Madame de Vallorbes sat very still. Her charming face had grown keen.

She listened, drawing in her breath with a little sobbing sound--but that was only the result of accentuated dramatic satisfaction.

"You see I have no special object or ambition. I can't have one. I just pa.s.s the time. I don't see any prospect of my ever being able to do more than that. There's my mother, of course. I need not tell you she and I love one another. And there are the horses. But I don't care to bet, and I never attend a race-meeting. I--I do not choose to make an exhibition of myself."

Again Helen drew her hand out of her m.u.f.f, but this time quickly, impulsively, and laid it on Richard's left hand which held the reins.

The young man's breath caught in his throat, he leaned sideways towards her, her shoulder touching his elbow, the trailing plumes of her hat--now limp from the clinging moisture of the fog--for a moment brushing his cheek.

"Helen," he said rapidly, "don't you understand it's in your power to alter all this? By accepting you would do infinitely more for me than I could ever dream of doing for you. You'd give me something to think of and plan about. If you'll only have whatever wretched money you need now, and have more whenever you want it--if you'll let me feel, however rarely we meet, that you depend on me and trust me and let me make things a trifle easier and smoother for you, you will be doing such an act of charity as few women have ever done. Don't refuse, for pity's sake don't! I don't want to whine, but things were not precisely gay before your coming, you know. Need it be added they promise to be less so than ever after you are gone? So listen to reason. Do as I ask you.

Let me be of use in the only way I can."

"Do you consider what you propose?" Madame de Vallorbes asked, slowly.

"It is a good deal. It is dangerous. With most men such a compact would be wholly inadmissible."

Then poor d.i.c.kie lost himself. The strain of the last week the young, headlong pa.s.sion aroused in him, the misery of his deformity, the acc.u.mulated bitterness and rebellion of years arose and overflowed as a great flood. Pride went down before it, and reticence, and decencies of self-respect. Richard turned and rent himself, without mercy and, for the moment, without shame. He pelted himself with cruel words, with scorn and self-contempt, while he laughed, and the sound of that laughter wandered away weirdly through the chill density of the fog, under the tall, shadowy firs of the great avenue, over the sombre-heather, out into the veiled, crowded darkness of the wide woods.

"But I am not as other men are," he answered. "I am a creature by myself, a unique development as much outside the normal social, as I am outside the normal physical law. I--alone by myself--think of it!--abnormal, extraordinary! You are safe enough with me, Helen. Safe to indulge and humour me as you might a monkey or a parrot. All the world will understand that! Only my mother, and a few old friends and old servants take me seriously. To every one else I am an embarra.s.sment, a more or less distressing curiosity."--He met little Lady Constance Quale's ruminant stare again in imagination, heard Lord Fallowfeild's blundering speech.--"Remember our luncheon to-day. It was flattering, at moments, wasn't it? And so if I do queer things, things off the conventional lines, who will be surprised? No one, I tell you, not even the most strait-laced or censorious. Allow me at least the privileges of my disabilities. I am a dwarf--a cripple. I shall never be otherwise. Had I lived a century or two ago I should have made sport for you, and such as you, as some rich man's professional fool. And so, if I overstep the usual limits, who will comment on that? Queer things, crazy things, are in the part. What do I matter?"

Richard laughed aloud.

"At least I have this advantage, that in my case you can do what you can do in the case of no other man. With me you needn't be afraid. No one will think evil. With me--yes, after all, there is a drop of comfort in it--with me, Helen, you're safe enough."

CHAPTER X

MR. LUDOVIC QUAYLE AMONG THE PROPHETS

That same luncheon party at Brockhurst, if not notably satisfactory to the hosts, afforded much subsequent food for meditation to one at least of the guests. During the evening immediately following it, and even in the watches of the night, Lady Louisa Barking's thought was persistently engaged with the subject of Richard Calmady, his looks, his character, his temper, his rent-roll, the acreage of his estates, and his prospects generally. Nor did her interest remain hidden and inarticulate. For, finding that in various particulars her knowledge was superficial and clearly insufficient, on her journey from Westchurch up to town next day, in company with her brother Ludovic, she put so many questions to that accomplished young gentleman that he shortly divined some serious purpose in her inquiry.

"We all recognise, my dear Louisa," he remarked presently, laying aside the day's Times, of which he had vainly essayed the study, with an air of gentle resignation, crossing his long legs and leaning back in his corner of the railway carriage, "that you are the possessor of an eminently practical mind. You have run the family for some years now, not without numerous successes, among which may be reckoned your running of yourself into the arms--if you will pardon my mentioning them--of my estimable brother-in-law, Barking."

"Really, Ludovic!" his sister protested.

"Let me entreat you not to turn restive, Louisa," Mr. Quayle rejoined with the utmost suavity. "I am paying a high compliment to your intelligence. To have run into the arms of Mr. Barking, or indeed of anybody else, casually and involuntarily, to have blundered into them--if I may so express myself--would have been a stupidity. But to run into them intentionally and voluntarily argues considerable powers of strategy, an intelligent direction of movement which I respect and admire."

"You are really exceedingly provoking, Ludovic!"

Lady Louisa pushed the square, leather-covered dressing-case, on which her feet had been resting, impatiently aside.

"Far from it," the young man answered. "Can I put that box anywhere else for you? You like it just where it is?--Yes? But I a.s.sure you I am not provoking. I am merely complimentary. Conversation is an art, Louisa. None of my sisters ever can be got to understand that. It is dreadfully crude to rush in waist-deep at once. There should be feints and approaches. You should nibble at your sugar with a graceful coyness. You should cut a few frills and skirmish a little before setting the battle actively in array. And it is just this that I have been striving to do during the last five minutes. But you do not appear to appreciate the commendable style of my preliminaries. You want to engage immediately. There is usually a first-rate underlying reason for your interest in anybody----"

Again the lady shifted the position of the dressing-case.

