CHAPTER VII

SPLENDIDE MENDAX

Unpunctuality could not be cited as among Madame de Vallorbes'

offenses. Yet, on the morning in question, she was certainly very late

for the twelve o'clock breakfast. Richard Calmady--awaiting her coming

beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion, set in the angle of

the terminal wall of the high-lying garden--had time to become

conscious of slight irritation. It was not merely that he was

constitutionally impatient of delay, but that his nerves were

tiresomely on edge just now. Trifles had power to endanger his somewhat

stoic equanimity. But when at length Helen emerged from the house

irritation was forgotten. Moving through the vivid lights and shadows

of the ilex and cypress grove, her appearance had a charm of unwonted

simplicity. At first sight her graceful person had the effect of being

clothed in a religious habit. Richard's youthful delight in seeing a

woman walk beautifully remained to him. It received satisfaction now.

Helen advanced without haste, a certain grandeur in her demeanour, a

certain gloom, even as one who takes serious counsel of himself,

indifferent to external things, at once actor in, and spectator of,

some drama playing itself out in the theatre of his own soul. And this

effect of dignity, of self-recollection, was curiously heightened by

her dress--of a very soft and fine, woolen material, of spotless white,

the lines of it at once flowing and statuesque. While as head-gear, in

place of some startling construction of contemporary, Parisian

millinery, she wore, after the modest Italian fashion, a black lace

mantilla over her bright hair.

Arrived, she greeted Richard curtly, and without apology for delay

accepted the contents of the first dish offered to her by the waiting

men-servants, ate as though determinedly and putting a force upon

herself, and--that which was unusual with her before sundown--drank

wine. And, watching her, involuntarily Richard's thought traveled back

to a certain luncheon party at Brockhurst, graced by the presence of

genial, puzzle-headed Lord Fallowfeild and members of his numerous

family, when Helen had swept in, even as now, had been self-absorbed,

even as now. Of the drive to Newlands, all in the sad November

afternoon, following on that luncheon, he also thought, of

communications made by Helen during that drive, and of the long course

of event and action directly or indirectly consequent on those

communications. He thought of the fog, too, enveloping and almost

choking him, when in the early morning driven by furies, still virgin

in body as in heart, he had ridden out into a blank and sightless world

hoping the chill of it would allay the fever in his blood,--and of the

fog again, in the afternoon, from out which the branches of the great

trees, like famine-stricken arms in tattered draperies, seemed to pluck

evilly at the carriage, as he walked the smoking horses up and down the

Newlands' drive, waiting for Helen to rejoin him. And now, somehow,

that fog seemed to come up between him and the well-furnished

breakfast-table, between him and the radiant expanse of the vivacious,

capricious, half-classic, half-modern, mercantile city outstretched

there, teeming, breeding, fermenting, in the fecundating heat of the

noonday sun. The chill of the fog struck cold into his vitals now,

giving him the strangest physical sensation. Richard straightened

himself in his chair, passed his hands across his eyes impatiently.

Brockhurst, and all the old life of it, was a subject of which he

forbade himself remembrance. He had divorced himself from all that, cut

himself adrift from it long ago. By an act of will, he tried to put it

out of his mind now. But the fog remained--an actual clouding of his

physical vision, blurring all he looked upon. It was horribly

uncomfortable. He wished he was alone. Then he might have slipped down

from his chair and, according to his poor capacity of locomotion,

sought relief in movement.

Meanwhile, silently, mechanically, Helen de Vallorbes continued her

breakfast. And as she so continued, in addition to his singular

physical sensations of blurred vision and clinging chill, he became

aware of a growing embarrassment and constraint between himself and his

companion. So far, his and her intercourse had been easy and

spontaneous, because superficial. Since that first interview on the

terrace a tacit agreement had existed to avoid the personal note. Now,

for cause unknown, that intercourse threatened entering upon a new

phase. It was as though the concentration, the tension, which he

observed in her, and of which he was sensible in himself, must of

necessity eventuate in some unbosoming, some act--almost

involuntary--of self-revelation. This unaccustomed silence and

restraint seemed to Richard charged with consequences which, in his

present condition of defective volition, he was powerless to prevent.

