"You are very considerate," Helen remarked.

She was surprised out of all readiness of speech. This new Richard impressed her, but she resented his manner. He took her so very much for granted. Admiration and homage were to her as her daily bread, and that any man should fail to offer them caused her frank amazement. It did more. It raised in her a longing to inflict pain. He might not admire, but at least he should not remain indifferent. Therefore she backed a couple of steps, so as to get a good view of Richard Calmady.

And, without any disguise of her purpose, took a comprehensive and leisurely survey of his dwarfed and mutilated figure. While so doing she pinned on her rose-trimmed hat, and twisted the long, tulle strings of it about her throat.

"You have altered a good deal, Richard," she said reflectively.

"Probably," he answered. "I had a good deal to learn, being a very thin-skinned young simpleton. In part, anyhow, I have learned it. And I do my best practically to apply my knowledge. But if I have altered, so, happily, have not you."

"I remain a simpleton?" she inquired, her irritation finding voice.

"You cannot very well remain that which you never have been. What you do remain is--if I may say so--victoriously yourself, unspoiled, unmodified by contact with that singularly stupid invention, society, true to my earliest recollections of you even----" Richard shuffled closer to the bal.u.s.trade, threw his left arm across it, grasping the outer edge of the broad coping,--"even in small details of dress."

He looked away over the immense and radiant prospect, and then up at the radiant woman in her vesture of turquoise, pink, and gold.

And, so doing, for the first time his face relaxed, being lighted up by a flickering, mocking smile. And something in his shuffling movements, in the fine irony of his expression, pierced Helen with a sensation hitherto unknown, broke up the absoluteness of her egotism, stirred her blood. She forgot resentment in an absorbed and absorbing interest. The ordinary man of the world she knew as thoroughly as her old shoe. Such an one presented small field of discovery to her. But this man was unique in person, and promised to be so in character also. Her curiosity regarding him was profound. For the moment it sunk all personal considerations, all humorous or angry criticism, either of her own att.i.tude towards him or of his att.i.tude towards her. Silently she came forward, sat down on the marble bench, close to where he stood, and, turning sideways, leaned her elbows upon the top of the bal.u.s.trade beside him. She looked up now, rather than down at him, and it went home to her, had nature spared him infliction of that hideous deformity, what a superb creature physically he would have been! There was a silence, Helen remaining intent, quiet, apprehension and imagination sensibly upon the stretch.

At last Richard spoke abruptly.

"By the way, did you happen to observe the decorations of your room? Do you like them?"

"Yes and no," she answered. "They struck me as rather wonderful, but liable to induce dreams of Scylla and Charybdis, of the Fata Morgana, and other inconvenient accidents of the deep. Fortunately I was too tired last night to be excursive in fancy, or I might have slept badly.

You have gathered all the colours of the ocean and fixed them, somehow, on those carpets and hangings and strangely frescoed walls."

"You saw that?"

"How could I fail to see it, since you kindly excuse me of being, or ever having been, a simpleton?"--Helen spoke lightly, tenderly almost.

An overmastering desire to please had overtaken her. "You have employed a certain wizardry in the furnishing of that room," she continued. "It lays subtle influences upon one. What made you think of it?"

"A dream, an idea, which has stuck by me queerly, though all other fond things of the sort were pitched overboard long ago. I suppose one is bound to be illogical on one point, if only to prove to oneself the absolutism of one's logic on all others. Thus do I, otherwise sane and consistent realist, materialist, pessimist, cling to my one dream and ideal--take it out, dandle it, nourish and cherish it, with weakly sentimental faithfulness. To do so is ludicrous. But then my being here at all, calmly considered, is ludicrous. And it, too, is among the results of the one idea."

He paused, and Helen, leaning beside him, waited. The sunshine covered them both. The sea wind was fresh in their faces. While the many voices of Naples came up to them confused, strident, continuous, with sometimes a bugle-call, sometimes a clang of hammers, or quick pulse of stringed instruments, or jangle of church-bells, or long-drawn bellow of a steamship clearing for sea, detaching itself from the universal chorus. Capri, Ischia, Procida, floated, islands of amethyst, upon the sapphire of the bay, and the smoke of Vesuvius rolled ceaselessly upward.

"You see and hear and feel all this," Richard continued presently.

"Well, when I saw it for the first time I was pretty thoroughly out of conceit with myself and all creation. I had been experimenting freely in things not usually talked of in polite society. And I was abominably sold, for I found the enjoyment such things procure is decidedly overrated. Unmentionable matters, once fully explored, are just as tedious and inadequate as those which supply the most unexceptionable subjects of conversation. Moreover, in the process of exploration I had touched a good deal of pitch, and, the simpleton being still superfluously to the fore in me, I was squeamishly sensible of defilement."

The young man shifted his position slightly, resting his chin in the hollow of his hands, speaking quietly and indifferently, as of some matter foreign to himself and his personal interests.

"I have reason to believe I was as fairly and squarely wretched as it is possible for an intelligent being to be. I had convinced myself, experimentally, that human existence, human nature, was a bottomless pit and an uncommonly filthy one at that. Reaction was inevitable. Then I understood why men have invented G.o.ds, subscribed to irrational systems of theology, hailed and accredited transparently ridiculous miracles. Such lies are necessary to certain stages of development simply for the preservation of sanity, just as, at another stage, sanity, for its own preservation, is necessarily driven to declare their falsehood. And so I, after the manner of my kind, was driven to take refuge in a dream. The subjective, in some form or other, alone makes life continuously possible. And all this, we now look at, determined the special nature of my attempt at subjective support and consolation."

