CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH M. PAUL DESTOURNELLE HAS THE BAD TASTE TO THREATEN TO UPSET

THE APPLE-CART

Helen de Vallorbes rose from her knees and slipped out from under the

greasy and frayed half-curtain of the confessional box. The atmosphere

of that penitential spot had been such as to make her feel faint and

dizzy. She needed to recover herself. And so she stood, for a minute or

more, in the clear, cool brightness of the nave of the great basilica,

her highly-civilised figure covered by a chequer-work of morning

sunshine streaming down through the round-headed windows of the lofty

clere-storey. As the sense of physical discomfort left her she

instinctively arranged her veil, and adjusted her bracelets over the

wrists of her long gloves. Yet, notwithstanding this trivial and

mundane occupation, her countenance retained an expression of devout

circumspection, of the relief of one who has accomplished a serious and

somewhat distasteful duty. Her sensations were increasingly agreeable.

She had rid herself of an oppressive burden. She was at peace with

herself and with--almost--all man and womankind.

Yet, it must be admitted, the measure had been mainly precautionary.

Helen had gone to confession, on the present occasion, in much the same

spirit as an experienced traveler visits his dentist before starting on

a protracted journey. She regarded it as a disagreeable, but politic,

insurance against possible accident. Her distaste had been increased by

the fact that there really were some rather risky matters to be

confessed. She had even feared a course of penance might have been

enforced before the granting of absolution--this certainly would have

been the case had she been dealing with that firm disciplinarian and

very astute man of the world, the Jesuit father who acted as her

spiritual adviser in Paris. But here in Naples, happily, it was

different. The fat, sleepy, easy-going, old canon--whose person exuded

so strong an odour of snuff that, at the solemnest moment of the

_confiteor_, she had been unable to suppress a convulsive sneeze--asked

her but few inconvenient questions. Pretty fine-ladies will get into

little difficulties of this nature. He had listened to very much the

same story not infrequently before, and took the position amiably,

almost humorously, for granted. It was very wicked, a deadly sin, but

the flesh--specially such delicately bred, delicately fed, feminine

flesh--is admittedly weak, and the wiles of Satan are many. Is it not

an historic fact that our first mother did not escape?--Was Helen's

repentance sincere, that was the point? And of that Helen could

honestly assure him there was no smallest doubt. Indeed, at this

moment, she abhorred, not only her sin, but her co-sinner, in the

liveliest and most comprehensive manner. Return to him? Sooner the dog

return to its vomit! She recognised the iniquity, the shame, the

detestable folly, of her late proceedings far too clearly. Temptation

in that direction had ceased to be possible.

Then followed the mysterious and merciful words of absolution. And

Helen rose from her knees and slipped out from beneath the frayed and

greasy curtain a free woman, the guilt of her adultery wiped off by

those awful words, as, with a wet cloth, one would wipe writing off a

slate leaving the surface of it clean in every part. Precisely how far

she literally believed in the efficacy of that most solemn rite she

would not have found it easy to declare. Scepticism warred with

expediency. But that appeared to her beside the mark. It was really

none of her business. Let her teachers look to all that. To her it was

sufficient that she could regard it from the practical standpoint of an

insurance against possible accident--the accident of sin proving

actually sinful and actually punishable by a narrow-minded deity, the

accident of the veritable existence of heaven and hell, and of Holy

Church veritably having the keys of both these in her keeping, the

accident--more immediately probable and consequently worth guarding

against--that, during wakeful hours, some night, the half-forgotten

lessons of the convent school would come back on her, and, as did

sometimes happen, would prove too much for her usually victorious

audacity.

