Part 66 (1/2)

Then, shame or no shame, Madame de Vallorbes, of necessity, opened her eyes. And, so doing, it needed all her self-control to repress a cry.

She forced her open hands down very hard on the mattress of the sofa.

For Richard leaned his back against the jamb of the open window, and she saw his face and all his poor figure in profile. His left hand hung straight at his side, the tips of his fingers only just not touching the floor. And again, as at midday the spectacle of his deformity worked upon her strangely.

”What of all that which I said at dinner distresses you?” she asked gently, with sudden solicitude.

”You showed me that I have been a wretchedly negligent host.”--In speaking, the young man turned his head and looked at her, paused a moment, almost startled by her resplendent aspect. Then he looked down at his own stunted and defective limbs. His expression became very grim. He raised his shoulders just perceptibly. ”I reproach myself with having allowed you to be so much alone. It must have been awfully dull for you.”

”It was a little dull,” Helen said, still gently.

”I ought to have begged you to ask some of the people you know in Naples to come here. It was stupid of me not to think of it. I need not have seen them, neither need they have seen me.”

He looked at her steadily again, as though trying to fix her image in his memory.

”Yes, it was stupid of me,” he repeated absently. ”But I have got into churlish, bachelor habits--that can hardly be helped, living alone, or on board s.h.i.+p, as I do--and I have pretty well forgotten how to provide adequately for the entertainment of a guest.”

”Oh! I have had that which I wanted, that which I came for,” Helen answered, very charmingly,--”had it in part, at all events. Though I could have put up with just a little more of it, d.i.c.kie, perhaps.”

”I warned you, if you remember, that opportunities of amus.e.m.e.nt--as that word is generally understood--would be limited.”

”Amus.e.m.e.nt?” she exclaimed, with an almost tragic inflection of contempt.

”Oh yes!” he said, ”amus.e.m.e.nt is not to be despised. I'd give all I am worth, half my time, to be amused--but that again, like hospitality, is rather a lost art with me. You remember, I warned you life at the villa in these days was not precisely hilarious.”

Helen clapped her hands together.

”Ah! you are wilfully obtuse, you are wilfully, cruelly pigheaded!” she cried. ”Pardon me, dear Richard, but your att.i.tude is enough to exasperate a saint. And I am no saint as yet. I am still human--radically, for my own peace of mind lamentably, human. I am only too capable of being grieved, humiliated, hurt. But there, it is folly to say such things to you! You are hopelessly insensible to all that.

So I take refuge in quoting your own words of this morning against you--that no explanation is lucid if the hearer refuses to accept it.”

”I am dull, no doubt, but honestly I fail to see how that remark of mine can be held to apply in the present case.”

”It applies quite desolatingly well!” Helen declared, with spirit. Then her manner softened into a seductiveness of forgiveness once again.--”And so, dear Richard, I am glad that I had already determined to leave here to-morrow. It would have been a little too wretched to arrive at that determination after this conversation. You must go alone to hear your old flame, Morabita, sing. Only, if her voice is still as sympathetic as of old, if it moves you from your present insensibility, you may read remembrance of some aspects of my visit into the witchery of it if you like. It may occur to you what those aspects really meant.”

Helen smiled upon him, leaning a little forward. Her eyes shone, as though looking out through unshed tears.

”It's not exactly flattering to one's vanity to be compelled to depute to another woman the making of such things clear. But it is too evident I waste my time in attempting to make them clear myself. No explanation is lucid, _et caetera_----”

Helen shook back her head with an extraordinary charm of half-defiant, half-tearful laughter. She was playing a game, her whole intelligence bent on the playing of it skilfully. Yet she was genuinely touched. She was swayed by her very real emotion. She spoke from her heart, though every word, every pa.s.sing action, subserved her ultimate purpose in regard to Richard Calmady.

”And, after all, one must retain some remnant of self-respect with which to cover the nakedness of one's---- Oh yes! decidedly, Morabita's voice had best do the rest.”

Richard had moved from his station in the window. He stood at the far end of the sofa, resting his hands on the gilded and carven arm of it.

Now the ungainliness of his deformity was hidden, and his height was greater than that of his companion, obliging her to look up at him.

”I gave you my word, Helen,” he said, ”I have no notion what you are driving at.”

”Driving at, driving at?” she cried. ”Why, the self-evident truth that you are forcing me rather brutally to pay the full price of my weakness in coming here, in permitting myself the indulgence of seeing you again. You told me directly I arrived, with rather cynical frankness, that I had not changed. That is quite true. What I was at Brockhurst, four years ago, what I then felt, that I am and that I feel still. Oh!

you have nothing to reproach yourself with in defect of plain speaking, or excess of amiable subterfuge! You hit out very straight from the shoulder! Directly I arrived you also told me how you had devoted this place--with which, after all, I am not wholly unconnected--to the cult, to the ideal wors.h.i.+p, of a woman whom you loved.”

”So I have devoted it,” Richard said.