The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes

Transcribed from the 1921 T. Fisher Unwin by David Price, email

ccx074@.org

THE

ARROW OF GOLD

A STORY BETWEEN TWO NOTES

BY

JOSEPH CONRAD

Celui qui n’a connu que des hommes

polis et raisonnables, ou ne connait pas

l’homme, ou ne le connait qu’a demi.

CARACTERES.

* * * * *

T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.

LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

* * * * *

_First published_ _August_ 1919

_Reprinted_ _December_ 1919

_Reprinted_ _October_ 1921

* * * * *

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

* * * * *

TO

RICHARD CURLE

* * * * *

FIRST NOTE

The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript

which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only. She seems to

have been the writer’s childhood’s friend. They had parted as children,

or very little more than children. Years passed. Then something

recalled to the woman the companion of her young days and she wrote to

him: “I have been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought

you. You certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it

always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always

regarded you as a person that must be given up for lost. But you have

turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my memory

welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the incidents on

the road which has led you to where you are now.”

And he answers her: “I believe you are the only one now alive who

remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I

wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn’t

dare put pen to paper. But I don’t know. I only remember that we were

great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your

brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the

Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that

you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story

of my life so different from yours, not only in all the facts but

altogether in spirit. You may not understand. You may even be shocked.

I say all this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a distinct

recollection that in the old days, when you were about fifteen, you

always could make me do whatever you liked.”

He succumbed. He begins his story for her with the minute narration of

this adventure which took about twelve months to develop. In the form in

which it is presented here it has been pruned of all allusions to their

common past, of all asides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed

directly to the friend of his childhood. And even as it is the whole

thing is of considerable length. It seems that he had not only a memory

but that he also knew how to remember. But as to that opinions may

differ.

This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins in Marseilles.

It ends there, too. Yet it might have happened anywhere. This does not

mean that the people concerned could have come together in pure space.

The locality had a definite importance. As to the time, it is easily

fixed by the events at about the middle years of the seventies, when Don

Carlos de Bourbon, encouraged by the general reaction of all Europe

against the excesses of communistic Republicanism, made his attempt for

the throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and gorges of

Guipuzcoa. It is perhaps the last instance of a Pretender’s adventure

for a Crown that History will have to record with the usual grave moral

disapproval tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance.

Historians are very much like other people.

However, History has nothing to do with this tale. Neither is the moral

justification or condemnation of conduct aimed at here. If anything it

is perhaps a little sympathy that the writer expects for his buried

youth, as he lives it over again at the end of his insignificant course

on this earth. Strange person—yet perhaps not so very different from

ourselves.

A few words as to certain facts may be added.

It may seem that he was plunged very abruptly into this long adventure.

But from certain passages (suppressed here because mixed up with

irrelevant matter) it appears clearly that at the time of the meeting in

the café, Mills had already gathered, in various quarters, a definite

view of the eager youth who had been introduced to him in that

ultra-legitimist salon. What Mills had learned represented him as a

young gentleman who had arrived furnished with proper credentials and who

apparently was doing his best to waste his life in an eccentric fashion,

with a bohemian set (one poet, at least, emerged out of it later) on one

side, and on the other making friends with the people of the Old Town,

pilots, coasters, sailors, workers of all sorts. He pretended rather

absurdly to be a seaman himself and was already credited with an

ill-defined and vaguely illegal enterprise in the Gulf of Mexico. At

once it occurred to Mills that this eccentric youngster was the very

person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at heart just

then: to organize a supply by sea of arms and ammunition to the Carlist

detachments in the South. It was precisely to confer on that matter with

Doña Rita that Captain Blunt had been despatched from Headquarters.

Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion before him.

The Captain thought this the very thing. As a matter of fact, on that

evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually

looking everywhere for our man. They had decided that he should be drawn

into the affair if it could be done. Blunt naturally wanted to see him

first. He must have estimated him a promising person, but, from another

point of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was the notorious (and at the

same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the

contact of two minds which did not give a single thought to his flesh and

blood.

Their purpose explains the intimate tone given to their first

conversation and the sudden introduction of Doña Rita’s history. Mills,

of course, wanted to hear all about it. As to Captain Blunt—I suspect

that, at the time, he was thinking of nothing else. In addition it was

Doña Rita who would have to do the persuading; for, after all, such an

enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not a trifle to put

before a man—however young.

It cannot be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat

unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some doubt about it, at a

given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with

his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He

might even have envied it. But it’s not my business to excuse Mills. As

to him whom we may regard as Mills’ victim it is obvious that he has

never harboured a single reproachful thought. For him Mills is not to be

criticized. A remarkable instance of the great power of mere

individuality over the young.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame

and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is

the Cannebière, and the jest: “If Paris had a Cannebière it would be a

little Marseilles” is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too,

I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into

the unknown.

There was a part of it where one could see as many as five big cafés in a

resplendent row. That evening I strolled into one of them. It was by no

means full. It looked deserted, in fact, festal and overlighted, but

cheerful. The wonderful street was distinctly cold (it was an evening of

carnival), I was very idle, and I was feeling a little lonely. So I went

in and sat down.

The carnival time was drawing to an end. Everybody, high and low, was

anxious to have the last fling. Companies of masks with linked arms and

whooping like red Indians swept the streets in crazy rushes while gusts

of cold mistral swayed the gas lights as far as the eye could reach.

There was a touch of bedlam in all this.

Perhaps it was that which made me feel lonely, since I was neither

masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any other way in harmony with

the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a state

of sobriety. I had just returned from my second West Indies voyage. My

eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my memory of my experiences,

lawful and lawless, which had their charm and their thrill; for they had

startled me a little and had amused me considerably. But they had left

me untouched. Indeed they were other men’s adventures, not mine. Except

for a little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not

matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably young—still

beautifully unthinking—infinitely receptive.

You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos and his fight for a

kingdom. Why should I? You don’t want to think of things which you meet

every day in the newspapers and in conversation. I had paid some calls

since my return and most of my acquaintance were legitimists and

intensely interested in the events of the frontier of Spain, for

political, religious, or romantic reasons. But I was not interested.

Apparently I was not romantic enough. Or was it that I was even more

romantic than all those good people? The affair seemed to me

commonplace. That man was attending to his business of a Pretender.

On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table near

me, he looked picturesque enough, seated on a boulder, a big strong man

with a square-cut beard, his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry

sabre—and all around him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught my

eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There were no inane

snapshot-reproductions in those days.) It was the obvious romance for

the use of royalists but it arrested my attention.

Just then some masks from outside invaded the café, dancing hand in hand

in a single file led by a burly man with a cardboard nose. He gambolled

in wildly and behind him twenty others perhaps, mostly Pierrots and

Pierrettes holding each other by the hand and winding in and out between

the chairs and tables: eyes shining in the holes of cardboard faces,

breasts panting; but all preserving a mysterious silence.

They were people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots,

costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn over

with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt.

Most of the ordinary clients of the café didn’t even look up from their

games or papers. I, being alone and idle, stared abstractedly. The girl

costumed as Night wore a small black velvet mask, what is called in

French a “_loup_.” What made her daintiness join that obviously rough

lot I can’t imagine. Her uncovered mouth and chin suggested refined

prettiness.

They filed past my table; the Night noticed perhaps my fixed gaze and

throwing her body forward out of the wriggling chain shot out at me a

slender tongue like a pink dart. I was not prepared for this, not even

to the extent of an appreciative “_Très foli_,” before she wriggled and

hopped away. But having been thus distinguished I could do no less than

follow her with my eyes to the door where the chain of hands being broken

all the masks were trying to get out at once. Two gentlemen coming in

out of the street stood arrested in the crush. The Night (it must have

been her idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them, too. The taller of

the two (he was in evening clothes under a light wide-open overcoat) with

great presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me the view at

the same time of a flash of white teeth in his dark, lean face. The

other man was very different; fair, with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly

shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made, for

it seemed too tight for his powerful frame.

That man was not altogether a stranger to me. For the last week or so I

had been rather on the look-out for him in all the public places where in

a provincial town men may expect to meet each other. I saw him for the

first time (wearing that same grey ready-made suit) in a legitimist

drawing-room where, clearly, he was an object of interest, especially to

the women. I had caught his name as Monsieur Mills. The lady who had

introduced me took the earliest opportunity to murmur into my ear: “A

relation of Lord X.” (_Un proche parent de Lord X_.) And then she

added, casting up her eyes: “A good friend of the King.” Meaning Don

Carlos of course.

I looked at the _proche parent_; not on account of the parentage but

marvelling at his air of ease in that cumbrous body and in such tight

clothes, too. But presently the same lady informed me further: “He has

come here amongst us _un naufragé_.”

I became then really interested. I had never seen a shipwrecked person

before. All the boyishness in me was aroused. I considered a shipwreck

as an unavoidable event sooner or later in my future.

Meantime the man thus distinguished in my eyes glanced quietly about and

never spoke unless addressed directly by one of the ladies present.

There were more than a dozen people in that drawing-room, mostly women

eating fine pastry and talking passionately. It might have been a

Carlist committee meeting of a particularly fatuous character. Even my

youth and inexperience were aware of that. And I was by a long way the

youngest person in the room. That quiet Monsieur Mills intimidated me a

little by his age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive

tranquillity, his clear, watchful eyes. But the temptation was too

great—and I addressed him impulsively on the subject of that shipwreck.

He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in his keen glance,

which (as though he had seen through me in an instant and found nothing

objectionable) changed subtly into friendliness. On the matter of the

shipwreck he did not say much. He only told me that it had not occurred

in the Mediterranean, but on the other side of Southern France—in the Bay

of Biscay. “But this is hardly the place to enter on a story of that

kind,” he observed, looking round at the room with a faint smile as

attractive as the rest of his rustic but well-bred personality.

I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all about it. To

this he said that it was not a secret and that perhaps next time we met. . .

“But where can we meet?” I cried. “I don’t come often to this house, you

know.”

“Where? Why on the Cannebière to be sure. Everybody meets everybody

else at least once a day on the pavement opposite the _Bourse_.”

This was absolutely true. But though I looked for him on each succeeding

day he was nowhere to be seen at the usual times. The companions of my

idle hours (and all my hours were idle just then) noticed my

preoccupation and chaffed me about it in a rather obvious way. They

wanted to know whether she, whom I expected to see, was dark or fair;

whether that fascination which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was

one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a

footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were

the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor

whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was “Young Ulysses.”

I liked it.

But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them

for the burly and sympathetic Mills. I was ready to drop any easy

company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental

deference. It was not precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted

and interested me the more because he was not to be seen. The fear that

he might have departed suddenly for England—(or for Spain)—caused me a

sort of ridiculous depression as though I had missed a unique

opportunity. And it was a joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal

to him with a raised arm across that café.

I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw him advance towards my

table with his friend. The latter was eminently elegant. He was exactly

like one of those figures one can see of a fine May evening in the

neighbourhood of the Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. And

yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have been, as

if one’s nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of

excellence. As to Mills, he was perfectly insular. There could be no

doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. The burly Mills

attended to the introduction: “Captain Blunt.”

We shook hands. The name didn’t tell me much. What surprised me was

that Mills should have remembered mine so well. I don’t want to boast of

my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than

enough for a man like Mills to forget my very existence. As to the

Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his

personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face,

pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality

only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn’t meet every

day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was

that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently

professional. That imperfection was interesting, too.

You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you

may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it

is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count

for interest and memory—and pretty well nothing else. This—you see—is

the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that

woman. These are like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn’t

my fault that they are associated with nothing better at the decisive

moment than the banal splendours of a gilded café and the bedlamite yells

of carnival in the street.

We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed

attitudes of serious amiability round our table. A waiter approached for

orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the

absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he

was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began charging

his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became

positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the café in a sort of

mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I

have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle

floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and

addressing me as “Young Ulysses” proposed I should go outside on the

fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites to decorate a

truly infernal supper which was being organized across the road at the

Maison Dorée—upstairs. With expostulatory shakes of the head and

indignant glances I called his attention to the fact that I was not

alone. He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery, took

off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance so that the feathers

swept the floor, and swaggered off the stage with his left hand resting

on the hilt of the property dagger at his belt.

