"Look here, Helen," he said, rather hoa.r.s.ely, "I am indescribably shocked at what you have just told me. I supposed it was all so different with you. I'd no suspicion of this. And--and--if I may say so, you've taught me a lesson which has gone home--steady there--steady, good la.s.s"--for the horses danced and snorted--"I don't think I shall ever grumble much in future about troubles of my own, having seen how splendidly you bear yours. Only I can't agree with you no remedy is possible for generous mistakes. The world isn't quite so badly made as all that. There is a remedy for every mistake except--a few physical ones, which we euphuistically describe as visitations of G.o.d.--Steady, steady there--wait a bit.--And I--I tell you I can't sit down under this unhappiness of yours and just put up with it. Don't think me a meddling fool, please. Something's got to be done. I know I probably appear to you the last person in the world to be of use. And yet I'm not sure about that. I have time--too much of it--and I'm not quite an a.s.s. And you--you must know, I think, there's nothing in heaven or earth I would not do for you that I could----"

The miller hauled his slow-moving team aside, with beery-thick objurgations and apologies. The groom swung himself up at the back of the carriage again. The impatient horses, getting their heads, swung away down Sandyfield Street--scattering a litter of merry, little, black pigs and remonstrant fowls to right and left--past modest village shop, and yellow-washed tavern, and red, lichen-stained cottage, beneath the row of tall Lombardy poplars that raised their brown-gray spires to the blue-gray of the autumn sky. Richard's left hand held the reins again.

"Half confidences are no good," he said. "So, as you've trusted me thus far, Helen, don't you think you will trust somewhat further? Be explicit. Tell me the rest?"

And hearing him, seeing him just then, Madame de Vallorbes' heart melted within her, and, to her own prodigious surprise, she had much ado not to weep.

CHAPTER IX

WHICH TOUCHES INCIDENTALLY ON MATTERS OF FINANCE

As Richard had predicted the fog reappeared towards sun sunset. At first, as a frail mist, through which the landscape looked colourless and blurred. Later it rose, growing in density, until all objects beyond a radius of some twenty paces were engulfed in its nothingness and lost. Later still--while Helen de Vallorbes paid her visit at Newlands--it grew denser yet, heavy, torpid, close yet cold, penetrated by earthy odours as the atmosphere of a vault, oppressive to the senses, baffling to sight and hearing alike. From out it, half-leafless branches, like gaunt arms in tattered draperies, seemed to claw and beckon at the pa.s.sing carriage and its occupants. The silver mountings of the harness showed in points and splashes of hard, shining white as against the shifting, universal dead-whiteness of it, while the breath from the horses' nostrils rose into it as defiant jets of steam, that struggled momentarily with the opaque, all-enveloping vapour, only to be absorbed and obliterated as light by darkness, or life by death.

The aspect presented by nature was sinister, had Richard Calmady been sufficiently at leisure to observe it in detail. But, as he slowly walked the horses up and down the quarter of a mile of woodland drive, leading from the thatched lodge on the right of the Westchurch road to the house, he was not at leisure. He had received enlightenment on many subjects. He had acquired startling impressions, and he needed to place these, to bring them into line with the general habit of his thought.

The majority of educated persons--so-called--think in words, words often arbitrary and inaccurate enough, prolific mothers of mental confusion. The minority, and those of by no means contemptible intellectual calibre,--since the symbol must count for more than the mere label,--think in images and pictures. d.i.c.kie belonged to the minority. And it must be conceded that his mind now projected against that shifting, impalpable background of fog, a series of pictures which in their cynical pathos, their suggestions at once voluptuous and degraded, were hardly unworthy of the great master, William Hogarth, himself.

For Helen, in the reaction and relief caused by finding her relation to Richard unimpaired, caused too by that joyous devilry resident in her and constantly demanding an object on which to wreak its derision, had by no means spared her lord and master, Angelo Luigi Francesco, Vicomte de Vallorbes. And this only son of a thrifty, hard-bitten, Savoyard banker-n.o.ble and a Neopolitan princess of easy morals and ancient lineage, this Parisian _viveur_, his intrigues, his jealousies, his practical unG.o.dliness and underlying superst.i.tion, his outbursts of temper, his shrewd economy in respect of others, and extensive personal extravagance, offered fit theme, with aid of little romancing, for such a discourse as it just now suited his very brilliant, young wife to p.r.o.nounce.

