were so patient of constraint? Why had they not risen long ago and obliterated the pretensions of those arrogant, indolent larvæ peopling the angular apertures of the honey cells—those larvæ of whom, by birth and wealth, sinfulness and uselessness, he was himself so conspicuous an example?
But then still clearer understanding of this whole strange matter came to him.—They, like all else,—mighty though they are in their corporate intention,—are obedient to fate. They can only act when the time is ripe. And then he understood yet more clearly. Their purpose in congregating here, whether they were conscious of it or not, was retributive. They were present to witness and to accomplish an act of foreordained justice.—Richard paused a moment, struggling with his own thought. And then he saw quite plainly that he himself was the object of that act of foreordained justice, he himself was the centre of that dimly-apprehended, approaching event. His punishment, his deliverance by means of that punishment, was that which had brought this great multitude together here to-night. He was awed. Yet with that awe came thankfulness, gratitude, an immense sense of relief. He need not seek self-obliteration, losing himself in far-away, tropic islands, or the ice-bound regions of the uttermost South. He could stay here. Sit quite still even—and that was well, for he was horribly tired and spent. He need only wait. When the time was ripe, they would do all the rest—do it for him by doing it to him.—How finely simple it all was! Incidentally he wondered if it would hurt very much. Not that that mattered, for beyond lay peace. Only he hoped they would get to work pretty soon, so that it might be over before the end of the second act, when Powell, the valet, would come back.
Richard's face had grown very youthful and eager. His eyes were unnaturally bright. And still he gazed down at that great company. His heart went out to it. He loved it, loved each and every member of it, as he had never conceived of loving heretofore. He would like to have gone down among them and become part of them, one with them in purpose, a partaker of their corporate strength. But that was forbidden. They were his preordained executioners. Yet in that capacity they were not the less, but the more, lovable. They were welcome to exact full justice. He longed after them, longed after the pain it was their mission to inflict.—And they were getting ready, surely they were getting ready! There was a sensible movement among them. They turned pale faces away from the brilliantly lighted stage, and towards the great horseshoe of waxen cells enclosing them. They were busy, dull-coloured insects again, and they buzzed—resentfully, angrily, they buzzed.
Yet even while Dickie noted all this, greatly moved by it, appreciating its inner meaning, its profound relation to himself and the drama of his own existence, he was not wholly unmindful of the progress of the opera and the charm of the graceful and fluent music which saluted his ears. He was aware of the entrance of the hero, of his greeting by his motley-clad followers. He felt kindly, just off the surface of his emotion so to speak, towards this impersonator of Ernani. The young actor's appearance was attractive, his voice fresh and sympathetic, his bearing modest. But the aristocratic occupants of the boxes treated him cavalierly. The famous Milanese tenor, whose name was on the programme, having failed to arrive, this local, and comparatively inexperienced, artist had been called upon to fill his part. Therefore the smart world talked more loudly than before, while the democratic occupants of theparterre, jealous for the reputation of their fellow-citizen, broke forth into stormy protest. And Richard could have found it in his heart to protest also. For it was waste of energy, this senseless conflict! It was unworthy of the dignity of that dull-coloured multitude, on whom his hopes were so strangely set—of the men in whose hands are the final rewards and punishments, by whose voice the final judgment is pronounced. It pained him to see these ministers of the Eternal Justice thus led away by trivial happenings, and their attention distracted from the main issue. For what, in God's name, did he and his sentimental love-carrollings amount to, this pretty fellow of a player, this fictitious hero of the modern, Neapolitan, operatic stage? Weighed in the balances, he and his whole occupation and calling were lighter, surely, than vanity itself? Rightly considered, he and his singing were but as a spangle, as some glittering trifle of tinsel, upon the veil still hiding the awful, yet benign, countenance of that tremendous and so surely approaching event.—Let him sing away, then, sing in peace. For the sound of his singing might help to lighten the weariness of the hours until the supreme hour should strike, and the glittering veil be torn asunder, and the countenance it covered be at last and wholly revealed.