Meantime the well-connected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his

briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself. I was

horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow

was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been

swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head apparently.

Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching blue eyes

through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed about his big head. The slim,

dark Captain’s smile took on an amiable expression. Might he know why I

was addressed as “Young Ulysses” by my friend? and immediately he added

the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute person.

Mills did not give me time for a reply. He struck in: “That old Greek

was famed as a wanderer—the first historical seaman.” He waved his pipe

vaguely at me.

“Ah! _Vraiment_!” The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if

weary. “Are you a seaman? In what sense, pray?” We were talking French

and he used the term _homme de mer_.

Again Mills interfered quietly. “In the same sense in which you are a

military man.” (_Homme de guerre_.)

It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking

declarations. He had two of them, and this was the first.

“I live by my sword.”

It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction

with the matter made me forget my tongue in my head. I could only stare

at him. He added more naturally: “2nd Reg. Castille, Cavalry.” Then

with marked stress in Spanish, “_En las filas legitimas_.”

Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: “He’s on leave here.”

“Of course I don’t shout that fact on the housetops,” the Captain

addressed me pointedly, “any more than our friend his shipwreck

adventure. We must not strain the toleration of the French authorities

too much! It wouldn’t be correct—and not very safe either.”

I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company. A man who “lived

by his sword,” before my eyes, close at my elbow! So such people did

exist in the world yet! I had not been born too late! And across the

table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence, enough in itself to

arouse one’s interest, there was the man with the story of a shipwreck

that mustn’t be shouted on housetops. Why?

I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in the

Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative of his, “a very wealthy

man,” he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other

supplies to the Carlist army. And it was not a shipwreck in the ordinary

sense. Everything went perfectly well to the last moment when suddenly

the _Numancia_ (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them

ashore on the French coast below Bayonne. In a few words, but with

evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described to us how he swam

to the beach clad simply in a money belt and a pair of trousers. Shells

were falling all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne and

shooed the _Numancia_ away out of territorial waters.

He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that

tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in the costume

you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of

war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he

was there before my eyes. But how and why did he get so far from the

scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question. And I put it to

him with most naïve indiscretion which did not shock him visibly. He

told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo

aboard was doubtless in good condition. The French custom-house men were

guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could be—h’m—removed by some

means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles and cartridges could

be taken off quietly at night by certain Spanish fishing boats. In fact,

salved for the Carlists, after all. He thought it could be done. . . .

I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights

(rare on that coast) it could certainly be done.

Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly inconvenient

zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be dealt with in some

way.

“Heavens!” I cried, astonished. “You can’t bribe the French Customs.

This isn’t a South-American republic.”

“Is it a republic?” he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden

pipe.

“Well, isn’t it?”

He murmured again, “Oh, so little.” At this I laughed, and a faintly

humorous expression passed over Mills’ face. No. Bribes were out of the

question, he admitted. But there were many legitimist sympathies in

Paris. A proper person could set them in motion and a mere hint from

high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about

that wreck. . . .

What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing

project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there

all over the café; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a

fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the

ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let fall

casually the words, “She will manage it for you quite easily.”

“Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that,” said Mr. Mills. “I

would have gone straight to Paris only I was told she had fled here for a

rest; tired, discontented. Not a very encouraging report.”

“These flights are well known,” muttered Mr. Blunt. “You shall see her

all right.”

“Yes. They told me that you . . . ”

I broke in: “You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that sort

of thing for you?”

“A trifle, for her,” Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. “At that sort of

thing women are best. They have less scruples.”

“More audacity,” interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.

Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: “You see,” he addressed me in a

most refined tone, “a mere man may suddenly find himself being kicked

down the stairs.”

I don’t know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It could

not be because it was untrue. The other did not give me time to offer

any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of South

American republics? I confessed that I knew very little of them.

Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and there; and

amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which was of course unique,

being a negro republic. On this Captain Blunt began to talk of negroes

at large. He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence, and a sort of

contemptuous affection. He generalized, he particularized about the

blacks; he told anecdotes. I was interested, a little incredulous, and

considerably surprised. What could this man with such a boulevardier

exterior that he looked positively like, an exile in a provincial town,

and with his drawing-room manner—what could he know of negroes?

Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence, seemed to

read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and explained: “The Captain is

from South Carolina.”

“Oh,” I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses I heard the

second of Mr. J. K. Blunt’s declarations.

“Yes,” he said. “_Je suis Américain_, _catholique et gentil-homme_,” in

a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile, which, as it were,

underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to return the

smile in kind or acknowledge the words with a grave little bow. Of

course I did neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence. It

marked our final abandonment of the French language. I was the one to

speak first, proposing that my companions should sup with me, not across

the way, which would be riotous with more than one “infernal” supper, but

in another much more select establishment in a side street away from the

Cannebière. It flattered my vanity a little to be able to say that I had

a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers, otherwise Salon

Blanc, where the atmosphere was legitimist and extremely decorous

besides—even in Carnival time. “Nine tenths of the people there,” I

said, “would be of your political opinions, if that’s an inducement.

Come along. Let’s be festive,” I encouraged them.

I didn’t feel particularly festive. What I wanted was to remain in my

company and break an inexplicable feeling of constraint of which I was

aware. Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile.

“No,” said Blunt. “Why should we go there? They will be only turning us

out in the small hours, to go home and face insomnia. Can you imagine

anything more disgusting?”

He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did not lend

themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness which he tried to

achieve. He had another suggestion to offer. Why shouldn’t we adjourn

to his rooms? He had there materials for a dish of his own invention for

which he was famous all along the line of the Royal Cavalry outposts, and

he would cook it for us. There were also a few bottles of some white

wine, quite possible, which we could drink out of Venetian cut-glass

goblets. A _bivouac_ feast, in fact. And he wouldn’t turn us out in the

small hours. Not he. He couldn’t sleep.

Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. But somehow I

hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my senior. He got up without

a word. This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something

indefinite at that, could stand against the example of his tranquil

personality.

CHAPTER II

The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow,

silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its

most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many

of its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to

Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all

nations almost—except his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other

side of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care

to keep clear of his own consulate.

“Are you afraid of the consul’s dog?” I asked jocularly. The consul’s

dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as

exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but

mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: “They are

all Yankees there.”

I murmured a confused “Of course.”

Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before that

the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten

years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was a

little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime, looking like the

conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat

pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty

with his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not one

of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street.

It had only one row of windows above the ground floor. Dead walls

abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front

presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light

of a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the

world. The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black

and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions.

Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way

across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a

door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle. It gave access to

his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of

the passage.

It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to the

garden side of the house. A large lamp was burning brightly there. The

floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about though

extremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa

upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions,

some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round

table, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove.

Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the

warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold

blasts of mistral outside.

Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm,

gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner where in the shadow of a

monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands but

with beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed to

be embarrassed by his stare.

As we sat enjoying the _bivouac_ hospitality (the dish was really

excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked the

accomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards that

corner. Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted by

the Empress.

“It’s disagreeable,” I said. “It seems to lurk there like a shy skeleton

at the feast. But why do you give the name of Empress to that dummy?”

“Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a Byzantine Empress to

a painter. . . I wonder where he discovered these priceless stuffs. . .

You knew him, I believe?”

Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his throat some wine out

of a Venetian goblet.

“This house is full of costly objects. So are all his other houses, so

is his place in Paris—that mysterious Pavilion hidden away in Passy

somewhere.”

Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose, loosened his tongue.

Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve. From their talk I gathered

the notion of an eccentric personality, a man of great wealth, not so

much solitary as difficult of access, a collector of fine things, a

painter known only to very few people and not at all to the public

market. But as meantime I had been emptying my Venetian goblet with a

certain regularity (the amount of heat given out by that iron stove was

amazing; it parched one’s throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn’t seem

much stronger than so much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and the

impressions they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind.

Suddenly I perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. I had

not noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had unbuttoned his shabby

jacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie under

his dark shaved chin. He had a strange air of insolence—or so it seemed

to me. I addressed him much louder than I intended really.

“Did you know that extraordinary man?”

“To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished or very

lucky. Mr. Mills here . . .”

“Yes, I have been lucky,” Mills struck in. “It was my cousin who was

distinguished. That’s how I managed to enter his house in Paris—it was

called the Pavilion—twice.”

“And saw Doña Rita twice, too?” asked Blunt with an indefinite smile and

a marked emphasis. Mills was also emphatic in his reply but with a

serious face.

“I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she was

without doubt the most admirable find of his amongst all the priceless

items he had accumulated in that house—the most admirable. . . ”

“Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one that

was alive,” pointed out Blunt with the slightest possible flavour of

sarcasm.

“Immensely so,” affirmed Mills. “Not because she was restless, indeed

she hardly ever moved from that couch between the windows—you know.”

“No. I don’t know. I’ve never been in there,” announced Blunt with that

flash of white teeth so strangely without any character of its own that

it was merely disturbing.

“But she radiated life,” continued Mills. “She had plenty of it, and it

had a quality. My cousin and Henry Allègre had a lot to say to each

other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like

old friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were that

we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not

meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields

she’ll have her place in a very special company.”

All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Blunt

produced another disturbing white flash and muttered:

“I should say mixed.” Then louder: “As for instance . . . ”

“As for instance Cleopatra,” answered Mills quietly. He added after a

pause: “Who was not exactly pretty.”

“I should have thought rather a La Vallière,” Blunt dropped with an

indifference of which one did not know what to make. He may have begun

to be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on, for the whole

personality was not clearly definable. I, however, was not indifferent.

A woman is always an interesting subject and I was thoroughly awake to

that interest. Mills pondered for a while with a sort of dispassionate

benevolence, at last:

“Yes, Doña Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity that

even that is possible,” he said. “Yes. A romantic resigned La Vallière

. . . who had a big mouth.”

I felt moved to make myself heard.

“Did you know La Vallière, too?” I asked impertinently.

Mills only smiled at me. “No. I am not quite so old as that,” he said.

“But it’s not very difficult to know facts of that kind about a

historical personage. There were some ribald verses made at the time,

and Louis XIV was congratulated on the possession—I really don’t remember

how it goes—on the possession of:

“. . . de ce bec amoureux

Qui d’une oreille à l’autre va,

Tra là là.

or something of the sort. It needn’t be from ear to ear, but it’s a fact

that a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of mind and

feeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths. Beware of the

others, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, the

royalist sympathizers can’t charge Doña Rita with any lack of generosity

from what I hear. Why should I judge her? I have known her for, say,

six hours altogether. It was enough to feel the seduction of her native

intelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that was brought home

to me so quickly,” he concluded, “because she had what some Frenchman has

called the ‘terrible gift of familiarity’.”

Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.

“Yes!” Mills’ thoughts were still dwelling in the past. “And when

saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance between

herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of

the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the

purple. Even if she did offer you her hand—as she did to me—it was as if

across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out?

Perhaps she’s really one of those inaccessible beings. What do you

think, Blunt?”

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of

sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbed

me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he

turned to me.

“That thick man,” he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, “is as fine as a

needle. All these statements about the seduction and then this final

doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included more

than six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is Henry

Allègre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills.”

“I haven’t the secret of raising the dead,” answered Mills good

humouredly. “And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a

liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life.”

“And yet Henry Allègre is the only person to ask about her, after all

this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her;

all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very

last breath. I don’t mean to say she nursed him. He had his

confidential man for that. He couldn’t bear women about his person. But

then apparently he couldn’t bear this one out of his sight. She’s the

only woman who ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a model inside

his house. That’s why the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and the ‘Byzantine Empress’

have that family air, though neither of them is really a likeness of Doña

Rita. . . You know my mother?”

Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from his

lips. Blunt’s eyes were fastened on the very centre of his empty plate.

“Then perhaps you know my mother’s artistic and literary associations,”

Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. “My mother has been writing

verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She’s still writing verse. She’s

still fifteen—a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of her poet

friends—no less than Versoy himself—to arrange for a visit to Henry

Allègre’s house. At first he thought he hadn’t heard aright. You must

know that for my mother a man that doesn’t jump out of his skin for any

woman’s caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . .”

Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his eyes

from his plate to look at him, started afresh with great deliberation.

“She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother’s exquisitely

absurd. You understand that all these painters, poets, art collectors

(and dealers in bric-à-brac, he interjected through his teeth) of my

mother are not in my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of the world.

One day I met him at the fencing school. He was furious. He asked me to

tell my mother that this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobs

she gave him to do were too difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased

enough to show the influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother

would tell the world’s wife all about it. He’s a spiteful, gingery

little wretch. The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I

believe he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn’t

get further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous

drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double doors

on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for a visit

from royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother, with her white hair

done in some 18th century fashion and her sparkling black eyes,

penetrating into those splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed,

vexed squirrel—and Henry Allègre coming forward to meet them like a

severe prince with the face of a tombstone Crusader, big white hands,

muffled silken voice, half-shut eyes, as if looking down at them from a

balcony. You remember that trick of his, Mills?”

Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended cheeks.

“I daresay he was furious, too,” Blunt continued dispassionately. “But

he was extremely civil. He showed her all the ‘treasures’ in the room,

ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, from

India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He pushed his

condescension so far as to have the ‘Girl in the Hat’ brought down into

the drawing-room—half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for my

mother to look at. The ‘Byzantine Empress’ was already there, hung on

the end wall—full length, gold frame weighing half a ton. My mother

first overwhelms the ‘Master’ with thanks, and then absorbs herself in

the adoration of the ‘Girl in the Hat.’ Then she sighs out: ‘It should

be called Diaphanéité, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last

expression of modernity!’ She puts up suddenly her face-à-main and looks

towards the end wall. ‘And that—Byzantium itself! Who was she, this

sullen and beautiful Empress?’

“‘The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!’ Allègre consented to answer.

‘Originally a slave girl—from somewhere.’

“My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her. She

finds nothing better to do than to ask the ‘Master’ why he took his

inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she was

proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. Allègre,

however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered in his

silkiest tones:

“‘Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women of all

time.’

“My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She is

extremely intelligent. Moreover, she ought to have known. But women can

be miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, ‘Then she is a

wonder!’ And with some notion of being complimentary goes on to say that

only the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders of art could have

discovered something so marvellous in life. I suppose Allègre lost his

temper altogether then; or perhaps he only wanted to pay my mother out,

for all these ‘Masters’ she had been throwing at his head for the last

two hours. He insinuates with the utmost politeness:

“‘As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like to

judge for yourself as to the inspiration of these two pictures. She is

upstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she wouldn’t be

very long. She might be a little surprised at first to be called down

like this, but with a few words of preparation and purely as a matter of

art . . .’

“There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself confesses

that he dropped his tall hat with a crash. I am a dutiful son, I hope,

but I must say I should have liked to have seen the retreat down the

great staircase. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly.

“That implacable brute Allègre followed them down ceremoniously and put

my mother into the fiacre at the door with the greatest deference. He

didn’t open his lips though, and made a great bow as the fiacre drove

away. My mother didn’t recover from her consternation for three days. I

lunch with her almost daily and I couldn’t imagine what was the matter.

Then one day . . .”

He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse left the

studio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into the

consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men.

With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front of his

face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff of

smoke, staring stolidly across the room.

I was moved to ask in a whisper:

“Do you know him well?”

“I don’t know what he is driving at,” he answered drily. “But as to his

mother she is not as volatile as all that. I suspect it was business.

It may have been a deep plot to get a picture out of Allègre for

somebody. My cousin as likely as not. Or simply to discover what he

had. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris there are various

ways of making a little money, without actually breaking anything. Not

even the law. And Mrs. Blunt really had a position once—in the days of

the Second Empire—and so. . .”

I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indian

experiences could not have given me an insight. But Mills checked

himself and ended in a changed tone.

“It’s not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any given

instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A delightful,

aristocratic old lady. Only poor.”

A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captain

of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as to one dish at

least), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four more

bottles between the fingers of his hand.

“I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot,” he remarked casually. But even

I, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had stumbled

accidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a

profound silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously—any more

than his stumble.

“One day,” he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, “my

mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in the

middle of the night. You must understand my mother’s phraseology. It

meant that she would be up and dressed by nine o’clock. This time it was

not Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine how

delighted I was. . . .”

It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively to

Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the man. It was as if Mills

represented something initiated and to be reckoned with. I, of course,

could have no such pretensions. If I represented anything it was a

perfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing ignorance, not so much

of what life may give one (as to that I had some ideas at least) but of

what it really contains. I knew very well that I was utterly

insignificant in these men’s eyes. Yet my attention was not checked by

that knowledge. It’s true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet at

the age when this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. My

imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the adventures

and fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from flagging was Mr. Blunt

himself. The play of the white gleams of his smile round the suspicion

of grimness of his tone fascinated me like a moral incongruity.

So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes as if

the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age, I kept

easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the contrast of

personalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough

initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things were

dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a

floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the

prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these

two men had _seen_ her, while to me she was only being “presented,”

elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar

voice.

She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the early

hour of the ultra-fashionable world (so I understood), on a light bay

“bit of blood” attended on the off side by that Henry Allègre mounted on

a dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the other by one of

Allègre’s acquaintances (the man had no real friends), distinguished

frequenters of that mysterious Pavilion. And so that side of the frame

in which that woman appeared to one down the perspective of the great

Allée was not permanent. That morning when Mr. Blunt had to escort his

mother there for the gratification of her irresistible curiosity (of

which he highly disapproved) there appeared in succession, at that

woman’s or girl’s bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whom

she was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit, who talked to her

with great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage in a

red fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, the

vexed Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though I really couldn’t see

where the harm was) had one more chance of a good stare. The third party

that time was the Royal Pretender (Allègre had been painting his portrait

lately), whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before the mounted

trio came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. There was colour in

the girl’s face. She was not laughing. Her expression was serious and

her eyes thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion the

charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately framed

between those magnificently mounted, paladin-like attendants, one older

than the other but the two composing together admirably in the different

stages of their manhood. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allègre

so close. Allègre was riding nearest to the path on which Blunt was

dutifully giving his arm to his mother (they had got out of their fiacre)

and wondering if that confounded fellow would have the impudence to take

off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allègre was not

a man of wandering glances. There were silver hairs in his beard but he

looked as solid as a statue. Less than three months afterwards he was

gone.

“What was it?” asked Mills, who had not changed his pose for a very long

time.

“Oh, an accident. But he lingered. They were on their way to Corsica.

A yearly pilgrimage. Sentimental perhaps. It was to Corsica that he

carried her off—I mean first of all.”

There was the slightest contraction of Mr. Blunt’s facial muscles. Very

slight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simple

souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been

mental. There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: “I

suppose you know how he got hold of her?” in a tone of ease which was

astonishingly ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled,

drawing-room person.

Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment. Then he

leaned back in his chair and with interest—I don’t mean curiosity, I mean

interest: “Does anybody know besides the two parties concerned?” he

asked, with something as it were renewed (or was it refreshed?) in his

unmoved quietness. “I ask because one has never heard any tales. I

remember one evening in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady—a

beautiful lady—very particularly beautiful, as though she had been stolen

out of Mahomet’s paradise. With Doña Rita it can’t be anything as

definite as that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I’ve always

felt that she looked as though Allègre had caught her in the precincts of

some temple . . . in the mountains.”

I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in that

way, a real live woman that is, not a woman in a book. For this was no

poetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I

would have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly,

addressed himself to me.

“I told you that man was as fine as a needle.”

And then to Mills: “Out of a temple? We know what that means.” His dark

eyes flashed: “And must it be really in the mountains?” he added.

“Or in a desert,” conceded Mills, “if you prefer that. There have been

temples in deserts, you know.”

Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose.

“As a matter of fact, Henry Allègre caught her very early one morning in

his own old garden full of thrushes and other small birds. She was

sitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet in

the damp grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on a

short, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de deux sous_) and there

was a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw him

looking down at her thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, like

Jove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she was

too startled to move; and then he murmured, “_Restez donc_.” She lowered

her eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away on the

path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds filling

the air with their noise. She was not frightened. I am telling you this

positively because she has told me the tale herself. What better

authority can you have . . .?” Blunt paused.

“That’s true. She’s not the sort of person to lie about her own

sensations,” murmured Mills above his clasped hands.

“Nothing can escape his penetration,” Blunt remarked to me with that

equivocal urbanity which made me always feel uncomfortable on Mills’

account. “Positively nothing.” He turned to Mills again. “After some

minutes of immobility—she told me—she arose from her stone and walked

slowly on the track of that apparition. Allègre was nowhere to be seen

by that time. Under the gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house,

which hides the Pavilion and the garden from the street, the wife of the

porter was waiting with her arms akimbo. At once she cried out to Rita:

‘You were caught by our gentleman.’

“As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita’s aunt,

allowed the girl to come into the garden whenever Allègre was away. But

Allègre’s goings and comings were sudden and unannounced; and that

morning, Rita, crossing the narrow, thronged street, had slipped in

through the gateway in ignorance of Allègre’s return and unseen by the

porter’s wife.

“The child, she was but little more than that then, expressed her regret

of having perhaps got the kind porter’s wife into trouble.

“The old woman said with a peculiar smile: ‘Your face is not of the sort

that gets other people into trouble. My gentleman wasn’t angry. He says

you may come in any morning you like.’

“Rita, without saying anything to this, crossed the street back again to

the warehouse full of oranges where she spent most of her waking hours.

Her dreaming, empty, idle, thoughtless, unperturbed hours, she calls

them. She crossed the street with a hole in her stocking. She had a

hole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they had

around them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but

because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her

personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious

then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight

life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, a

Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the

priest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the

age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant

stock, you know. This is the true origin of the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and of

the ‘Byzantine Empress’ which excited my dear mother so much; of the

mysterious girl that the privileged personalities great in art, in

letters, in politics, or simply in the world, could see on the big sofa

during the gatherings in Allègre’s exclusive Pavilion: the Doña Rita of

their respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious, like an object of

art from some unknown period; the Doña Rita of the initiated Paris. Doña

Rita and nothing more—unique and indefinable.” He stopped with a

disagreeable smile.

“And of peasant stock?” I exclaimed in the strangely conscious silence

that fell between Mills and Blunt.

“Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II,” said

Captain Blunt moodily. “You see coats of arms carved over the doorways

of the most miserable _caserios_. As far as that goes she’s Doña Rita

right enough whatever else she is or is not in herself or in the eyes of

others. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?”

For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.

“Why think about it at all?” he murmured coldly at last. “A strange bird

is hatched sometimes in a nest in an unaccountable way and then the fate

of such a bird is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. And

so that is how Henry Allègre saw her first? And what happened next?”

“What happened next?” repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise in

his tone. “Is it necessary to ask that question? If you had asked _how_

the next happened. . . But as you may imagine she hasn’t told me

anything about that. She didn’t,” he continued with polite sarcasm,

“enlarge upon the facts. That confounded Allègre, with his impudent

assumption of princely airs, must have (I shouldn’t wonder) made the fact

of his notice appear as a sort of favour dropped from Olympus. I really

can’t tell how the minds and the imaginations of such aunts and uncles

are affected by such rare visitations. Mythology may give us a hint.

There is the story of Danae, for instance.”

“There is,” remarked Mills calmly, “but I don’t remember any aunt or

uncle in that connection.”

“And there are also certain stories of the discovery and acquisition of

some unique objects of art. The sly approaches, the astute negotiations,

the lying and the circumventing . . . for the love of beauty, you know.”

With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing about his

grimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively satanic. Mills’ hand was

toying absently with an empty glass. Again they had forgotten my

existence altogether.

“I don’t know how an object of art would feel,” went on Blunt, in an

unexpectedly grating voice, which, however, recovered its tone

immediately. “I don’t know. But I do know that Rita herself was not a

Danae, never, not at any time of her life. She didn’t mind the holes in

her stockings. She wouldn’t mind holes in her stockings now. . . That is

if she manages to keep any stockings at all,” he added, with a sort of

suppressed fury so funnily unexpected that I would have burst into a

laugh if I hadn’t been lost in astonishment of the simplest kind.

