Meanwhile he looked back at that box on the grand tier, striving to unriddle the mystery of his knowledge of those two persons. He needed glasses no longer. His sight had become preternaturally keen. Again the two were talking—and about him, that was somehow evident. And, as they talked, he beheld a being, exquisitely formed, perfect in every part, step forth from between the lips of the woman fashioned of ivory and gold. It knelt upon one knee. Over the heads of the vast, dull-coloured multitude of workers, those witnesses of and participators in the execution of Eternal Justice, it gazed at him, Richard Calmady, and at him alone. And its gaze enfolded and held him like an embrace. It wooed him, extending its arms in invitation. It was naked and unashamed. It was black—black as the reeking, liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships, over which the screaming gulls circled seeking foul provender, down in Naples harbour.—And he knew the fair woman it came forth from for Helen de Vallorbes, herself, in her crocus-yellow gown sewn with seed pearls. And he knew it for the immortal soul of her. And he perceived, moreover, as it smiled on and beckoned him with lascivious gestures, that its hands and its lips were bloody, since it had broken the hearts of living women and torn and devoured the honour of living men.
"Ernani, Ernani, involami"—still the air was vibrant with that glorious voice. But the love of which it was the exponent, the flight which it counseled, had ceased, to Richard's hearing, to bear relation to that which is earthly, concrete, and of the senses. The passion and promise of it were alike turned to nobler and more permanent uses, presaging the quick coming of expiation and of reconciliation contained in that supreme event. For he knew that, in a little moment, Helen must arise and follow the soul which had gone forth from her—the soul of which, in all its admirable perfection of outward form and blackness of intimate lies and lust, was close to him—though he no longer actually beheld it—here, beside him, laying subtle siege to him even yet. Where it went, there, of necessity, she who owned it must shortly follow, since soul and body cannot remain apart, save for the briefest space, until death effect their final divorce. Therefore Helen would come speedily. It could not be otherwise—so, at least, he argued. And her coming meant the culmination. Then, time being fully ripe, the bees would swarm, swarm at last,—labour revenging itself upon sloth, hunger upon gluttony, want upon wealth, obscurity upon privilege,—justice being thus meted out, and he, Richard, cleansed and delivered from the disgrace of deformity now so hideously infecting both his spirit and his flesh.
Of this he was so well assured that, disregarding the felt, though unseen, presence of that errant soul, disdaining to do battle with it, he leaned forward once more, looking down into the close-packed arena of the great theatre. All those brilliant figures, members of his own class, here present, were matter of indifference to him. In this moment of conscious and supreme farewell, it was to the dull-coloured multitude that he turned. They still moved him to sympathy. Unconsciously they had enlightened him concerning matters of infinite moment. At their hands he would receive penance and absolution. Before they dealt more closely with him,—since that dealing must involve suffering which might temporarily cloud his friendship for them,—he wanted to bid them farewell and assure them of his conviction of the righteousness of their corporate action. So, silently, he blessed them, taking leave of them in peace. Then he found there were other farewells to be said.—Farewell to earthly life as he had known it, the struggle and very frequent anguish of it, its many frustrated purposes, fair illusions, unfulfilled hopes. He must bid farewell, moreover, to art as he had relished it—to learning, as he had all too intermittently pursued it—to travel, as he had found solace in it—to the inexhaustible interest, the inextinguishable humour and pathos, in brief, of things seen. And, reviewing all this, a profound nostalgia of all those minor happinesses which are the natural inheritance of the average man arose in him—happiness of healthy, light-hearted activities, not only of the athlete and the fighting-man, but of the playing-field, and the ball-room, and the river—happinesses to him inevitably denied. With an almost boyish passion of longing, he cried out for these.—Just for one day to have lived with the ease and freedom with which the vast majority of men habitually live! Just for one day to have been neither dwarf nor cripple, but to have taken his place and his chance with the rest, before it all was over and the tale told!
But very soon Richard put these thoughts from him, deeming it unworthy to dwell upon them at this juncture. The call was to go forward, not to go back. So he settled himself in his chair once more, pulling the velvet drapery forward so as to shut out the sight of the house. Bitterness should have no part in him. When that happened which was appointed to happen, it must find him not only acquiescent but serene and undisturbed. He composed himself, therefore, with a decent and even lofty pride. Then he turned his eyes upon the narrow door, there in the semi-obscurity of the back of the box, and waited. And all the while royally, triumphantly, Morbita sang.
During that period of waiting—whether in itself brief or prolonged, he knew not—sensation and thought alike were curiously in abeyance. Richard neither slept nor woke. He knew that he existed, but all active relation to being had ceased. And it was with painful effort he in a measure returned to more ordinary correspondence with fact, aroused by the sound of low-toned, emphatic speech close at hand, and by a scratching as of some animal denied and seeking admittance. Then he perceived that the door yielded, letting in a spread of yellow brightness from the corridor. And in the midst of that brightness, part and parcel of it thanks to the lustre of her crocus-yellow dress, her honey-coloured hair, her fair skin and softly-gleaming ornaments, stood Helen de Vallorbes. Behind her, momentarily, Richard caught sight of the young man whose face had impressed him as a ribald travesty of that of some being altogether worshipful and holy. The face peered at him with, as it seemed, malicious curiosity over the rounded shoulder of the woman of ivory and gold, The effect was very hateful, and, with a sense of thankfulness, Richard saw Helen close the door and come, alone, down the two steps leading from the back of the box. As she passed from the dimness into the clearer light, he watched her, quiescent, yet with absorbing interest. For he perceived that the hands of the clock had been put back somehow. Intervening years and the many events of them had ceased to obtain, so that, of all the many Helens, enchanting or evil, whom he had come to know, he saw now only one, and that the first and earliest—a little dancer, with blush-roses in her hat, dainty as a toy, finished to her rosy finger-tips and the toes of her pretty shoes, merry and merciless, as she had pirouetted round him mocking his shuffling, uncertain progress across the Chapel-Room at Brockhurst fifteen years ago.
"Ah! so you have come back!" he exclaimed, almost involuntarily.
Madam de Vallorbes pushed a chair from the front of the box into the shadow of the velvet draperies beside Richard.
"It is unnecessary that all Naples should take part in our interview," she said. She sat down, turning to him, leaning a little towards him.
"You do not deserve that I should come back, you know, Dickie," she continued. "You both deserted and deceived me. That is hardly chivalrous, hardly just indeed, after taking all a woman has to give. You led me to suppose you had departed for good and all. Why should you deceive me?"
"The yacht was not ready for sea," Richard said simply.