The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 29

she said. "Would it be giving you altogether too much trouble to have them out for me?"

"Why, of course not. You shall see them whenever you like," he answered. "Julius knows all about them. He'll be only too delighted to act showman."

Just here the road narrowed a little, and Mr. Ormiston let his horse drop a few lengths behind, so that she, Helen, and her cousin rode forward side by side. The tones of the low sky, of the ranks of firs and stretches of heather formed a rich, though sombre, harmony of colour. Scents, pungent and singularly exhilarating, were given off by the damp mosses and the peaty moorland soil. The freedom of the forest, the feeling of the n.o.ble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the edge of that excitement to a perfect keenness of pleasure.

"Ah, how glorious it all is!" she cried. "How glad I am that you asked me to come here."

And she turned to Richard, looking at him as, since the first day of their meeting, she had not, somehow, quite ventured to look.

"But, oh! dear me! please," she went on, "I know Mr. March is an angel, a saint--but--but--_mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_, I don't want him to show me those special treasures of yours. He'll take the life out of them. I know it. And make them seem like things read of merely in a learned book. Be very charming to me, Richard. Waste half an hour upon me. Show me those moving relics yourself."

As she spoke, momentary suspicion rose in d.i.c.kie's eyes. But she gazed back unflinchingly, with the uttermost frankness, so that suspicion died, giving place to the shy, yet triumphant, gladness of youth which seeks and finds youth.

"Do, Richard, pray do," she repeated.

The young man had averted his face rather sharply, and both horses, somehow, broke into a hand gallop.

"All right," he answered. "I'll arrange it. This evening, about six, after tea? Will that suit you? I'll send you word."

Then the road had widened, permitting Mr. Ormiston to draw up to them again. The remainder of the ride had been a little silent.

Yes, all that had been prettily done. Nor had the piece that followed proved unworthy of the prelude. She ran over the scene in her mind now, as she stood among the pocketing pea-fowl, and it caused her both mirth and delightful little heats, in which the heart has a word to say.--Madame de Vallorbes was ravished to feel her heart, just now and again.--For, contradictory as it may seem, no game is perfect that has not moments of seriousness.--She recalled the aspect of the Long Gallery, as one of those civil, ever-present men-servants had opened the door for her, and she waited a moment on the threshold. The true artist is never in a hurry. The breadth of the great room immediately before her showed very bright with candle-light and lamplight. But that died away, through gradations of augmenting obscurity, until the extreme end, towards the western bay, melted out into complete darkness. This produced an effect of almost limitless length which moved her to a childish, and at first pleasing, fancy of vague danger--an effect heightened by the ranges of curious and costly objects standing against, or decorating, the walls in a perspective of deepening gloom. Turquoise-coloured, satin curtains, faded to intimate accord with the silvered surface of the paneling, were drawn across the wide windows. They reached to the lower edge of the stonework merely, leaving blottings of impenetrable shadow below. While, as culmination of interest, as living centre of this rich and varied setting, was the figure of Richard Calmady--seen, as his custom was, only to the waist--seated in a high-backed chair drawn close against an antique, oak table, upon which a small _pietra dura_ cabinet shad been placed.

The doors of the cabinet stood open, displaying slender columns of jasper and porphyry, and little drawers encrusted with raised work in marbles and precious stones. The young man sat stiffly upright, as one who listens, expectant. His expression was almost painfully serious. In one hand he held a string of pearls, attached to which, and enclosed by intersecting hoops of gold, was a crystal ball that shone with the mild effulgence of a mimic moon. And the great room was so very quiet, that Helen, in her pause upon the threshold, had remarked the sound of raindrops tapping upon the many window-panes as with impatiently nervous fingers.

And this bred in her a corresponding nervousness--sensation to her, heretofore, almost unknown. The darkness yonder began to provoke a disagreeable impression, queerly challenging both her eyesight and her courage. Old convent teachings, regarding the Prince of Darkness and his emissaries, returned upon her. What if diabolic shapes lurked there, ready to become stealthily emergent? She had scoffed at such archaic fancies in the convent, yet, in lonely hours, had suffered panic fear of them, as will the hardiest sceptic. A certain little scar, moreover, carefully hidden under the soft hair arranged low on her right temple, smarted and p.r.i.c.ked. In short, her habitual self-confidence suffered partial eclipse. She was visited by the disintegrating suspicion, for once, that the eternal laughter might, possibly, be at her expense, rather than on her side.