“No—really!” There was a flash of interest from the quiet Mills.

“Yes, really,” Blunt nodded and knitted his brows very devilishly

indeed. “She may yet be left without a single pair of stockings.”

“The world’s a thief,” declared Mills, with the utmost composure. “It

wouldn’t mind robbing a lonely traveller.”

“He is so subtle.” Blunt remembered my existence for the purpose of that

remark and as usual it made me very uncomfortable. “Perfectly true. A

lonely traveller. They are all in the scramble from the lowest to the

highest. Heavens! What a gang! There was even an Archbishop in it.”

“_Vous plaisantez_,” said Mills, but without any marked show of

incredulity.

“I joke very seldom,” Blunt protested earnestly. “That’s why I haven’t

mentioned His Majesty—whom God preserve. That would have been an

exaggeration. . . However, the end is not yet. We were talking about the

beginning. I have heard that some dealers in fine objects, quite

mercenary people of course (my mother has an experience in that world),

show sometimes an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens,

even at a good price. It must be very funny. It’s just possible that

the uncle and the aunt have been rolling in tears on the floor, amongst

their oranges, or beating their heads against the walls from rage and

despair. But I doubt it. And in any case Allègre is not the sort of

person that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it’s just possible that

those people stood open-mouthed at all that magnificence. They weren’t

poor, you know; therefore it wasn’t incumbent on them to be honest. They

are still there in the old respectable warehouse, I understand. They

have kept their position in their _quartier_, I believe. But they didn’t

keep their niece. It might have been an act of sacrifice! For I seem to

remember hearing that after attending for a while some school round the

corner the child had been set to keep the books of that orange business.

However it might have been, the first fact in Rita’s and Allègre’s common

history is a journey to Italy, and then to Corsica. You know Allègre had

a house in Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything he

ever had; and that Corsican palace is the portion that will stick the

longest to Doña Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place like

that? I suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having

houses built all over the place. This very house where we are sitting

belonged to him. Doña Rita has given it to her sister, I understand. Or

at any rate the sister runs it. She is my landlady . . .”

“Her sister here!” I exclaimed. “Her sister!”

Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His eyes

were in deep shadow and it struck me for the first time then that there

was something fatal in that man’s aspect as soon as he fell silent. I

think the effect was purely physical, but in consequence whatever he said

seemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace, if uneasy, soul.

“Doña Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is asleep

somewhere in this house, in one of the vacant rooms. She lets them, you

know, at extortionate prices, that is, if people will pay them, for she

is easily intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an enormous town

before in her life, nor yet so many strange people. She has been keeping

house for the uncle-priest in some mountain gorge for years and years.

It’s extraordinary he should have let her go. There is something

mysterious there, some reason or other. It’s either theology or Family.

The saintly uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of any other

reasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she had seen some

real money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me long enough,

and I hope you will (I really can’t sleep), you will see her going out to

mass at half-past six; but there is nothing remarkable in her; just a

peasant woman of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun. . . .”

I may as well say at once that we didn’t stay as long as that. It was

not that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the whispering

lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass from the house of

iniquity into the early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a world

steeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning that I saw Doña Rita’s

incredible sister with her brown, dry face, her gliding motion, and her

really nun-like dress, with a black handkerchief enfolding her head

tightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like

enough. And yet not altogether. People would have turned round after

her if those dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn’t been the only

occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was

frightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a danger

but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn’t fly back to her mountains

because at bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant tenacity of

purpose, predatory instincts. . . .

No, we didn’t remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to see even as much as

her back glide out of the house on her prayerful errand. She was

prayerful. She was terrible. Her one-idead peasant mind was as

inaccessible as a closed iron safe. She was fatal. . . It’s perfectly

ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now; but writing to

you like this in all sincerity I don’t mind appearing ridiculous. I

suppose fatality must be expressed, embodied, like other forces of this

earth; and if so why not in such people as well as in other more glorious

or more frightful figures?

We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt’s half-hidden acrimony

develop itself or prey on itself in further talk about the man Allègre

and the girl Rita. Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story,

passed on to what he called the second act, the disclosure, with, what he

called, the characteristic Allègre impudence—which surpassed the

impudence of kings, millionaires, or tramps, by many degrees—the

revelation of Rita’s existence to the world at large. It wasn’t a very

large world, but then it was most choicely composed. How is one to

describe it shortly? In a sentence it was the world that rides in the

morning in the Bois.

In something less than a year and a half from the time he found her

sitting on a broken fragment of stone work buried in the grass of his

wild garden, full of thrushes, starlings, and other innocent creatures of

the air, he had given her amongst other accomplishments the art of

sitting admirably on a horse, and directly they returned to Paris he took

her out with him for their first morning ride.

“I leave you to judge of the sensation,” continued Mr. Blunt, with a

faint grimace, as though the words had an acrid taste in his mouth. “And

the consternation,” he added venomously. “Many of those men on that

great morning had some one of their womankind with them. But their hats

had to go off all the same, especially the hats of the fellows who were

under some sort of obligation to Allègre. You would be astonished to

hear the names of people, of real personalities in the world, who, not to

mince matters, owed money to Allègre. And I don’t mean in the world of

art only. In the first rout of the surprise some story of an adopted

daughter was set abroad hastily, I believe. You know ‘adopted’ with a

peculiar accent on the word—and it was plausible enough. I have been

told that at that time she looked extremely youthful by his side, I mean

extremely youthful in expression, in the eyes, in the smile. She must

have been . . .”

Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not to let the

confused murmur of the word “adorable” reach our attentive ears.

The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. The effect on me

was more inward, a strange emotion which left me perfectly still; and for

the moment of silence Blunt looked more fatal than ever.

“I understand it didn’t last very long,” he addressed us politely again.

“And no wonder! The sort of talk she would have heard during that first

springtime in Paris would have put an impress on a much less receptive

personality; for of course Allègre didn’t close his doors to his friends

and this new apparition was not of the sort to make them keep away.

After that first morning she always had somebody to ride at her bridle

hand. Old Doyen, the sculptor, was the first to approach them. At that

age a man may venture on anything. He rides a strange animal like a

circus horse. Rita had spotted him out of the corner of her eye as he

passed them, putting up his enormous paw in a still more enormous glove,

airily, you know, like this” (Blunt waved his hand above his head), “to

Allègre. He passes on. All at once he wheels his fantastic animal round

and comes trotting after them. With the merest casual ‘_Bonjour_,

Allègre’ he ranges close to her on the other side and addresses her, hat

in hand, in that booming voice of his like a deferential roar of the sea

very far away. His articulation is not good, and the first words she

really made out were ‘I am an old sculptor. . . Of course there is that

habit. . . But I can see you through all that. . . ’

He put his hat on very much on one side. ‘I am a great sculptor of

women,’ he declared. ‘I gave up my life to them, poor unfortunate

creatures, the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the most loved. . . Two

generations of them. . . Just look at me full in the eyes, _mon enfant_.’

“They stared at each other. Doña Rita confessed to me that the old

fellow made her heart beat with such force that she couldn’t manage to

smile at him. And she saw his eyes run full of tears. He wiped them

simply with the back of his hand and went on booming faintly. ‘Thought

so. You are enough to make one cry. I thought my artist’s life was

finished, and here you come along from devil knows where with this young

friend of mine, who isn’t a bad smearer of canvases—but it’s marble and

bronze that you want. . . I shall finish my artist’s life with your face;

but I shall want a bit of those shoulders, too. . . You hear, Allègre, I

must have a bit of her shoulders, too. I can see through the cloth that

they are divine. If they aren’t divine I will eat my hat. Yes, I will

do your head and then—_nunc dimittis_.’

“These were the first words with which the world greeted her, or should I

say civilization did; already both her native mountains and the cavern of

oranges belonged to a prehistoric age. ‘Why don’t you ask him to come

this afternoon?’ Allègre’s voice suggested gently. ‘He knows the way to

the house.’

“The old man said with extraordinary fervour, ‘Oh, yes I will,’ pulled up

his horse and they went on. She told me that she could feel her

heart-beats for a long time. The remote power of that voice, those old

eyes full of tears, that noble and ruined face, had affected her

extraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her was the shadow,

the still living shadow of a great passion in the man’s heart.

“Allègre remarked to her calmly: ‘He has been a little mad all his

life.’”

CHAPTER III

Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even cold pipe before his

big face.

“H’m, shoot an arrow into that old man’s heart like this? But was there

anything done?”

“A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don’t know. I rather think

it’s in this house. A lot of things have been sent down from Paris here,

when she gave up the Pavilion. When she goes up now she stays in hotels,

you know. I imagine it is locked up in one of these things,” went on

Blunt, pointing towards the end of the studio where amongst the

monumental presses of dark oak lurked the shy dummy which had worn the

stiff robes of the Byzantine Empress and the amazing hat of the “Girl,”

rakishly. I wondered whether that dummy had travelled from Paris, too,

and whether with or without its head. Perhaps that head had been left

behind, having rolled into a corner of some empty room in the dismantled

Pavilion. I represented it to myself very lonely, without features, like

a turnip, with a mere peg sticking out where the neck should have been.

And Mr. Blunt was talking on.

“There are treasures behind these locked doors, brocades, old jewels,

unframed pictures, bronzes, chinoiseries, Japoneries.”

He growled as much as a man of his accomplished manner and voice could

growl. “I don’t suppose she gave away all that to her sister, but I

shouldn’t be surprised if that timid rustic didn’t lay a claim to the lot

for the love of God and the good of the Church. . .

“And held on with her teeth, too,” he added graphically.

Mills’ face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those little

venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. Again I knew myself utterly

forgotten. But I didn’t feel dull and I didn’t even feel sleepy. That

last strikes me as strange at this distance of time, in regard of my

tender years and of the depressing hour which precedes the dawn. We had

been drinking that straw-coloured wine, too, I won’t say like water

(nobody would have drunk water like that) but, well . . . and the haze of

tobacco smoke was like the blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.

Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight of all

Paris. It was that old glory that opened the series of companions of

those morning rides; a series which extended through three successive

Parisian spring-times and comprised a famous physiologist, a fellow who

seemed to hint that mankind could be made immortal or at least

everlastingly old; a fashionable philosopher and psychologist who used to

lecture to enormous audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (but

never permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that

surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybody

else at all distinguished including also a celebrated person who turned

out later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius. . . All this

according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of

languid zest covering a secret irritation.

“Apart from that, you know,” went on Mr. Blunt, “all she knew of the

world of men and women (I mean till Allègre’s death) was what she had

seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during four months of

the year or so. Absolutely all, with Allègre self-denyingly on her right

hand, with that impenetrable air of guardianship. Don’t touch! He

didn’t like his treasures to be touched unless he actually put some

unique object into your hands with a sort of triumphant murmur, ‘Look

close at that.’ Of course I only have heard all this. I am much too

small a person, you understand, to even . . .”

He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part of

his face, the shadowed setting of his eyes, and the slight drawing in of

his eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought suddenly of the

definition he applied to himself: “_Américain_, _catholique et

gentil-homme_” completed by that startling “I live by my sword” uttered

in a light drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour of mockery lighter even

than air.

He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allègre a

little close was that morning in the Bois with his mother. His Majesty

(whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender, flanked the girl,

still a girl, on the other side, the usual companion for a month past or

so. Allègre had suddenly taken it into his head to paint his portrait.

A sort of intimacy had sprung up. Mrs. Blunt’s remark was that of the

two striking horsemen Allègre looked the more kingly.

“The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler,” commented Mr. Blunt

through his clenched teeth. “A man absolutely without parentage.

Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak.”

“That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her,” said Mills.

“The will, I believe,” said Mr. Blunt moodily, “was written on a half

sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the head. What

the devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last time that she

surveyed the world of men and women from the saddle. Less than three

months later. . .”

“Allègre died and. . . ” murmured Mills in an interested manner.

“And she had to dismount,” broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. “Dismount right

into the middle of it. Down to the very ground, you understand. I

suppose you can guess what that would mean. She didn’t know what to do

with herself. She had never been on the ground. She . . . ”

“Aha!” said Mills.

“Even eh! eh! if you like,” retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined tone,

that made me open my eyes, which were well opened before, still wider.

