CHAPTER X

THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

Sullenly, persistently, the rain came down. In the harbour the wash was

just sufficient to make the raveled fruit-baskets, the shredded

vegetables, the crusts and offal thrown out from the galleys, heave and

sway upon the oily surface of the water, while screaming gulls dropped

greedily upon the floating refuse, and rising, circled over the black,

liquid lanes and open spaces between the hulls of the many ships. But

it was insufficient to lift the yacht, tied up to the southern quay of

the Porto Grande. She lay there inert and in somewhat sorry plight

under the steady downpour. For the moment all the winsome devilry of a

smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through

all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel.

For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern.

While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized,

gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow

planks from the inky lighters and in over her side.

"Beastly dirty job this. Shan't get her paint clean under a week!" the

first mate grumbled to his companion, the second mate--a dark-haired,

dreamy-eyed, West-country lad, but just out of his teens.

The two officers, in dripping oilskins, stood at the gangway checking

the tally of coal-baskets as they came on board. Just now there was a

pause in the black procession, as an empty lighter sheered off, making

room for a full one to come alongside, thus rendering conversation

momentarily possible.

"Pity the boss couldn't have stayed on shore till we were through with

it and cleaned up a bit," the speaker continued. "Makes the old man no

end waxy to have any one on board when the yacht's like she is. I don't

blame him. She's as neat and pretty as a white daisy in a green pasture

when she's away to sea. And now, poor little soul, she's a regular

slut."

"I know I'd 'ave stayed ashore fast enough if I was the boss," the boy

said, half wistfully. "That villa of his is like a piece of poetry. I

keep on saying over to myself how it looks."

"Oh! it's not so bad for foreign parts," the senior officer replied.

"And you're young yet and soft, Penberthy. You'll come of that

presently. England's best for houses, town and country, and most other

things--women, and fights, and even sunshine, for when you do get

sunshine at home there's no spite in it.--Hi! there you ganger," he

shouted suddenly, and resentfully, leaning out over the bulwarks,

"hurry 'em up a bit, can't you? You don't suppose I mean to stand here

till the second anniversary of the Day of Judgment, watching your

blithering, chicken-shanked macaronies suck rotten oranges, do you?

Start 'em up again. Whatever are you waiting for, man? Start 'em up, I

say."

The boy's dreamy eyes, full of unwritten verse, dwelt with a curious

indifference upon the broken procession of ascending, black figures. He

had but lately joined, and to him both the fine vessel and her owner

were invested with a certain romance.

"What was the fancy for calling the yacht the _Reprieve_?" he asked

presently.

"Wait till you've had the chance to take a good look at Sir Richard,

and you'll answer your question yourself," the other man answered

oracularly. Then he broke out again into sustained invective:--"Hold up

there, you little fool of a tight-rope-dancing, _bella Napoli_ gorilla,

and don't go dropping good, honest, Welsh steam-coal overboard into

your confounded, stinking local sewer! I don't care to see any of your

blamed posturings, don't flatter yourself. Hold up you grimacing, great

grandson of a lousy she-ape, can't you, and walk straight.--Take him

all round Sir Richard Calmady's the best boss I ever sailed with--one

of the sternest, but the civilest too.--Shove 'em along, ganger, will

you. Shove 'em along, I say.--He's one of the few men I've loved, I'm

not ashamed to say it, Mr. Penberthy, and about the only one I ever

remember to have feared, in my life."

Meanwhile, if the scene to seaward was cheerless, that to landward

offered but small improvement. For the murk of low-brooding cloud and

falling rain blotted out the Castel S. Elmo, and the Capo di Monte and

Pizzafalcone heights. Even the Castello del'Ovo down on the shore line,

comparatively near at hand, loomed up but a denser mass of indigo-gray

amid the all obtaining grayness. The tall multi-coloured,

many-shuttered houses fronting the quays--restaurants, _cafes_,

money-changers' bureaux, ships' chandlers, and slopshops--looked tawdry

and degraded as a clown's painted face seen by daylight. Thick,

malodorous vapours arose from the squalid streets, lying back on the

level, and from the crowded shipping of the port. These hung in the

stagnant air, about the forest of masts and the funnels of steamers.

