CHAPTER V

TELLING HOW QUEEN MARY'S CRYSTAL BALL CAME TO FALL ON THE GALLERY FLOOR

This world is unquestionably a vastly stimulating and entertaining

place if you take it aright--namely, if you recognise that it is the

creation of a profound humorist, is designed for wholly practical and

personal uses, and proceed to adapt your conduct to that knowledge in

all light-heartedness and good faith. Thus, though in less trenchant

phrase since she was still happily very young, meditated Madame de

Vallorbes, while standing in the pensive October sunshine upon the wide

flight of steps which leads down from the main entrance of Brockhurst

House. Tall, stone pinnacles alternating with seated griffins--long of

tail, fierce of beak and sharp of claw--fill in each of the many angles

of the descending stone balustrade on either hand. Behind her, the

florid, though rectangular, decoration of the house front ranged up,

storey above storey, in arcade and pilaster, heavily mullioned window,

carven plaque and string course, to pairs of matching pinnacles and

griffins--these last rampant, supporting the Calmady shield and

coat-of-arms--the quaint forms of which break the long line of the

pierced, stone parapet in the centre of the facade, and rise above the

rusty red of the low-pitched roofs, until the spires of the one and

crested heads of the other are outlined against the sky. About her feet

the pea-fowl stepped in mincing and self-conscious elegance--the cocks

with rustlings of heavy trailing quills, the hens and half-grown chicks

with squeakings and whifflings--subdued, conversational--accompanied by

the dry tap of many bills picking up the glossy grains of Indian-corn

which she let dribble slowly down upon the shallow steps from between

her pretty fingers. She had huddled a soft sable tippet about her

throat and shoulders. The skirt of her indigo-coloured, poplin dress,

turning upon the step immediately above that on which she stood, showed

some inches of rose-scarlet, silken frill lining the hem of it.

Helen de Vallorbes had a lively consciousness of her surroundings. She

enjoyed every detail of them. Enjoyed the gentle, southwesterly wind

which touched her face and stirred her bright hair, enjoyed the

plaintive, autumn song of a robin perched on a rose-grown wall, enjoyed

the impotent ferocity of the guardian griffins, enjoyed the small

sounds made by the feeding pea-fowl, the modest quaker grays and the

imperial splendours of their plumage. She enjoyed the turn of her own

wrist, its gold chain-bracelet and the handsome lace falling away from

and displaying it, as she held out the handfuls of corn. She enjoyed

even that space of rose-scarlet declaring itself between the dull blue

of her dress and the gray, weathered surface of the stone.

But all these formed only the accompaniment, the ground-tone, to more

reasoned, more vital enjoyments. Before her, beyond the carriage sweep,

lay the square lawn enclosed by red walls and by octagonal, pepper-pot

summer-houses, whereon--unwillingly, yet in obedience to the wild

justice of revenge--Roger Ormiston had shot the Clown, half-brother to

Touchstone, race-horse of mournful memory. As a child Helen had heard

that story. Now her somewhat light, blue-gray eyes, their beautiful

lids raised wide for once, looked out curiously upon the space of

dew-powdered turf; while the corners of her mouth--a mouth a trifle

thin lipped, yet soft and dangerously sweet for kissing--turned upward

in a reflective smile. She, too, knew what it was to be angry, to the

point of revenge; had indeed come to Brockhurst not without purpose of

that last tucked away in some naughty convolution of her active brain.

But Brockhurst and its inhabitants had proved altogether more

interesting than she had anticipated. This was the fourth day of her

visit, and each day had proved more to her taste than the preceding

one. So she concluded this matter of revenge might very well stand over

for the moment, possibly stand over altogether. The present was too

excellent, of its kind, to risk spoiling. Helen de Vallorbes valued the

purple and fine linen of a high civilisation; nor did she disdain,

within graceful limits, to fare sumptuously every day. She valued all

that is beautiful and costly in art, of high merit and distinction in

literature. Her taste was sure and just, if a little more disposed

towards that which is sensuous than towards that which is spiritual.