He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon Mills

as though that quiet man whom I admired, whom I trusted, and for whom I

had already something resembling affection had been as much of a dummy as

that other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful and headless in its

attitude of alarmed chastity.

“Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at an

enormous distance when he is interested.”

I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of

vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his tobacco

pouch.

“But that’s nothing to my mother’s interest. She can never see a

haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of course

Doña Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert little

paragraphs. But Allègre was the sort of man. A lot came out in print

about him and a lot was talked in the world about her; and at once my

dear mother perceived a haystack and naturally became unreasonably

absorbed in it. I thought her interest would wear out. But it didn’t.

She had received a shock and had received an impression by means of that

girl. My mother has never been treated with impertinence before, and the

aesthetic impression must have been of extraordinary strength. I must

suppose that it amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can’t account

for her proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in Paris a

year and a half after Allègre’s death some shabby journalist (smart

creature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of Mr.

Allègre. ‘The heiress of Mr. Allègre has taken up her residence again

amongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so well known to the élite

of the artistic, scientific, and political world, not to speak of the

members of aristocratic and even royal families. . . ’ You know the sort

of thing. It appeared first in the _Figaro_, I believe. And then at the

end a little phrase: ‘She is alone.’ She was in a fair way of becoming a

celebrity of a sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing.

Heaven only knows who stopped it. There was a rush of ‘old friends’ into

that garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one or

several of them, having influence with the press, did it. But the gossip

didn’t stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very certain

and very significant sort of fact, and of course the Venetian episode was

talked about in the houses frequented by my mother. It was talked about

from a royalist point of view with a kind of respect. It was even said

that the inspiration and the resolution of the war going on now over the

Pyrenees had come out from that head. . . Some of them talked as if she

were the guardian angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is

like.”

Mr. Blunt’s face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head the

least little bit. Apparently he knew.

“Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have affected my

mother’s brain. I was already with the royal army and of course there

could be no question of regular postal communications with France. My

mother hears or overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr. Allègre is

contemplating a secret journey. All the noble Salons were full of

chatter about that secret naturally. So she sits down and pens an

autograph: ‘Madame, Informed that you are proceeding to the place on

which the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to

your womanly sympathy with a mother’s anxious feelings, etc., etc.,’ and

ending with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . .

The coolness of my mother!”

Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed to me

very odd.

“I wonder how your mother addressed that note?”

A moment of silence ensued.

“Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think,” retorted Mr. Blunt, with

one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of his feelings and the

consistency of his outlook in regard to his whole tale. “My mother’s

maid took it in a fiacre very late one evening to the Pavilion and

brought an answer scrawled on a scrap of paper: ‘Write your messages at

once’ and signed with a big capital R. So my mother sat down again to

her charming writing desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre

just before midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into

my hand at the _avanzadas_ just as I was about to start on a night

patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so that she

might allay my mother’s anxieties by telling her how I looked.

“It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my horse

with surprise.”

“You mean to say that Doña Rita was actually at the Royal Headquarters

lately?” exclaimed Mills, with evident surprise. “Why,

we—everybody—thought that all this affair was over and done with.”

“Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than that

episode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at Tolosa were retained for

her by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-rooms, the place was

so full of all sorts of court people; but I can assure you that for the

three days she was there she never put her head outside the door.

General Mongroviejo called on her officially from the King. A general,

not anybody of the household, you see. That’s a distinct shade of the

present relation. He stayed just five minutes. Some personage from the

Foreign department at Headquarters was closeted for about a couple of

hours. That was of course business. Then two officers from the staff

came together with some explanations or instructions to her. Then Baron

H., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made so many sacrifices for the

cause, raised a great to-do about seeing her and she consented to receive

him for a moment. They say he was very much frightened by her arrival,

but after the interview went away all smiles. Who else? Yes, the

Archbishop came. Half an hour. This is more than is necessary to give a

blessing, and I can’t conceive what else he had to give her. But I am

sure he got something out of her. Two peasants from the upper valley

were sent for by military authorities and she saw them, too. That friar

who hangs about the court has been in and out several times. Well, and

lastly, I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was the first

time I talked to her. I would have gone that evening back to the

regiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me that I

would be ordered to escort that most loyal and noble lady back to the

French frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I was

inclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and jovial person and

he laughed with me quite readily—but I got the order before dark all

right. It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right

flank of our whole front and there was some considerable disorder there.

I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another. We spent one night in a

ruined old tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away at

daybreak under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly died of fright and

one of the troopers with us was wounded. To smuggle her back across the

frontier was another job but it wasn’t my job. It wouldn’t have done for

her to appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company of Carlist

uniforms. She seems to have a fearless streak in her nature. At one

time as we were climbing a slope absolutely exposed to artillery fire I

asked her on purpose, being provoked by the way she looked about at the

scenery, ‘A little emotion, eh?’ And she answered me in a low voice:

‘Oh, yes! I am moved. I used to run about these hills when I was

little.’ And note, just then the trooper close behind us had been

wounded by a shell fragment. He was swearing awfully and fighting with

his horse. The shells were falling around us about two to the minute.

“Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own. But

women are funny. I was afraid the maid would jump down and clear out

amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to dismount and catch

her. But she didn’t do that; she sat perfectly still on her mule and

shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately we came to a curiously

shaped rock at the end of a short wooded valley. It was very still there

and the sunshine was brilliant. I said to Doña Rita: ‘We will have to

part in a few minutes. I understand that my mission ends at this rock.’

And she said: ‘I know this rock well. This is my country.’

“Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three peasants

appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old man, with a thin

nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known

to the whole Carlist army. The two youths stopped under the trees at a

distance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at her,

screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun. Then he raised his arm

very slowly and took his red _boina_ off his bald head. I watched her

smiling at him all the time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew

the old rock. Very old rock. The rock of ages—and the aged

man—landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly

forward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished

between the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle

the Cura.

“It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open country

framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the distance, the

thin smoke of some invisible _caserios_, rising straight up here and

there. Far away behind us the guns had ceased and the echoes in the

gorges had died out. I never knew what peace meant before. . .

“Nor since,” muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on. “The

little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family, might have

been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismounted

to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was only a nasty long scratch.

While I was busy about it a bell began to ring in the distance. The

sound fell deliciously on the ear, clear like the morning light. But it

stopped all at once. You know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I

never knew before what stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the

fellow holding our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a

Spaniard, not a Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you

know,

“‘Oh bells of my native village,

I am going away . . . good-bye!’

He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I remounted,

but there was a charm in the spot, something particular and individual

because while we were looking at it before turning our horses’ heads away

the singer said: ‘I wonder what is the name of this place,’ and the other

man remarked: ‘Why, there is no village here,’ and the first one

insisted: ‘No, I mean this spot, this very place.’ The wounded trooper

decided that it had no name probably. But he was wrong. It had a name.

The hill, or the rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard of

it by chance later. It was—Lastaola.”

A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills’ pipe drove between my head and the

head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say, yawned slightly. It seemed to me

an obvious affectation on the part of that man of perfect manners, and,

moreover, suffering from distressing insomnia.

“This is how we first met and how we first parted,” he said in a weary,

indifferent tone. “It’s quite possible that she did see her uncle on the

way. It’s perhaps on this occasion that she got her sister to come out

of the wilderness. I have no doubt she had a pass from the French

Government giving her the completest freedom of action. She must have

got it in Paris before leaving.”

Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles.

“She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole army

over the frontier if she liked. She could get herself admitted into the

Foreign Office at one o’clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doors

fly open before the heiress of Mr. Allègre. She has inherited the old

friends, the old connections . . . Of course, if she were a toothless old

woman . . . But, you see, she isn’t. The ushers in all the ministries

bow down to the ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums

take on an eager tone when they say, ‘_Faites entrer_.’ My mother knows

something about it. She has followed her career with the greatest

attention. And Rita herself is not even surprised. She accomplishes

most extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a pair of gloves.

People in the shops are very polite and people in the world are like

people in the shops. What did she know of the world? She had seen it

only from the saddle. Oh, she will get your cargo released for you all

right. How will she do it? . . Well, when it’s done—you follow me,

Mills?—when it’s done she will hardly know herself.”

“It’s hardly possible that she shouldn’t be aware,” Mills pronounced

calmly.

“No, she isn’t an idiot,” admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact

voice. “But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered

from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own

feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them at least

about which she had no doubt; and you will never guess what it was.

Don’t try. I happen to know, because we are pretty good friends.”

At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills’ staring eyes

moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raised

myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his

elbow on the table.

“I asked her what it was. I don’t see,” went on Mr. Blunt, with a

perfectly horrible gentleness, “why I should have shown particular

consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allègre. I don’t mean to that

particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she told

me. It’s fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . .”

He added after a pause, “There can be not the slightest doubt of her

courage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear.”

There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.

“A person of imagination,” he began, “a young, virgin intelligence,

steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allègre’s studio, where

every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into

shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . .”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Blunt interrupted hastily, “the intellectual

personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I, who am

neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear is

material.”

“Because she confessed to it being that?” insinuated Mills.

“No, because she didn’t,” contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and in

an extremely suave voice. “In fact, she bit her tongue. And considering

what good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude

that there is nothing there to boast of. Neither is my friendship, as a

matter of fact.”

Mills’ face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was

looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might mean, I

had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.

“My leave is a farce,” Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpected

exasperation. “As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no more standing than

a bandit. I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in

Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I not? Because Doña Rita exists and

for no other reason on earth. Of course it’s known that I am about. She

has only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, ‘Put

that bird in a cage for me,’ and the thing would be done without any more

formalities than that. . . Sad world this,” he commented in a changed

tone. “Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that

sort of thing.”

It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a deep,

pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from that

quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret

hardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

“But the truth of the matter is that I am ‘_en mission_,’” continued

Captain Blunt. “I have been instructed to settle some things, to set

other things going, and, by my instructions, Doña Rita is to be the

intermediary for all those objects. And why? Because every bald head in

this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress

rustles outside the door. They bow with immense deference when the door

opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days. That

confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says

accidentally. He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing

fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose

accidentally, too) under that very title. There was in it a Prince and a

lady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on landing from the

gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar,

while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the

dog romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy’s beautiful prose

vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column. But some other

papers that didn’t care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.

And that’s the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially

if the lady is, well, such as she is . . .”

He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction

of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism.

“So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.

Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I have.”

I don’t know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he

seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on

his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands

amongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a little

spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into an

empty glass profoundly. I have a notion that I sat there staring and

listening like a yokel at a play. Mills’ pipe was lying quite a foot

away in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr.

Blunt assumed his dandified air—nervously.

“Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive

drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where the

gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying that she

has got a ‘_coup de coeur_’ for some one. Whereas I think she is utterly

incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian affair, the beginning of

it and the end of it, was nothing but a _coup de tête_, and all those

activities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters,

ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this

intimacy into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who

is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that

shock their Royal families. . . ”

He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills’ eyes seemed to

have grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that tranquil face

it was a great play of feature. “An intimacy,” began Mr. Blunt, with an

extremely refined grimness of tone, “an intimacy with the heiress of Mr.

Allègre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it isn’t exactly . . .

it’s open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?”

“Is there anybody looking on?” Mills let fall, gently, through his kindly

lips.

“Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don’t need to tell a man

of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen. And that

they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune.”

Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into it

made himself heard while he looked for his hat.

“Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless.”

Mr. Blunt muttered the word “Obviously.”

By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove glowed no longer and the

lamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty glasses, had grown dimmer.

I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions of the

divan.

“We will meet again in a few hours,” said Mr. Blunt.

“Don’t forget to come,” he said, addressing me. “Oh, yes, do. Have no

scruples. I am authorized to make invitations.”

He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment. And

indeed I didn’t know what to say.

“I assure you there isn’t anything incorrect in your coming,” he

insisted, with the greatest civility. “You will be introduced by two

good friends, Mills and myself. Surely you are not afraid of a very

charming woman. . . .”

I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at him

mutely.

“Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along. I am sorry you

two are going. I shall throw myself on the bed for an hour or two, but I

am sure I won’t sleep.”