And the noise of the place was as that of Bedlam let loose.--The

long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal pitched from the baskets down

the echoing, iron shoots. The grate and scream of saws cutting through

blocks of stone and marble. The grind of heavy wheels upon the broken,

irregular flags. The struggling clatter of hoofs, lashing of whips,

squeal of mules, savage voices raised in cries and imprecations. The

clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner,

blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The

shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster

iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran

out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this,

as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting,

ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid,

sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities of her trade and her

poverty alike disclosed, her fictions and her foulness uncondoned by

reconciling sunshine, Naples had declined from radiant goddess to

common drab.

It was in this character that Richard Calmady, driving yesterday, and

for the first time, through the streets at noon, had been fated to see

his so fondly-idealised city. It was in this character that he

apprehended it again to-day, waiting in his deck-cabin until cessation

of the rain and on-coming of the friendly dusk should render it not

wholly odious to sit out on deck. The hours lagged, and even this

bright and usually spotless apartment--with its shining, white walls,

its dark, blue leather and polished, mahogany fittings--the coal dust

penetrated. It rimmed the edge of the books neatly ranged on the racks.

It smirched the charts laid out on the square locker-table below. It

drifted in at the cabin windows, along with the babel of sound and the

all-pervading stench of the port. This was, in itself, sufficiently

distasteful, sufficiently depressing. And to Richard, just now, the

disgust of it came with the heightened sensibility of physical illness,

and as accompaniment to an immense private shame and immense

self-condemnation, a conviction of outlawry and a desolation passing

speech. He looked for comfort, for promise of restoration, and found

none, in things material or things intellectual, in others or in

himself. For his mind, always prone to apprehend by images rather than

by words, and to advance by analogy rather than by argument,

discovered, in surrounding aspects and surrounding circumstance, a

rather hideously apt parable and illustration of its present state.

Just as this seemingly fair city was proven, on intimate acquaintance,

repulsive beyond the worst he had ever feared and earnestly refused to

know of it, so a certain fair woman, upon whom, since boyhood, his

best, most chivalrous, most unselfish, affections had centred, was

proven--herself, moreover, flagrantly contributing to that

proving--vile beyond all that rumor, heard and passionately denied by

him, had ever ventured to whisper concerning her. Nor was the misery of

this revelation lessened by the knowledge that his own part in it all

had been very base. He had sinned before. He would sin again probably.

Richard had long ceased to regard these matters from a strictly

puritanic standpoint. But this particular sinning was different to any

that had gone before, or which could come after it. For it partook--so

at least, it now appeared to him--of the nature of sacrilege, since he

had sinned against his ideal, degrading that to gross uses which he had

agreed with himself to hold sacred, defiling it and, thereby, very

horribly defiling himself.

And this disgrace of their relation, his own and hers, the inherent

abomination of it all and its inherent falsity, had been forced home on

him with a certain violence of directness just in the common course of

daily happenings. For among the letters, brought to him along with his

first breakfast, yesterday, after that night of secret licence, had

been three of serious import. One was from Lady Calmady, and that he

put aside with a certain anger, calling himself unwilling, knowing

himself unfit, to read it. Another he tore open. The handwriting was

unknown to him. He began reading it in bewilderment. Then he

understood.

"MONSIEUR,"--it ran,--"You are in process of exterminating me. But,

since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been

afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the

profoundness of nobility which I discover within me--I calm myself. I

go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned

that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here--Madame de Vallorbes.

