The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
startling, but whether any sensible increase of happiness, either to
yourself or others, will be counted among them is open to question."
Richard laughed bitterly.--"I shall have lived, anyhow," he rejoined.
"Worn out, not rusted and rotted out--which, according to our former
fine-fanciful programme, seemed the only probable consummation of my
unlucky existence."
His tone changed, becoming quietly businesslike and indifferent.
"I am entering horses for some of the French events, and I go through
to Paris to-morrow to see various men there and make the necessary
arrangements. I shall take Chifney with me for a few days. But the
stables will not give you any trouble. He will have given all the
orders."
"Very well," Katherine said mechanically.
"Later I shall go on to Baden-Baden."
Katharine rallied somewhat.
"Helen de Vallorbes is there," she said, not without a trace of her
former pride.
"Certainly Helen de Vallorbes is there," he answered. "That is why I
go. I want to see her. It is inconsistent, I admit, for Helen remains
the one person gloriously untouched by the wreck of the former order of
things. Pray let there be no misconception on that point. She belonged
to the ideal order, she belongs to it still."
"Ah, my dear, my dear!" Katharine almost cried. His perversity hurt her
a little too much so that the small, upspringing flame of decent pride
was quenched.
"Yes," he went on, "there was my initial, my cardinal, mistake. For I
was a traitor to all that was noblest and best in me, when I persuaded
myself, and weakly permitted you to persuade me, that a loveless
marriage is better than a love in which marriage is impossible,--that
Lady Constance Quayle, poor little soul, bought, paid for, and my
admitted property, could fill Helen's place,--though Helen was--and I
intend her to remain so, for I care for her enough to hold her honour
as sacred as I do your own--forever inaccessible."
Lady Calmady staggered to her feet.
"That is enough, Richard," she said. "That is enough. If you have more
to say, in pity leave it until to-morrow."
The young man looked at her strangely.
"You are ill, mother," he said.
"No, no, I am only broken-hearted," she replied. "And a broken heart,
alas! never killed so healthy a body as mine. I shall survive this--and
more perhaps. God knows. Do not vex yourself about me, Dickie.--Go,
live your life as it seems fit to you. I have not the will, even had I
the right, to restrain you. And meanwhile I will be the steward of your
goods, as, long ago, when you were a child and belonged to me wholly.
You can trust me to be faithful and discreet, at least in financial and
practical matters. If you ever need me, I will come even to the ends of
the earth. And should the desire take you to return, here you will find
me.--And so, good-bye, my darling. I am foolishly tired. I grow
lightheaded, and dare not linger, lest in my weakness I say that which
I afterwards regret."
She passed to the door and went out, without looking back.
Left to himself Richard Calmady crossed to the writing-table, swung
himself up into the revolving-chair, and remained there sorting and
docketing papers far into the night. But once, stooping, with
long-armed adroitness, to unlock the lowest drawer of the table, a
madness of disgust towards the unsightliness of his own person seized
on and tore him.
"Oh! God, God, God," he cried aloud, in the extremity of his passion,
"why hast Thou made me thus?"
And to that question, as yet, there was no answer, though it rang afar
over the sleeping park, and up to the clear shining stars of the
profound and peaceful summer night.
BOOK V
RAKE'S PROGRESS
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH THE READER IS COURTEOUSLY ENTREATED TO GROW OLDER BY THE SPACE
OF SOME FOUR YEARS, AND TO SAIL SOUTHWARD HO! AWAY
The southeasterly wind came fresh across the bay from the crested range
of the Monte Sant' Angelo. The blossoms of the Judas-trees, breaking
from the smooth gray stems and branches--on which they perch so
quaintly--fell in a red-mauve shower upon the slabs of the marble
pavement, upon the mimic waves of the fountain basin, and upon the
clustering curls, and truncated shoulders, of the bust of Homer
standing in the shade of the grove of cypress and ilex which sheltered
the square, high-lying hill-garden, at this hour of the morning, from
the fierceness of the sun. They floated as far even as the semicircular
steps of the pavilion on the extreme right--the leaded dome of which
showed dark and livid on the one side, white and glistering on the
other, against the immense and radiant panorama of mountain, sea, and
sky.
The garden, its fountains, neatly clipped shrubs, and formal paved
alleys, was backed by a large villa of the square, flat-roofed order
common to southern Italy. The record of its age had recently suffered
modification by application of a coat of stucco, of a colour
intermediate between faint lemon-yellow and pearl-gray, and by the
renovation of the fine arabesques--Pompeian in character--decorating
the narrow interspaces between its treble range of Venetian shutters.
Otherwise, the aspect of the Villa Vallorbes showed but small
alteration since the year when, for a few socially historic weeks, the
"glorious Lady Blessington," and her strangely assorted train,
condescended to occupy it prior to taking up their residence at the
Palazzo Belvedere near by. The walls were sufficiently massive to
withstand a siege. The windows of the ground floor, set in deeply-hewn
ashlar work, were cross-barred as those of a prison. Above, the central
windows and door of the entresol, opened on to a terrace of black and
white marble, from which at either end a wide, shallow-stepped, curved
stairway led down into the garden. The first floor consisted of a suite
of noble rooms, each of whose lofty windows gave on to a balcony of
wrought ironwork, very ornate in design. The topmost story, immediately
below the painted frieze of the parapet, coincided in height and in
detail with the entresol.