And this displeased him, mastery of surrounding influences being very

dear to him.

At last, coffee having been served, the men-servants withdrew to the

house, but the constraint was not thereby lessened. Helen sat upright,

her chin resting upon the back of her left hand, her eyes, under their

drooping lids, looking out with a veiled fierceness upon the fair and

glittering prospect. Richard saw her face in profile. The black

mantilla draped her shoulders and bust with a certain austerity of

effect. It was evident that--by something--she had been stirred to the

extinction of her habitual vivacity and desire to shine. And Richard,

for all his coolness of head and rather cynical maturity of outlook,

had a restless suspicion of going forth--even as on that foggy morning

at Brockhurst--into a blank and sightless world, full of hazardous

possibility, where the safe way was difficult of discovery and where

masked dangers might lurk. Solicitous to dissipate his discomfort he

spoke a little at random.

"You must forgive me for being such an abominably bad host," he said

courteously. "I am not quite the thing this morning, somehow. I had a

little go of fever last night. My brain is like so much pulp."

Helen dropped her hand upon the table as though putting a term to an

importunate train of thought.

"I have always understood the villa to be remarkably free from

malaria," she remarked abstractedly.

"So it is. I quite believe that. The servants certainly keep well

enough. But so, unfortunately, is not the port."

Helen turned her head. A vertical line was observable between her

arched eyebrows.

"The port?" she repeated.

Richard swallowed his black coffee. Perhaps it might steady him and

clear his head. The numbness of his faculties and senses alike

exasperated him, filling him with a persuasion he would say precisely

those things wisdom would counsel to leave unsaid.

"Yes--you know I generally go down and sleep on board the yacht."

There was a momentary pause. Madame de Vallorbes' lips parted in a

soundless exclamation. Then she pushed back the modest folds of the

mantilla, leaving her neck free. The action of her hands was very

graceful as she did this, and she looked fixedly at Richard Calmady.

"I did not know that," she said slowly. Then added, as though reasoning

out her own thought:--"And Naples harbour is admittedly one of the most

pestilential holes on the face of the earth. Are you not tempting

providence in the matter of disease, Richard? Are you not rather

wantonly indiscreet?"

"On the contrary," he answered, and something of mockery touched his

expression, "I see it quite otherwise. I have been congratulating

myself on the praiseworthy abundance of my discretion."

And the words were no sooner out of his mouth than Richard cursed

himself for a bungler, and a slightly vulgar one at that. But upon his

hearer those same words worked a remarkable change. Her gloom, her

abstraction, departed, leaving only a pretty pensiveness. She smiled

with chastened sweetness upon Richard Calmady--a smile nicely attuned

to the semi-religious simplicity of her dress.

"Ah! perhaps we are both a trifle out of sorts this morning!" she said.

"I, too, have had my little turn of sickness--sickness of heart. And

that seems unfair, since I rose in the best disposition of spirit.

Quite early I went to confession."

"Confession?" Richard repeated. "I did not know your submission to the

Church carried you to such practical lengths."

"Evidently we are each fated to make small discoveries regarding the

habits of the other, to-day," she rejoined. "Possibly confession is to

me just what those nights spent on board the yacht, lying in that

malodorous harbour, are to you!"

Helen's smile broadened to a dainty naughtiness, infinitely provoking.

But pensiveness speedily supervened. She folded her hands upon the edge

of the table and looked down at them meditatively.

"I relieved my conscience. Not that there was much to relieve it of,

thank heaven! We have lived austerely enough most of us, this winter in

France. Only it becomes a matter of moral, personal cleanliness, after

a time, all that--exaggerated, but very comfortable. Just as one takes

one's bath twice daily, not that it is necessary but that it is a

luxury of physical purity and self-respect, so one comes to go to

confession. That is a luxury of moral purification. It is as a bath to

the soul, ministering to the perfection of its cleanliness and health."

She looked up at Richard smiling, that same dainty naughtiness very

present.

"You observe I am eminently candid. I tell you exactly how my religion

affects me. I can only reach high-thinking through acts which are

external and concrete. In short, I am a born sacramentalist."