Reasoning thus, Richard raised his opera glasses and swept those many superimposed ranges of waxen cells. And the aspect of them was to him very sinister, for everywhere he seemed to encounter soft, voluptuous, brainless faces, violences of hot colour, and costly clothing cunningly devised to heighten the physical allurements of womanhood. Everywhere, beside and behind these, he seemed to encounter the faces of men, gluttonous of pleasure, hungering for those generously-discovered, material charms. They were veritable antechambers of vice, those angular-mouthed, waxen cells. And, therefore, very fittingly, as he reflected, he had his place in one of them, since he was infected by the vices, active partaker in the sensuality, of his class.—Oh! that the bees would swarm—swarm, and make short work of it all, inflict completeness of punishment, and thereby cleanse him and set him free! In its intensity his longing came near taking the form of articulate prayer.
And then his thought shifted once more, attaching itself curiously, speculatively, to individual objects. For his survey of the house had just now brought a box into view, situated on the grand tier and almost immediately opposite his own. It was occupied by a party of six persons. With four of those persons Richard was aware he had nothing to do. But with the remaining two persons—a woman fashioned, as it appeared, of ivory and gold, and a young man standing almost directly behind her—he had much, everything, in fact, to do. It was incomprehensible to him that he had not observed these two persons sooner, since they were as necessary to the accomplishment of that terrible, yet beneficent, approaching event as he himself was. The woman he knew actually and intimately, though as yet he could give her no name, nor recall in what his knowledge of her consisted. The young man he knew inferentially. And Dickie was sensible of regarding him with instinctive repulsion, since his appearance presented a living and grossly ribald caricature of a figure august, worshipful, and holy. Long and closely Richard studied those two persons, studied them, forgetful of all else, straining his memory to place them. And all the while they talked.
But, at last, the woman fashioned of ivory and gold ceased talking. She folded her arms upon the velvet cushion of the front of the box and gazed right out into the theatre. There was a splendid arrogance in the pose of her head, and in the droop of her eyelids. Then she looked up and across, straight at Richard. He saw her drooping eyelids raised, her eyes open wide, and remain fixed as in amazement. A something alert, and very fierce, came into her expression. She seemed to think carefully for a brief space. She threw back her head, and he saw uncontrollable laughter convulse her beautiful throat. And, at that same moment, a mighty outburst of applause and of welcome shook the great theatre from floor to ceiling, and, as it died away, the voice of the famous soprano, rich and compelling as of old, swelled out, and made vibrant with passionate sweetness the whole atmosphere. And Richard hailed that glorious voice, not that in itself it moved him greatly, but because in it he recognised the beginning of the end. It came as prelude to catastrophe which was also salvation.—Very soon the bees would swarm now! He rallied his patience. He had not much longer to wait.
Meanwhile he looked back at that box on the grand tier, striving to unriddle the mystery of his knowledge of those two persons. He needed glasses no longer. His sight had become preternaturally keen. Again the two were talking—and about him, that was somehow evident. And, as they talked, he beheld a being, exquisitely formed, perfect in every part, step forth from between the lips of the woman fashioned of ivory and gold. It knelt upon one knee. Over the heads of the vast, dull-coloured multitude of workers, those witnesses of and participators in the execution of Eternal Justice, it gazed at him, Richard Calmady, and at him alone. And its gaze enfolded and held him like an embrace. It wooed him, extending its arms in invitation. It was naked and unashamed. It was black—black as the reeking, liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships, over which the screaming gulls circled seeking foul provender, down in Naples harbour.—And he knew the fair woman it came forth from for Helen de Vallorbes, herself, in her crocus-yellow gown sewn with seed pearls. And he knew it for the immortal soul of her. And he perceived, moreover, as it smiled on and beckoned him with lascivious gestures, that its hands and its lips were bloody, since it had broken the hearts of living women and torn and devoured the honour of living men.
"Ernani, Ernani, involami"—still the air was vibrant with that glorious voice. But the love of which it was the exponent, the flight which it counseled, had ceased, to Richard's hearing, to bear relation to that which is earthly, concrete, and of the senses. The passion and promise of it were alike turned to nobler and more permanent uses, presaging the quick coming of expiation and of reconciliation contained in that supreme event. For he knew that, in a little moment, Helen must arise and follow the soul which had gone forth from her—the soul of which, in all its admirable perfection of outward form and blackness of intimate lies and lust, was close to him—though he no longer actually beheld it—here, beside him, laying subtle siege to him even yet. Where it went, there, of necessity, she who owned it must shortly follow, since soul and body cannot remain apart, save for the briefest space, until death effect their final divorce. Therefore Helen would come speedily. It could not be otherwise—so, at least, he argued. And her coming meant the culmination. Then, time being fully ripe, the bees would swarm, swarm at last,—labour revenging itself upon sloth, hunger upon gluttony, want upon wealth, obscurity upon privilege,—justice being thus meted out, and he, Richard, cleansed and delivered from the disgrace of deformity now so hideously infecting both his spirit and his flesh.