The villa was superbly situated upon an advancing spur of hill, so
that, looking down from its balconies, looking out from between the
pale and slender columns of the pavilion, the whole city of Naples lay
revealed below.--Naples, that bewildering union of modern commerce and
classic association--its domes, its palms, its palaces, its crowded,
hoarse-shouting quays, its theatres and giant churches, its steep and
filthy lanes black with shadow, its reeking markets, its broad,
sun-scorched piazzas, its glittering, blue waters, its fringing forest
of tall masts, and innumerable, close-packed hulls of oceangoing ships!
Naples, city of glaring contrasts--heaven of rascality, hell of horses,
unrivaled all the western world over for natural beauty, for spiritual
and moral grossness! Naples, breeding, teeming, laughing, fighting,
festering, city of music, city of fever and death! Naples, at once
abominable and enchanting--city to which, spite of noise, stenches,
cruelty and squalor, those will return, of necessity, and return again,
whose imagination has once been taken captive in the meshes of her
many-coloured net!
And among the captives of Naples, on the brilliant morning in question
in the early spring of the year 1871, open-eared and open-eyed to its
manifest and manifold incongruities, relishing alike the superficial
beauty and underlying bestiality of it, was very certainly Helen de
Vallorbes. Several years had elapsed since she had visited this
fascinating locality, and she could congratulate herself upon
conditions adapted to a more intimate and comprehensive acquaintance
with its very various humours than she had ever enjoyed before. She had
spent more than one winter here, it is true, immediately subsequent to
her marriage. But she had then been required to associate exclusively
with the members of her husband's family, and to fill a definite
position in the aristocratic society of the place. The tone of that
society was not a little lax. Yet, being notably defective in the
saving grace of humour--as to the feminine portion of it, at all
events--its laxity proved sadly deficient in vital interest. The fair
Neapolitans displayed as small intelligence in their intrigues as in
their piety. In respect of both they remained ignorant, prejudiced,
hopelessly conventional. Their noble ancestresses of the Renaissance
understood and did these things better--so Helen reflected. She found
herself both bored and irritated. She feared she had taken up her
residence in southern Italy quite three centuries too late.
But all that was in the past--heaven be praised for it! Just now she
was her own mistress, at liberty--thanks to the fortune of war--to
comport herself as she pleased and obey any caprice that took her. The
position was ideal in its freedom, while the intrinsic value of it was
enhanced by contrast with recent disagreeable experiences. For the
alarms and deprivations of the siege of Paris were but lately over. She
had come through them unscathed in health and fortune. Yet they had
left their mark. During those months of all-encompassing disappointment
and disaster the eternal laughter--in which she trusted--had rung
harshly sardonic, to the breaking down of self-confidence, and
light-hearted, cynic philosophy. It scared her somewhat. It made her
feel old. It chilled her with suspicion of the actuality of The Four
Last Things--death and judgment, heaven and hell. The power of a merry
scepticism waxed faint amid the scream of shells and long-drawn,
murderous crackle of the _mitrailleuse_. Helen, indeed, became actively
superstitious, thereby falling low in her own self-esteem. She took to
frequenting churches, and spending long, still days with the nuns, her
former teachers, within the convent of the Sacre Coeur. Circumstances
so worked upon her that she made her submission, and was solemnly and
duly received back into the fold of the Church. She confessed ardently,
yet with certain politic reservations. The priest, after all, is but
human. It is only charitable to be considerate of his feelings--so she
argued--and avoid overburdening his conscience, poor dear man, by
blackening your own reputation too violently! The practice of religion
was a help--truly it was, since it served to pass the time. And then,
who could tell but that it might not prove really useful hereafter, as,
when all is said and done, those dread Four Last Things will present
themselves to the mind, in hours of depression with haunting
pertinacity? It is clearly wise, then, to be on the safe side of Holy
Church in these matters, accepting her own assertion that she is very
certainly on the safe side of the Deity.
Yet, notwithstanding her pious exercises, Helen de Vallorbes found
existing circumstances excessively disturbing and disquieting. She was
filled with an immense self-pity. She feared her health was failing.
She became nervously sensible of her eight-and-twenty years, telling
herself that her youth and the glory of it had departed. She wore black
dresses, rolled bandages, pulled lint. Selecting Mary Magdalene as her
special intercessor, she made a careful study of the life and legends
of that saint. This proved stimulating to her imagination. She
proceeded to write a little one-act drama concerning the holy woman's
dealings, subsequent to her conversion, quite late in life in fact,
with such as survived of her former lovers. The dialogue was very
moving in parts. Helen read it aloud one bleak January evening, by the
light of a single candle, to her friend M. Paul Destournelle, poet and
novelist--with whom, just then, by her own desire, her relations were
severely platonic--and they both wept. The application, though