The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
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