The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
agitation of composition was too much for me. My mind seethed with
ideas. I became irritable. I comprehend I was in fault. But it is so
easy to recommence, and to range oneself. I accept your assurances
regarding your cousin. It is all so simple. You shall not return to me.
You shall continue your admirable work. But I will return to you. I
will join you at the villa. My society cannot fail to be of pleasure to
your cousin, if he is such a person as you describe. In a _milieu_
removed from care and trivialities I will continue my poem. I may even
dedicate it to your cousin. I may make his name immortal. If he is a
person of taste and ideals, he cannot fail to appreciate so magnificent
a compliment. You will place this before him. You will explain to him
how necessary to me is your presence. He will be glad to cooperate in
procuring it for me. He will understand that in making these
propositions I offer him a unique opportunity, I behave towards him
with signal generosity. And if, at first, the intrusion of a stranger
into his household should appear inconvenient, let him but pause a
little. He will find his reward in the development of my genius and in
the spectacle of our mutual felicity."
Destournelle spoke with great rapidity. The street which they had now
entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered
by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers.
Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming
pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she
addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from her pretty teeth
viciously.
"Oh! you unspeakable idiot!" she said. "Have you no remnant of
decency?"
"Do you mean to imply that Sir Richard Calmady would have the
insolence, is so much the victim of insular prejudice as, to object to
our intimacy?"
Madame de Vallorbes clapped her hands together in a sort of frenzy.
"Idiot, idiot," she repeated. "I wish I could kill you."
Suddenly M. Paul Destournelle had all his wits about him.
"Ah!" he said, with a short laugh, curiously resembling in its malice
the bleating of the little goats, "I perceive that which constitutes
the obstacle to our union. It shall be removed."
He lifted his Panama hat with studied elegance, and turning down a
break-neck, side alley, called, over his shoulder:--
"_Abientot tres chere madame._"
CHAPTER VII
SPLENDIDE MENDAX
Unpunctuality could not be cited as among Madame de Vallorbes'
offenses. Yet, on the morning in question, she was certainly very late
for the twelve o'clock breakfast. Richard Calmady--awaiting her coming
beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion, set in the angle of
the terminal wall of the high-lying garden--had time to become
conscious of slight irritation. It was not merely that he was
constitutionally impatient of delay, but that his nerves were
tiresomely on edge just now. Trifles had power to endanger his somewhat
stoic equanimity. But when at length Helen emerged from the house
irritation was forgotten. Moving through the vivid lights and shadows
of the ilex and cypress grove, her appearance had a charm of unwonted
simplicity. At first sight her graceful person had the effect of being
clothed in a religious habit. Richard's youthful delight in seeing a
woman walk beautifully remained to him. It received satisfaction now.
Helen advanced without haste, a certain grandeur in her demeanour, a
certain gloom, even as one who takes serious counsel of himself,
indifferent to external things, at once actor in, and spectator of,
some drama playing itself out in the theatre of his own soul. And this
effect of dignity, of self-recollection, was curiously heightened by
her dress--of a very soft and fine, woolen material, of spotless white,
the lines of it at once flowing and statuesque. While as head-gear, in
place of some startling construction of contemporary, Parisian
millinery, she wore, after the modest Italian fashion, a black lace
mantilla over her bright hair.
Arrived, she greeted Richard curtly, and without apology for delay
accepted the contents of the first dish offered to her by the waiting
men-servants, ate as though determinedly and putting a force upon
herself, and--that which was unusual with her before sundown--drank
wine. And, watching her, involuntarily Richard's thought traveled back
to a certain luncheon party at Brockhurst, graced by the presence of
genial, puzzle-headed Lord Fallowfeild and members of his numerous
family, when Helen had swept in, even as now, had been self-absorbed,
even as now. Of the drive to Newlands, all in the sad November
afternoon, following on that luncheon, he also thought, of
communications made by Helen during that drive, and of the long course
of event and action directly or indirectly consequent on those
communications. He thought of the fog, too, enveloping and almost
choking him, when in the early morning driven by furies, still virgin
in body as in heart, he had ridden out into a blank and sightless world
hoping the chill of it would allay the fever in his blood,--and of the
fog again, in the afternoon, from out which the branches of the great
trees, like famine-stricken arms in tattered draperies, seemed to pluck
evilly at the carriage, as he walked the smoking horses up and down the
Newlands' drive, waiting for Helen to rejoin him. And now, somehow,
that fog seemed to come up between him and the well-furnished
breakfast-table, between him and the radiant expanse of the vivacious,
capricious, half-classic, half-modern, mercantile city outstretched
there, teeming, breeding, fermenting, in the fecundating heat of the
noonday sun. The chill of the fog struck cold into his vitals now,
giving him the strangest physical sensation. Richard straightened
himself in his chair, passed his hands across his eyes impatiently.