But, it should be added that another and more creditable instinct did

much to dictate Madame de Vallorbes' action at this juncture. As the

days went by the attraction exercised over her by Richard Calmady

suffered increase rather than diminution. And this attraction affected

her morally, producing in her modesties, reticencies of speech, even of

thought, and prickings of unflattering self-criticism unknown to her

heretofore. Her ultimate purpose might not be virtuous. But undeniably,

such is the complexity--not to say hypocrisy--of the human heart, the

prosecution of that purpose developed in her a surprising sensibility

of conscience. Many episodes in her career, hitherto regarded as

entertaining, she ceased to view with toleration, let alone

complacency. The remembrance of them made her nervous. What if Richard

came to hear of them? The effect might be disastrous. Not that he was

any saint, but that she perceived that, with the fine inconsistency

common to most well-bred Englishmen, he demanded from the women of his

family quite other standards of conduct to those which he himself

obeyed. Other women might do as they pleased. Their lapses from the

stricter social code were no concern of his. He might, indeed, be not

wholly averse to profiting by such lapses. But in respect of the women

of his own rank and blood the case was quite otherwise. He was

alarmingly capable of disgust. And, not a little to her own surprise,

fear of provoking, however slightly, that disgust had become a reigning

power with her. Never had she felt as she now felt. Her own sensations

at once captivated and astonished her. This had ceased to be an

adventure dictated by merry devilry, undertaken out of lightness of

heart, inspired by a mischievous desire to see dust whirl and straws

fly, or undertaken even out of necessity to support self-satisfaction

by ranging herself with cynical audacity on the side of the Eternal

Laughter. This was serious. It was desperate--the crisis, as she told

herself, of her life and fate. The result was singular. Never had she

been more vividly, more electrically, alive. Never had she been more

diffident and self-distrustful.

And this complexity of sensation served to press home on her the high

desirability of insurance against accident, of washing clean, as far as

might be possible, the surface of the slate. So it followed that now,

standing in the chequer-work of sunshine within the great basilica,

self-congratulation awoke in her. The lately concluded ceremony, some

of the details of which had really been most distasteful, might or

might not be of vital efficacy, but, in any case, she had courageously

done her part. Therefore, if Holy Church spoke truly, her first

innocence was restored. Helen hugged the idea with almost childish

satisfaction. Now she could go back to the Villa Vallorbes in peace,

and take what measure----

She left the sentence unfinished. Even in thought it is often an error

to define. Let the future and her intentions regarding it remain in the

vague! She signed to Zelie Forestier--seated on the steps of a

side-chapel, yellow-paper-covered novel in hand--to follow her. And,

after making a genuflexion before the altar of Our Lady of the

Immaculate Conception, gathered up her turquoise-coloured skirts--the

yellow-tufa quarries were not superabundantly clean--and pursued her

way towards the great main door. The benevolent priest, charmed by her

grace of movement, watched her from his place in the confessional,

although another penitent now kneeled within the greasy curtain. Verily

the delinquencies of so delectable a piece of womanhood were easily

comprehensible! Neither God nor man, in such a case, would be extreme

to mark what was done amiss.--Moreover, had she not promised generous

gifts alike to church and poor? The sin which in an ugly woman is

clearly mortal, in a pretty one becomes little more than venial. Making

which reflection a kindly, fat chuckle shook his big paunch, and,

crossing himself, he turned his attention to the voice murmuring from

behind the wooden lattice at his side.

Yet it would appear that abstract justice judged less leniently of the

position. For, passing out on to the portico--about the base of whose

enormous columns half-naked beggars clustered, exposing sores and

mutilations, shrilly clamouring for alms--the dazzling glare of the

empty, sun-scorched piazza behind him, Helen came face to face with no

less a personage than M. Paul Destournelle.

It was as though some one had struck her. The scene reeled before her

eyes. Then her temper rose as in resentment of insult. To avoid all

chance of such a meeting she had selected this church in an

unfashionable quarter of the town. Here, at least, she had reckoned

herself safe from molestation. And, that precisely in the hour of

peace, the hour of politic insurance against accident, this accident of

all others should befall her, was maddening! But anger did not lessen

her perspicacity. How to inflict the maximum of discomfort upon M.

Destournelle with the minimum of risk to herself was the question. An

interview was inevitable. She wanted, very certainly, to get her claws

into him, but, for safety's sake, that should be done not in attack,

but in defense. Therefore he should speak first, and in his words,

whatever those words might be, she promised herself to discover

legitimate cause of offense. So, leisurely, and with studied ignorance

of his presence, she flung largesse of _centissimi_ to right and left,

and, while the chorus of blessing and entreaty was yet loud, walked

calmly past M. Destournelle down the wide, shallow steps, from the

solid shadow of the portico to the burning sun-glare of the piazza.

The young man's countenance went livid.

"Do you dare to pretend not to recognise me?" he literally gasped.

"On the contrary I recognise you perfectly."

"I have written to you repeatedly."

"You have--written to me with a ridiculous and odious persistence."

Madame de Vallorbes picked her steps. The pavement was uneven, the heat

great. Destournelle's hands twitched with agitation, yet he contrived

not only to replace his Panama hat, but opened his white umbrella as a

precaution against sunstroke. And this diverted, even while

exasperating, Helen. Measures to ensure personal safety were so

characteristic of Destournelle.

