A small round table showed as an island of tender light in the dimness of the vast room. And Richard, sitting at it awaiting her coming, appeared more nearly related to the Richard of Brockhurst and of five years ago than he had done during the interview of the morning. In any case, she took him more for granted. While he, if still inscrutable and unsmiling, proved an eminently agreeable companion, ready of conversation, very much at his ease, very much a cultivated man of the world, studious--a little excessively so, she thought--in his avoidance of the personal note. And this at once piqued Helen, and incited her to intellectual effort. If this was what he wanted, well, he should have it! If he elected to talk of travel, of ancient and alien religions, of modern literature and art, she could meet him more than half-way. Her intelligence ran nimbly from subject to subject, point to point. She struck out daring hypotheses, indulged in ingenious paradox, her mind charmed by her own eloquence, her body comforted by costly wines and delicate meats. Nor did she fail to listen also, knowing how very dear to every man is the sound of his own voice, or omit to offer refined flattery of quick agreement and seasonable laughter. It was late when she rose from the table at last.

"I have had a delightful dinner," she said. "Absolutely delightful. And now I will encroach no longer on your time or good nature, Richard. You have your own occupations, no doubt. So, with thanks for shelter and generous entertainment, we part for to-night."

She held out her hand smiling, but with an admirable effect of discretion, all ardour, all intimacy, kept in check by self-respect and well-bred dignity. Madame de Vallorbes was enchanted with the reserve of her own demeanour. Let it be well understood that she was the least importunate, the least exacting, the most adaptable, of guests!

Richard took her outstretched hand for the briefest period compatible with courtesy. And a momentary spasm--so she fancied--contracted his face.

"You are very welcome, Helen," he said. "If it is warm let us breakfast in the pavilion to-morrow. Twelve--does that suit you? Good-night."

Upon the inlaid writing-table in the anteroom, Helen found a long and impa.s.sioned epistle from Paul Destournelle. Perusal of it did not minister to peaceful sleep. In the small hours she left her bed, threw a silk dressing-gown about her, drew aside the heavy, blue-purple, window curtain and looked out. The sky was clear and starlit. Naples, with its curving lines of innumerable lights, lay outstretched below.

In the southeast, midway between the two, a blood-red fire marked the summit of Vesuvius. While in the dimly seen garden immediately beneath--the paved alleys of which showed curiously pale, a.s.serting themselves against the darkness of the flower borders, and otherwise impenetrable shadows of the ilex and cypress grove--a living creature moved, black, slow of pace, strange of shape. At first Helen took it for some strayed animal. It alarmed her, exciting her to wildest conjectures as to its nature and purpose, wandering in the grounds of the villa thus. Then, as it pa.s.sed beyond the dusky shade of the trees, she recognised it. Richard Calmady shuffled forward haltingly, to the terminal wall of the garden, leaned his arms on it, looking down at the beautiful and vicious city and out into the night.

Helen de Vallorbes shivered--the marble floor striking up chill, for all the thickness of the carpet, to her bare feet. Her eyes were hard with excitement and her breath came very quick. Suddenly, yielding to an impulse of superst.i.tious terror, she dragged the curtains together, shutting out that very pitiful sight, and, turning, fled across the room and buried herself, breathless and trembling, between the sheets of the soft, warm, faintly fragrant bed.

"He is horrible," she said aloud, "horrible! And it has come to me at last. It has come--I love--I love!"

CHAPTER IV

"MATER ADMIRABILIS"

"There, there, my good soul, don't blubber. Hysterics won't restore Lady Calmady to health, or bring Sir Richard back to England, home, and duty, or be a ha'porth of profit to yourself or any other created being. Keep your tears for the first funeral. For I tell you plainly I shan't be surprised out of seven days' sleep if this business involves a visit to the churchyard before we get to the other side of it."

John Knott stood with his back to the Chapel-Room fire, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands forced down into the pockets of his riding-breeches. Without, black-thorn winter held the land in its cheerless grasp. The spring was late. Night frosts obtained, followed by pallid, half-hearted sunshine in the early mornings, too soon obliterated by dreary, easterly blight. This afternoon offered exception to the rule only in the additional discomfort of small, sleeting rain and a harsh skirling of wind in the eastward-facing cas.e.m.e.nts.--"Livery weather," the doctor called it, putting down his existing lapse from philosophic tolerance to insufficient secretions of the biliary duct.