And Richard listened, interested and entertained. Yet, since that

strange blurring of fog still confused his vision and his judgment,

vaguely suspicious that he missed the main intent of her speech.

Suspicious as one who, listening to the clever patter of a conjurer,

detects in it the effort to distract attention from some difficult feat

of legerdemain, until that feat has passed from attempt merely into

accomplished fact.

"And, indirectly, that is where my heart-sickness comes in," she

continued, with a return to something of her former abstraction and

gloom. "I was coming away, coming back here--and I was very happy. It

is not often one can say that. And then--_pouf_---like that," she

brought her hands smartly together, "the charming bubble burst! For,

upon the very church steps, I met a man whom I have every cause to

hate."

As she spoke, the fog seemed to draw away, burnt up by the great,

flaming sun-god there. Richard's brain grew clear--clearer, indeed,

than in perfect health--and his still face grew more still than was,

even to it, quite natural.

"Well?" he asked, almost harshly.

And Helen, whose faith in her own diplomacy had momentarily suffered

eclipse, rejoiced. For the tone of his voice betrayed not disgust, but

anxiety. It stirred her as a foretaste of victory. And victory had

become a maddening necessity to her. Destournelle had forced her hand.

His natural infirmity of purpose relieved her of the fear he could work

her any great mischief. Yet his ingenuity, inspired by wounded vanity,

might prove beyond her calculations. It is not always safe to forecast

the future by experience of the past in relation to such a being as

Destournelle! Therefore it became of supreme importance, before that

gentleman had time further to obtrude himself, to bind Richard Calmady

by some speech, some act, from which there was no going back. And more

than just that. The sight of her ex-lover, though she now loathed

him--possibly just because she so loathed him--provoked passion in her.

It was as though only in a new intrigue could she rid herself of the

remembrance of the old intrigue which was now so detestable to her. She

craved to do him that deepest, most ultimate, despite. And passion

cried out in her. The sight of him, though she loathed him, had made

her utterly weary of chastity. All of which emotions--but held as

hounds in a leash, ready to be slipped when the psychological moment

arrived, and by no means to be slipped until the arrival of

it--dictated the tenor of her next speech.

"Well," she answered, with an air of half-angry sincerity altogether

convincing, "I really don't know that I am particularly proud of the

episode. I know I was careless, that I laid myself open to the

invidious comment, which is usually the reward of all disinterested

action. One learns to accept it as a matter of course. And you see Paul

Destournelle----"

"Oh, Destournelle!" Richard exclaimed.

"You have read him?"

"Every one has read him."

"And what do you think of him?"

"That his technique is as amazingly clever as his thought is amazingly

rotten."

"I know--I know," she said eagerly. "And that is just what induced me

to do all I could for him. If one could cut the canker away, give him

backbone and decency, while retaining that wonderful technique, one

would have a second and a greater Theophile Gautier."

Richard was looking full at her. His face had more colour, more

animation, than usual.

"If--yes--if," he returned. "But that same _if_ bulks mighty big to my

mind."

"I know," she repeated. "Yet it seemed to me worth the attempt. And

then, you understand,--who better?--that if one's own affairs are not

conspicuously happy, one has all the more longing the affairs of others

should be crowned with success. And this winter specially, among the

sordid miseries, disgraces, deprivations, of the siege, one was liable

to take refuge in an over-exalted altruism. It was difficult in so mad

a world not to indulge in personal eccentricity--to the neglect of due

worship of the great goddess Conventionality. With death in visible

form at every street corner, one's sense of humour, let alone one's

higher faculties, rebelled against the futility of such worship. So

many detestable sights and sounds were perpetually presented to

one--not to mention broth of abominable things daily for dinner--that

one turned, with thanksgiving, to beautiful form in art, to perfectly

felicitous words and phrases. The meaning of them mattered but little

just then. They freed one from the tyranny of more or less disgusting

fact. They satisfied eye and ear. One asked nothing more just

then--luckily, you will say, since the animal Destournelle has very

surely nothing more to give."

In speaking, Helen pushed her chair back, turning it sideways to the

table. Her speech was alive with varied and telling inflections. Her

smallest gesture had in it something descriptive and eloquent.

