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

hopelessly disfranchised human creatures. And the first sight of

Richard Calmady now, though she did not stop very certainly to analyse

the exact how and why of her increasing satisfaction, took its root in

this same craving for ascendency by means of the suffering and loss of

others. While, unconsciously, the fine flavour of her satisfaction was

heightened by the fact that the victim, now before her, was her equal

in birth, her superior in wealth, in intelligence and worldly station.

But as she drew nearer, Richard the while making no effort to go

forward and receive her, buoyant self-complacency and self-congratulation

suffered diminution. For, rehearsing this same meeting during those

rain-blotted days of waiting at Perugia, imagination had presented

Dickie as the inexperienced, tender-hearted, sweet-natured lad she had

known and beguiled at Brockhurst four years earlier. As has already

been stated her meetings with him, since then, had been brief and

infrequent. Now she perceived that imagination had played a silly trick

upon her. The boy she had left, the man who stood awaiting her so

calmly were, save in one distressing peculiarity, two widely different

persons. For in the interval Richard Calmady had eaten very freely of

the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that diet

had left its mark not only on his character, but on his appearance. He

had matured notably, all trace of ingenuous, boyish charm having

vanished. His skin, though darkened by recent seafaring, was

colourless. His features were at once finer and more pronounced than of

old--the bone of the face giving it a noticeable rigidity of outline,

index at once of indomitable will and irreproachable breeding. The

powerful jaw and strong muscular neck might have argued a measure of

brutality. But happily the young man's mouth had not coarsened. His

lips were compressed, relaxing rarely into the curves which, as a lad,

had rendered his smile so peculiarly engaging. Still there was no trace

of grossness in their form or expression. Hard living had, indeed, in

Richard's case, been matter of research rather than of appetite. The

intellectual part of him had never fallen wholly into bondage to the

animal. He explored the borders of the Forbidden hoping to find some

anodyne with which to assuage the ache of a vital discontent, rather

than by any compulsion of natural lewdness.

Much of this quick-witted Helen quickly apprehended. He was cleverer,

more serious, and mentally more distinguished, than she had supposed

him. And this, while opening up new sources of interest and pricking

her ambition of conquest, disclosed unforeseen difficulties in the way

of such conquest. Moreover, she was slightly staggered by the strength

and inscrutability of his countenance, the repose of his bearing and

manner. His eyes affected her oddly. They were cold and clear as some

frosty, winter's night, the pupils of them very small. They seemed to

see all things, yet tell nothing. They were as windows opening onto an

endless perspective of empty space. They at once challenged curiosity

and baffled inquiry. Helen's excitement deepened, and she was sensible

it needed all the subjective support, all the indirect flattery, with

which the fact of his deformity supplied her self-love to prevent her

standing in awe of him. As consequence her address was impulsive rather

than studied.

"Richard, I have had a detestable winter," she said. "It wore upon me.

It demoralised me. I was growing dull, superstitious even. I wanted to

get away, to put a long distance between myself and certain

experiences, certain memories. I wanted to hear another language. You

have always been sympathetic to me. It was natural, if a little

unconventional, to take refuge with you."

Madame de Vallorbes spoke with an unaccustomed and very seductive air

of apology, her face slightly flushed, her arms hanging straight at her

sides, the long, pink, tulle strings of the hat she carried in her left

hand trailing upon the black-and-white squares of the pavement.

"To do so seemed obvious in contemplation. I did not stop to consider

possible objections. But, in execution, the objections become hourly

more glaringly apparent. I want you to reassure me. Tell me I have not

dared too greatly in coming thus uninvited?"

"Of course not," he answered. "I hope you found the house comfortable

and everything prepared for you. The servants had their orders."

"I know, I know. That you should have provided against the possibility

of my coming some day moved me a little more than I care to tell

you."--Helen paused, looking upon him, and that look had in it a

delicate affinity to a caress. But the young man's manner, though

faultlessly courteous, was lacking in any hint of enthusiasm. Helen

could have imagined, and that angered her, something of irony in his

tone.

"Oh, there's no matter for thanks," he said. "The house was yours, will

be yours again. The least I can do, since you and de Vallorbes are good

enough to let me live in it meanwhile, is to beg you to make any use

you please of it. Indeed it is I, rather than you, who come uninvited

just now. I had not intended being back here for another month. But

there was a case of something suspiciously like cholera on board my

yacht at Constantinople, and it seemed wisest to get away to sea as

soon as possible. One of the firemen--oh, he's all right now! Still I

shall send him home to England. He's a married man--the only one I have

on board. A useful fellow, but he must go. I don't choose to take the

responsibility of creating the widow and the fatherless whenever one of

my crew chances to fall sick and depart into the unknown."

Richard talked on, very evidently for the mere sake of passing the

time. And all the while those eyes, which told nothing, dwelt quietly

upon Helen de Vallorbes until she became nervously impatient of their

scrutiny. For it was not at all thus that she had pictured and

rehearsed this meeting during those days of waiting at Perugia!