Richard paused again, contemplating the view.

"All this--its splendour, its diversity, its caprices and seductions, its suggestion of underlying danger--presented itself to me as the embodiment of a personality that has had remarkable influence in the shaping of my life."

So far Helen had listened intently and silently. Now she moved a little, straightening up her charming figure, pulling down the wide brim of her hat to shelter her eyes from the heat and brightness of the sun.

"A woman?" she asked briefly.

Richard turned to her, that same flickering of mockery in his still face.

"Oh! you mustn't require too much of me!" he said. "Remember the simpleton was not wholly eradicated then.--Yes, very much a woman. Of course. How should it be otherwise? It gave me great pleasure to look at that which looked like her. It gives me pleasure even yet. So I wrote and asked de Vallorbes to be kind enough to let me rent the villa. You remember it was not particularly well cared for. There was an air of fallen greatness about the poor place. Inside it was something of a barrack."

"I remember," Helen said.

"Well, I restored and refurnished it--specially the rooms you now occupy, in accordance with what I imagined to be her taste. The whole proceeding was not a little feeble-minded, since the probability of her ever inhabiting those rooms was more than remote. But it amused, it pacified me, as prayer to their self-invented deities pacifies the devout. I never stay here for long together. If I did the spell might be broken. I go away, I travel. I even experiment in things not usually spoken of, but with a cooler judgment and less morbidly sensitive conscience than of old. I amuse myself after more active and practical fashions in other places. Here I amuse myself only with my idea."

The even flow of his speech ceased.--"What do you think of it, Helen?"

he demanded, almost harshly.

"I think it can't last. It is too intangible, too fantastic."

"I admit that to keep it intact needs an infinity of precautions. For instance, I can make no near acquaintance with Naples. I cannot permit myself to see the town at close quarters. I only look at it from here.

If I want to go to or from the yacht, I do so at night and in a closed carriage. I took on de Vallorbes' box at the San Carlo. If any good opera is given I go and hear it. Otherwise I remain exclusively in the house and garden. I am not acquainted with a single soul in the place."

"And the woman," Helen exclaimed, a singular emotion at once of envy and protest upon her. "Do you treat her with the same cold-blooded calculation?"

"Of the woman I know just as much and just as little as I know of Naples. It is conceivable there may be unlovely elements in her character, as well as unlovely quarters of this beautiful city. I have avoided knowledge of both. You see the whole arrangement is designed not for her benefit, but for my own. It's an elaborate piece of self-seeking on my part, but, so far, it has really worked rather successfully."

"It is preposterous. It cannot in the nature of things continue successful," Helen declared.

"I am not so sure of that," he replied calmly. "Even the most preposterous of religious systems proves to have a remarkable power of survival. Why not this one? In any case, neither the success nor the failure depends on me. I shall be true, on my part. The rest depends on her."

As Richard spoke he turned, leaning his back against the bal.u.s.trade, his face away from the sunlight and the wide view. Again the extent of his deformity became arrestingly apparent to Madame de Vallorbes.

"Has this woman ever been here?" she asked.

"Yes--she has been here."

"And then? And then?" Helen cried.

The young man looked up at her, his face keen yet impa.s.sive, his eyes--as windows opening on to endless perspective of empty s.p.a.ce--telling nothing. She recognised, once again, that he was very strong. She also recognised that, notwithstanding his strength, he was horribly sad.

"Ah! then," he said, "the last of the poor, little, subjective supports and consolations seemed in danger of going overboard and joining their fellows in the uneasy deeps of the sea.--But the history of that will keep till a more convenient season, Cousin Helen. You have stood in the midday sun, and I have talked about myself, quite long enough. However, it was only fair to acquaint you with the limited resources in the way of society and amus.e.m.e.nt offered by your present dwelling. There are horses and carriages of course. Give what orders you please. Only remember both the town and the surrounding country are pretty rough. It is not fit for a lady to drive by herself. Always take your own man, or one of mine, with you if you go out. I hope you won't be quite intolerably bored. Ask for whatever you want.--You let me dine with you? Thanks."

CHAPTER III

HELEN DE VALLORBES APPREHENDS VEXATIOUS COMPLICATIONS

Four gowns lay outspread upon the indigo-purple, embroidered coverlet of the bed. The afterglow of an orange and crimson sunset touched the folds of them, ranged upward to the vaultings of the frescoed ceiling, and stained the lofty walls as with the glare of a furnace. Sea-greens, sea-blues, died in the heat of it, abashed and vanquished. But so did not Madame de Vallorbes' white lawn and lace _peignoir_, or her abundant hair, which Zelie Forestier--trim of figure, and sour of countenance--was in the act of dressing. These caught the fiery light and held it, so that from head to foot Helen appeared as an image of living gold. Sitting before the toilet-table, her reflection in the great, oval mirror pleased her.

"Which shall I wear?"

"That depends upon the length of time madame proposes to stay here. The black dress might be worn on several occasions with impunity. The peac.o.c.k brocade, the _eau de Nil_, the crocus yellow, but once--twice at the uttermost. They are ravishing costumes, but wanting in repose.

They are unsuited for frequent repet.i.tion."

Zelie's lean fingers twisted, puffed, pinned, the shining hair very skilfully.