And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a

kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury--waste. Appreciated

these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of

each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave

at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh

in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very

finest ironies of the great comedy of existence. It heightened, it

accentuated the drama. And among the many good things of life, drama,

come how and where and when it might, seemed to her supremely the best.

She desired it as a lover his mistress. To detect it, to observe it,

gave her the keenest pleasure. To take a leading part in and shape it

to the turn of her own heart, her own purpose, her own wit was, so far,

her ruling passion.

And of potential drama, of the raw material of it, as the days passed,

she found increasingly generous store at Brockhurst. It invaded and

held her imagination, as the initial conception of his poem will that

of the poet, or of his picture that of the painter. She brooded over

it, increasingly convinced that it might be a masterpiece. For the

drama--as she apprehended it--contained not only elements of virility

and strength, but an element, and that a persistent one, of the

grotesque. This put the gilded dome to her silent, and perhaps slightly

unscrupulous, satisfaction. How could it be otherwise, since the

presence of the grotesque is, after all, the main justification of the

theory on which her philosophy of life was based--namely, the belief

that above all eloquence of human speech, behind all enthusiasm of

human action or emotion, the ear which hears aright can always detect

the echo of eternal laughter? And this grim echo did not affect the

charming young lady to sadness as yet. Still less did it make her mad,

as the mere suspicion of it has made so many, and those by no means

unworthy or illiterate persons. For the laugh, so far, had appeared to

be on her side, never at her expense--which makes a difference. And the

chambers of her house of life were too crowded by health and agreeable

sensations, mental activities and sparkling audacities, to have any one

of them vacant for reception, more than momentary, of that

thrice-blessed guest, pity.

And so it followed that, as she fed the mincing pea-fowl, Madame de

Vallorbes' smile changed in character from reflection to impatience. A

certain heat running through her, she set her pretty teeth and fell to

pelting the pea-hens and chicks mischievously, breaking up all their

aristocratic reserve and making them jump and squeak to some purpose.

For this precious, this very masterpiece of a drama was not only here

potentially, but actually. It was alive. She had felt it move under her

hand--or under her heart, which was it?--yesterday evening. Again this

morning, just now, she had noted signs of its vitality, wholly

convincing to one skilled in such matters. Impatience, then, became

very excusable.

"For my time is short and the action disengages itself so deplorably

slowly!" she exclaimed. "Pah! you greedy, conceited birds, which do you

hold dearest after all, the filling of your little stomachs, or the

supporting of your little dignities? Be advised by a higher

intelligence. Revenge yourselves on the grains that hit and sting you

by gobbling them up. It is a venerable custom that of feasting upon

one's enemies. And has been practised, in various forms, both by

nations and individuals. There, I give you another chance of displaying

wisdom--there--there!--La! la! what an absurd commotion! You little

idiots, don't flutter. Agitation is a waste of energy, and advances

nothing. I declare peace. I want to consider."

And so, letting the remaining handfuls of corn dribble down very

slowly, while the sunshine grew warmer and the shadows of the guardian

griffins more distinct upon the lichen-encrusted stones, Helen de

Vallorbes sank back into meditation--Yes, unquestionably the drama was

alive. But it seemed so difficult to bring it to the birth. And she

wanted, very badly, to hear its first half-articulate cries and watch

its first staggering footsteps. All that is so entertaining, you

yourself safely grown-up, standing very firm on your feet, looking

down! And it would be a lusty child, this drama, very soon reaching

man's estate and man's inspiring violence of action, striking out like

some blind, giant Samson, blundering headlong in its unseeing,

uncalculating strength.--Helen laid her hands upon her bosom, and threw

back her head, while her throat bubbled with suppressed laughter. Ah!

it promised to be a drama of ten thousand, if she knew her power, and

knew her world--and she possessed considerable confidence in her

knowledge of both. Only, how on earth to set the crystal free of the

matrix, how to engage battle, how to get this thing fairly and squarely

born? For, as she acknowledged, in the flotation of all such merry

schemes as her present one, chance encounters, interludes, neatly

planned evasions and resultant pursuits, play so large and important a

part. But at Brockhurst this whole chapter of accidents was barred, and

received rules of strategy almost annihilated, by the fact of Richard

Calmady's infirmity and the hard-and-fast order of domestic procedure,

the elaborate system of etiquette, which that infirmity had gradually

produced. At Brockhurst there were no haphazard exits and entrances.