"We got in last night," he continued. "But I slept on board. I heard

you had just arrived, and I did not care to run the risk of disturbing

you after your journey."

"You are very considerate," Helen remarked.

She was surprised out of all readiness of speech. This new Richard

impressed her, but she resented his manner. He took her so very much

for granted. Admiration and homage were to her as her daily bread, and

that any man should fail to offer them caused her frank amazement. It

did more. It raised in her a longing to inflict pain. He might not

admire, but at least he should not remain indifferent. Therefore she

backed a couple of steps, so as to get a good view of Richard Calmady.

And, without any disguise of her purpose, took a comprehensive and

leisurely survey of his dwarfed and mutilated figure. While so doing

she pinned on her rose-trimmed hat, and twisted the long, tulle strings

of it about her throat.

"You have altered a good deal, Richard," she said reflectively.

"Probably," he answered. "I had a good deal to learn, being a very

thin-skinned young simpleton. In part, anyhow, I have learned it. And I

do my best practically to apply my knowledge. But if I have altered,

so, happily, have not you."

"I remain a simpleton?" she inquired, her irritation finding voice.

"You cannot very well remain that which you never have been. What you

do remain is--if I may say so--victoriously yourself, unspoiled,

unmodified by contact with that singularly stupid invention, society,

true to my earliest recollections of you even----" Richard shuffled

closer to the balustrade, threw his left arm across it, grasping the

outer edge of the broad coping,--"even in small details of dress."

He looked away over the immense and radiant prospect, and then up at

the radiant woman in her vesture of turquoise, pink, and gold.

And, so doing, for the first time his face relaxed, being lighted up by

a flickering, mocking smile. And something in his shuffling movements,

in the fine irony of his expression, pierced Helen with a sensation

hitherto unknown, broke up the absoluteness of her egotism, stirred her

blood. She forgot resentment in an absorbed and absorbing interest. The

ordinary man of the world she knew as thoroughly as her old shoe. Such

an one presented small field of discovery to her. But this man was

unique in person, and promised to be so in character also. Her

curiosity regarding him was profound. For the moment it sunk all

personal considerations, all humorous or angry criticism, either of her

own attitude towards him or of his attitude towards her. Silently she

came forward, sat down on the marble bench, close to where he stood,

and, turning sideways, leaned her elbows upon the top of the balustrade

beside him. She looked up now, rather than down at him, and it went

home to her, had nature spared him infliction of that hideous

deformity, what a superb creature physically he would have been! There

was a silence, Helen remaining intent, quiet, apprehension and

imagination sensibly upon the stretch.

At last Richard spoke abruptly.

"By the way, did you happen to observe the decorations of your room? Do

you like them?"

"Yes and no," she answered. "They struck me as rather wonderful, but

liable to induce dreams of Scylla and Charybdis, of the Fata Morgana,

and other inconvenient accidents of the deep. Fortunately I was too

tired last night to be excursive in fancy, or I might have slept badly.

You have gathered all the colours of the ocean and fixed them, somehow,

on those carpets and hangings and strangely frescoed walls."

"You saw that?"

"How could I fail to see it, since you kindly excuse me of being, or

ever having been, a simpleton?"--Helen spoke lightly, tenderly almost.

An overmastering desire to please had overtaken her. "You have employed

a certain wizardry in the furnishing of that room," she continued. "It

lays subtle influences upon one. What made you think of it?"

"A dream, an idea, which has stuck by me queerly, though all other fond

things of the sort were pitched overboard long ago. I suppose one is

bound to be illogical on one point, if only to prove to oneself the

absolutism of one's logic on all others. Thus do I, otherwise sane and

consistent realist, materialist, pessimist, cling to my one dream and

ideal--take it out, dandle it, nourish and cherish it, with weakly

sentimental faithfulness. To do so is ludicrous. But then my being here

at all, calmly considered, is ludicrous. And it, too, is among the

results of the one idea."

He paused, and Helen, leaning beside him, waited. The sunshine covered

them both. The sea wind was fresh in their faces. While the many voices

of Naples came up to them confused, strident, continuous, with

sometimes a bugle-call, sometimes a clang of hammers, or quick pulse of

stringed instruments, or jangle of church-bells, or long-drawn bellow

of a steamship clearing for sea, detaching itself from the universal

chorus. Capri, Ischia, Procida, floated, islands of amethyst, upon the

sapphire of the bay, and the smoke of Vesuvius rolled ceaselessly

upward.

"You see and hear and feel all this," Richard continued presently.

"Well, when I saw it for the first time I was pretty thoroughly out of

conceit with myself and all creation. I had been experimenting freely

in things not usually talked of in polite society. And I was abominably

sold, for I found the enjoyment such things procure is decidedly

overrated. Unmentionable matters, once fully explored, are just as

tedious and inadequate as those which supply the most unexceptionable

subjects of conversation. Moreover, in the process of exploration I had

touched a good deal of pitch, and, the simpleton being still

superfluously to the fore in me, I was squeamishly sensible of

defilement."