My connection with her represents the supreme passion of my passionate

youth. At once a frenzy and an anodyne, I have found in it the

inspiration of my genius in its later development. This work must not

be put a stop to. It is too majestic, it is weighted with too serious

consequences to the whole of thinking France, of thinking Europe. A

less experienced woman cannot satisfy the extravagance of my desires,

the demands of my all-consuming imagination. The reverence with which a

person, such as yourself, must regard commanding talent, the

concessions he must be willing to make to its necessities, are without

limit. This I cannot doubt that you will admit. The corollary is

obvious. Either, _monsieur_, you will immediately invite me to reside

with you at your villa--thereby securing for yourself daily intercourse

with a nature of distinguished merit--or you will restore Madame de

Vallorbes to me without hesitation or delay. Her devotion to me is

absolute. How could it fail to be so, since I have lavished upon her

the treasures of my extraordinary personality? But a fear of insular

prejudice on your part withholds her at this moment from full

expression of that devotion. She suffers as well as myself. It will be

your privilege to put a term to this suffering by requesting me to join

her, or by restoring her to me. To do otherwise will be to prolong the

eclipse of my genius, and thereby outrage the conscience of civilised

humanity which breathlessly awaits the next utterance of its chosen

poet. If you require the consolation of feminine society, marry--it

would be very simple--some white-souled, English miss. But restore to

me, to whom her presence is indispensable, this woman of regal

passions. I shall present myself at your house to-day to receive your

answer in person. The result of a refusal on your part to receive me

will be attended by calamitous consequences to yourself.--Accept,

_monsieur_, the expression of my highest consideration,

"PAUL AUGUSTE DESTOURNELLE."

For the moment Richard saw red, mad with rage at the insolence of the

writer. And then came the question, was it true, this which the letter

implied? Had Helen, indeed, lied to him? And, notwithstanding its

insane vanity, did this precious epistle give a more veracious account

of her relation to the young poet than that which she had herself

volunteered? He tried to put the thought from him. Who was he--to-day

of all days--to be nice about the conduct of another? Who was he to sit

in judgment? So he turned to his correspondence again, taking another

letter, at random, from the pile. And then, looking at the

superscription, he turned somewhat sick.

"MON CHER,"--wrote M. de Vallorbes,--"My steward informs me that he has

just received your draft for a quarter's rent of the villa. I thank you

a thousand times for your admirable punctuality. Decidedly you are of

those with whom it is a consolation to do business. Need I assure you

that the advent of this money is far from inopportune, since a grateful

country, while showering distinctions upon me with one hand, with the

other picks my pocket. I find it not a little expensive this famous

military service! But then, ever since I can remember, I have found all

that afforded me the slightest, active pleasure equally that! And this

sport of war, I promise you, is the most excellent sport in which I

have as yet participated. It satisfies the primitive instincts more

thoroughly than even your English fox-hunting. A _battue_ of

_Communards_ is obviously superior to a _battue_ of pheasants. To the

dignity of killing one's fellow-men is added the satisfaction of

ridding oneself of vermin. It becomes a matter of sanitation and

self-respect. And this, indirectly, recalls to me, that report declares

my wife to be with you at Naples. _Mon cher je vous en fais cadeau_.

With you, at least, I know that my honour is safe. You may even instil

into her mind some faint conception of the rudiments of morality. To be

frank with you, she needs that. A couple of months ago she did me the

honour to elope--temporarily, of course--with M. Paul Destournelle. You

may have glanced, one day, at his crapulous verses. I suppose honour

demanded that I should pursue the guilty pair and account for one, if

not both, of them. But I was too busily engaged with my little

_Communards_. We set these gentry up against a wall and dispose of them

in batches. I have had a good deal of this, but, as I say, it has not

yet become monotonous. Traits of individual character lend it vivacity.

And then, putting aside the exigencies of my profession, I do not know

that anything is to be gained by inviting public scandal. You have an

English proverb to the effect that one should wash one's dirty linen at

home. This I have tried to do, as you cannot but be aware, all along.

If one has had the misfortune to marry Messalina, one learns to be

philosophic. A few lovers more or less, in that connection, what, after

all, does it matter? Indeed, I begin to derive ironical consolation

from the fact of their multiplicity. The existence of one would have

constituted a reflection upon my charms. But a matter of ten, fifteen,

twenty, ceases to be in any degree personal to myself. Only I object to

Destournelle. He is too young, too _rococco_. He represents a descent

in the scale. I prefer _des hommes mures_, generals, ministers,

princes. The devil knows we have had our share of such! Your generosity

to her has saved us from Jews so far, and from _nouveaux riches_, by

relieving the business of commercial aspects. Give her some salutary

advice, therefore, _mon cher_, and if she becomes inconvenient forward

her to Paris. I forgive to seventy-times-seven, being still proud

enough to struggle after an appearance of social and conjugal decency.

_Enfin_ it is a relief to have unburdened myself for once, and you have

been the good genius of my unfortunate _menage_, for which heaven

reward you.--Yours, in true cousinly regard and supreme reliance on

your discretion,

"LUIGI ANGELO FRANCESCO DE VALLORBES."

