The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
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 the
_parterre_, 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