These were either hopelessly official and public, or guarded to an

equally hopeless point of secrecy. A contingent of tall, civil

men-servants was always on duty. Richard was invariably in his place at

table when the rest of the company came down. The ladies took their

after-dinner coffee in the drawing-room, and joined the gentlemen in

the Chapel-Room, library, or gallery, as the case might be. If they

rode, Richard was at the door ready mounted, along with the grooms and

led-horses. If they drove, he was already seated in the carriage.

"And how, how in the name of common sense," Madame de Vallorbes

exclaimed, stamping her foot, and thereby throwing the now thoroughly

nervous pea-fowl into renewed agitation, "are you to establish any

relation worth mentioning with a man who is perpetually being carried

in procession like a Hindu idol? My good birds, one's never alone with

him--whether by design and arrangement, I know not. But, so far, never,

never, picture that! And yet, don't tell me, matchless mixture of pride

and innocence though he is, he wouldn't like it!"

However, she checked her irritation by contemplation of yesterday. Ah!

that had been very prettily done assuredly. For riding in the forenoon

along the road skirting the palings of the inner park, while they

walked their horses over the soft, brown bed of fallen fir-needles,--she,

her father, and Dick,--the conversation dealt with certain first

editions and their bindings, certain treasures, unique in historic

worth, locked in the glass tables and fine Florentine and _pietra dura_

cabinets of the Long Gallery. Mr. Ormiston was a connoisseur and talked

well. And Helen had sufficient acquaintance with such matters both to

appreciate, and to add telling words to the talk.

"Ah! but I cannot go without seeing those delectable things, Richard,"

she said. "Would it be giving you altogether too much trouble to have

them out for me?"

"Why, of course not. You shall see them whenever you like," he

answered. "Julius knows all about them. He'll be only too delighted to

act showman."

Just here the road narrowed a little, and Mr. Ormiston let his horse

drop a few lengths behind, so that she, Helen, and her cousin rode

forward side by side. The tones of the low sky, of the ranks of firs

and stretches of heather formed a rich, though sombre, harmony of

colour. Scents, pungent and singularly exhilarating, were given off by

the damp mosses and the peaty moorland soil. The freedom of the forest,

the feeling of the noble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the

excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the

close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the edge of

that excitement to a perfect keenness of pleasure.

"Ah, how glorious it all is!" she cried. "How glad I am that you asked

me to come here."

And she turned to Richard, looking at him as, since the first day of

their meeting, she had not, somehow, quite ventured to look.

"But, oh! dear me! please," she went on, "I know Mr. March is an angel,

a saint--but--but--_mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_, I don't want him to

show me those special treasures of yours. He'll take the life out of

them. I know it. And make them seem like things read of merely in a

learned book. Be very charming to me, Richard. Waste half an hour upon

me. Show me those moving relics yourself."

As she spoke, momentary suspicion rose in Dickie's eyes. But she gazed

back unflinchingly, with the uttermost frankness, so that suspicion

died, giving place to the shy, yet triumphant, gladness of youth which

seeks and finds youth.

"Do, Richard, pray do," she repeated.

The young man had averted his face rather sharply, and both horses,

somehow, broke into a hand gallop.

"All right," he answered. "I'll arrange it. This evening, about six,

after tea? Will that suit you? I'll send you word."

Then the road had widened, permitting Mr. Ormiston to draw up to them

again. The remainder of the ride had been a little silent.