"And so I fell to encouraging the animal," she continued, almost

plaintively, yet with a note of veiled laughter in her voice.

"Reversing the order of Circe--Naples inclines one to classic

illustration, sometimes a little hackneyed--by the way, speaking of

Naples, look at the glory of it all just now, Richard!--I tried to

turn, not men to swine, but swine to men. And I failed, of course. The

gods know best. They never attempt metamorphosis on the ascending

scale! I let Destournelle come to see me frequently. The world advised

itself to talk. But, being rather bitterly secure of myself, I

disregarded that. If one is aware that one's heart was finally and long

ago disposed of, one ceases to think seriously of that side of things.

You must know all that well enough--witness the sea-born furnishings of

my bedroom up-stairs!"

For half a minute she paused. Richard made no comment.

"Hard words break no bones," she added lightly. "And so, to show how

much I despised all such censorious cackle, I allowed Destournelle to

travel south with me when I left Paris."

"You pushed neglect of the worship of conventionality rather far,"

Richard said.

Helen rose to her feet. Excitement gained on her, as always during one

of her delightful improvisations, her talented _viva voce_ improvements

on dry-as-dust fact. She laughed softly, biting her lip. More than one

hound had been slipped by now. They made good running. She stood by

Richard Calmady, looking down at him, covering him, so to speak, with

her eyes. The black mantilla no longer veiled her bright head. It had

fallen to the ground, and lay a dark blot upon the mellow fairness of

the tesselated pavement. White-robed, statuesque--yet not with the

severe grace of marble, but with that softer, more humanly seductive

grace of some figure of cunningly tinted ivory--she appeared, just

then, to gather up in herself all the poetry, the intense and vivid

light, the victorious vitality, of the clear, burning, southern noon.

"Ah, well, conventionality proved perfectly competent to avenge

herself!" she exclaimed. "The animal Destournelle took the average, the

banal view, as might have been anticipated. He had the insane

presumption to suppose it was himself, not his art, in which I was

interested. I explained his error, and departed. I recovered my

equanimity. That took time. I felt soiled, degraded. And then to-day I

meet him again, unashamed, actually claiming recognition. I repeated my

explanation with uncompromising lucidity----"

Richard moved restlessly in his chair, looking up almost sharply at

her.

"Waste of breath," he said. "No explanation is lucid if the hearer is

unwilling to accept it."

And then the two cousins, as though they had reached unexpectedly some

parting of the ways, calling for instant decision in respect of the

future direction of their journey, gazed upon one another

strangely--each half defiant of the other, each diligent to hide his

own and read the other's thought, each sensible of a crisis, each at

once hurried and arrested by suspicion of impending catastrophe, unless

this way be chosen that declined--though it seemed, in good truth, not

in their keeping, but in that of blind chance only that both selection

and rejection actually resided. And, in this strait, neither habit of

society, fine sword-play of diplomacy and tact, availed to help them.

For suddenly they had outpaced all that, and brought up amongst ancient

and secular springs of action and emotion before which civilisation is

powerless and the ready tongue of fashion dumb.

But even while he so gazed, in fateful suspense and indecision, the fog

came up again, chilling Richard Calmady's blood, oppressing his brain

as with an uprising of foul miasma, blurring his vision, so that

Helen's fair, downward-gazing face was distorted, rendered illusive and

vague. And, along with this, distressing restlessness took him,

compelling him to seek relief in change of posture and of place. He

could not stop to reckon with how that which he proposed to do might

strike an onlooker. His immediate sensations filled his whole horizon.

Silently he slipped down from his chair, stood a moment, supporting

himself with one hand on the edge of the table, and then moved forward

to that side of the pavilion which gave upon the garden. Here the

sunshine was hot upon the pavement, and upon the outer half of each

pale, slender column. Richard leant his shoulder against one of these,

grateful for the genial heat.