"To the right?" inquired Mr. Quayle extending his hand, his head a little on one side, his long neck directed forward, while he regarded first his sister and then the dressing-case with infuriating urbanity.

"No? Let us come to Hecuba, then. Let us dissemble no longer, but put it plainly. What, oh, Louisa! what are you driving at in respect of my very dear friend, d.i.c.kie Calmady?"

Now it was unquestionably most desirable for her to keep on the fair-weather side of Mr. Quayle just then. Yet the flesh is weak. Lady Louisa Barking could not control a movement of self-justification. She spoke with dignity, severely.

"It is all very well for you to say those sort of things, Ludovic----"

"What sort of things?" he inquired mildly.

"But I should be glad to know what would have become of the family by now, unless some one had come forward and taken matters in hand? Of course one gets no thanks for it. One never does get any thanks for doing one's duty, however wearing it is to oneself and however much others profit. But somebody had to sacrifice themselves. Mama is unequal to any exertion. You know what papa is----"

"I do, I do," murmured Mr. Quayle, raising his gaze piously to the roof of the railway carriage.

"If he has one of the boys to tramp over the country with him at Whitney, and one of the girls to ride with him in London, he is perfectly happy and content. He is alarmingly improvident. He would prefer keeping the whole family at home doing nothing----"

"Save laughing at his jokes. My father craves the support of a sympathetic audience."

"Shotover is worse than useless."

"Except to the guileless Israelite he is. Absolutely true, Louisa."

"Guy would never have gone into the army when he left Eton unless I had insisted upon it. And it was entirely through the Barkings'

influence--at my representation of course--that Eddie got a berth in that Liverpool cotton-broker's business. I am sure Alicia is very comfortably married. I know George Winterbotham is not the least interesting, but he is perfectly gentlemanlike and presentable, and so on, and he makes her a most devoted husband. And from what Mr. Barking heard the other day at the Club from somebody or other, I forget who, but some one connected with the Government, you know, there is every probability of George getting that permanent under-secretaryship."

"Did I not start by declaring you had achieved numerous successes?"

Ludovic inquired. "Yet we stray from the point, Louisa. For do I not still remain ignorant of the root of your sudden interest in my friend d.i.c.kie Calmady? And I thirst to learn how you propose to work him into the triumphant development of our family fortunes."

The proportions of Lady Louisa's small mouth contracted still further into an expression of great decision, while she glanced at the landscape reeling away from the window of the railway carriage. In the past twelve hours autumn had given place to winter. The bare hedges showed black, while the fallen leaves of the hedgerow trees formed unsightly blotches of sodden brown and purple upon the dirty green of the pastures. Over all brooded an opaque, gray-brown sky, sullen and impenetrable. Lady Louisa saw all this. But she was one of those persons happily, for themselves, unaffected by such abstractions as the aspects of nature. Her purposes were immediate and practical. She followed them with praiseworthy persistence. The landscape merely engaged her eyes because she preferred, just now, looking out of the window to looking her brother in the face.

"Something must be done for the younger girls," she announced. "I feel pretty confident about Emily's future. We need not go into that.

Maggie, if she marries at all--and she really is very useful at home, in looking after the servants and entertaining, and so on--if she marries at all, will marry late. She has no particular attractions as girls go. Her figure is too solid, and she talks too much. But she will make a very presentable middle-aged woman--sensible, dependable, an excellent _menagere_. Certainly she had better marry late."

"A mature clergyman when she is rising forty--a widowed bishop, for instance. Yes, I approve that," Mr. Quayle rejoined reflectively. "It is well conceived, Louisa. We must keep an eye on the Bench and carefully note any episcopal matrimonial vacancy. Bishops have a little turn, I observe, for marrying somebody who _is_ somebody--specially _en secondes noces_, good men. Yes, it is well thought of. With careful steering we may bring Maggie to anchor in a palace yet. Maggie is rather dogmatic, she would make not half a bad Mrs. Proudie. So she is disposed of, and then?"

For a few seconds the lady held silent converse with herself. At last she addressed her companion in tones of unwonted cordiality.

"You are by far the most sensible of the family, Ludovic," she began.

"And in a family so renowned for intellect, so conspicuous for 'parts and learning,' as Macaulay puts it, that is indeed a distinction!"--Mr.

Quayle bowed slightly in his comfortable corner. "A thousand thanks, Louisa," he murmured.

"I would not breathe a syllable of this to any of the others," she continued. "You know how the girls chatter. Alicia, I am sorry to say, is as bad as any of them. They would discuss the question without intermission--simply, you know, talk the whole thing to death."

"Poor thing!--Yet, after all, what thing?" the young man inquired urbanely.

Lady Louisa bit her lip. He was very irritating, while she was very much in earnest. It was her misfortune usually to be a good deal in earnest.

"There is Constance," she remarked, somewhat abruptly.

"Precisely--there is poor, dear, innocent, rather foolish, little Connie. It occurred to me we might be coming to that."

In his turn Mr. Quayle fell silent, and contemplated the reeling landscape. Pasture had given place to wide stretches of dark moorland on either side the railway line, with a pallor of sour bog-gra.s.ses in the hollows. The outlook was uncheerful. Perhaps it was that which caused the young man to shake his head.