Yes, all that had been prettily done. Nor had the piece that followed

proved unworthy of the prelude. She ran over the scene in her mind now,

as she stood among the pocketing pea-fowl, and it caused her both mirth

and delightful little heats, in which the heart has a word to

say.--Madame de Vallorbes was ravished to feel her heart, just now and

again.--For, contradictory as it may seem, no game is perfect that has

not moments of seriousness.--She recalled the aspect of the Long

Gallery, as one of those civil, ever-present men-servants had opened

the door for her, and she waited a moment on the threshold. The true

artist is never in a hurry. The breadth of the great room immediately

before her showed very bright with candle-light and lamplight. But that

died away, through gradations of augmenting obscurity, until the

extreme end, towards the western bay, melted out into complete

darkness. This produced an effect of almost limitless length which

moved her to a childish, and at first pleasing, fancy of vague

danger--an effect heightened by the ranges of curious and costly

objects standing against, or decorating, the walls in a perspective of

deepening gloom. Turquoise-coloured, satin curtains, faded to intimate

accord with the silvered surface of the paneling, were drawn across the

wide windows. They reached to the lower edge of the stonework merely,

leaving blottings of impenetrable shadow below. While, as culmination

of interest, as living centre of this rich and varied setting, was the

figure of Richard Calmady--seen, as his custom was, only to the

waist--seated in a high-backed chair drawn close against an antique,

oak table, upon which a small _pietra dura_ cabinet shad been placed.

The doors of the cabinet stood open, displaying slender columns of

jasper and porphyry, and little drawers encrusted with raised work in

marbles and precious stones. The young man sat stiffly upright, as one

who listens, expectant. His expression was almost painfully serious. In

one hand he held a string of pearls, attached to which, and enclosed by

intersecting hoops of gold, was a crystal ball that shone with the mild

effulgence of a mimic moon. And the great room was so very quiet, that

Helen, in her pause upon the threshold, had remarked the sound of

raindrops tapping upon the many window-panes as with impatiently

nervous fingers.

And this bred in her a corresponding nervousness--sensation to her,

heretofore, almost unknown. The darkness yonder began to provoke a

disagreeable impression, queerly challenging both her eyesight and her

courage. Old convent teachings, regarding the Prince of Darkness and

his emissaries, returned upon her. What if diabolic shapes lurked

there, ready to become stealthily emergent? She had scoffed at such

archaic fancies in the convent, yet, in lonely hours, had suffered

panic fear of them, as will the hardiest sceptic. A certain little

scar, moreover, carefully hidden under the soft hair arranged low on

her right temple, smarted and pricked. In short, her habitual

self-confidence suffered partial eclipse. She was visited by the

disintegrating suspicion, for once, that the eternal laughter might,

possibly, be at her expense, rather than on her side.

But she conquered such suspicion as contemptible, and cast out the

passing weakness. The bare memory of it angered her now, causing her to

fire a volley of yellow corn at a lordly peacock, which sent him

scuttling down the steps on to the gravel in most plebeian haste. Yes,

she had speedily cast out her weakness, thank heaven! What was all the

pother about after all? This was not the first time she had played

merry games with the affairs and affections of men. Madame de Vallorbes

smiled to herself, recalling certain episodes, and shook her charming

shoulders gleefully, as she looked out into the sunny morning. And

then, was there not ample excuse? This man moved her more than

most--more than any. She swore he did. Her attitude towards him was

something new, something quite different, thereby justifying her

campaign. And therefore, all the bolder for her brief self-distrust and

hesitation, she had swept across the great room, light of foot, and

almost impertinently graceful of carriage.

"Here you are at last!" Dickie had exclaimed, with a sigh as of relief.

"I shan't want anything more, Powell. You can come back when the

dressing-bell rings." Then, as the valet closed the door behind him, he

continued rapidly:--"Not that I propose to victimise you till then,

Helen. You mustn't stay a bit longer than you like. I confess I'm

awfully fond of this room. I'm almost ashamed to think how much time I

waste in it. Doing what? Oh, well, just dreaming! You see it contains

samples of the doings of all my father's people, and I return to

primitive faiths here and to perform acts of ancestor worship."