Of this he was so well assured that, disregarding the felt, though unseen, presence of that errant soul, disdaining to do battle with it, he leaned forward once more, looking down into the close-packed arena of the great theatre. All those brilliant figures, members of his own class, here present, were matter of indifference to him. In this moment of conscious and supreme farewell, it was to the dull-coloured multitude that he turned. They still moved him to sympathy. Unconsciously they had enlightened him concerning matters of infinite moment. At their hands he would receive penance and absolution. Before they dealt more closely with him,—since that dealing must involve suffering which might temporarily cloud his friendship for them,—he wanted to bid them farewell and assure them of his conviction of the righteousness of their corporate action. So, silently, he blessed them, taking leave of them in peace. Then he found there were other farewells to be said.—Farewell to earthly life as he had known it, the struggle and very frequent anguish of it, its many frustrated purposes, fair illusions, unfulfilled hopes. He must bid farewell, moreover, to art as he had relished it—to learning, as he had all too intermittently pursued it—to travel, as he had found solace in it—to the inexhaustible interest, the inextinguishable humour and pathos, in brief, of things seen. And, reviewing all this, a profound nostalgia of all those minor happinesses which are the natural inheritance of the average man arose in him—happiness of healthy, light-hearted activities, not only of the athlete and the fighting-man, but of the playing-field, and the ball-room, and the river—happinesses to him inevitably denied. With an almost boyish passion of longing, he cried out for these.—Just for one day to have lived with the ease and freedom with which the vast majority of men habitually live! Just for one day to have been neither dwarf nor cripple, but to have taken his place and his chance with the rest, before it all was over and the tale told!
But very soon Richard put these thoughts from him, deeming it unworthy to dwell upon them at this juncture. The call was to go forward, not to go back. So he settled himself in his chair once more, pulling the velvet drapery forward so as to shut out the sight of the house. Bitterness should have no part in him. When that happened which was appointed to happen, it must find him not only acquiescent but serene and undisturbed. He composed himself, therefore, with a decent and even lofty pride. Then he turned his eyes upon the narrow door, there in the semi-obscurity of the back of the box, and waited. And all the while royally, triumphantly, Morbita sang.
During that period of waiting—whether in itself brief or prolonged, he knew not—sensation and thought alike were curiously in abeyance. Richard neither slept nor woke. He knew that he existed, but all active relation to being had ceased. And it was with painful effort he in a measure returned to more ordinary correspondence with fact, aroused by the sound of low-toned, emphatic speech close at hand, and by a scratching as of some animal denied and seeking admittance. Then he perceived that the door yielded, letting in a spread of yellow brightness from the corridor. And in the midst of that brightness, part and parcel of it thanks to the lustre of her crocus-yellow dress, her honey-coloured hair, her fair skin and softly-gleaming ornaments, stood Helen de Vallorbes. Behind her, momentarily, Richard caught sight of the young man whose face had impressed him as a ribald travesty of that of some being altogether worshipful and holy. The face peered at him with, as it seemed, malicious curiosity over the rounded shoulder of the woman of ivory and gold, The effect was very hateful, and, with a sense of thankfulness, Richard saw Helen close the door and come, alone, down the two steps leading from the back of the box. As she passed from the dimness into the clearer light, he watched her, quiescent, yet with absorbing interest. For he perceived that the hands of the clock had been put back somehow. Intervening years and the many events of them had ceased to obtain, so that, of all the many Helens, enchanting or evil, whom he had come to know, he saw now only one, and that the first and earliest—a little dancer, with blush-roses in her hat, dainty as a toy, finished to her rosy finger-tips and the toes of her pretty shoes, merry and merciless, as she had pirouetted round him mocking his shuffling, uncertain progress across the Chapel-Room at Brockhurst fifteen years ago.
"Ah! so you have come back!" he exclaimed, almost involuntarily.
Madam de Vallorbes pushed a chair from the front of the box into the shadow of the velvet draperies beside Richard.
"It is unnecessary that all Naples should take part in our interview," she said. She sat down, turning to him, leaning a little towards him.