He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall, where

the low gas flame glimmered forlornly. When he opened the front door the

cold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made me

shiver to the very marrow of my bones.

Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards the

centre of the town. In the chill tempestuous dawn he strolled along

musingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the depressing

influence of the hour, the desolation of the empty streets in which the

dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew upon us from the

side streets. The masks had gone home and our footsteps echoed on the

flagstones with unequal sound as of men without purpose, without hope.

“I suppose you will come,” said Mills suddenly.

“I really don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I am

staying at the Hôtel de Louvre and I shall leave there at a quarter to

twelve for that lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later. I

suppose you can sleep?”

I laughed.

“Charming age, yours,” said Mills, as we came out on the quays. Already

dim figures of the workers moved in the biting dawn and the masted forms

of ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down the

old harbour.

“Well,” Mills began again, “you may oversleep yourself.”

This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands at

the lower end of the Cannebière. He looked very burly as he walked away

from me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was very full of

confused images, but I was really too tired to think.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to oversleep myself or

not: that is, whether he really took sufficient interest to care. His

uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me to tell. And I

can hardly remember my own feelings. Did I care? The whole recollection

of that time of my life has such a peculiar quality that the beginning

and the end of it are merged in one sensation of profound emotion,

continuous and overpowering, containing the extremes of exultation, full

of careless joy and of an invincible sadness—like a day-dream. The sense

of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of

imagination is all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had

something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that

didn’t cast any shadow before.

Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. They were, in

truth, commonplace. What to my backward glance seems startling and a

little awful is their punctualness and inevitability. Mills was

punctual. Exactly at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the lofty

portal of the Hôtel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting grey

suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere.

How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a shadowy conviction of

his inherent distinction of mind and heart, far beyond any man I have

ever met since. He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid

him. The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up

before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember

now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment’s

hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such

was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

After we had gone a little way I couldn’t help saying to him with a

bashful laugh: “You know, it seems very extraordinary that I should be

driving out with you like this.”

He turned to look at me and in his kind voice:

“You will find everything extremely simple,” he said. “So simple that

you will be quite able to hold your own. I suppose you know that the

world is selfish, I mean the majority of the people in it, often

unconsciously I must admit, and especially people with a mission, with a

fixed idea, with some fantastic object in view, or even with only some

fantastic illusion. That doesn’t mean that they have no scruples. And I

don’t know that at this moment I myself am not one of them.”

“That, of course, I can’t say,” I retorted.

“I haven’t seen her for years,” he said, “and in comparison with what she

was then she must be very grown up by now. From what we heard from Mr.

Blunt she had experiences which would have matured her more than they

would teach her. There are of course people that are not teachable. I

don’t know that she is one of them. But as to maturity that’s quite

another thing. Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being

worthy of the name.”

“Captain Blunt doesn’t seem to be a very happy person,” I said. “He

seems to have a grudge against everybody. People make him wince. The

things they do, the things they say. He must be awfully mature.”

Mills gave me a sidelong look. It met mine of the same character and we

both smiled without openly looking at each other. At the end of the Rue

de Rome the violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria

in a great widening of brilliant sunshine without heat. We turned to the

right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which

stands at the entrance to the Prado.

“I don’t know whether you are mature or not,” said Mills humorously.

“But I think you will do. You . . . ”

“Tell me,” I interrupted, “what is really Captain Blunt’s position

there?”

And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows

of the perfectly leafless trees.

“Thoroughly false, I should think. It doesn’t accord either with his

illusions or his pretensions, or even with the real position he has in

the world. And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters

and the state of his own feelings he. . . ”

“He is in love with her,” I interrupted again.

“That wouldn’t make it any easier. I’m not at all sure of that. But if

so it can’t be a very idealistic sentiment. All the warmth of his

idealism is concentrated upon a certain ‘_Américain_, _Catholique et

gentil-homme_. . . ’”

The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind.

“At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that

surround, as it were, the situation.”

“What do you mean? That Doña Rita” (the name came strangely familiar to

my tongue) “is rich, that she has a fortune of her own?”

“Yes, a fortune,” said Mills. “But it was Allègre’s fortune before. . .

And then there is Blunt’s fortune: he lives by his sword. And there is

the fortune of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and

most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished connections. I

really mean it. She doesn’t live by her sword. She . . . she lives by

her wits. I have a notion that those two dislike each other heartily at

times. . . Here we are.”

The victoria stopped in the side alley, bordered by the low walls of

private grounds. We got out before a wrought-iron gateway which stood

half open and walked up a circular drive to the door of a large villa of

a neglected appearance. The mistral howled in the sunshine, shaking the

bare bushes quite furiously. And everything was bright and hard, the air

was hard, the light was hard, the ground under our feet was hard.

The door at which Mills rang came open almost at once. The maid who

opened it was short, dark, and slightly pockmarked. For the rest, an

obvious “_femme-de-chambre_,” and very busy. She said quickly, “Madame

has just returned from her ride,” and went up the stairs leaving us to

shut the front door ourselves.

The staircase had a crimson carpet. Mr. Blunt appeared from somewhere in

the hall. He was in riding breeches and a black coat with ample square

skirts. This get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by

doing away with the effect of flexible slimness he produced in his

evening clothes. He looked to me not at all himself but rather like a

brother of the man who had been talking to us the night before. He

carried about him a delicate perfume of scented soap. He gave us a flash

of his white teeth and said:

“It’s a perfect nuisance. We have just dismounted. I will have to lunch

as I am. A lifelong habit of beginning her day on horseback. She

pretends she is unwell unless she does. I daresay, when one thinks there

has been hardly a day for five or six years that she didn’t begin with a

ride. That’s the reason she is always rushing away from Paris where she

can’t go out in the morning alone. Here, of course, it’s different. And

as I, too, am a stranger here I can go out with her. Not that I

particularly care to do it.”

These last words were addressed to Mills specially, with the addition of

a mumbled remark: “It’s a confounded position.” Then calmly to me with a

swift smile: “We have been talking of you this morning. You are expected

with impatience.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, “but I can’t help asking myself what I am

doing here.”

The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing the staircase made us

both, Blunt and I, turn round. The woman of whom I had heard so much, in

a sort of way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before, was

coming down the stairs, and my first sensation was that of profound

astonishment at this evidence that she did really exist. And even then

the visual impression was more of colour in a picture than of the forms

of actual life. She was wearing a wrapper, a sort of dressing-gown of

pale blue silk embroidered with black and gold designs round the neck and

down the front, lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of the

same material. Her slippers were of the same colour, with black bows at

the instep. The white stairs, the deep crimson of the carpet, and the

light blue of the dress made an effective combination of colour to set

off the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance

given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an

indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis and made you think of

remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on

immemorial monuments and of those lying unsung in their tombs. While she

moved downwards from step to step with slightly lowered eyes there

flashed upon me suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of

Allègre’s words about her, of there being in her “something of the women

of all time.”

At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an exhibition of

teeth as dazzling as Mr. Blunt’s and looking even stronger; and indeed,

as she approached us she brought home to our hearts (but after all I am

speaking only for myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection in

beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much of grace, probably,

as of absolute harmony.

She said to us, “I am sorry I kept you waiting.” Her voice was low

pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive gentleness. She offered

her hand to Mills very frankly as to an old friend. Within the

extraordinarily wide sleeve, lined with black silk, I could see the arm,

very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow. But to me she extended

her hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person,

combined with an extremely straight glance. It was a finely shaped,

capable hand. I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers. I did not

look then at her face.

Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round

marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She seized one of them

with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open,

saying to us, “Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-room.

Captain Blunt, show the way.”

Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors

open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation

accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh

which had in it a note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt. He had

remained on the other side, possibly to soothe. The room in which we

found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many

windows. It was long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite.

A table laid out for four occupied very little space. The floor inlaid

in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting

objects like still water.

Before very long Doña Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down around

the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically sudden ring

at the front door stilled our incipient animation. Doña Rita looked at

us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were, with suspicion. “How did

he know I was here?” she whispered after looking at the card which was

brought to her. She passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who

made a faint grimace, dropped it on the table-cloth, and only whispered

to me, “A journalist from Paris.”

“He has run me to earth,” said Doña Rita. “One would bargain for peace

against hard cash if these fellows weren’t always ready to snatch at

one’s very soul with the other hand. It frightens me.”

Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which moved

very little. Mills was watching her with sympathetic curiosity. Mr.

Blunt muttered: “Better not make the brute angry.” For a moment Doña

Rita’s face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow, and high cheek bones,

became very still; then her colour was a little heightened. “Oh,” she

said softly, “let him come in. He would be really dangerous if he had a

mind—you know,” she said to Mills.

The person who had provoked all those remarks and as much hesitation as

though he had been some sort of wild beast astonished me on being

admitted, first by the beauty of his white head of hair and then by his

paternal aspect and the innocent simplicity of his manner. They laid a

cover for him between Mills and Doña Rita, who quite openly removed the

envelopes she had brought with her, to the other side of her plate. As

openly the man’s round china-blue eyes followed them in an attempt to

make out the handwriting of the addresses.

He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he

gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed our hostess.

“Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my word, I thought I would

find you alone. But you have too much sense. Neither man nor woman has

been created to live alone. . . .” After this opening he had all the

talk to himself. It was left to him pointedly, and I verily believe that

I was the only one who showed an appearance of interest. I couldn’t help

it. The others, including Mills, sat like a lot of deaf and dumb people.

No. It was even something more detached. They sat rather like a very

superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed but indetermined facial

expression and with that odd air wax figures have of being aware of their

existence being but a sham.

I was the exception; and nothing could have marked better my status of a

stranger, the completest possible stranger in the moral region in which

those people lived, moved, enjoying or suffering their incomprehensible

emotions. I was as much of a stranger as the most hopeless castaway

stumbling in the dark upon a hut of natives and finding them in the grip

of some situation appertaining to the mentalities, prejudices, and

problems of an undiscovered country—of a country of which he had not even

had one single clear glimpse before.

It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been more disconcerting.

For, pursuing the image of the cast-away blundering upon the

complications of an unknown scheme of life, it was I, the castaway, who

was the savage, the simple innocent child of nature. Those people were

obviously more civilized than I was. They had more rites, more

ceremonies, more complexity in their sensations, more knowledge of evil,

more varied meanings to the subtle phrases of their language. Naturally!

I was still so young! And yet I assure you, that just then I lost all

sense of inferiority. And why? Of course the carelessness and the

ignorance of youth had something to do with that. But there was

something else besides. Looking at Doña Rita, her head leaning on her

hand, with her dark lashes lowered on the slightly flushed cheek, I felt

no longer alone in my youth. That woman of whom I had heard these things

I have set down with all the exactness of unfailing memory, that woman

was revealed to me young, younger than anybody I had ever seen, as young

as myself (and my sensation of my youth was then very acute); revealed

with something peculiarly intimate in the conviction, as if she were

young exactly in the same way in which I felt myself young; and that

therefore no misunderstanding between us was possible and there could be

nothing more for us to know about each other. Of course this sensation

was momentary, but it was illuminating; it was a light which could not

last, but it left no darkness behind. On the contrary, it seemed to have

kindled magically somewhere within me a glow of assurance, of

unaccountable confidence in myself: a warm, steady, and eager sensation

of my individual life beginning for good there, on that spot, in that

sense of solidarity, in that seduction.

CHAPTER II

For this, properly speaking wonderful, reason I was the only one of the

company who could listen without constraint to the unbidden guest with

that fine head of white hair, so beautifully kept, so magnificently

waved, so artistically arranged that respect could not be felt for it any

more than for a very expensive wig in the window of a hair-dresser. In

fact, I had an inclination to smile at it. This proves how unconstrained

I felt. My mind was perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that

room mine was the only pair able to look about in easy freedom. All the

other listeners’ eyes were cast down, including Mills’ eyes, but that I

am sure was only because of his perfect and delicate sympathy. He could

not have been concerned otherwise.