But she conquered such suspicion as contemptible, and cast out the pa.s.sing weakness. The bare memory of it angered her now, causing her to fire a volley of yellow corn at a lordly peac.o.c.k, which sent him scuttling down the steps on to the gravel in most plebeian haste. Yes, she had speedily cast out her weakness, thank heaven! What was all the pother about after all? This was not the first time she had played merry games with the affairs and affections of men. Madame de Vallorbes smiled to herself, recalling certain episodes, and shook her charming shoulders gleefully, as she looked out into the sunny morning. And then, was there not ample excuse? This man moved her more than most--more than any. She swore he did. Her att.i.tude towards him was something new, something quite different, thereby justifying her campaign. And therefore, all the bolder for her brief self-distrust and hesitation, she had swept across the great room, light of foot, and almost impertinently graceful of carriage.

"Here you are at last!" d.i.c.kie had exclaimed, with a sigh as of relief.

"I shan't want anything more, Powell. You can come back when the dressing-bell rings." Then, as the valet closed the door behind him, he continued rapidly:--"Not that I propose to victimise you till then, Helen. You mustn't stay a bit longer than you like. I confess I'm awfully fond of this room. I'm almost ashamed to think how much time I waste in it. Doing what? Oh, well, just dreaming! You see it contains samples of the doings of all my father's people, and I return to primitive faiths here and to perform acts of ancestor wors.h.i.+p."

"Ah! I like that!" Helen said. And she did. Picture this man, long of arm, unnaturally low of stature, and astonis.h.i.+ngly--yes, quite astonis.h.i.+ngly good-looking, moving about among these books and pictures, these trophies of war and of sport, these oriental jars, tall almost as himself, and all the other strange furnis.h.i.+ngs from out distant years and distant lands! Picture him emerging from that well of soft darkness yonder, for instance! Helen's eyes danced under their arched and drooping lids, and she registered the fact that, though still frightened, her fright had changed in character. It was grateful to her palate. She relished it as the bouquet of a wine of finest quality. Meanwhile her companion talked on.

"The ancestor wors.h.i.+p? Oh yes! I dare say you might like it for a change. Getting it as I do, as habitual diet, it is not remarkably stimulating. The natural man prefers to find occasion for wors.h.i.+pping himself rather than his ancestors, after all, you know. But a little turn of it will serve to fill in a gap and lessen the monotony of your visit. I am afraid you must be a good deal bored, Helen. It must seem rather terribly humdrum here after Paris and Naples, and--well--most places, at that rate, as you know them."

Richard s.h.i.+fted his position. And the crystal moon encompa.s.sed by golden bands, crossing and intersecting one another like those of a sidereal sphere, gleamed as with an inward and unearthly light, swinging slowly upon the movement of his hand.

"You must feel here as though the clock had been put back two or three centuries. I know we move slowly, and conduct ourselves with tedious deliberation. And so, you understand, you mustn't let me keep you. Just look at what you like of these odds and ends, and then depart without scruple. It's rather a fraud, in any case, my showing them to you.

Julius March, as I told you, is much better qualified to."

"Julius March, Julius March," Madame de Vallorbes broke in. "Do, I beseech you, dear Cousin Richard, leave him to the pious retirement of his study. Is he not middle-aged, and a priest into the bargain?"

"Unquestionably," d.i.c.kie said. "But, pardon me, I don't quite see what that has to do with it."

Thereupon Madame de Vallorbes made a very naughty, little grimace and drummed with her finger-tips upon the table.

"La! la!" she cried, "you're no better than all the rest. Commend me to a clever man for incapacity to apprehend what is patent to the intelligence of the most ordinary woman. Look about you."--Helen sketched in their surroundings with a quick descriptive gesture.

"Observe the lights and shadows. The ghostly wavings of those pale curtains. Smell the potpourri and spices. Think of the ancestor wors.h.i.+p. Listen to the protesting wind and rain. See the mysterious treasure you hold in your hand. And then ask me what middle-age and the clerical profession have to do with all this! Why, nothing, just precisely nothing, nothing in the whole world. That's the point of my argument. They'd ruin the sentiment, blight the romance, hopelessly blight it--for me at least."

The conversation was slightly embarra.s.sed, both Helen and Richard talking at length, yet at random. But she knew that it was thus, and not otherwise, that it behooved them to talk. For that which they said mattered not in the least. The thing said served as a veil, as a cloak, merely, wherewith to disguise those much greater things which, perforce, remained unsaid.--To cover his and her lively consciousness of their present isolation, desired these many days and now obtained.

To conceal the swift, silent approaches of spirit to spirit, so full of inquiry and self-revelation, fugitive reserves and fugitive distrusts.