"You do not deserve that I should come back, you know, Dickie," she continued. "You both deserted and deceived me. That is hardly chivalrous, hardly just indeed, after taking all a woman has to give. You led me to suppose you had departed for good and all. Why should you deceive me?"
"The yacht was not ready for sea," Richard said simply.
"Then you might, in common charity, have let me know that. You were bound to give me an opportunity of speaking to you once again, I think."
In his present state of detachment from all worldly considerations, absolute truthfulness compelled Richard. The event was so certain, the swarming of the bees so very near, that small diplomacies, small evasions, seemed absurdly out of place.
"I did not want to hear you speak," he said.
"But doesn't it strike you that was rather dastardly in face of what had taken place between us? Do you know that you appear in a new and far from becoming light?"
Denial seemed to Richard futile. He remained silent.
For a moment Helen looked towards the stage. When she spoke again it was as with reluctance.
"I was desperately unhappy. I went all over the villa in the vain hope of finding you. I went back to that room of yours in which we parted. I wanted to see it again."—Helen paused. Her speech was low-toned, soft as milk.—"It was rather dreadful, Dickie, for the place was all in disarray, littered with signs of your hasty departure, damp, cheerless—the rain beating against the windows. And I hate rain. I found there, not you—whom I so sorely wanted—but something very much else.—A letter to you from de Vallorbes."—Once more she paused. "I excuse you of anything worse than negligence in omitting to destroy it. Misery knows no law, and I was miserable. I read it."
Richard had listened with the same detachment, yet the same absorbed interest, with which he had watched her entrance. She was a wonderful creature in her adroitness, in her handling of means to serve her own ends! But he could not pay her back in her own coin. The time was too short for anything but simple truth. He felt strangely tired. These reiterated delays became harassing. If the bees would swarm, only swarm! Then it would be over, and he could sleep. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked at Madame de Vallorbes. Her soul kneeled on her lap, its delicate arms were clasped about her neck—black against the lustrous white of her skin and all those twisted ropes of seed pearls. It pressed its breasts against hers, amorously. It loved her and she it. And he understood that in the whole scope of nature there was but it alone, it only, that she ever had loved, or did, or could, love. And, understanding this, he was filled with a great compassion for her. And, answering her, his expression was gentle and pitiful. Still he needs must speak the truth.
"Perhaps it was as well that you should read Luigi's letter," he said.
She turned upon him fiercely and scornfully, yet even as she did so her soul fell to beckoning to him, soliciting him with evilly alluring gestures.
"My congratulations to you," she exclaimed, "upon your praiseworthy candour! I am to gather, then, that you believe that which my husband advises himself to tell you? Under the circumstances it is exceedingly convenient to you to do so, no doubt."
"How can I avoid believing it?" Richard asked, quite sweet-temperedly. "Surely we need not waste the little time which remains in argument as to that? You must admit, Helen, that Luigi's letter fits in. It supplies just the piece of the puzzle which was missing. It tallies with all the rest."
"All the rest?"
"Oh yes! It is part of the whole, precisely that part both of you and of Naples which I knew, and tried so hard not to know, from the first. But it is worse than useless to practice such refusals. The Whole, and nothing less than the whole, is bound to get one in the end. It is contrary to the nature of things that any integral portion of the whole should submit to permanent denial."—Richard's voice deepened. He spoke with a subdued enthusiasm, thinking of the dull-coloured multitude there in the arena and the act of retributive justice on the eve, by them, of accomplishment.—"It seems to me the radical weakness of all human institutions, of all systems of thought, resides in exactly that effort to select and reject, to exalt one part as against another part, and so build not upon the rock of unity and completeness, but upon the sand of partiality and division. And sooner or later the Whole revenges itself, and the fine-fanciful fabric crumbles to ruin, just for lack of that which in our short-sighted over-niceness we have taken such mighty great pains to miss out. This has happened times out of number in respect of religions, and philosophies, and the constitution of kingdoms, and in that of fair romances which promised to stand firm to all eternity. And now, now, in these last few days,—since laws which rule the general, also rule the individual life,—it has happened in respect of you, Helen, to my seeing, and in respect of Naples."—Richard smiled upon her sadly and very sweetly.—"I am sorry," he said, "yes, indeed, horribly sorry. It is a bitter thing to see the last of one's gods go overboard. But there is no remedy. Sorry or not, so it is."