That this, in any case, had a stamp of sincerity upon it, Richard could

not doubt. It must be admitted that he had long ceased to accept Madame

de Vallorbes' estimate of her husband with unqualified belief. But, be

that as it might, whether he were a consummate, or merely an average,

profligate, one thing was certain that this man trusted him--Richard

Calmady,--and that he--Richard Calmady--had very vilely betrayed that

trust. He stared at the letter, and certain sentences in it seemed to

sear him, even as the branding-iron used on a felon might. This was a

new shame, different to, and greater than, any his deformity had ever

induced in him, even as evil done is different to, and greater than,

evil suffered. Morality may be relative only and conventional. Honour,

for all persons of a certain standing and breeding, remains absolute.

And it was precisely of his own honour that he had deprived himself.

Not only in body, but in character, he was henceforth monstrous. For a

while Richard had remained very still, looking at this thing into which

he had made himself as though it were external and physically visible

to him.

Then, suddenly, he had reached out his hand for his mother's letter. A

decision of great moment was impending. He would know what she had to

say before finally making that decision. He wondered bitterly, grimly,

whether her words would plunge him yet deeper in this abyss of

self-hatred and self-contempt.

MY DARLING,"--she wrote,--"I am foolishly glad to learn that you are

back at Naples. It gives me comfort to know you are even thus much

nearer home and in a country where I too have traveled and of which I

retain many dear and delightful recollections. You may be surprised,

perhaps, to see the unaccustomed address upon my note-paper and may

wonder what has made me guilty of deserting my post. Now, since the

worst of it is certainly over, I may tell you that my health has failed

a good deal of late. Nothing of a really serious nature--you need not

be alarmed about me. But I had got into a rather weak and unworthy

state, from which it became very desirable I should rouse myself.

Selfishness is insidious, but none the less reprehensible because it

takes the apparently innocent form of sitting in a chair with one's

eyes shut! However, that best of men, John Knott, brought very bracing

influences to bear on me, convincing me of sin--in the gentlest way in

the world--by means of Honoria St. Quentin. And so I picked myself up,

dear Dickie,--picked the whole of myself up, as I hope, always saving

and excepting my self-indulgent inertia,--and came away here to

Ormiston. At first, I confess, I felt very much like a dog at a fair,

or the proverbial mummy at a feast. But they all bore with me in the

plenty of their kindness, and, in the last week, I have banished the

mummy and trained the scared dog to altogether polite and pretty

behaviour. Till I came back to it, I hardly realised how truly I loved

this place. How should it be otherwise? I met your father first here

after his third term at Eton. I remember he snubbed me roundly. I met

him again the year before our marriage. Without vanity I declare that

then he snubbed me not one little bit. These things are very far away.

But to me, though far away, they are very vivid and very lovely. I see

them as you, when you were small, so often pleaded to see a fairy

landscape by looking through the large end of the gold and

tortoise-shell spy-glass upon my writing-table. All of which may seem

to you somewhat childish and trivial, but I grow an old woman and have

a fancy for toys and tender make-believes--such as fairy landscapes

seen through the big end of a spy-glass. The actual landscape, at

times, is a trifle discouragingly rain-washed and cloudy!---Roger and

Mary are here. Their two boys are just gone back to school again. They

are fine, courteous, fearless, little fellows. Roger makes a rather

superb middle-aged man. He has much of my father--your grandfather's

reticence and dignity. Indeed, he might prove slightly alarming, was

one not so perfectly sure of him, dear creature. Mary remains, as of

old, the most wholesome and helpful of women. Yes, it is good to dwell,

for a time, among one's own people. And I cannot but rejoice that my

eldest brother has come to an arrangement by which, at his death, your

Uncle William will receive a considerable sum of money in lieu of the

property. This last will go direct to Roger, and eventually to his

boys. If your Uncle William had a son, the whole matter would be

different. But I own it would hurt me that in the event of his death

there would be no Ormiston at Ormiston after these many generations. In

all probability the place would be sold immediately, moreover, for it

is an open secret that, through no fault of his own, poor man, William

is sadly embarrassed in money matters. And he has other sorrows--of a

rather terrible nature, since they are touched with disgrace. But here

you will probably detect a point of prejudice, so I had better stop!--I

look out upon a gray, northern sea, where 'the white horses fume and

fret' under a cold, gray, northern sky. The oaks in the park are just

thickening with yellow-green buds. And there, close to my window,

perched on a topmost twig, a missel-thrush is singing, facing the wind

like a gentleman. You look out upon a purple sea, I suppose, beneath

clear skies and over orange trees and palms. I wonder if any brave bird

pipes to you as my storm-cock to me? It brings up one's courage to hear

his song, so strong and wild and sweet, in the very teeth of the gale

too! But now you will have had enough of my news and more than enough.