The young man shifted his position slightly, resting his chin in the

hollow of his hands, speaking quietly and indifferently, as of some

matter foreign to himself and his personal interests.

"I have reason to believe I was as fairly and squarely wretched as it

is possible for an intelligent being to be. I had convinced myself,

experimentally, that human existence, human nature, was a bottomless

pit and an uncommonly filthy one at that. Reaction was inevitable. Then

I understood why men have invented gods, subscribed to irrational

systems of theology, hailed and accredited transparently ridiculous

miracles. Such lies are necessary to certain stages of development

simply for the preservation of sanity, just as, at another stage,

sanity, for its own preservation, is necessarily driven to declare

their falsehood. And so I, after the manner of my kind, was driven to

take refuge in a dream. The subjective, in some form or other, alone

makes life continuously possible. And all this, we now look at,

determined the special nature of my attempt at subjective support and

consolation."

Richard paused again, contemplating the view.

"All this--its splendour, its diversity, its caprices and seductions,

its suggestion of underlying danger--presented itself to me as the

embodiment of a personality that has had remarkable influence in the

shaping of my life."

So far Helen had listened intently and silently. Now she moved a

little, straightening up her charming figure, pulling down the wide

brim of her hat to shelter her eyes from the heat and brightness of the

sun.

"A woman?" she asked briefly.

Richard turned to her, that same flickering of mockery in his still

face.

"Oh! you mustn't require too much of me!" he said. "Remember the

simpleton was not wholly eradicated then.--Yes, very much a woman. Of

course. How should it be otherwise? It gave me great pleasure to look

at that which looked like her. It gives me pleasure even yet. So I

wrote and asked de Vallorbes to be kind enough to let me rent the

villa. You remember it was not particularly well cared for. There was

an air of fallen greatness about the poor place. Inside it was

something of a barrack."

"I remember," Helen said.

"Well, I restored and refurnished it--specially the rooms you now

occupy, in accordance with what I imagined to be her taste. The whole

proceeding was not a little feeble-minded, since the probability of her

ever inhabiting those rooms was more than remote. But it amused, it

pacified me, as prayer to their self-invented deities pacifies the

devout. I never stay here for long together. If I did the spell might

be broken. I go away, I travel. I even experiment in things not usually

spoken of, but with a cooler judgment and less morbidly sensitive

conscience than of old. I amuse myself after more active and practical

fashions in other places. Here I amuse myself only with my idea."

The even flow of his speech ceased.--"What do you think of it, Helen?"

he demanded, almost harshly.

"I think it can't last. It is too intangible, too fantastic."

"I admit that to keep it intact needs an infinity of precautions. For

instance, I can make no near acquaintance with Naples. I cannot permit

myself to see the town at close quarters. I only look at it from here.

If I want to go to or from the yacht, I do so at night and in a closed

carriage. I took on de Vallorbes' box at the San Carlo. If any good

opera is given I go and hear it. Otherwise I remain exclusively in the

house and garden. I am not acquainted with a single soul in the place."

"And the woman," Helen exclaimed, a singular emotion at once of envy

and protest upon her. "Do you treat her with the same cold-blooded

calculation?"

"Of the woman I know just as much and just as little as I know of

Naples. It is conceivable there may be unlovely elements in her

character, as well as unlovely quarters of this beautiful city. I have

avoided knowledge of both. You see the whole arrangement is designed

not for her benefit, but for my own. It's an elaborate piece of

self-seeking on my part, but, so far, it has really worked rather

successfully."

"It is preposterous. It cannot in the nature of things continue

successful," Helen declared.

"I am not so sure of that," he replied calmly. "Even the most

preposterous of religious systems proves to have a remarkable power of

survival. Why not this one? In any case, neither the success nor the

failure depends on me. I shall be true, on my part. The rest depends on

her."

As Richard spoke he turned, leaning his back against the balustrade,

his face away from the sunlight and the wide view. Again the extent of

his deformity became arrestingly apparent to Madame de Vallorbes.

"Has this woman ever been here?" she asked.

"Yes--she has been here."

"And then? And then?" Helen cried.

The young man looked up at her, his face keen yet impassive, his

eyes--as windows opening on to endless perspective of empty

space--telling nothing. She recognised, once again, that he was very

strong. She also recognised that, notwithstanding his strength, he was

horribly sad.

"Ah! then," he said, "the last of the poor, little, subjective supports

and consolations seemed in danger of going overboard and joining their

fellows in the uneasy deeps of the sea.--But the history of that will

keep till a more convenient season, Cousin Helen. You have stood in the

midday sun, and I have talked about myself, quite long enough. However,

it was only fair to acquaint you with the limited resources in the way

of society and amusement offered by your present dwelling. There are

horses and carriages of course. Give what orders you please. Only

remember both the town and the surrounding country are pretty rough. It

is not fit for a lady to drive by herself. Always take your own man, or

one of mine, with you if you go out. I hope you won't be quite

intolerably bored. Ask for whatever you want.--You let me dine with

you? Thanks."