Madame de Vallorbes looked at him keenly. Her attitude was strained. Her face sombre with thought.
"My God! my God!" she exclaimed, "that I should sit and listen to all this! And yet you were never more attractive. There is an unnatural force, unnatural beauty about you. You are ill, Richard. You look and you speak as a man might who was about to join hands with death."
But Dickie's attention had wandered again. He pulled the velvet drapery aside somewhat, and gazed down into the crowded house. They lingered strangely in the performance of their mission, that dull-coloured multitude of workers!—Just then came another mighty outburst of applause, cries,vivas, the famous soprano's name called aloud. The sound was stimulating, as the shout of a victorious army. Richard hailed it as a sign of speedy deliverance, and sank back into his place.
"Oh yes!" he said civilly and lightly, "I fancy I am pretty bad. I am a bit sick of this continued delay, you see. I suppose they know their own business best, but they do seem most infernally slow in getting under weigh. I was ready hours ago. However, they must be nearly through with preliminaries now. And when once we're fairly into it, I shall be all right."
"You mean when the yacht sails?" Madame de Vallorbes asked. Still she looked at him intently. He turned to her smiling, and she observed that his eyes had ceased to be as windows opening back on to empty space. They were luminous with a certain gay content.
"Yes, of course—when the yacht sails, if you like to put it that way," he answered.
"And when will that be?"
The shout of the arena grew louder in the recall. It surged up to the roof and quivered along the lath and plaster partitions of the boxes.
"Very soon now. Immediately, I think, please God," he said.—But why should she make him speak thus foolishly in riddles? Of a surety she must read the signs of the approach of that momentous and beneficent event as clearly as he himself! Was she not equally with himself involved in it? Was she not, like himself, to be cleansed and set free by it? Therefore it came as a painful bewilderment and shock to him when she drew closer to him, leaned forward, laid her hand lightly upon his thigh.
"Richard," she said, very softly, "I forgive all. I am not satisfied with loving. I will come with you. I will stay with you. I will be faithful to you—yes, yes, even that. Your loving is unlike any other. It is unique, as you yourself are unique. I—I want more of it."
"But you must know that it is too late to go back on that now," he said, reasoning with her, greatly perplexed and distressed by her determined ignoring of—to him—self-evident fact. "All that side of things for us is over and done with."
Her lips parted in naughty laughter. And then, not without a shrinking of quick horror, Richard beheld the soul of her—that being of lovely proportions, exquisitely formed in every part, yet black as the foul, liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships down in Naples harbour—step delicately in between those parted lips, returning whence it came. And, beholding this, instinctively he raised her hand from where it rested upon his thigh, and put it from him, put it upon her glistering, crocus-yellow lap where her soul had so lately kneeled.
"Let us say no more, Helen," he entreated, "lest we both forfeit our remaining chance, and become involved in hopeless and final condemnation."
But Madame de Vallorbes' anger rose to overwhelming height. She slapped her hands together.
"Ah, you despise me!" she cried. "But let me assure you that in any case this assumption of virtue becomes you singularly ill. It really is a little bit too cheap, a work of supererogation in the matter of hypocrisy. Have the courage of your vices. Be honest. You can be so to the point of insult when it serves your purpose. Own that you are capricious, own that you have lighted upon some woman who provokes your appetite more than I do! I have been too tender of you, too lenient with you. I have loved too much and been weakly desirous to please. Own that you are tired of me, that you no longer care for me!"
And he answered, sadly enough:—
"Yes, that last is true. Having seen the Whole, that has happened which I always dreaded might happen. The last of my self-made gods has indeed gone overboard. I care for you no longer."
Helen sprang up from her chair, ran to the door, flung it open. The first act of the opera was concluded. The curtain had come down. The house below and around, the corridor without, were full of confused noise and movement.
"Paul, M. Destournelle, come here," she cried, "and at once!"