The said discourse opened in a low key, broken by pauses, by tactful self-accusations, by questionings as to whether it were not more merciful, more loyal, to leave this or that untold. But as she proceeded, not only did Helen suffer the seductions of the fine art of lying, but she really began to have some ado to keep her exuberant sense of fun within due limits. For it proved so excessively exhilarating to deal thus with Angelo Luigi Francesco! She had old scores to settle. And had she not this very day received an odiously disquieting letter from him, in which he not only made renewed complaint of her poor, little miseries of debts and flirtations, but once more threatened retaliation by a cutting-off of supplies? In common justice did he not deserve villification? Therefore, partly out of revenge, partly in self-justification, she proceeded with increasing enthusiasm to show that to know M. de Vallorbes was a lamentably liberal education in all civilised iniquities. With a hand, sure as it was light, she dissected out the unhappy gentleman, and offered up his mangled and bleeding reputation as tribute to her own so-perpetually outraged moral sense and feminine delicacy, not to mention her so-repeatedly and vilely wounded heart. And there really was truth--as at each fresh flight of her imagination she did not fail to remind herself--in all that which she said. Truth?--yes, just that misleading sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this precaution is to court eventual detection and consequent confusion of face.

As it was, Helen entered the house at Newlands, a house singularly unused to psychological aberrations, in buoyant spirits, mischief sitting in her discreetly downcast eyes, laughter perplexing her lips.

She had placed her cargo of provocation, of resentment, to such excellent advantage! She was, moreover, slightly intoxicated by her own eloquence. She was at peace with herself and all mankind, with de Vallorbes even since his sins had afforded her so rare an opportunity.

And this occasioned her to congratulate herself on her own conspicuous magnanimity. It is so exceedingly pleasing not only to know yourself clever, but to believe yourself good! She would be charming to these dear kind, rather dull people. Not that Honoria was dull, but she had inconveniently austere notions of honour and loyalty at moments. And then the solitary drive home with Richard Calmady lay ahead, full of possible drama, full of, well, heaven knew what! Oh! how entrancing a pastime is life!

But to Richard, walking the snorting and impatient horses slowly up and down the woodland drive in the blear and sightless fog, life appeared quite other than an entrancing pastime. The pictures projected by his thought, and forming the medium of it, caused him black indignation and revolt, desolated him, too, with a paralysing disgust of his own disabilities. For poor d.i.c.k had declined somewhat in the last few hours, it must be owned, from the celestial alt.i.tudes he had reached before luncheon. Some part of his cousin's discourse had been dangerously intimate in character, suggesting situations quite other than platonic. To him there appeared a n.o.ble innocence in her treatment of matters not usually spoken of. He had listened with a certain reverent amazement. Only out of purity of mind could such speech come.

And yet an undeniable effect remained, and it was not altogether elevating. Richard was no longer the young Sir Galahad of the noontide of this eventful day. He was just simply a man--in a sensible degree the animal man--loving a woman, hating that other man to whom she was legally bound. Hating that other man, not only because he was unworthy and failed to make her happy, but because he stood in his--Richard's--way.

Hating the man all the more fiercely because, whatever the uncomeliness of his moral const.i.tution, he was physically very far from uncomely.

And so, along with n.o.bler incitements to hatred, went the fiend envy, which just now plucked at poor d.i.c.kie's vitals as the vulture at those of the chained t.i.tan of old. Whereupon he fell into a meditation somewhat morbid. For, contemplating in pictured thought that other man's bodily perfection, contemplating his property and victim,--the fair modern Helen, who by her courage and her trials exercised so potent a spell over his imagination,--Richard loathed his own maimed body, maimed chances and opportunities, as he had never loathed them before. How often since his childhood had some casual circ.u.mstance or trivial accident brought the fact of his misfortune home to him, causing him--as he at the moment supposed--to reckon, once and for all, with the sum total of it! But as years pa.s.sed and experience widened, below each depth of this adhering misery another deep disclosed itself.

Would he never reach bottom? Would this inalienable disgrace continue to show itself more restricting and impeding to his action, more repulsive and contemptible to his fellow-men, through all the succeeding stages and vicissitudes of his career, right to the very close?

To her hosts Madame de Vallorbes appeared in her gayest and most engaging humour. It was only a flying visit, she mustn't stay, Richard was waiting for her. Only she felt she must just have two words with Honoria. And say good-bye? Yes, ten thousand sorrows, it was good-bye.

She was recalled to Paris, home, and duty. She made an expressive little grimace at Miss St. Quentin.

"Your husband will be"--began Mrs. Cathcart, in her large, gently authoritative manner.

"Enchanted to see me, of course, dear Cousin Selina, or he would not have required my return thus urgently. We may take that for said.

Meanwhile what strange sprigs of n.o.bility flourish in the local soil here."

And she proceeded to give an account of the Fallowfeild party at luncheon more witty, perhaps, than veracious. Helen could be extremely entertaining on occasion. She gave reins to her tongue, and it galloped away with her in most surprising fashion.

"My dear, my dear," interrupted her hostess, "you are a little unkind surely! My dear, you are a little flippant!"

But Madame de Vallorbes enveloped her in the most a.s.suaging embrace.

"Let me laugh while I can, dearest Cousin Selina," she pleaded. "I have had a delightful little holiday. Every one has been charming to me.