The intruder devoured the cutlets—if they were cutlets. Notwithstanding

my perfect liberty of mind I was not aware of what we were eating. I

have a notion that the lunch was a mere show, except of course for the

man with the white hair, who was really hungry and who, besides, must

have had the pleasant sense of dominating the situation. He stooped over

his plate and worked his jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled

incessantly; but as a matter of fact he never looked openly at any one of

us. Whenever he laid down his knife and fork he would throw himself back

and start retailing in a light tone some Parisian gossip about prominent

people.

He talked first about a certain politician of mark. His “dear Rita” knew

him. His costume dated back to ’48, he was made of wood and parchment

and still swathed his neck in a white cloth; and even his wife had never

been seen in a low-necked dress. Not once in her life. She was buttoned

up to the chin like her husband. Well, that man had confessed to him

that when he was engaged in political controversy, not on a matter of

principle but on some special measure in debate, he felt ready to kill

everybody.

He interrupted himself for a comment. “I am something like that myself.

I believe it’s a purely professional feeling. Carry one’s point whatever

it is. Normally I couldn’t kill a fly. My sensibility is too acute for

that. My heart is too tender also. Much too tender. I am a Republican.

I am a Red. As to all our present masters and governors, all those

people you are trying to turn round your little finger, they are all

horrible Royalists in disguise. They are plotting the ruin of all the

institutions to which I am devoted. But I have never tried to spoil your

little game, Rita. After all, it’s but a little game. You know very

well that two or three fearless articles, something in my style, you

know, would soon put a stop to all that underhand backing of your king.

I am calling him king because I want to be polite to you. He is an

adventurer, a blood-thirsty, murderous adventurer, for me, and nothing

else. Look here, my dear child, what are you knocking yourself about

for? For the sake of that bandit? _Allons donc_! A pupil of Henry

Allègre can have no illusions of that sort about any man. And such a

pupil, too! Ah, the good old days in the Pavilion! Don’t think I claim

any particular intimacy. It was just enough to enable me to offer my

services to you, Rita, when our poor friend died. I found myself handy

and so I came. It so happened that I was the first. You remember, Rita?

What made it possible for everybody to get on with our poor dear Allègre

was his complete, equable, and impartial contempt for all mankind. There

is nothing in that against the purest democratic principles; but that

you, Rita, should elect to throw so much of your life away for the sake

of a Royal adventurer, it really knocks me over. For you don’t love him.

You never loved him, you know.”

He made a snatch at her hand, absolutely pulled it away from under her

head (it was quite startling) and retaining it in his grasp, proceeded to

a paternal patting of the most impudent kind. She let him go on with

apparent insensibility. Meanwhile his eyes strayed round the table over

our faces. It was very trying. The stupidity of that wandering stare

had a paralysing power. He talked at large with husky familiarity.

“Here I come, expecting to find a good sensible girl who had seen at last

the vanity of all those things; half-light in the rooms; surrounded by

the works of her favourite poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to

myself: I must just run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage her

in her good resolutions. . . And I fall into the middle of an _intime_

lunch-party. For I suppose it is _intime_. Eh? Very? H’m, yes . . . ”

He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare went round the table,

with an expression incredibly incongruous with the words. It was as

though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that

visit. He still held Doña Rita’s hand, and, now and then, patted it.

“It’s discouraging,” he cooed. “And I believe not one of you here is a

Frenchman. I don’t know what you are all about. It’s beyond me. But if

we were a Republic—you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and

terrorist—if this were a real Republic with the Convention sitting and a

Committee of Public Safety attending to national business, you would all

get your heads cut off. Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and

serve you right, too. Don’t mind my little joke.”

While he was still laughing he released her hand and she leaned her head

on it again without haste. She had never looked at him once.

During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he got a leather cigar

case like a small valise out of his pocket, opened it and looked with

critical interest at the six cigars it contained. The tireless

_femme-de-chambre_ set down a tray with coffee cups on the table. We

each (glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he, to begin

with, sniffed at his. Doña Rita continued leaning on her elbow, her lips

closed in a reposeful expression of peculiar sweetness. There was

nothing drooping in her attitude. Her face with the delicate carnation

of a rose and downcast eyes was as if veiled in firm immobility and was

so appealing that I had an insane impulse to walk round and kiss the

forearm on which it was leaning; that strong, well-shaped forearm,

gleaming not like marble but with a living and warm splendour. So

familiar had I become already with her in my thoughts! Of course I

didn’t do anything of the sort. It was nothing uncontrollable, it was

but a tender longing of a most respectful and purely sentimental kind. I

performed the act in my thought quietly, almost solemnly, while the

creature with the silver hair leaned back in his chair, puffing at his

cigar, and began to speak again.

It was all apparently very innocent talk. He informed his “dear Rita”

that he was really on his way to Monte Carlo. A lifelong habit of his at

this time of the year; but he was ready to run back to Paris if he could

do anything for his “_chère enfant_,” run back for a day, for two days,

for three days, for any time; miss Monte Carlo this year altogether, if

he could be of the slightest use and save her going herself. For

instance he could see to it that proper watch was kept over the Pavilion

stuffed with all these art treasures. What was going to happen to all

those things? . . . Making herself heard for the first time Doña Rita

murmured without moving that she had made arrangements with the police to

have it properly watched. And I was enchanted by the almost

imperceptible play of her lips.

But the anxious creature was not reassured. He pointed out that things

had been stolen out of the Louvre, which was, he dared say, even better

watched. And there was that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black

lacquer with silver herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars.

A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle it off under

people’s noses.

“Have you thought it all out?” she asked in a cold whisper, while we

three sat smoking to give ourselves a countenance (it was certainly no

enjoyment) and wondering what we would hear next.

No, he had not. But he confessed that for years and years he had been in

love with that cabinet. And anyhow what was going to happen to the

things? The world was greatly exercised by that problem. He turned

slightly his beautifully groomed white head so as to address Mr. Blunt

directly.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your mother lately.”

Mr. Blunt took his time to raise his eyebrows and flash his teeth at him

before he dropped negligently, “I can’t imagine where you could have met

my mother.”

“Why, at Bing’s, the curio-dealer,” said the other with an air of the

heaviest possible stupidity. And yet there was something in these few

words which seemed to imply that if Mr. Blunt was looking for trouble he

would certainly get it. “Bing was bowing her out of his shop, but he was

so angry about something that he was quite rude even to me afterwards. I

don’t think it’s very good for _Madame votre mère_ to quarrel with Bing.

He is a Parisian personality. He’s quite a power in his sphere. All

these fellows’ nerves are upset from worry as to what will happen to the

Allègre collection. And no wonder they are nervous. A big art event

hangs on your lips, my dear, great Rita. And by the way, you too ought

to remember that it isn’t wise to quarrel with people. What have you

done to that poor Azzolati? Did you really tell him to get out and never

come near you again, or something awful like that? I don’t doubt that he

was of use to you or to your king. A man who gets invitations to shoot

with the President at Rambouillet! I saw him only the other evening; I

heard he had been winning immensely at cards; but he looked perfectly

wretched, the poor fellow. He complained of your conduct—oh, very much!

He told me you had been perfectly brutal with him. He said to me: ‘I am

no good for anything, _mon cher_. The other day at Rambouillet, whenever

I had a hare at the end of my gun I would think of her cruel words and my

eyes would run full of tears. I missed every shot’ . . . You are not fit

for diplomatic work, you know, _ma chère_. You are a mere child at it.

When you want a middle-aged gentleman to do anything for you, you don’t

begin by reducing him to tears. I should have thought any woman would

have known that much. A nun would have known that much. What do you

say? Shall I run back to Paris and make it up for you with Azzolati?”

He waited for her answer. The compression of his thin lips was full of

significance. I was surprised to see our hostess shake her head

negatively the least bit, for indeed by her pose, by the thoughtful

immobility of her face she seemed to be a thousand miles away from us

all, lost in an infinite reverie.

He gave it up. “Well, I must be off. The express for Nice passes at

four o’clock. I will be away about three weeks and then you shall see me

again. Unless I strike a run of bad luck and get cleaned out, in which

case you shall see me before then.”

He turned to Mills suddenly.

“Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of his at

Cannes?”

Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn’t know anything about his

cousin’s movements.

“A _grand seigneur_ combined with a great connoisseur,” opined the other

heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect and grotesque

imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair. Positively I thought he

would begin to slobber. But he attacked Blunt next.

“Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter. . . It seems to me you

haven’t been seen in your usual Paris haunts of late. Where have you

been all this time?”

“Don’t you know where I have been?” said Mr. Blunt with great precision.

“No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me,” was the

unexpected reply, uttered with an air of perfect vacancy and swallowed by

Mr. Blunt in blank silence.

At last he made ready to rise from the table. “Think over what I have

said, my dear Rita.”

“It’s all over and done with,” was Doña Rita’s answer, in a louder tone

than I had ever heard her use before. It thrilled me while she

continued: “I mean, this thinking.” She was back from the remoteness of

her meditation, very much so indeed. She rose and moved away from the

table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which he did at once,

yet slowly and as it were warily.

It was a conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated

round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the

plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Doña Rita’s profile,

irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her

well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its

place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn’t hear what she

said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full

of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She

spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened

round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see

now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment

Doña Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, “Give

me my hand-bag off the sofa.”

At this the other was heard plainly, “No, no,” and then a little lower,

“You have no tact, Rita. . . .” Then came her argument in a low,

penetrating voice which I caught, “Why not? Between such old friends.”

However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices

sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with

her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the

bare and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room, throwing to the

table an airy “_Bonjour, bonjour_,” which was not acknowledged by any of

us three.

CHAPTER III

Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. To my extreme

surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of obviously painful hesitation,

hastened out after the man with the white hair.

In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began to be

uncomfortably conscious of it when Doña Rita, near the window, addressed

me in a raised voice.

“We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I.”

I took this for an encouragement to join them. They were both looking at

me. Doña Rita added, “Mr. Mills and I are friends from old times, you

know.”

Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not fall

directly into the room, standing very straight with her arms down, before

Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young,

and yet mature. There was even, for a moment, a slight dimple in her

cheek.

“How old, I wonder?” I said, with an answering smile.

“Oh, for ages, for ages,” she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little, then

she went on addressing herself to Mills, apparently in continuation of

what she was saying before.

. . . “This man’s is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn’t the

worst. But that’s the sort of thing. I have no account to render to

anybody, but I don’t want to be dragged along all the gutters where that

man picks up his living.”

She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no angry

flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The words did not ring. I was

struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of her voice.

“Will you let me suggest,” said Mills, with a grave, kindly face, “that

being what you are, you have nothing to fear?”

“And perhaps nothing to lose,” she went on without bitterness. “No. It

isn’t fear. It’s a sort of dread. You must remember that no nun could

have had a more protected life. Henry Allègre had his greatness. When

he faced the world he also masked it. He was big enough for that. He

filled the whole field of vision for me.”

“You found that enough?” asked Mills.

“Why ask now?” she remonstrated. “The truth—the truth is that I never

asked myself. Enough or not there was no room for anything else. He was

the shadow and the light and the form and the voice. He would have it

so. The morning he died they came to call me at four o’clock. I ran

into his room bare-footed. He recognized me and whispered, ‘You are

flawless.’ I was very frightened. He seemed to think, and then said

very plainly, ‘Such is my character. I am like that.’ These were the

last words he spoke. I hardly noticed them then. I was thinking that he

was lying in a very uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should

lift him up a little higher on the pillows. You know I am very strong.

I could have done it. I had done it before. He raised his hand off the

blanket just enough to make a sign that he didn’t want to be touched. It

was the last gesture he made. I hung over him and then—and then I nearly

ran out of the house just as I was, in my night-gown. I think if I had

been dressed I would have run out of the garden, into the street—run away

altogether. I had never seen death. I may say I had never heard of it.

I wanted to run from it.”

She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized sweetness and daring

of her face was made pathetic by her downcast eyes.

“_Fuir la mort_,” she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious voice.

Mills’ big head had a little movement, nothing more. Her glance glided

for a moment towards me like a friendly recognition of my right to be

there, before she began again.

“My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a

fourth-floor window for years. When the end came it was like falling out

of a balcony into the street. It was as sudden as that. Once I remember

somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a tale about a girl who jumped

down from a fourth-floor window. . . For love, I believe,” she

interjected very quickly, “and came to no harm. Her guardian angel must

have slipped his wings under her just in time. He must have. But as to

me, all I know is that I didn’t break anything—not even my heart. Don’t

be shocked, Mr. Mills. It’s very likely that you don’t understand.”