Before him stood Clara--sometime d.i.c.kie Calmady's devoted nurse and playfellow--her eyes very bright and moist, the reds and whites of her fresh complexion in lamentable disarray.

"I'd never have believed it of Sir Richard," she a.s.sented, chokingly.

"It isn't like him, so pretty as he was in all his little ways, and loving to her ladyship, and civilly behaved to everybody, and careful of hurting anybody's feelings--more so than you'd expect in a young gentleman like him. No! it isn't like him. In my opinion he's been got hold of by some designing person, who's worked on him to keep him away to serve their own ends. There, I'd never have believed it of him, that I wouldn't!"

The doctor's ma.s.sive head sank lower, his ma.s.sive shoulders rose higher, his loose lips twisted into a snarling smile.

"Lord bless you, that's nothing new! We none of us ever do believe it of them when the little beggars are in long clothes, or first breeched for that matter. It's a trick of Mother Nature's--one-idead old lady, who cares not a pin for morality, but only for increase. She knows well enough if we did believe it of them we should clear them off wholesale, along with the blind kittens and puppies. A bucket full of water, and broom to keep them under, would make for a mighty lessening of subsequent violations of the Decalogue! Don't tell me King Herod was not something of a philanthropist when he got to work on the infant population of Bethlehem. One woman wept for each of the little brats then, but his Satanic Majesty only knows how many women wouldn't have had cause to weep for each one of them later, if they'd been spared to grow up."

While speaking, Dr. Knott kept his gaze fixed upon his companion. His humour was none of the gentlest truly, yet he did not let that obscure the main issue. He had business with Clara, and merely waited till the reds and whites of her comely face should have resumed their more normal relations before pursuing it. He talked, as much to afford her opportunity to overcome her emotion, as to give relief to his own.

Though now well on the wrong side of sixty, John Knott was hale and vigorous as ever. His rough-hewn countenance bore even closer resemblance, perhaps, to that of some stone gargoyle carved on cathedral b.u.t.tress or spout. But his hand was no less skilful, his tongue no less ready in denunciation of all he reckoned humbug, his heart no less deeply touched, for all his superficial irascibility, by the pains, and sins, and grinding miseries, of poor humanity than of old.

"That's right now," he said approvingly, as the heaving of Clara's bosom became less p.r.o.nounced. "Wipe your eyes, and keep your nerves steady. You've got a head on your shoulders--always had. Well, keep it screwed on the right way, for you'll need all the common sense that is in it if we are to pull Lady Calmady through. Do?--To begin with this, give her food every two hours or so. Coax her, scold her, reason with her, cry even.--After all, I give you leave to, just a little, if that will serve your purpose and not make your hand shake--only make her take nourishment. If you don't wind up the clock regularly, some fine morning you'll find the wheels have run down."

"But her ladyship won't have any one sit up with her."

"Very well, then sleep next door. Only go in at twelve and two, and again between five and six."

"But she won't have anybody occupy the dressing-room. It used to be the night nursery you remember, sir, and not a thing in it has been touched since Sir Richard moved down to the gun-room wing."

"Oh, fiddle-de-dee! It's just got to be touched now, then. I can't be bothered with sentiment when it's ten to one whether I save my patient."

Again sobs rose in Clara's throat. The poor woman was hard pressed. But that fixed gaze from beneath the s.h.a.ggy eyebrows was upon her, and, with quaint gurglings, she fought down the sobs.

"My lady's as gentle as a lamb," she said, "and I'd give the last drop of my blood for her. But talk of managing her, of making her do anything, as well try to manage the wind, she's that set in her ways and obstinate!"

"If you can't manage her, who can?--Mr. March?"

Clara shook her head. Then reluctantly, for though honestly ready to lay down her life for her mistress, she found it far from easy to invite supersession in respect of her, she said:--"Miss St. Quentin's more likely to get round my lady than any one else."

"Well, then, I'll talk to her. Where is Miss St. Quentin?"

"Here, Dr. Knott. Do you want me?"