"Ah! I like that!" Helen said. And she did. Picture this man, long of

arm, unnaturally low of stature, and astonishingly--yes, quite

astonishingly good-looking, moving about among these books and

pictures, these trophies of war and of sport, these oriental jars, tall

almost as himself, and all the other strange furnishings from out

distant years and distant lands! Picture him emerging from that well of

soft darkness yonder, for instance! Helen's eyes danced under their

arched and drooping lids, and she registered the fact that, though

still frightened, her fright had changed in character. It was grateful

to her palate. She relished it as the bouquet of a wine of finest

quality. Meanwhile her companion talked on.

"The ancestor worship? Oh yes! I dare say you might like it for a

change. Getting it as I do, as habitual diet, it is not remarkably

stimulating. The natural man prefers to find occasion for worshipping

himself rather than his ancestors, after all, you know. But a little

turn of it will serve to fill in a gap and lessen the monotony of your

visit. I am afraid you must be a good deal bored, Helen. It must seem

rather terribly humdrum here after Paris and Naples, and--well--most

places, at that rate, as you know them."

Richard shifted his position. And the crystal moon encompassed by

golden bands, crossing and intersecting one another like those of a

sidereal sphere, gleamed as with an inward and unearthly light,

swinging slowly upon the movement of his hand.

"You must feel here as though the clock had been put back two or three

centuries. I know we move slowly, and conduct ourselves with tedious

deliberation. And so, you understand, you mustn't let me keep you. Just

look at what you like of these odds and ends, and then depart without

scruple. It's rather a fraud, in any case, my showing them to you.

Julius March, as I told you, is much better qualified to."

"Julius March, Julius March," Madame de Vallorbes broke in. "Do, I

beseech you, dear Cousin Richard, leave him to the pious retirement of

his study. Is he not middle-aged, and a priest into the bargain?"

"Unquestionably," Dickie said. "But, pardon me, I don't quite see what

that has to do with it."

Thereupon Madame de Vallorbes made a very naughty, little grimace and

drummed with her finger-tips upon the table.

"La! la!" she cried, "you're no better than all the rest. Commend me to

a clever man for incapacity to apprehend what is patent to the

intelligence of the most ordinary woman. Look about you."--Helen

sketched in their surroundings with a quick descriptive gesture.

"Observe the lights and shadows. The ghostly wavings of those pale

curtains. Smell the potpourri and spices. Think of the ancestor

worship. Listen to the protesting wind and rain. See the mysterious

treasure you hold in your hand. And then ask me what middle-age and the

clerical profession have to do with all this! Why, nothing, just

precisely nothing, nothing in the whole world. That's the point of my

argument. They'd ruin the sentiment, blight the romance, hopelessly

blight it--for me at least."

The conversation was slightly embarrassed, both Helen and Richard

talking at length, yet at random. But she knew that it was thus, and

not otherwise, that it behooved them to talk. For that which they said

mattered not in the least. The thing said served as a veil, as a cloak,

merely, wherewith to disguise those much greater things which,

perforce, remained unsaid.--To cover his and her lively consciousness

of their present isolation, desired these many days and now obtained.

To conceal the swift, silent approaches of spirit to spirit, so full of

inquiry and self-revelation, fugitive reserves and fugitive distrusts.

To hide, as far as might be, the existence of the hungry,

all-compelling _joie de vivre_ which is begotten whensoever youth thus

seeks and finds youth.--These unspoken and, as yet, unspeakable things

were alone of real moment, making eyes lustrous and lips quick with

tremulous, uncalled-for smiles irrespective of the purport of their

speech.

"Ah! but that's rather rough on poor dear Julius, you know," Dickie

said. "I suppose you wanted to learn all----"

"Learn?" she interrupted. "I wanted to feel. Don't you know there is

only one way any woman worth the name ever really learns--through her

emotions? Only the living feel. Such men as he, if they are sincere,

are already dead. He would have made feeling impossible."