I write to you more freely, you see, than for a long time past, being

myself more free of spirit. And therefore I dare add this, in all and

every case, my darling, God keep you. And remember, should you weary of

wandering, that not only the doors of Brockhurst, but the doors of my

heart, stand forever wide open to welcome you home.--Yours always,

K. C."

Reading which gentle, yet in a sense daring, words, Richard's shame

took on another complexion, but one by no means calculated to mitigate

the burning of it. His treachery towards de Vallorbes became almost

vulgar and of small moment beside his cruelty to this superbly

magnanimous woman, his mother. For, all these years, determinately and

of set purpose, defiant of every better impulse, he had hardened his

heart against her. To differ from her, to cherish that which was

unsympathetic to her, to put aside every tradition in which she had

nurtured him, to love that which she condemned, to condemn that which

she loved--and this, if silently, yet unswervingly--had been the ruling

purpose of his action. That which had its origin in passionate revolt

against his own unhappy disfigurement, had come to be an interest and

object in itself. In this quarrel with her--a quarrel, intimate,

pre-natal, anterior to consciousness and to volition--he found the

justification of his every lapse, his every crookedness of conduct and

of thought. Since he could not reach Almighty God, and strike at the

eternal First Cause which he held responsible for the inalienable wrong

done to him, he would strike, with cold-blooded persistence, at the

woman whom Almighty God had permitted to be His instrument in the

infliction of that wrong. And to where had that sustained purpose of

striking led him? Even--so he judged just now--to the dishonour and

desolation of to-day, following upon the sacrilegious licence of last

night.

All this Richard saw with the alternately groping, benumbed, mental

vision and the glaring, mental nakedness of breeding fever. Small

wonder that looking for comfort, for promise of restoration, he found

none in things material, in things intellectual, in others, or in

himself! He felt outcasted beyond hope of redemption, but not

repentant, hardly remorseful even, only aware of all that which had

happened, and of his own state. For Lady Calmady's letter was to him

little more, as yet, than a placing of facts. To trade upon her

magnificent generosity of affection, and seek refuge in those

outstretched arms now, with the mark of the branding-iron so sensibly

upon him, appeared to him of all contemptible doings the most radically

contemptible. Obviously it was impossible to go back. He must go on

rather--out of sight, out of mind. Fantastic schemes of disappearing,

of losing himself, far away, in remote and nameless places, among the

coral islands of the Pacific or the chill majesty of the Antarctic

seas, offered themselves to his imagination. The practical difficulties

presented by such schemes, their infeasibility, did not trouble him. He

would sever all connection with that which had been, with that which

had made for good equally with that which had made for evil. By his own

voluntary act and choice he would become as a man dead, the disgrace of

his malformed body, the closer and more hideous disgrace of his defiled

and prostituted soul, surviving in legend merely, as might some ugly,

old-time fable useful for the frightening of unruly babies.

And to that end of self-obliteration he instantly applied himself, with

outward calm, but with the mental hurry and restlessness of increasing

illness. His first duty was to end the whole matter of his relation to

Helen,--Helen shorn of her divinity, convicted liar and wanton, yet

mistress still for him, as he feared, of mighty enchantments. So he

wrote to her very briefly. The note should be given her later in the

day. In it he stated that he should have left the villa before this

announcement reached her, left it finally and without remotest prospect

of return, since he could not doubt that she recognised, as he did, how

impossible it had become that he and she should meet again. He added

that he would communicate with her shortly as to business arrangements.

That done, he summoned Powell, his valet, bidding him pack. He would go

down to the yacht at once. He had received information which made it

imperative that he should quit Naples immediately.