Honoria had strolled into the room from the stairhead, her attention arrested by the all-too-familiar sound--since sorrowful happenings often of late had brought him to Brockhurst--of the doctor's voice. The skirt of the young lady's habit, gathered up in her left hand, displayed a slightly unconventional length of muddy riding-boot. The said skirt, her tan, covert coat, and slouched, felt hat, were furred with wet. Her garments, indeed, showed evident traces of hard service, and, though notably well cut, were far from new or smart. They were sad-coloured, moreover, as is the fashion of garments designed for work. And this weather-stained, mud-bespattered costume, taken in connection with her pale, sensitive face, her gallant bearing, and the luminous smile with which she greeted not only Dr. Knott but the slightly fl.u.s.tered Clara, offered a picture pensive in tone, but very harmonious, and of a singularly sincere and restful quality. To all, indeed, save those troubled by an accusing conscience and fear of detection, Honoria St. Quentin's presence brought a sense of security and rea.s.surance at this period of her development. Her enthusiasms remained to her, but they were tempered by a wider experience and a larger charity--at least in the majority of cases.

"I'm in a beastly mess," she observed casually.

"So are we," Knott answered. He had a great liking for this young lady, finding in her a certain stoicism along with a quickness of practical help. "But our mess is worse than yours, in that it is internal rather than external. Yours'll brush off. Not so ours--eh, Clara? There, you can go. I'll talk things over with Miss St. Quentin, and she'll talk 'em over with you later."

Honoria's expression had grown anxious. She spoke in a lower tone of voice.

"Is Lady Calmady worse?"

"In a sense, yes--simply because she is no better. And she's ill, I tell you, just as dangerously ill as any woman can be, who has nothing whatever actually the matter with her."

"Except an only son," put in Honoria. "I am beginning to suspect that is about the most deadly disease going. The only thing to be said in its favour is that it is not infectious."

John Knott could not quite keep admiration from his eyes, or provocation from his tongue. He richly enjoyed getting a rise out of Miss St. Quentin.

"I am not so sure of that," he said. "In the case of beautiful women, judging by history, it has shown a tendency to be recurrently sporadic in any case."

"Recommend all such to spend a few months at Brockhurst then, under existing circ.u.mstances," Honoria answered. "There will be very little fear for them after that. They will have received such a warning, swallowed such an antidote!--It is like a.s.sisting at the infliction of slow torture. It almost gets on one's brain at times."

"Why do you stay on then?"

Honoria looked down at her muddy boots and then across at the doctor.

She was slightly the taller of the two, for in these days his figure had fallen together and he had taken to stooping. Her expression had a delightful touch of self-depreciation.

"Why does any one stay by a sinking ship, or volunteer for a forlorn hope? Why do you sit up all night with a case of confluent smallpox, or suck away the poisonous membrane from a diphtheric throat, as I hear you did only last week? I don't know. Just because, if we are made on certain lines, we have to, I suppose. One would be a trifle too much ashamed to be seen in one's own company, afterwards, if one deserted.

It really requires less pluck to stick than to run--that's the reason probably.--But about dear Lady Calmady. The excellent Clara was in tears. Is there any fresh mischief over and above the only son?"

"Not at present. But it's an open question how soon there may be.--Good-day, Mr. March. Been riding? Ought to be a bit careful of that cranky chest of yours in this confounded weather.--Lady Calmady?--Yes, as I was telling Miss St. Quentin, her strength is so reduced that complications may arise any day. A chill, and her lungs may go; a shock, and her heart. It comes to a mere question of the point of least resistance. I won't guarantee the continued soundness of any organ unless we get changed conditions, a let up of some sort."

The doctor looked up from under his eyebrows, first at Honoria and then at Julius. He spoke bitterly, defiant of his inclination towards tenderness.

"She's just worn herself out," he said, "that's the fact, in the service of others, loving, giving, attempting the impossible in the way of goodness all round. 'Be not righteous over much'--there's a text to that effect in the Scriptures, Mr. March, isn't there? Preach a good, rattling sermon on it next Sunday to Lady Calmady, if you want to keep her here a bit longer. Nature abhors a vacuum. Granted. But nature abhors excess, even of virtue. And punishes it just as harshly as excess of vice.--Yes, I tell you, she's worn herself out."

Miss St. Quentin dropped into a chair and sat bowed together, her hands on her knees, her feet rather far apart. The brim of her hat, pulled down in front to let the rain run off, partially concealed her face.

She was not sorry, for a movement of defective courage was upon her, evidence of which she preferred to keep to herself. Julius March remained silent. And this she resented slightly, for she badly wanted somebody to say something, either vindictive or consolatory. Then, indignation getting the better alike of reticence and charity, she exclaimed:--