But Richard was more than ever tired. The strain of waiting had been too prolonged. Lights, draperies, figures, the crowded arena, the vast honeycomb of boxes, tier above tier, swam before his eyes, blurred, indistinct, vague, shifting, colossal in height, giddy in depth. The bees were swarming, at last, swarming upward through seas of iridescent mist. But he had no longer empire over his own attitude and thoughts. He had hoped to meet the supreme moment in full consciousness, with clear vision and thankfulness of heart. But he was too tired to do so, tired in brain and body alike. And so it happened that a dogged endurance grew on him, simply a setting of the teeth and bracing of himself to suffer silently, even stupidly, all that might be in store. For the bees were close upon him now, countless in number, angry, grudging, violent. But they no longer appeared as insects. They were human, save for their velvet-like, expressionless eyes. And all those eyes were fixed upon him, and him alone. He was the centre towards which, in thought and action, all turned. Nor were the dull-coloured occupants of theparterrealone in their attack. For those gay-coloured larvæ—the men and women of his own class—indolent, licentious, full-fed, hung out of the angular mouths of the waxen cells, above the crimson and gold of their cushions, pointing at him, claiming and yet denouncing him. And in the attitude of these the democratic and the aristocratic sections—he detected a difference. The former swarmed to inflict punishment for his selfishness, uselessness, sensuality. But the latter jeered and mocked at his bodily infirmity, deriding his deformity, making merry over his shortened limbs and shuffling walk. And against this background, against this all-enclosing tapestry of faces which encircled him, two persons, and the atmosphere and aroma of them, so to speak, were clearly defined. They were close to him, here within the narrow limits of the opera box. Then a great humiliation overtook Richard, perceiving that they, and not the people, the workers, august in their corporate power and strength, were to be his executioners.—No—no—he wasn't worth that! And, for all his present dulness of sensation, a sob rose in his throat. Madame de Vallorbes, resplendent in crocus-yellow brocade, costly lace, and seed pearls, the young man, her companion—the young man of the light, forked beard, domed skull, vain eyes and peevish mouth—the young man of holy and dissolute aspect—were good enough instruments for the Eternal Justice to employ in respect of him, Richard Calmady.
"Look, M. Destournelle," Helen said very quietly, "this is my cousin of whom I have already spoken to you. But I wished to spare him if possible, and give him room for self-justification, so I did not tell you all. Richard, this is my friend, M. Destournelle, to whom my honour and happiness are not wholly indifferent."
Dickie looked up. He did not speak. Vaguely he prayed it might all soon be over. Paul Destournelle looked down. He raised his eye-glass and bowed himself, examining Richard's mutilated legs and strangely-shod feet. He broke into a little, bleating, goat-like laugh.
"Mais c'est etonnant!" he observed reflectively.
"I was in his house," Helen continued. "I was there unprotected, having absolute faith in his loyalty."—She paused a moment. "He seduced me. Richard can you deny that?"
"Canaille!" M. Destournelle murmured. He drew a pair of gloves through his hands, holding them by the finger-tips. The metal buttons of them were large, three on each wrist. Those gloves arrested Richard's attention oddly.
"I do not deny it," Dickie said.
"And having thus outraged, he deserted me. Do you deny that?"
"No," Dickie said again. For it was true, that which she asserted, true, though penetrated by subtle falsehood impossible, as it seemed to him, to combat,—"No, I do not deny it."
"You hear!" Helen exclaimed. "Now do what you think fit."
Still Destournelle drew the gloves through his hands, holding them by the finger-tips.
"Under other circumstances I might feel myself compelled to do you the honour of sending you a challenge,monsieur," he said. "But a man of sensibility like myself cannot do such violence to his moral and artistic code as to fight with an outcast of nature, an abortion, such as yourself. The sword and the pistol I necessarily reserve for my equals. The deformed person, the cripple, whose very existence is an offense to the eye and to every delicacy of sense, must be condescended to, and, if chastised at all, must be chastised without ceremony, chastised as one would chastise a dog."
And with that he struck Richard again and again across the face with those metal-buttoned gloves.
Mad with rage, blinded and sick with pain, Dickie essayed to fling himself upon his assailant. But Destournelle was too adroit for him. He skipped aside, with his little, bleating, goat-like laugh, and Richard fell heavily full length, his forehead coming in contact with the lower step of the descent from the back of the box. He lay there, too weak to raise himself.
Paul Destournelle bent down and again examined him curiously.
"C'est etonnant!" he repeated.—He gave the prostrate body a contemptuous kick. "Dear madame, are you sufficiently avenged? Is it enough?" he inquired sneeringly.
And vaguely, as from some incalculable distance, Richard heard Helen de Vallorbes' voice:—"Yes—it is a little affair of honour which dates from my childhood. It has taken many years in adjusting. I thank you,mon cher, a thousand times. Now let us go quickly. It is enough."
Then came darkness, silence, rest.