Since her first and somewhat inauspicious meeting with him in

childhood, Helen had never, close at hand, seen Richard Calmady walk

thus far. She stared, fascinated by that cruel spectacle. For the

instant transformation of the apparently tall, and conspicuously

well-favoured, courtly gentleman, just now sitting at table with her,

into the shuffling, long-armed, dwarfed and crippled creature was, at

first utterly incredible, then portentous, then, by virtue of its very

monstrosity, absorbing and, to her, adorable, whetting appetite as

veritable famine might. Chastity became to her more than ever absurd, a

culpable waste of her own loveliness, of sensation, of emotion, a sin

against those vernal influences working in this generous nature

surrounding her and working in her own blood. All the primitive

instinct of her womanhood called aloud in her that she must wed--must

wed. And the strident voice of the great, painted city coming up to

her, urgent, incessant, carried the same message, as did the radiant

sea, whose white lips kissed the indented coast-line as though pale and

hungry with love. While the man before her, by his very abnormality and

a certain secretness inevitable in that, heightened her passion. He was

to her of all living men most desirable, so that she must win him and

hold him, must see and know.

In a few steps, light as those of the little, rose-crowned dancer of

long ago, she followed him across the shining floor. There was a point

of north in the wind, adding exhilaration to the firm sunshine as ice

to rare wine. The scent of narcissus, magnolia, and lemon blossom was

everywhere. The cypresses yielded an aromatic, myrrh-like sweetness.

The uprising waters of the fountain, set in the central alley, swerved

southward, falling in a jeweled rain. Helen, in her spotless raiment,

came close and Richard Calmady turned to her. But his eyes no longer

questioned hers. They were as windows opening back on to empty space,

seeing all, yet telling nothing. His face had become still again and

inscrutable, lightened only by that flickering, mocking smile. It

seemed as though the psychological moment were passed and social sense,

ordinary fashions of civilised intercourse, had not only come back but

come to stay.

"I think we will omit Destournelle from our talk in future," he said.

"As a subject of conversation I find he disagrees with me,

notwithstanding his felicity of style and his admirable technique. I

will give orders which, I hope, may help to protect you from annoyance

in future. In this delightful land, by wise exercise of just a little

bribery and corruption, it is still possible to make the unwelcome

alien prefer to seek health and entertainment elsewhere. Now, will you

like to go back to the house?"

The approach to the pavilion from the lower level of the garden was by

a carefully graded slope of Roman brick, set edgewise. At regular

intervals of about eighteen inches this was crossed--on the principle

of a gang-plank--by raised marble treads. Without waiting for his

cousin's reply, Richard started slowly down the slope. At the best of

times this descent for him demanded caution. Now his vision was again

so queerly blurred that he miscalculated the distance between the two

lowest treads, slipped and stumbled, lunging forward. Quick as a cat,

Madame de Vallorbes was behind him, her right hand grasping his right

elbow, her left hand under his left armpit.

"Ah! Dickie, Dickie, don't fall!" she cried, a sudden terror in her

voice.

Her muscles hardened like steel. It needed all her strength to support

him, for he was heavy, his body inert as that of one fainting. For a

moment his head rested against her bosom; and her breath came short,

sighing against his neck and cheek.

By sheer force of will Richard recovered his footing, disengaging

himself from her support, shuffling aside from her.

"A thousand thanks, Helen," he said.

Then he looked full at her, and she--untender though she was--perceived

that the perspective of space on which, as windows might, his eyes

seemed to open back, was not empty. It was peopled, crowded--even as

those steep, teeming byways of Naples--by undying, unforgetable misery,

humiliation, revolt.

"Yes, it is rather unpardonable to be--as I am--isn't it?" he said.

Adding hastily, yet with a certain courteous dignity:--"I am ashamed to

trouble you, to ask you--of all people--to run messages for me--but

would you go on to the house----"

"Dickie, why may not I help you?" she interrupted.

"Ah!" he said, "the answer to that lies away back in the beginning of

things. Even unlucky devils, such as myself, are not without a certain

respect for that which is fitting, for seemliness and etiquette. Send

one of my men please. I shall be very grateful to you--thanks."

And Helen de Vallorbes, her passion baulked and therefore more than

ever at white heat, swept up the paved alley, amid the sweet scents of

the garden, beneath the jeweled rain of the fountain, that point of

north in the wind dallying with her as in laughing challenge, making

her the more mad to have her way with Richard Calmady, yet knowing that

of the two--he and she--he was the stronger as yet.