Therefore she glanced up at him again, trying to divine his thought, her own mind in a tumult of opposing purposes and desires. And just as the contemplation of her beauty had so deeply stirred him earlier this same afternoon, so did the contemplation of his beauty now stir her. It satisfied her artistic sense. Save that the nose was straighter and shorter, the young man reminded her notably of a certain antique, terracotta head of the young Alexander which she had once seen in a museum at Munich, and which had left an ineffaceable impression upon her memory. But, the face of the young Alexander beside her was of nobler moral quality than that other—undebauched by feasts and licentious pleasures as yet, masculine yet temperate, the sanctuary of generous ambitions—merciless it might be, she fancied, but never base, never weak. Thus was her artistic sense satisfied, morally as well as physically. Her social sense was satisfied also. For the young man's high-breeding could not be called in question. He held himself remarkably well. She approved the cut of his clothes moreover, his sure and easy handling of the spirited horses.
And then her eyes, following down the lines of the fur rug, received renewed assurance of the fact of his deformity—hidden as far as might be, with decent pride, yet there, permanent and unalterable. This worked upon her strongly. For, to her peculiar temperament, the indissoluble union in one body of elements so noble and so monstrous, of youthful vigour and abject helplessness, the grotesque in short, supplied the last word of sensuous and dramatic attraction. As last evening, in the Long Gallery, so now, she hugged herself, at once frightened and fascinated, wrought upon by excitement as in the presence of something akin to the supernatural, and altogether beyond the confines of ordinary experience.
And to think that she had come so near holding this inimitable creature in her hand, and by overhaste, or clumsiness of statement should lose it! Madame de Vallorbes was wild with irritation, racked her brain for means to recover her—as she feared—forfeited position. It would be maddening did her mighty hunting prove but a barren pastime in the end. And thereupon the little scar on her temple, deftly concealed under the soft, bright hair, began to smart and throb. Ah! well, the hunting should not prove quite barren anyhow, of that she was determined, for, failing her late gay purpose, that small matter of long-deferred revenge still remained in reserve. If she could not gratify one passion, she would gratify quite another. For in this fair lady's mind it was—perhaps unfortunately—but one step from the Eden bowers of love to the waste places of vindictive hate.—"Yet I would rather be good to him, far rather," she said to herself, with a movement of quite pathetic sincerity.
But here, just at the entrance to the village street, an altogether unconscious deus ex machinâ—destined at once to relieve Helen of further anxiety, and commit poor Dickie to a course of action affecting the whole of his subsequent career—presented itself in the shape of a white-tented miller's waggon, which, with somnolent jingle of harness bells and most admired deliberation, moved down the centre of the road. A yellow-washed garden-wall on one side, the brook on the other, there was not room for the phaeton to pass.
"Whistle," Richard commanded over his shoulder. And the wooden image thereby galvanised into immediate activity whistled shrilly, but without result as far as the waggon was concerned.
"The fellow's asleep. Go and tell him to pull out of the way."
Then, while the groom ran neatly forward in twinkling, white breeches and flesh-coloured tops, Richard, bending towards her, as far as that controling strap about his waist permitted, shifted the reins into his right hand and laid his left upon Madame de Vallorbes' sable muff.
"Look here, Helen," he said, rather hoarsely, "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 lass"—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 God.—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 ass. 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?"