Brockhurst, and all the old life of it, was a subject of which he
forbade himself remembrance. He had divorced himself from all that, cut
himself adrift from it long ago. By an act of will, he tried to put it
out of his mind now. But the fog remained--an actual clouding of his
physical vision, blurring all he looked upon. It was horribly
uncomfortable. He wished he was alone. Then he might have slipped down
from his chair and, according to his poor capacity of locomotion,
sought relief in movement.
Meanwhile, silently, mechanically, Helen de Vallorbes continued her
breakfast. And as she so continued, in addition to his singular
physical sensations of blurred vision and clinging chill, he became
aware of a growing embarrassment and constraint between himself and his
companion. So far, his and her intercourse had been easy and
spontaneous, because superficial. Since that first interview on the
terrace a tacit agreement had existed to avoid the personal note. Now,
for cause unknown, that intercourse threatened entering upon a new
phase. It was as though the concentration, the tension, which he
observed in her, and of which he was sensible in himself, must of
necessity eventuate in some unbosoming, some act--almost
involuntary--of self-revelation. This unaccustomed silence and
restraint seemed to Richard charged with consequences which, in his
present condition of defective volition, he was powerless to prevent.
And this displeased him, mastery of surrounding influences being very
dear to him.
At last, coffee having been served, the men-servants withdrew to the
house, but the constraint was not thereby lessened. Helen sat upright,
her chin resting upon the back of her left hand, her eyes, under their
drooping lids, looking out with a veiled fierceness upon the fair and
glittering prospect. Richard saw her face in profile. The black
mantilla draped her shoulders and bust with a certain austerity of
effect. It was evident that--by something--she had been stirred to the
extinction of her habitual vivacity and desire to shine. And Richard,
for all his coolness of head and rather cynical maturity of outlook,
had a restless suspicion of going forth--even as on that foggy morning
at Brockhurst--into a blank and sightless world, full of hazardous
possibility, where the safe way was difficult of discovery and where
masked dangers might lurk. Solicitous to dissipate his discomfort he
spoke a little at random.
"You must forgive me for being such an abominably bad host," he said
courteously. "I am not quite the thing this morning, somehow. I had a
little go of fever last night. My brain is like so much pulp."
Helen dropped her hand upon the table as though putting a term to an
importunate train of thought.
"I have always understood the villa to be remarkably free from
malaria," she remarked abstractedly.
"So it is. I quite believe that. The servants certainly keep well
enough. But so, unfortunately, is not the port."
Helen turned her head. A vertical line was observable between her
arched eyebrows.
"The port?" she repeated.
Richard swallowed his black coffee. Perhaps it might steady him and
clear his head. The numbness of his faculties and senses alike
exasperated him, filling him with a persuasion he would say precisely
those things wisdom would counsel to leave unsaid.
"Yes--you know I generally go down and sleep on board the yacht."
There was a momentary pause. Madame de Vallorbes' lips parted in a
soundless exclamation. Then she pushed back the modest folds of the
mantilla, leaving her neck free. The action of her hands was very
graceful as she did this, and she looked fixedly at Richard Calmady.
"I did not know that," she said slowly. Then added, as though reasoning
out her own thought:--"And Naples harbour is admittedly one of the most
pestilential holes on the face of the earth. Are you not tempting
providence in the matter of disease, Richard? Are you not rather
wantonly indiscreet?"
"On the contrary," he answered, and something of mockery touched his
expression, "I see it quite otherwise. I have been congratulating
myself on the praiseworthy abundance of my discretion."
And the words were no sooner out of his mouth than Richard cursed
himself for a bungler, and a slightly vulgar one at that. But upon his
hearer those same words worked a remarkable change. Her gloom, her
abstraction, departed, leaving only a pretty pensiveness. She smiled
with chastened sweetness upon Richard Calmady--a smile nicely attuned
to the semi-religious simplicity of her dress.
"Ah! perhaps we are both a trifle out of sorts this morning!" she said.
"I, too, have had my little turn of sickness--sickness of heart. And
that seems unfair, since I rose in the best disposition of spirit.
Quite early I went to confession."
"Confession?" Richard repeated. "I did not know your submission to the
Church carried you to such practical lengths."
"Evidently we are each fated to make small discoveries regarding the
habits of the other, to-day," she rejoined. "Possibly confession is to
me just what those nights spent on board the yacht, lying in that
malodorous harbour, are to you!"
Helen's smile broadened to a dainty naughtiness, infinitely provoking.
But pensiveness speedily supervened. She folded her hands upon the edge
of the table and looked down at them meditatively.
"I relieved my conscience. Not that there was much to relieve it of,
thank heaven! We have lived austerely enough most of us, this winter in
France. Only it becomes a matter of moral, personal cleanliness, after
a time, all that--exaggerated, but very comfortable. Just as one takes
one's bath twice daily, not that it is necessary but that it is a
luxury of physical purity and self-respect, so one comes to go to
confession. That is a luxury of moral purification. It is as a bath to
the soul, ministering to the perfection of its cleanliness and health."