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

delicate, was obvious. And those tears appeared to lay the dust of so

many pleasant sins, and promise fertilisation of so heavy a crop of

virtue, that--by inevitable action of the law of contraries--the two

friends found it more than ever difficult to say farewell and part that

night.

Now looking back on all that, viewing it calmly in perspective, her

action and attitude struck Helen as somewhat imbecile. Prayer and

penitence have too often a tendency to kick the beam when fear ceases

to weight the balance. And so it followed that the lust of the flesh,

the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, presented themselves to her

as powers by no means contemptible, or unworthy of invocation, this

morning, while she sat at the luxuriously furnished breakfast-table

beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion and gazed out between

its slender columns, over the curving lines of the painted city and

glittering waters of the bay, to the cone of Vesuvius rising, in

imperial purple, against the azure sky. To-day, sign, as she noted, of

fine weather, omen, as she trusted, of good fortune, the smoke of its

everlasting burnings towered up and up into the translucent atmosphere,

and then drifted away--a gigantic, wedge-shaped pennon--towards Capri

and the open sea. And, beholding these things, out of simple, physical

well-being, fulness of bread, conviction of her own undiminished

beauty, and the merry devilry begotten of these, she fell to projecting

a second, a companion, one-act drama founded upon the life of the

Magdalene, but, this time, before the saint's conversion, at an

altogether earlier stage of her very instructive history. And this

drama she would not read to M. Destournelle--not a bit of it. In it he

should have neither part nor lot.--Registering which determination, she

shook her charming, honey-coloured head, holding up both hands with a

gesture of humorous and well-defined repudiation.

For, in truth, the day of M. Destournelle appeared, just now, to be

very effectually over. It had been reasonable enough to urge her

natural fears in journeying through a war-distracted land--although

guarded by Charles, most discreet and resourceful of English

men-servants, and Zelie Forestier, most capable of French

lady's-maids--as excuse for Paul Destournelle joining her at a wayside

station a short distance out of Paris and accompanying her south. _A la

guerre comme a la guerre._ A beautiful woman can hardly be too careful

of her person amid the many and primitive dangers which battle and

invasion let loose. De Vallorbes himself--detestably jealous though he

was--could hardly have objected to her thus securing effective

protection, had he been acquainted with the fact. That he was not so

acquainted was, of course, the veriest oversight. But, the frontier

once reached--the better part of three weeks had elapsed in the

reaching of it--and all danger of war and tumult past, both the

necessity and, to be frank, the entertainment of M. Destournelle's

presence became less convincing. Helen grew a trifle weary of his

transports, his suspicions, his _bel tete de Jesu souffrant_, his

insatiable literary and personal vanity. The charm, the excitement, of

the situation, began to wear rather threadbare, while the practical

inconveniences and restrictions it imposed increasingly disclosed

themselves. A lover, as Helen reflected, provided you see enough of

him, offers but small improvement upon a husband. He is liable to

become possessive and didactic, after the manner of the natural man. He

is liable to forget that the relation is permitted, not legalised--that

it exists on suffrance merely, and is therefore terminable at the will

of either party. The last days of that same southern journey had been

marked by misunderstandings and subsequent reconciliations, in an

ascending scale of acrimony and fervour on the part of her companion.

In Helen's case familiarity tended very rapidly to breed contempt. She

ceased to be in the least amused by these recurring agitations. At

Pisa, after a scene of a particularly excited nature, she lost all

patience, frankly told her admirer that she found him not a little

ridiculous, and requested him to remove himself, his grievances, and

his _bel tete de Jesu_ elsewhere. M. Destournelle took refuge in

nerves, threats of morphia, and his bedchamber,--in the chaste

seclusion of which apartment Helen left him, unvisited and unconsoled,

while, attended by her servants, she gaily resumed her journey.

An adorable sense of independence possessed her, of the charm of her

own society, of the absence of all external compelling or directing of

her movements--no circumscription of her liberty possible--the world

before her where to choose! Not only were privations, dismal hauntings

of siege and slaughter, left behind, and M. Destournelle, just now most

wearisome of lovers, left behind also, but de Vallorbes himself had,

for the time being, become a permissibly negligible quantity. The news

of more fighting, more bloodshed, had just reached her, though the

German armies were marching back to the now wholly German Rhine. For

upon unhappy Paris had come an hour of deeper humiliation than any

which could be procured by the action of foreign foes. She was a

kingdom divided against herself, a mother scandalously torn by her own

children. News had reached Helen too, news special and highly

commendatory of her husband, Angelo Luigi Francesco. Early in that

eventful struggle he had enlisted in the Garde Mobile, all the manhood

and honest sentiment resident in him stirred into fruitful activity by

the shame and peril of his adopted country. Now Helen learned he had

distinguished himself in the holding of Chatillon against the

insurgents, had been complimented by MacMahon upon his endurance and

resource, had been offered, and had accepted, a commission in the

regular army. Promotion was rapid during the later months of the war,

and probability pointed to the young man having started on a serious

military career.