To be out of all this, rid of it, fairly started on the road of

negation of social being, negation of recognised existence, infected

him like a madness. But even the most forceful human will must bend to

stupidities of detail and of material fact. Unexpected delays had

occurred. The yacht was not ready for sea, neither coaled, nor

provisioned, nor sound of certain small damages to her machinery.

Vanstone, the captain, might mislay his temper, and the first mate

expend himself in polysyllabic invective, young Penberthy cease to

dream, stewards, engineers, carpenters, cooks, quartermasters, seamen,

firemen, do their most willing and urgent best, nevertheless the

morning of next day, and even the afternoon of it, still found Richard

Calmady seated at the locker-table of the white-walled deck-cabin, his

voyage towards self-obliteration not yet begun.

Charts were outspread before him, upon which, at weary intervals, he

essayed to trace the course of his coming wanderings. But his brain was

dull, he had no power of consecutive thought. That same madness of

going was upon him with undiminished power, yet he knew not where he

wanted to go, hardly why he wanted to go, only that a blind obsession

of going drove him. He was miserably troubled about other matters

too--about that same brief letter he had written to Helen before

leaving the villa. He was convinced that he had written such a letter,

but struggle as he might to remember the contents of it they remained

to him a blank. He was haunted by the fear that in that letter he had

committed some irremediable folly, had bound himself to some absurdly

unworthy course of action. But what it might be escaped and, in

escaping, tortured him. And then, this surely was Friday, and Morabita

sang at the San Carlo to-night? And surely he had promised to be there,

and to meet the famous _prima donna_ and sup with her after the

performance, as in former days at Vienna? He had not always been quite

kind to her, poor, dear, fat, good-natured, silly soul! He could not

fail her now.--And then he went back to a chart of the South Pacific

again. Only he could not see it plainly, but saw, instead of it, the

great folio of copper-plate engravings lying on the broad window-seat

of the eastern bay of the Long Gallery at home. He was sitting there to

watch for the race-horses coming back from exercise, Tom Chifney

pricking along beside them on his handsome cob. And the long-ago,

boyish desperation of longing for wholeness, for freedom, brought a

moistness to his eyes, and a lump into his throat. And all the while

the coal dust drifted in at each smallest crevice and aperture, and the

air was vibrant with rasping, jarring uproar and nauseous with the

stale, heavy odours of the city and the port. And steadily,

ceaselessly, the descending rain drummed upon the roofing overhead.

At length a stupor took him. His head sunk upon his arms, folded upon

those outspread charts, while the noise of all the rude activities

surrounding him subtly transformed itself into that of a great

orchestra. And above this, superior to, yet nobly supported by it,

Morabita's voice rose in the suave and passionate phrases of the

glorious cavatina--"_Ernani, Ernani, involami, all aborito

ampleso._"--Yes, her voice was as good as ever! Richard drew a long

breath of relief. Here, at least, was something true to itself, and

amid so much of change, so much of spoiling, still unspoilt! He raised

his head and listened. For something must have happened, something of

serious moment. The orchestra, for some unaccountable reason, had

suddenly broken down. Yes, it must be the orchestra which disaster had

overtaken, for a voice very certainly continued. No, not a voice, but

voices--those of Vanstone the captain, and Price the first mate, and

old Billy Tinn the boatswain--loud, imperative, violently remonstrant,

but swept under and swamped at moments by cries and volleys of foulest,

Neapolitan _argot_ from hoarse, Neapolitan throats. And that abruptly

silenced orchestra?--Richard came back to himself, came back to

actualities of environment and prosaic fact. An infinitely weariful

despair seized him. For the sound that had reached so sudden a

termination was not that of cunningly-attuned, musical instruments, but

the long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal, pitched from the baskets

down the echoing, iron shoots.

The cabin door opened discreetly and Powell, incarnation of decorous

punctualities even amid existing tumultuously discomposing

circumstances, entered.

"From the villa, sir," he said, depositing letters and newspapers upon

the table.

Richard put out his hand, turned them over mechanically. For again,

somehow, notwithstanding the babel without, that exquisite

invitation--"_Ernani, Ernani, involami_,"--assailed his ears.

The valet waited a little, quiet and deferential in bearing, yet

observing his master with a certain keenness and anxiety.