A perceptible hush descended upon the room. Richard Calmady's hand

usually was steady enough, but, in the silence, the pearls chattered

against the table. He went rather pale and his face hardened.

"And are you getting anything of that which you wanted, Helen?" he

asked. "For sometimes in the last few days--since you have been

here--I--I have wondered if perhaps we were not all like that--all

dead----"

"You mean do I get emotion, am I feeling?" she said. "Rest contented.

Much is happening. Indeed I have doubted, during the last few days,

since I have been here, whether I have ever known what it is to feel

actually and seriously before."

She sat down at right angles to him, resting her elbows upon the table,

her chin upon her folded hands, leaning a little towards him. One of

those pleasant heats swept over her, flushing her delicate skin,

lending a certain effulgence to her beauty. The scent of roses long

faded hung in the air. But here was a rose sweeter far than they. No

white rose of paradise, it must be confessed. Rather like her immortal

namesake, that classic Helen, was she _rosa mundi_, glowing with warmth

and colour, rose-red rose altogether of this dear, naughty, lower

world?

"Richard," she said impulsively, "why don't you understand? Why do you

underrate your own power? Don't you know that you are quite the most

moving, the most attractive--well--cousin, a woman ever had?"

She looked closely at him, her lips a little parted, her head thrown

back.

"Life is sweet, dear cousin. Reckon with yourself and with it, and

live--live."--Then she put out her hand and held up the crystal between

her face and his. "There," she went on, "tell me about this. I become

indiscrete, thanks I suppose to your Brockhurst habit of putting back

the clock, and speak with truly Elizabethan frankness. It belongs to

semi-barbaric ages, doesn't it, this, to tell the true truth? Show me

this. It seems rather fascinating."

And Richard obeyed mechanically, pointing out to her the signs of the

Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance

engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same

bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal

sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid

it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of

all this, their heads--his and hers--were very near together, and their

hands met. But they were very solemn all the while, solemn, eager,

busy, as two babies revealing to each other the mysteries of a newly

acquired toy. And it seemed to Madame de Vallorbes that all this was as

pretty a bit of business as ever served to help forward such gay

purposes as hers. She was pleased with herself too--for did she not

feel very gentle, very sincere, really very innocent and good?

"No, hold it so," Richard said, rounding her fingers carefully, that

the tips of them might alone touch the surface of the crystal. "Now

gaze into the heart of it steadily, fixing your will to see. Pictures

will come presently, dimly at first, as in a mist. Then the mist will

lift and you will read your own fortune and--perhaps--some other

person's fate."

"Have you ever read yours?"

"Oh! mine's of a sort that needs no crystal to reveal it," he answered,

with a queer drop in his voice. "It's written in rather indecently big

letters and plain type. Always has been."

Helen glanced at him. His words whipped up her sense of drama, fed her

excitement. But she bent her eyes upon the crystal again, and the hush

descended once more, disturbed only by that nervous tapping of rain.

"I see nothing, nothing," she said presently. "And there is much I

would give very much to see."

"You must gaze with a simple intention." The young man's voice came

curiously hoarse and broken. "Purify your mind of all desire."

Helen did not raise her head.

"Alas! if those are the conditions of revelation my chances of seeing

are extremely limited. To purify one's mind of all desire is to commit

emotional suicide. Of course I desire, all the while I desire. And

equally, of course, you desire. Every one who is human and in their

sober senses must do that. Absence of desire means idiotcy, or----"

"Or what?"

For an instant she looked up at him, a very devil of dainty malice in

her expression, in the shrug of her shoulders too, beneath their fine

laces and the affected sobriety of that same dull-blue, poplin gown.

"Or priestly, saintly middle-age--from which may heaven in its mercy

ever deliver us," she said.

Richard shifted his position a little, gathering himself back from her

so near neighbourhood--a fact of which the young lady was not unaware.

"I'm not quite sure whether I echo your prayer," he said slowly. "I

doubt whether that attitude, or one approximate to it, is not the

safest and best for some of us."

