The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
unsatisfactory--of a piece with the disquieting influences of this grim
and fateful city, with the detestable weather evident there without!
And then, suddenly, an idea came to Helen de Vallorbes, causing the
delicate colour to spring into her cheeks, and the light into her eyes,
veiled by those fringed, semitransparent lids. For, some two years
earlier, Richard Calmady had taken her husband's villa at Naples on
lease, it offering, as he said, a convenient _pied a terre_ to him
while yachting along the adjacent coasts, up the Black Sea to Odessa,
and eastward as far as Aden, and the Persian Gulf. The house, save for
the actual fabric of it, had become rather dilapidated and ruinate. To
de Vallorbes it appeared clearly advantageous to get the property off
his hands, and touch a considerable yearly sum, rather than have his
pocket drained by outgoings on a place in which he no longer cared to
live. So the Villa Vallorbes passed for the time being into Richard
Calmady's possession. It pleased his fancy. Helen heard he had restored
and refurnished it at great expenditure of money and of taste.
These facts she recalled. And, recalling them, found both the actuality
of rain-blurred, wind-scourged town without, and anger-begetting
memories of Brockhurst within, fade before a seductive vision of
sun-bathed Naples and of that nobly placed and painted villa, in
which--as it seemed to her--was just now resident promise of high
entertainment, the objective delight of abnormal circumstance, the
subjective delight of long-cherished revenge. All the rapture of her
existing freedom came back on her, while her brain, fertile in forecast
of adventure, projected scenes and situations not unworthy of the pen
of Boccaccio himself. Fired by such thoughts, she moved from the
window, stood before a tall glass at right angles to it and
contemplated her own fair reflection long and intimately. An absorbing
interest in the general effect, and in the details, of her person
possessed her. She moved to and fro observing the grace of her
carriage, the set of her hips, the slenderness of her waist. She
unfastened her soft, trailing tea-gown, throwing the loose bodice of it
back, critically examining her bare neck, the swell of her beautiful
bosom, the firm contours of her arms from shoulder to elbow. Her skin
was of a clear, golden whiteness, smooth, fine in texture, as that of a
child. Placing her hands on the gilded frame of the mirror, high up on
either side, she observed her face, exquisitely healthful in colour,
even as seen in this mournful, afternoon light. She leaned forward,
gazing intently into her own eyes--meeting in them, as Narcissus in the
surface of the fatal pool, the radiant image of herself. And this
filled her with a certain intoxication, a voluptuous self-love, a
profound persuasion of the power and completeness of her own beauty.
She caressed her own neck, her own lips, with lingering finger-tips.
She bent her bright head and kissed the swell of her cuplike breasts.
Never had she received so entire assurance of the magic of her own
personality.
"It is all--all, as perfect as ever," she exclaimed exultantly. "And
while it remains perfect, it should be made use of."
Helen waved her hand, smiling, to the smiling image in the mirror.
"You and I together--your beauty and my brains--I pit the pair of us
against all mankind! Together we have worked pretty little miracles
before now, causing the proud to lay aside their pride and the godly
their virtue. A man of strange passions shall hardly escape us--nor
shall the mother that bare him escape either."
Her face hardened, her laughing eyes paled to the colour of fine steel.
She lifted the soft-curling hair from off her right temple disclosing a
small, crescent-shaped scar.
"That is the one blemish, and we will exact the price of it--you and
I--to the ultimate _sou_."
Then she moved away, overcome by sudden amusement at her own attitude,
which she perceived risked being slightly comic. Heroics were, to her
thinking, unsuitable articles for home consumption. Yet her purpose
held none the less strongly and steadily because excitement lessened.
She refastened her tea gown, tied the streaming azure ribbons of it,
patted bows and laces into place, walked the length of the room a time
or two to recover her composure, then rang the bell. And, on the
arrival of Charles,--irreproachably correct in dress and demeanour, his
clean-shaven, sharp-featured, rakish countenance controlled to
praiseworthy nullity of expression, she said:--
"The weather is abominable."
The man-servant set down the tray on a little table before her, turned
out the corners of the napkin, deftly arranged the tea-things.
"It is a little dull, my lady."
"How is the glass?"
"Falling steadily, my lady."
"I cannot remain here."
"No, my lady?"
"Find out about the trains south--to Naples."
"Yes, my lady. We can join the Roman express at Chiusi. When does your
ladyship wish to start?"
"I must telegraph first."
"Certainly, my lady."
Charles produced telegraph forms. It was Helen's boast that, upon
request, the man could produce any known object from a packet of pins
to a white elephant, or fully manned battleship. She had a lively
regard for her servant's ability. So had he, it may be added, for that
of his mistress. The telegram was written and despatched. But the reply
took four days in reaching Madame de Vallorbes, and during those days
it rained incessantly. The said reply came in the form of a letter. Sir
Richard Calmady was at Constantinople, so the writer--Bates, his
steward--had reason to believe. But it was probable he would return to
Naples shortly. Meanwhile he--the steward--had permanent orders to the
effect that the villa was at Madame de Vallorbes' disposition should
she at any time express the wish to visit it. She would find everything
prepared for her reception. This information caused Helen singular
satisfaction. It was very charming, very courteous, of Richard thus to
remember her. She set forth from Perugia full of ingenious purpose,
deliciously light of heart.