"Well, let him both start and continue," Helen commented. "I am the

last person to be otherwise than delighted thereat. Just in proportion

as he is occupied he ceases to be inconvenient. If he succeeds--good.

If he is shot--good likewise. For him laurels and a hero's tomb. For me

crape and permanent emancipation. An agreeably romantic conclusion to a

profoundly unromantic marriage--fresh proof, were such needed, of the

truth of the immortal Dr. Pangloss' saying, that 'all is for the best

in this best of all possible worlds!'"

In such happy frame of mind did Madame de Vallorbes continue during her

visit to Florence and upon her onward way to Perugia. But there

self-admiration ceased to be all-sufficient for her. She needed to read

confirmation of that admiration in other eyes. And the gray Etruscan

city, uplifted on its star-shaped hill, offered her a somewhat grim

reception. Piercing winds swept across the Tiber valley from the still

snow-clad Apennines above Assisi. The austere, dark-walled,

lombard-gothic churches and palaces showed forbidding, merciless

almost, through the driving wet. Even in fair summer weather suspicion

of ancient and implacable terror lurks in the shadow of those cyclopean

gateways, and stalks over the unyielding, rock-hewn pavements of those

solemn mediaeval streets. There was an incalculable element in Perugia

which raised a certain anger in Helen. The place seemed to defy her and

make light of her pretensions. As during the siege of Paris, so now,

echoes of the eternal laughter saluted her ears, ironic in tone.

Nor was the society offered by the residents in the hotel,

weather-bound like herself, of a specially enlivening description. It

was composed almost exclusively of middle-aged English and American

ladies--widows and spinsters--of blameless morals and anxiously active

intelligence. They wrapped their lean forms in woolen shawls and

ill-cut jackets. They pervaded salon and corridors guide-book in hand.

They discoursed of Umbrian antiquities, Etruscan tombs, frescoes and

architecture. Having but little life in themselves, they tried, rather

vainly, to warm both hands at the fire of the life of the past. Among

them, Helen, in her vigorous and self-secure, though fine-drawn,

beauty, was about as much at home as a young panther in a hen-roost.

They admired, they vaguely feared, they greatly wondered at her. Had

one of those glorious young gallants, Baglioni or Oddi, clothed in

scarlet, winged, helmeted, sword on thigh, as Perugino has painted them

on the walls of the Sala del Cambio--very strangest union of sensuous

worldliness and radiant arch-angelic grace--had one of these

magnificent gentlemen ruffled into the hotel parlour, he could hardly

have startled the eyes, and perplexed the understanding, of the

virtuous and learned Anglo-Saxon and Transatlantic feminine beings

there assembled, more than did Madame de Vallorbes.

For all such sexless creatures, for the great company of women in whose

outlook man plays no immediate or active part, Helen had, in truth,

small respect. They appeared to her so absurdly inadequate, so

contemptibly divorced from the primary interests of existence. More

than once, in a spirit of mischievous malice, she was tempted to bid

the good ladies lay aside their Baedekers and Murrays, and increase

their knowledge of the Italian character and language by study of the

_Novelle_ of Bandello, or of certain merry tales to be found in the

pages of the _Decameron_. She had copies of both works in her

traveling-bag. She was prepared, moreover, to illustrate such ancient

saws by modern instances, for the truth of which last she could quite

honestly vouch. But on second thoughts she spared her victims. The

quarry was not worth the chase. What self-respecting panther can, after

all, go a-hunting in a hen-roost? So from the neighbourhood of their

unlovely clothes, questioning glances, and under-vitalised pursuit of

art and literature, she removed herself to her sitting-room up-stairs.

Charles should serve her meals there in future, for to sit at table

with these neuters, clothed in amorphous garments, came near upsetting

her digestion.

Meanwhile, as she watched the rain streaming down the panes of the big

windows, watched thin-legged, heavily-cloaked figures tacking,

wind-buffeted, across the gray-black street into the shelter of some

cavernous _port cochere_, it must be owned her spirits went very

sensibly down into her boots. Even the presence of the despised and

repudiated Destournelle would have been grateful to her. Remembrance of

all the less successful episodes of her career assaulted her. And in

that connection, of necessity, the thought of Brockhurst returned upon

her. For neither the affair of her childhood--that of the little dancer

with blush-roses in her hat--or the other affair--of now nearly four

years back--the intimate drama frustrated, within sight of its climax,

by intervention of Lady Calmady--could be counted otherwise than as

failures. It was strange how deep-seated was her discontent under this

head. As on Queen Mary's heart the word Calais, so on hers Brockhurst,

she sometimes thought, might be found written when she was dead. In the

last four years Richard had given her princely gifts. He had treated

her with a fine, old-world chivalry, as something sacred and apart. But

he rarely sought her society. He seemed, rather carefully, to elude her

pursuit. His name was not exactly a patent of discretion and rectitude

in these days, unfortunately. Still Helen found his care of her

reputation--as far as association of her name with his went--somewhat

exaggerated. She could hardly believe him to be indifferent to her, and

yet---- Oh! the whole matter was unsatisfactory, abominably

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?"