"Safest, no doubt." Madame de Vallorbes' eyes were bent on the crystal

sphere again. "As it is safer to decline a duel, than go out and meet

your man. Best? On that point you must permit me to hold my own

opinion. The word best has many readings according to the connection in

which it is employed. Personally I should always fight."

"Whatever the odds?"

"Whatever the odds."--And almost immediately Madame de Vallorbes

uttered a little cry, curiously at variance with her bold words.

"Something is moving inside the crystal, something is coming. I don't

half like it, Richard. Perhaps we are tempting Providence. Yes, it

moves, it moves, like mist rising off a river. It is poisonous. Some

woman has looked into this before--a woman of my temperament--and read

an evil fortune. I know it. Tell me quick, how did the crystal come

here, to whom did it belong?"

"To Mary Stuart--Mary, Queen of Scots," Dickie said.

"Ah! unhappy woman, ill-omened woman. You should have told me that

before and I would never have looked. Here take it, take it. Lock it

up, hide it. Let no woman ever look in it again."

As she spoke Helen crossed herself hastily, pushing the magic ball

towards him. But, as though endowed with life and volition of its

own--or was it merely that Dick's hand was even yet not quite of the

steadiest?--it evaded his grasp, fell off the table edge and rolled,

gleaming moonlike, far across the floor, away behind the pedestal of

the bronze Pompeian Antinous, into the dusky shadow of those

ghostly-waving, turquoise, satin curtains.

With a sense of catastrophe upon her Helen had sprung to her

feet.--Even now, standing in the peaceful warmth of the autumn

sunshine, among the feeding pea-fowl, the remembrance of it caused her

a little shiver. For at sight of that gleaming ball hurrying across the

carpet, all the nervousness, the distrust of herself, the vague

spiritual alarms, which had beset her on first entering the room,

returned on her with tenfold force. The superstitious terrors of the

convent-bred girl mastered the light-hearted scepticism of the woman of

the world, and regions of sinister possibility seemed disclosing

themselves around her.

"Oh! how horrible! What does it mean?" she cried.

And Richard answered cheerily, somewhat astonished at her agitation,

trying to reassure her.

"Mean? Nothing, except that I was abominably awkward and the crystal

abominably slippery. What does it matter? We can find it again

directly."

Then, self-forgetful in the fulness of his longing to pacify her,

Richard had pushed his chair back from the table, intending to go in

search of the vagrant jewel. But the chair was high, and its make not

of the most solid sort; and so he paused, instinctively calculating the

amount of support it could be trusted to render him in his descent. And

during that pause Helen had felt her heart stand still. She set her

little teeth now, recalling it. For the extent of his deformity was

fully apparent for once. And, apprehending that which he proposed to

do, she was smitten by immense curiosity to realise the ultimate of the

grotesque in respect of his appearance as he should move, walk, grope

in the dimness over there after the lost crystal. But there are some

indulgences which can be bought at too high a price, and along with the

temptation to gratify her curiosity came an intensification of

superstitious alarm. What if she had sinned, and trafficked with

diabolic agencies, in trying to read the future? Payment of an actively

disagreeable character might be exacted for that, and would not such

payment risk disastrous augmentation if she gratified her curiosity

thus further? Helen de Vallorbes became quite wonderfully prudent and

humane.

"No, no, don't bother about it, don't move, dear Richard," she cried.

"Let me find it please. I saw exactly the direction in which it went."

And to emphasise her speech, and keep the young man in his place, she

laid her hands persuasively upon his shoulders. This brought her

charming face, so pure in outline, set in its aureole of honey-coloured

hair, very near to his, she looking down, he up. And in this position

the two remained longer than was absolutely necessary, silent, quite

still, while the air grew thick with the push of unspoken and as yet

unspeakable matters, and Helen's hands resting upon his shoulders grew

heavy, as the seconds passed, with languorous weight.

"There are better things than crystals to read in, after all, Richard,"

she said at last. Then she lifted her hands almost brusquely and

stepped back. "All the same it is stupid I should have to go away," she

continued, speaking more to herself than to him. "I am happy here. And

when I am happy it's easy to be good--and I like to be good."