"I saw Mr. Bates, as you desired, sir," he said at last.

Richard looked up at him vaguely. And it struck him that while Powell

was on shore to-day he had undoubtedly had his hair cut. This

interested him--though why, he would have found it difficult to say.

"Mr. Bates thought you should be informed that a gentleman called early

yesterday afternoon, as he said by appointment."

Yes--certainly Powell had had his hair cut.--"Did the gentleman give

his name?"

"Yes, sir, M. Paul Destournelle."

Powell spoke slowly, getting his tongue carefully round the foreign

syllables, and, for all the confusion of his hearer's mind, the name

went home. Vagueness passed from Richard's glance.

"He was refused, of course."

"Her ladyship had given orders that should any person of that name call

he was to be admitted."--Powell spoke with evident reluctance.

"Consequently Mr. Bates was uncertain how to act, having received

contrary orders from you, sir, the day before yesterday. He explained

this to her ladyship, but she insisted."

Richard's mind had become perfectly lucid.

"Very well," he said coldly.

"Mr. Bates also thought you should know, sir, that after M.

Destournelle's visit her ladyship announced she should not remain at

the villa. She left about five o'clock, taking her maid. Charles

followed with all the baggage."

The valet paused. Richard's manner was decidedly discouraging, yet,

something further must at least be intimated.

"Her ladyship gave no address to Mr. Bates for the forwarding of her

letters."

But here the cabin door, left slightly ajar by Powell, was opened wide,

and that with none of the calm and discretion displayed by the

functionary in question. A long perspective of grimy deck behind him,

his oilskins shiny from the wet, with trim, black beard, square-made,

bold-eyed, hot-tempered, warm-hearted, alert, humorous--typical West

Countryman as his gentle dreamy cousin, Penberthy, the second mate,

though of a very different type--stood Captain Vanstone. His

easily-ruffled temper suffered from the after effects of what is

commonly known as a "jolly row," and his speech was curt in consequence

thereof.

"Sorry to disturb you, Sir Richard," he said, "and still more sorry to

disappoint you, but it can't be helped."

Dickie turned upon him so strangely drawn and haggard a countenance,

that Vanstone with difficulty repressed an exclamation. He looked in

quick inquiry at the valet, who so far departed from his usual decorum

as to nod his head in assent to the silent questioning.

"What's wrong now?" Richard said.

"Why, these beggarly rascals have knocked off. Price offered them a

higher scale of pay. I had empowered him to do so. But they won't

budge. The rain's washed the heart out of them. We've tried persuasion

and we've tried threats--it's no earthly use. Not a basket more coal

will they put on board before five to-morrow morning."

"Can't we sail with what we have got?"

"Not enough to carry us to Port Said."

"What will be the extent of the delay this time?" Richard asked. His

tone had an edge to it.

Again Captain Vanstone glanced at the valet.

"With luck we may get off to-morrow about midnight."

He stepped back, shook himself like a big dog, scattering the water off

his oilskins in a shower upon the slippery deck. Then he came inside

the cabin and stood near Richard. His expression was very kindly,

tender almost.

"You must excuse me, sir," he said. "I know it doesn't come within my

province to give you advice. But you do look pretty ill, Sir Richard.

Every one's remarking that. And you are ill, sir--you know it, and I

know it, and Mr. Powell here knows it. You ought to see a doctor,

sir--and if you'll pardon plain language, this beastly cess-pit of a

harbour is not a fit place for you to sleep in."

And poor Dickie, after an instant of sharp annoyance, touched by the

man's honest humanity smiled upon him--a smile of utter weariness,

utter homelessness.

"Perfectly true. Get me out to sea then, Vanstone. I shall be better

there than anywhere else," he said.

Whereupon the kindly sailor-man turned away, swearing gently into his

trim, black beard.

But the valet remained, impassive in manner, actively anxious at heart.

"Have you any orders for the carriage, sir?" he asked. "Garcia drove me

down. I told him to wait until I had inquired."

Richard was long in replying. His brain was all confused and clouded

again, while again he heard the voice of the famous soprano--"_Ernani,

Ernani, involami_."

"Yes," he said at last. "Tell Garcia to be here in good time to drive

me to the San Carlo. I have an appointment at the opera to-night."