To hide, as far as might be, the existence of the hungry, all-compelling _joie de vivre_ which is begotten whensoever youth thus seeks and finds youth.--These unspoken and, as yet, unspeakable things were alone of real moment, making eyes l.u.s.trous and lips quick with tremulous, uncalled-for smiles irrespective of the purport of their speech.

"Ah! but that's rather rough on poor dear Julius, you know," d.i.c.kie said. "I suppose you wanted to learn all----"

"Learn?" she interrupted. "I wanted to feel. Don't you know there is only one way any woman worth the name ever really learns--through her emotions? Only the living feel. Such men as he, if they are sincere, are already dead. He would have made feeling impossible."

A perceptible hush descended upon the room. Richard Calmady's hand usually was steady enough, but, in the silence, the pearls chattered against the table. He went rather pale and his face hardened.

"And are you getting anything of that which you wanted, Helen?" he asked. "For sometimes in the last few days--since you have been here--I--I have wondered if perhaps we were not all like that--all dead----"

"You mean do I get emotion, am I feeling?" she said. "Rest contented.

Much is happening. Indeed I have doubted, during the last few days, since I have been here, whether I have ever known what it is to feel actually and seriously before."

She sat down at right angles to him, resting her elbows upon the table, her chin upon her folded hands, leaning a little towards him. One of those pleasant heats swept over her, flus.h.i.+ng her delicate skin, lending a certain effulgence to her beauty. The scent of roses long faded hung in the air. But here was a rose sweeter far than they. No white rose of paradise, it must be confessed. Rather like her immortal namesake, that cla.s.sic Helen, was she _rosa mundi_, glowing with warmth and colour, rose-red rose altogether of this dear, naughty, lower world?

"Richard," she said impulsively, "why don't you understand? Why do you underrate your own power? Don't you know that you are quite the most moving, the most attractive--well--cousin, a woman ever had?"

She looked closely at him, her lips a little parted, her head thrown back.

"Life is sweet, dear cousin. Reckon with yourself and with it, and live--live."--Then she put out her hand and held up the crystal between her face and his. "There," she went on, "tell me about this. I become indiscrete, thanks I suppose to your Brockhurst habit of putting back the clock, and speak with truly Elizabethan frankness. It belongs to semi-barbaric ages, doesn't it, this, to tell the true truth? Show me this. It seems rather fascinating."

And Richard obeyed mechanically, pointing out to her the signs of the Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of all this, their heads--his and hers--were very near together, and their hands met. But they were very solemn all the while, solemn, eager, busy, as two babies revealing to each other the mysteries of a newly acquired toy. And it seemed to Madame de Vallorbes that all this was as pretty a bit of business as ever served to help forward such gay purposes as hers. She was pleased with herself too--for did she not feel very gentle, very sincere, really very innocent and good?

"No, hold it so," Richard said, rounding her fingers carefully, that the tips of them might alone touch the surface of the crystal. "Now gaze into the heart of it steadily, fixing your will to see. Pictures will come presently, dimly at first, as in a mist. Then the mist will lift and you will read your own fortune and--perhaps--some other person's fate."

"Have you ever read yours?"

"Oh! mine's of a sort that needs no crystal to reveal it," he answered, with a queer drop in his voice. "It's written in rather indecently big letters and plain type. Always has been."

Helen glanced at him. His words whipped up her sense of drama, fed her excitement. But she bent her eyes upon the crystal again, and the hush descended once more, disturbed only by that nervous tapping of rain.

"I see nothing, nothing," she said presently. "And there is much I would give very much to see."

"You must gaze with a simple intention." The young man's voice came curiously hoa.r.s.e and broken. "Purify your mind of all desire."

Helen did not raise her head.

"Alas! if those are the conditions of revelation my chances of seeing are extremely limited. To purify one's mind of all desire is to commit emotional suicide. Of course I desire, all the while I desire. And equally, of course, you desire. Every one who is human and in their sober senses must do that. Absence of desire means idiotcy, or----"

"Or what?"

For an instant she looked up at him, a very devil of dainty malice in her expression, in the shrug of her shoulders too, beneath their fine laces and the affected sobriety of that same dull-blue, poplin gown.

"Or priestly, saintly middle-age--from which may heaven in its mercy ever deliver us," she said.

Richard s.h.i.+fted his position a little, gathering himself back from her so near neighbourhood--a fact of which the young lady was not unaware.

"I'm not quite sure whether I echo your prayer," he said slowly. "I doubt whether that att.i.tude, or one approximate to it, is not the safest and best for some of us."