She crossed the room and passed behind the bronze Pompeian Antinous.

Under the shadow of the curtains, in the angle of the bay, against the

wainscot, Queen Mary's magic ball showed softly luminous. Helen could

have believed that it watched her. She hesitated before stooping to

pick it up and looked over her shoulder at Richard Calmady. His back

was towards her, his chair close against the table again. He leaned

forward on his elbows, his face buried in his hands. Something in the

bowed head, in the set of the almost crouching figure reassured Madame

de Vallorbes. She picked up the crystal without more ado, with, indeed,

a certain flippancy of gesture. For she had received pleasing assurance

that she had been frightened in the wrong place, and that the eternal

laughter was very completely on her side after all.

And just then a bell had rung in some distant quarter of the great

house. Powell, incarnation of decent punctualities, had appeared.

Whereupon the temperature fell to below normal from fever-heat. Drama,

accentuations of sensibility, in short all the unspoken and

unspeakable, withered as tropic foliage at a touch of frost. No doubt

it was as well, Madame de Vallorbes reflected philosophically, since

the really psychological moment was passed. There had been a dinner

party last night, and----

But here the young lady's reminiscences broke off short. She gathered

up her blue, poplin, scarlet-lined skirts, ran down the steps,

scattering the pea-fowl to right and left, and hastened across the

gravel.

"Wait half a minute for me, dear Aunt Katherine," she cried. "Are you

going to the conservatories? I would so like to see them. May I go

too?"

Lady Calmady stood by the door in the high, red-brick wall. She wore a

white, lace scarf over her hair--turned up and back, dressed high, as

of old, though now somewhat gray upon the temples. The lace was tied

under her chin, framing her face. In her gray dress she looked as some

stately, yet gracious lady abbess might--a lady abbess who had known

love in all fulness, yet in all honour--a lady abbess painted, if such

happy chance could be, by the debonair and clean-hearted Reynolds. She

stood smiling, charmed--though a trifle unwillingly--by the brilliant

vision of the younger woman.

"Assuredly you may come with me, if it would amuse you," she said.

"I may? Then let me open that door for you. La! la! how it sticks. Last

night's rain must have swelled it;" and she wrestled unsuccessfully

with the lock.

"My dear, don't try any more," Katherine said. "You will tire yourself.

The exertion is too great for you. I will go back and call one of the

servants."

"No, no;" and regardless of her fine laces, and trinkets, and sables

Madame de Vallorbes put her shoulder against the resisting door and

fairly burst it open.

"See," she cried, breathless but triumphant, "I am very strong."

"You are very pretty," Katharine said, almost involuntarily.

The steeply-terraced kitchen gardens, neat box edgings, wide flower

borders in which a few clumps of chrysanthemum and Michaelmas daisy

still resisted the frost, ranged down to greenish brown ponds in the

valley bottom spotted with busy, quacking companies of white ducks.

Beyond was an ascending slope of thick wood, the topmost trees of which

showed bare against the sky line. All this was framed by the arch of

the door. Madame de Vallorbes glanced at it, while she pulled down the

soft waves of hair, which her late exertions had slightly disarranged,

over her right temple. Then she turned impulsively to Lady Calmady.

"Thank you, dear Aunt Katherine," she said. "I would so like you to

like me, you know."

"I should be rather unpardonably difficult to please, if I did not like

you, my dear," Lady Calmady answered. But she sighed as she spoke.

The two women moved away, side by side, down the path to the glistering

greenhouses. But Camp, who, missing Richard, had followed his mistress

out of the house for a leisurely morning potter, turned back sulkily

across the gravel homewards, his tail limp, his heavy head carried low.

His instincts were conservative, as has been already mentioned. He was

suspicious of newcomers. And whoever liked this particular newcomer,

Madame de Vallorbes, he was sorry to say--and on more than one occasion

he said it with quite inconvenient distinctness--he did not.