The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 71

"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 s.p.a.ce.

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 part.i.tions of the boxes.

"Very soon now. Immediately, I think, please G.o.d," 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 a.s.sure you that in any case this a.s.sumption 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 appet.i.te 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 G.o.ds 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 att.i.tude 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 the _parterre_ alone in their attack. For those gay-coloured larvae--the men and women of his own cla.s.s--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 att.i.tude 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."

d.i.c.kie looked up. He did not speak. Vaguely he prayed it might all soon be over. Paul Destournelle looked down. He raised his eye-gla.s.s 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 b.u.t.tons of them were large, three on each wrist. Those gloves arrested Richard's attention oddly.

"I do not deny it," d.i.c.kie said.

"And having thus outraged, he deserted me. Do you deny that?"

"No," d.i.c.kie said again. For it was true, that which she a.s.serted, 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 circ.u.mstances 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-b.u.t.toned gloves.

Mad with rage, blinded and sick with pain, d.i.c.kie essayed to fling himself upon his a.s.sailant. 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.

BOOK VI

THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH MISS ST. QUENTIN BEARS WITNESS TO THE FAITH THAT IS IN HER

Honoria divested herself of her traveling-cap, thrust her hands into the pockets of her frieze ulster, and thus, bareheaded, a tall, supple, solitary figure, paced the railway platform in the dusk. Above the gentle undulations of the western horizon splendours of rose-crimson sunset were outspread, veiled, as they flamed upward, by indigo cloud of the texture and tenuity of finest gauze. And those same rose-crimson splendours found repet.i.tion upon the narrow, polished surface of the many lines of rails, causing them to stand out, as though of red-hot metal, from the undeterminate gray-drab of the track where it curved away, southeastward, across the darkening country towards the Savoy Alps. And from out the fastnesses of these last, quick with the bleak purity of snow, came a breathing of evening wind. To Honoria it brought refreshing emphasis of silence, and of immunity from things human and things mechanical. It spoke to her of virgin and unvisited s.p.a.ces, ignorant of mankind and of obligation to his so many and so insistent needs. And there being in Honoria herself a kindred defiance of subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical and emotional chast.i.ty, she welcomed these intimations of the essential inviolability of nature, finding in them justification and support of her own mental att.i.tude--of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned, grown slightly suspicious of late.

And this was the more grateful to her, not only as contrast to the noise and dust of a lengthy and hurriedly-undertaken journey, but because that same journey had been suddenly and, in a sense violently, imposed upon one whom she held in highest regard, by another whom she had long since agreed with herself to hold in no sort of regard at all.

Since the highly-regarded one set forth, she--Honoria--of course, set forth likewise. And yet, in good truth, the whole affair rubbed her not a little the wrong way! She recognised in it a particularly flagrant example of masculine aggression. Some persons, as she reflected, are permitted an amount of elbow room altogether disproportionate to their deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is, indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispa.s.sionate onlooker.

And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not only as to the actuality of her own dispa.s.sionateness, but, as has already been stated, to the wisdom of her mental att.i.tude generally. She wanted to think and feel one way. She was more than half afraid she was much disposed to think and feel quite another way. This was worrying. And, therefore, it came about that Honoria hailed the present interval of silence and solitude, striving to put from her remembrance both the origin and object of her journey, while filling her lungs with the snow-fed purity of the mountain wind and yielding her spirit to the somewhat serious influences of surrounding nature. All too soon the great Paris-express would thunder into the station. The heavy, horse-box-like sleeping-car--now standing on the Culoz-Geneva-Bale siding--would be coupled to the rear of it. Then the roar and rush would begin again--from dark to dawn, and on through the long, bright hours to dark once more, by mountain gorge, and stifling tunnel, and broken woodland, and smiling coastline, and fertile plain, past Chambery, and Turin, and Bologna, and mighty Rome herself, until the journey was ended and distant Naples reached at last.

But Miss St. Quentin's communings with nature were destined to speedy interruption. Ludovic Quayle's elongated person, clothed to the heels in a check traveling-coat, detached itself from the company of waiting pa.s.sengers, and blue-linen-clad porters, upon the central platform before the main block of station buildings, and made its light and active way across the intervening lines of crimson-stained metals.

"If I am a nuisance mention that chastening fact without hesitation,"