"And with what fault, I ask you, can you reproach me, save that of a

too absorbing, a too generous, adoration?"

"That fault in itself is very sufficient."

"Do you not reckon, then, in any degree, with the crime you are in

process of committing? Have you no sense of gratitude, of obligation?

Have you no regret for your own loss in leaving me?"

Helen drew aside to let a herd of goats pass. They jostled one another

impudently, carrying their inquisitive heads and short tails erect, at

right angles to the horizontal line of their narrow backs. They

bleated, as in impish mischief. Their little beards wagged. Their

little hoofs pattered on the stone, and the musky odour of them hung in

the burning air. Madame de Vallorbes put her handkerchief up to her

face, and over the edge of it she contemplated Paul Destournelle. Every

detail of his appearance was not only familiar, but associated in her

mind with some incident of his and her common past. Now the said

details asserted themselves, so it seemed to her, with an impertinence

of premeditated provocation.--The high, domed skull, the smooth,

prematurely-thin hair parted in the middle and waved over the ears. The

slightly raised eyebrows, and fatigued, red-lidded, and vain, though

handsome eyes. The straight, thin nose, and winged, open nostrils, so

perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely

followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache,

lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and

rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The

tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly

supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in

relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately matched to

the pale, brown hair and beard.--So much for the detail of the young

man's appearance. As a whole, that appearance was elegant as only

French youth ventures to be elegant. Refinement enveloped Paul

Destournelle--refinement, over-sensitised and under-vitalised, as that

of a rare exotic forced into precocious blossoming by application of

some artificial horticultural process. And all this--elaborately

effective and seductive as long as one should happen to think so,

elaborately nauseous when one had ceased so to think--had long been

familiar to Helen to the point of satiety. She turned wicked, satiety

transmuting itself into active vindictiveness. How gladly would she

have torn this emasculated creature limb from limb, and flung the lot

of it among the refuse of the Neapolitan gutter!

But, from beneath the shade of his umbrella, the young man recommenced

his plaint.

"It is inconceivable that, knowing my cruel capacity for suffering, you

should be indifferent to my present situation," he asserted, half

violently, half fretfully. "The whole range of history would fail to

offer a case of parallel callousness. You, whose personality has

penetrated the recesses of my being! You, who are acquainted with the

infinite intricacy of my mental and emotional organisation! A touch

will endanger the harmony of that exquisite mechanism. The

interpenetration of the component parts of my being is too complete. I

exist, I receive sensations, I suffer, I rejoice, as a whole. And this

lays me open to universal, to incalculable, pain. Now my nerves are

shattered--intellectual, moral, physical anguish permeate in every

part. I rally my self-reverence, my nobility of soul. I make efforts.

By day I visit spots of natural beauty and objects of art. But these

refuse to gratify me. My thought is too turgid to receive the impress

of them. Concentration is impossible to me. Feverish agitation perverts

my imagination. My ideas are fugitive. I endure a chronic delirium.

This by day," he extended one hand with a despairing gesture, "but by

night----"

"Oh, I implore you," Helen interrupted, "spare me the description of

your nights! The subject is a hardly modest one. And then, at various

times, I have already heard so very much about them, those nights!"