You, of course--but then you always are that. Your presence breathes consolation. But Aunt Katherine has been charming too, and that, quite between ourselves, was a little more than I antic.i.p.ated. Now the holiday draws to a close and pay-day looms large ahead. You know nothing about such pay-days, thank heaven, dear Cousin Selina. They are far from joyous inventions; and so"--the young lady spread abroad her hands, palms upward, and shrugged her shoulders under their weight of costly furs--"and so I laugh, don't you understand, I laugh!"

Miss St. Quentin's delicate, square-cut face wore an air of solicitude as she followed her friend out of the room. There was a trace of indolence in her slow, reflective speech, as in her long, swinging stride--the indolence bred of unconscious strength rather than of weakness, the leisureliness which goes with staying power both in the moral and the physical domain.

"See here, Nellie," she said, "forgive brutal frankness, but which is the real thing to-day--they're each delightful in their own way--the tears or the laughter?"

"Both! oh, well-beloved seeker after truth," Madame de Vallorbes answered. "There lies the value of the situation."

"Fresh worries?"

"No, no, the old, the accustomed, the well-accredited, the normal, the stock ones--a husband and a financial crisis."

As she spoke Madame de Vallorbes fastened the b.u.t.tons of her long driving-coat. Miss St. Quentin knelt down and busied herself with the lowest of these. Her tall, slender figure was doubled together. She kept her head bent.

"I happen to have a pretty tidy balance just now," she remarked parenthetically, and as though with a certain diffidence. "So you know, if you are a bit hard up--why--it's all perfectly simple, Nellie, don't you know."

For a perceptible s.p.a.ce of time Madame de Vallorbes did not answer. A grating of wheels on the gravel arrested her attention. She looked down the long vista of ruddily lighted hall, with its glowing fire and cheerful lamps to the open door, where, against the blear whiteness of the fog, the mail-phaeton and its occupant showed vague, in outline and in proportions almost gigantic against the thick, shifting atmosphere.

Miss St. Quentin raised her head, surprised at her companion's silence.

Helen de Vallorbes bent down, took the upturned face in both hands and kissed the soft cheeks with effusion.

"You are adorable," she said. "But you are too generous. You shall lend me nothing more. I believe I see my way. I can sc.r.a.pe through this crisis."

Miss St. Quentin rose to her feet.

"All right," she said, smiling upon her friend from her superior height with a delightful air of affection and apology. "I only wanted you just to know, in case--don't you see. And--and--for the rest, how goes it Helen? Are you turning all their poor heads at Brockhurst? You're rather an upsetting being to let loose in an ordinary, respectable, English country-house. A sort of _Mousquetaire au couvent_ the other way about, don't you know. Are you making things fly generally?"

"I am making nothing fly," the other lady rejoined gaily. "I am as inoffensive as a stained-gla.s.s saint in a chapel window. I am absolutely angelic."

"That's worst of all," Honoria exclaimed, still smiling. "When you're angelic you are most particularly deadly. For the preservation of local innocents, somebody ought to go and hoist danger signals."

Miss St. Quentin, after just a moment's hesitation, followed her friend through the warm, bright hall to the door. Then Helen de Vallorbes turned to her.

"_Au revoir_, dearest Honoria," she said, "and the sooner the better.

Leave your shopgirls and distressed needlewomen, and all your other good works for a still better one--namely for me. Come and reclaim, and comfort, and support me for a while in Paris."

Again she kissed the soft cheek.

"I am as good as gold. I am just now actually mawkish with virtue," she murmured, between the kisses.

Richard witnessed this exceedingly pretty leave-taking not without a movement of impatience. The fog was thickening once more. It grew late.

He wished his cousin would get through with these amenities. Then, moreover, he did not covet intercourse with Miss St. Quentin. He pulled the fur rug aside with his left hand, holding reins and whip in his right.

"I say, are you nearly ready?" he asked. "I don't want to bother you; but really it's about time we were moving."

"I come, I come," Madame de Vallorbes cried, in answer. She put one neatly-shod foot on the axle, and stepped up--Richard holding out his hand to steady her. A sense, at once pleasurable and defiant, of something akin to ownership, came over him as he did so. Just then his attention was claimed by a voice addressing him from the further side of the carriage. Honoria St. Quentin stood on the gravel close beside him, bare-headed, in the clinging damp and chill of the fog.

"Give my love to Lady Calmady," she said. "I hope I shall see her again some day. But, even if I never have the luck to do that, in a way it'll make no real difference. I've written her name in my private calendar, and shall always remember it."--She paused a moment. "We got rather near each other somehow, I think. We didn't dawdle or beat about the bush, but went straight along, pa.s.sed the initial stages of acquaintance in a few hours, and reached that point of friendship where forgetting becomes impossible.

"My mother never forgets," Richard a.s.serted, and there was, perhaps, a slight edge to his tone. Looking down into the girl's pale, finely-moulded face, meeting the glance of those steady, strangely clear and observant eyes, he received an impression of something uncompromisingly sincere and in a measure protective. This, for cause unknown, he resented. Notwithstanding her high breeding. Miss St.

Quentin's att.i.tude appeared to him a trifle intrusive just then.