Thus did it come about that, on the afore-mentioned gay, spring
morning, Madame de Vallorbes breakfasted beneath the glistering dome of
the airy pavilion, all Naples outstretched before her, while the
blossoms of the Judas-trees fell in a red-mauve shower upon the slabs
of the marble pavement, and the mimic waves of the fountain basin, and
upon the clustered curls and truncated shoulders of the bust of Homer
stationed within the soft gloom of the ilex and cypress grove. She had
arrived the previous evening, and had met with a dignified welcome from
the numerous household. Her manner was gracious, kindly,
captivating--she intended it to be all that. She slept well, rose in
buoyant health and spirits, partook of a meal offering example of the
most finished Italian cooking. Finish, in any department, appealed to
Helen's artistic sense. Life was sweet--moreover it was supremely
interesting! Her breakfast ended, rising from her place at table, she
looked away to the purple cone of the great volcano and the uprising of
the smoke of its everlasting burnings. The sight of this, magnificent,
menacing evidence of the anarchic might of the powers of nature,
quickened the pagan instinct in her. She wanted to worship. And even in
so doing, she became aware of a kindred something in herself--of an
answering and anarchic energy, a certain menace to the conventional
works and ways, and fancied security, of groping, purblind man. The
insolence of a great lady, the dangerously primitive instincts of a
great courtesan, filled her with an enormous pride, a reckless
self-confidence.
Turning, she glanced back across the formal garden, bright with waxen
camellias set in glossy foliage, with early roses, with hyacinths,
lemon and orange blossom, towards the villa. Upon the black-and-white
marble balustrade a man leaned his elbows. She could see his broad
shoulders, his bare head. From his height she took him, at first, to be
kneeling, as, motionless, he looked towards her and towards the
splendid view. Then she perceived that he was not kneeling, but
standing upright. She understood, and a very vital sensation ran right
through her, causing the queerest turn in her blood.
"Mercy of heaven!" she said to herself, "is it conceivable that now, at
this time of day, I am capable of the egregious folly of losing my
head?"
CHAPTER II
WHEREIN TIME IS DISCOVERED TO HAVE WORKED CHANGES
Helen, however, did not stay to debate as to the state of her
affections. She had had more than enough of reflection of late. Now
action invited her. She responded. The sweep of her turquoise-blue
cloth skirts sent the fallen Judas-blossoms dancing, to left and right,
in crazy whirling companies. She did not wait even to put on her
broad-brimmed, garden hat,--the crown of it encircled, as luck would
have it, by a garland of pale, pink tulle and pale, pink roses,--but
braved the sunshine with no stouter head-covering than the coils of her
honey-coloured hair. Rapidly she passed up the central alley between
the double row of glossy leaved camellia bushes, laughter in her
downcast eyes and a delicious thrill of excitement at her heart. She
felt strong and light, her being vibrant, penetrated and sustained
throughout by the bracing air, the sparkling, crystal-clear atmosphere.
Yet for all her eagerness Helen remained an artist. She would not
forestall effects. Thriftily she husbanded sensations. Thus, reaching
the base of the black-and-white marble wall supporting the terrace,
where, midway in its long length, it was broken by an arched grotto of
rough-hewn stonework, in which maiden-hair fern rooted,--the delicate
fronds of it caressing the shoulders of an undraped nymph, with
ever-dripping water-pitcher upon her rounded hip,--Helen turned sharp
to the left, and arrived at the bottom of the descending flight of
steps without once looking up. That Richard Calmady still leaned on the
balustrade some twelve to fourteen feet above that same cool, green
grotto she knew well enough. But she did not choose to anticipate
either sight or greeting of him. Both should come to her as a whole.
She would receive a single and unqualified impression.
So, silently, without apparent haste, she passed up the flight of
shallow steps on to the edge of the wide black-and-white chequer-board
platform. It was sun-bathed, suspended, as it seemed, between that
glorious prospect of city, mountain, sea, and the unsullied purity of
the southern heavens. It was vacant, save for the solitary figure and
the sharp-edged, yet amorphous, shadow cast by that same figure. For
the young man had moved as she came up from the garden below. He stood
clear of the balustrade, only the fingers of his left hand resting upon
the handrail of it. Seeing him thus the strangeness, the grotesque
incompleteness, of his person struck her as never before. But this,
though it did not move her to mirth as in her childhood, moved her to
pity no more now than it then had. That which it did was to deepen, to
stimulate, her excitement, to provoke and to satisfy the instinct of
cruelty latent in every pagan nature such as hers. Could Helen have
chosen the moment of her birth she would have been a great lady of
Imperial Rome, holding power of life and death over her slaves, and the
mutes and eunuchs with which the East should have furnished her palace
in the eternal city, and her dainty villa away there on the purple
flanks of Vesuvius at Herculaneum or Pompeii. The delight of her own
loveliness, of her own triumphant health and activity, would have been
increased tenfold by the sight of, by power over, such stultified and