Calmly she resumed her walk. The amazing vanity of the young man's

speech appeased her, in a measure, since it fed her contempt. Let him

sink himself beyond all hope of recovery, that was best. Let him go

down, down, in exposition of fatuous self-conceit. When he was low

enough, then she would kick him! Meanwhile her eyes, ever greedy of

incident and colour, registered the scene immediately submitted to

them. In the centre of the piazza, women--saffron and poppy-coloured

handkerchiefs tied round their dark heads--washed, with a fine

impartiality, soiled linen and vegetables in an iron trough, grated for

a third of its length, before a fountain of debased and flamboyant

design. Their voices were alternately shrill and gutteral. It was

perhaps as well not to understand too clearly all which they said. On

the left came a break in the high, painted house-fronts, off which in

places the plaster scaled, and from the windows of which protruded

miscellaneous samples of wearing apparel and bedding soliciting

much-needed purification by means of air and light. In the said break

was a low wall where coarse plants rooted, and atop of which lay some

half-dozen ragged youths, outstretched upon their stomachs, playing

cards. The least decrepit of the beggars, armed with Helen's largesse

of copper coin, had joined them from beneath the portico. Gambling,

seasoned by shouts, imprecations, blows, grew fast and furious. In the

steep roadway on the right a dray, loaded with barrels, creaked and

jolted upward. The wheels of it were solid discs of wood. The great,

mild-eyed, cream-coloured oxen strained, with slowly swinging heads,

under the heavy yoke. Scarlet, woolen bands and tassels adorned their

broad foreheads and wide-sweeping, black-tipped horns, and here and

there a scarlet drop their flanks, where the goad had pricked them too

shrewdly. And upon it all the unrelenting southern sun looked down, and

Helen de Vallorbes' unrelenting eyes looked forth. One of those quick

realisations of the inexhaustible excitement of living came to her. She

looked at the elegant young man walking beside her, apprised, measured,

him. She thought of Richard Calmady, self-imprisoned in the luxurious

villa, and of the possibilities of her, so far platonic, relation to

him. She glanced down at her own rustling skirts and daintily-shod feet

traveling over the hot stones, then at the noisy gamblers, then at the

women washing, with that consummate disregard of sanitation, food and

raiment together in the rusty iron trough by the fountain. The violent

contrasts, the violent lights and shadows, the violent diversities of

purpose and emotion, of rank, of health, of fortune and misfortune,

went to her head. Whatever the risks or dangers that excitement

remained inexhaustible. Nay, those very dangers and risks ministered to

its perpetual upflowing. It struck her she had been over-scrupulous,

weakly conscientious, in making confession and seeking absolution. Such

timid moralities do not really shape destiny, control or determine

human fate. The shouting, fighting youths there, with their filthy pack

of cards and few _centissimi_, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine,

were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the

practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the

stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or

fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took

up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, with

remarkable lightness of heart.

"I appeal to you in the name of my as yet unwritten poems, my

masterpieces for which France, for which the whole brotherhood of

letters, so anxiously waits, to put a term to this appalling

chastisement!"

"Delicious!" said Helen, under her breath.

"Your classicism is the natural complement of my mediaevalism. The

elasticity, the concreteness, of your temperament fertilised the

too-brooding introspectiveness of my own. It lightened the reverence

which I experience in the contemplation of my own nature. It induced in

me the hint of frivolity which is necessary to procure action. Our

union was as that of high-noon and impenetrable night. I anticipated

extraordinary consequences."

"Marriage of a butterfly and a bat? Yes, the progeny should be

surprising, little animals certainly," commented Madame de Vallorbes.

"In deserting me you have rendered me impotent. That is a crime. It is

an atrocity. You assassinate my genius."

"Then, indeed, I have reason to congratulate myself on my ingenuity,"

she returned, "since I succeeded in the assassination of the

non-existent!"

"You, who have praised it a thousand times--you deny the existence of

my genius?" almost shrieked M. Destournelle. He was very much in

earnest, and in a very sorry case. His limbs twitched. He appeared on

the verge of an hysteric seizure. To plague him thus was a charmingly

pretty sport, but one safest carried on with closed doors--not in so

public a spot.

"I do not deny the existence of anything, save your right to make a

scene and render me ridiculous as you repeatedly did at Pisa."

"Then you must return to me."

"Oh! la, la!" cried Helen.

"That you should leave me and live in your cousin's house constitutes

an intolerable insult."

"And where, pray, would you have me live?" she retorted, her temper

rising, to the detriment of diplomacy. "In the street?"

"It appears to me the two localities are synonymous--morally."

Madame de Vallorbes drew up. Rage almost choked her. M. Destournelle's

words stung the more fiercely because the insinuation they contained

was not justified by fact. They brought home to her her non-success in

a certain direction. They called up visions of that unknown rival, to

whom--ah, how she hated the woman!--Richard Calmady's affections were,

as she feared, still wholly given. That her relation to him was

innocent, filled her with humiliation. First she turned to Zelie

Forestier, who had followed at a discreet distance across the piazza.

"Go on," she said, "down the street. Find a cab, a clean one. Wait in

it for me at the bottom of the hill."

Then she turned upon M. Destournelle.

"Your mind is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest

friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion--I

measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you.

I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person

of remarkable intellectual powers, of chivalrous ideals, and of

superior character. He has had great troubles. He is far from well. I

am watching over and nursing him."

The last statement trenched boldly on fiction. As she made it Madame de

Vallorbes moved forward, intending to follow the retreating Zelie down

the steep, narrow street. For a minute M. Destournelle paused to

recollect his ideas. Then he went quickly after her.

"Stay, I implore you," he said. "Yes, I own at Pisa I lost myself. The

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._"