“Very likely,” Mills assented, unmoved. “But don’t be too sure of that.”

“Henry Allègre had the highest opinion of your intelligence,” she said

unexpectedly and with evident seriousness. “But all this is only to tell

you that when he was gone I found myself down there unhurt, but dazed,

bewildered, not sufficiently stunned. It so happened that that creature

was somewhere in the neighbourhood. How he found out. . . But it’s his

business to find out things. And he knows, too, how to worm his way in

anywhere. Indeed, in the first days he was useful and somehow he made it

look as if Heaven itself had sent him. In my distress I thought I could

never sufficiently repay. . . Well, I have been paying ever since.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mills softly. “In hard cash?”

“Oh, it’s really so little,” she said. “I told you it wasn’t the worst

case. I stayed on in that house from which I nearly ran away in my

nightgown. I stayed on because I didn’t know what to do next. He

vanished as he had come on the track of something else, I suppose. You

know he really has got to get his living some way or other. But don’t

think I was deserted. On the contrary. People were coming and going,

all sorts of people that Henry Allègre used to know—or had refused to

know. I had a sensation of plotting and intriguing around me, all the

time. I was feeling morally bruised, sore all over, when, one day, Don

Rafael de Villarel sent in his card. A grandee. I didn’t know him, but,

as you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that

hasn’t been talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only

heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and

that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face

and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One missed

a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly and I couldn’t

imagine what he might want. I waited for him to pull out a crucifix and

sentence me to the stake there and then. But no; he dropped his eyes and

in a cold, righteous sort of voice informed me that he had called on

behalf of the prince—he called him His Majesty. I was amazed by the

change. I wondered now why he didn’t slip his hands into the sleeves of

his coat, you know, as begging Friars do when they come for a

subscription. He explained that the Prince asked for permission to call

and offer me his condolences in person. We had seen a lot of him our

last two months in Paris that year. Henry Allègre had taken a fancy to

paint his portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning.

Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was

shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as

a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his hands flat on

his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don’t know why, something

moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving

me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I had my

door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a

very proper sorrowful face, but five minutes after he got into the room

he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You

know his big, irresistible laugh. . . .”

“No,” said Mills, a little abruptly, “I have never seen him.”

“No,” she said, surprised, “and yet you . . . ”

“I understand,” interrupted Mills. “All this is purely accidental. You

must know that I am a solitary man of books but with a secret taste for

adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me.”

She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance, and a

friendly turn of the head.

“I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . Adventure—and books?

Ah, the books! Haven’t I turned stacks of them over! Haven’t I? . . .”

“Yes,” murmured Mills. “That’s what one does.”

She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills’ sleeve.

“Listen, I don’t need to justify myself, but if I had known a single

woman in the world, if I had only had the opportunity to observe a single

one of them, I would have been perhaps on my guard. But you know I

hadn’t. The only woman I had anything to do with was myself, and they

say that one can’t know oneself. It never entered my head to be on my

guard against his warmth and his terrible obviousness. You and he were

the only two, infinitely different, people, who didn’t approach me as if

I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece

of Chinese porcelain. That’s why I have kept you in my memory so well.

Oh! you were not obvious! As to him—I soon learned to regret I was not

some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone or bronze; a rare

piece of porcelain, _pâte dure_, not _pâte tendre_. A pretty specimen.”

“Rare, yes. Even unique,” said Mills, looking at her steadily with a

smile. “But don’t try to depreciate yourself. You were never pretty.

You are not pretty. You are worse.”

Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. “Do you find such sayings in

your books?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact I have,” said Mills, with a little laugh, “found

this one in a book. It was a woman who said that of herself. A woman

far from common, who died some few years ago. She was an actress. A

great artist.”

“A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge, that garment, while I

stand here with nothing to protect me from evil fame; a naked temperament

for any wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art is a protection. I

wonder if there would have been anything in me if I had tried? But Henry

Allègre would never let me try. He told me that whatever I could achieve

would never be good enough for what I was. The perfection of flattery!

Was it that he thought I had not talent of any sort? It’s possible. He

would know. I’ve had the idea since that he was jealous. He wasn’t

jealous of mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his

collection; but he may have been jealous of what he could see in me, of

some passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I

shall never forget his last words. He saw me standing beside his bed,

defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say was, ‘Well, I

am like that.’”

I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak with

less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her face

preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form themselves,

fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their design was hardly

disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and force as if born from the

inspiration of some artist; for I had never seen anything to come up to

it in nature before or since.

All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed to

notice that Mills had the aspect of a man under a spell. If he too was a

captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my surrender.

“And you know,” she began again abruptly, “that I have been accustomed to

all the forms of respect.”

“That’s true,” murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.

“Well, yes,” she reaffirmed. “My instinct may have told me that my only

protection was obscurity, but I didn’t know how and where to find it.

Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other instincts and

. . . How am I to tell you? I didn’t know how to be on guard against myself,

either. Not a soul to speak to, or to get a warning from. Some woman

soul that would have known, in which perhaps I could have seen my own

reflection. I assure you the only woman that ever addressed me directly,

and that was in writing, was . . . ”

She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the hall and added

rapidly in a lowered voice,

“His mother.”

The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at us right down the

room, but he didn’t, as it were, follow it in his body. He swerved to

the nearest of the two big fireplaces and finding some cigarettes on the

mantelpiece remained leaning on his elbow in the warmth of the bright

wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play. The heiress of Henry

Allègre, who could secure neither obscurity nor any other alleviation to

that invidious position, looked as if she would speak to Blunt from a

distance; but in a moment the confident eagerness of her face died out as

if killed by a sudden thought. I didn’t know then her shrinking from all

falsehood and evasion; her dread of insincerity and disloyalty of every

kind. But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had

recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. And it occurred to me, too,

to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to transact with

our odious visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make him run out after

him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little with one of the sticks

that were to be found there? White hair so much like an expensive wig

could not be considered a serious protection. But it couldn’t have been

that. The transaction, whatever it was, had been much too quiet. I must

say that none of us had looked out of the window and that I didn’t know

when the man did go or if he was gone at all. As a matter of fact he was

already far away; and I may just as well say here that I never saw him

again in my life. His passage across my field of vision was like that of

other figures of that time: not to be forgotten, a little fantastic,

infinitely enlightening for my contempt, darkening for my memory which

struggles still with the clear lights and the ugly shadows of those

unforgotten days.

CHAPTER IV

It was past four o’clock before I left the house, together with Mills.

Mr. Blunt, still in his riding costume, escorted us to the very door. He

asked us to send him the first fiacre we met on our way to town. “It’s

impossible to walk in this get-up through the streets,” he remarked, with

his brilliant smile.

At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I made at the time in

little black books which I have hunted up in the litter of the past; very

cheap, common little note-books that by the lapse of years have acquired

a touching dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-out dignity of documents.

Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life had been a thing of

outward manifestations. I never had been secret or even systematically

taciturn about my simple occupations which might have been foolish but

had never required either caution or mystery. But in those four hours

since midday a complete change had come over me. For good or evil I left

that house committed to an enterprise that could not be talked about;

which would have appeared to many senseless and perhaps ridiculous, but

was certainly full of risks, and, apart from that, commanded discretion

on the ground of simple loyalty. It would not only close my lips but it

would to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts and from the

society of my friends; especially of the light-hearted, young,

harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable. It was because I felt myself

thrown back upon my own thoughts and forbidden to seek relief amongst

other lives—it was perhaps only for that reason at first I started an

irregular, fragmentary record of my days.

I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory (one cared not for

any to-morrow then) but to help me to keep a better hold of the

actuality. I scribbled them on shore and I scribbled them on the sea;

and in both cases they are concerned not only with the nature of the

facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It may be, too, that I

learned to love the sea for itself only at that time. Woman and the sea

revealed themselves to me together, as it were: two mistresses of life’s

values. The illimitable greatness of the one, the unfathomable seduction

of the other working their immemorial spells from generation to

generation fell upon my heart at last: a common fortune, an unforgettable

memory of the sea’s formless might and of the sovereign charm in that

woman’s form wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity rather

than blood.

I begin here with the notes written at the end of that very day.

—Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked side by side in absolute

silence. The fact is he is too old for me to talk to him freely. For

all his sympathy and seriousness I don’t know what note to strike and I

am not at all certain what he thinks of all this. As we shook hands at

parting, I asked him how much longer he expected to stay. And he

answered me that it depended on R. She was making arrangements for him

to cross the frontier. He wanted to see the very ground on which the

Principle of Legitimacy was actually asserting itself arms in hand. It

sounded to my positive mind the most fantastic thing in the world, this

elimination of personalities from what seemed but the merest political,

dynastic adventure. So it wasn’t Doña Rita, it wasn’t Blunt, it wasn’t

the Pretender with his big infectious laugh, it wasn’t all that lot of

politicians, archbishops, and generals, of monks, guerrilleros, and

smugglers by sea and land, of dubious agents and shady speculators and

undoubted swindlers, who were pushing their fortunes at the risk of their

precious skins. No. It was the Legitimist Principle asserting itself!

Well, I would accept the view but with one reservation. All the others

might have been merged into the idea, but I, the latest recruit, I would

not be merged in the Legitimist Principle. Mine was an act of

independent assertion. Never before had I felt so intensely aware of my

personality. But I said nothing of that to Mills. I only told him I

thought we had better not be seen very often together in the streets. He

agreed. Hearty handshake. Looked affectionately after his broad back.

It never occurred to him to turn his head. What was I in comparison with

the Principle of Legitimacy?

Late that night I went in search of Dominic. That Mediterranean sailor

was just the man I wanted. He had a great experience of all unlawful

things that can be done on the seas and he brought to the practice of

them much wisdom and audacity. That I didn’t know where he lived was

nothing since I knew where he loved. The proprietor of a small, quiet

café on the quay, a certain Madame Léonore, a woman of thirty-five with

an open Roman face and intelligent black eyes, had captivated his heart

years ago. In that café with our heads close together over a marble

table, Dominic and I held an earnest and endless confabulation while

Madame Léonore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings, with her

raven hair elaborately dressed and something nonchalant in her movements,

would take occasion, in passing to and fro, to rest her hand for a moment

on Dominic’s shoulder. Later when the little café had emptied itself of

its habitual customers, mostly people connected with the work of ships

and cargoes, she came quietly to sit at our table and looking at me very

hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had

happened to his Signorino. It was her name for me. I was Dominic’s

Signorino. She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been

somewhat of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed since

she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to look at my

eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at

cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered half in scorn that I was not

of the sort that runs after that kind of luck. He stated generally that

there were some young gentlemen very clever in inventing new ways of

getting rid of their time and their money. However, if they needed a

sensible man to help them he had no objection himself to lend a hand.

Dominic’s general scorn for the beliefs, and activities, and abilities of

upper-class people covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he

could not resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties in a

field he knew of old. He had been a desperate smuggler in his younger

days. We settled the purchase of a fast sailing craft. Agreed that it

must be a balancelle and something altogether out of the common. He knew

of one suitable but she was in Corsica. Offered to start for Bastia by

mail-boat in the morning. All the time the handsome and mature Madame

Léonore sat by, smiling faintly, amused at her great man joining like

this in a frolic of boys. She said the last words of that evening: “You

men never grow up,” touching lightly the grey hair above his temple.

A fortnight later.

. . . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. At the moment of

ringing at the door a strong emotion of an anxious kind. Why? Down the

length of the dining-room in the rotunda part full of afternoon light

Doña R., sitting cross-legged on the divan in the attitude of a very old

idol or a very young child and surrounded by many cushions, waves her

hand from afar pleasantly surprised, exclaiming: “What! Back already!”

I give her all the details and we talk for two hours across a large brass

bowl containing a little water placed between us, lighting cigarettes and

dropping them, innumerable, puffed at, yet untasted in the overwhelming

interest of the conversation. Found her very quick in taking the points

and very intelligent in her suggestions. All formality soon vanished

between us and before very long I discovered myself sitting cross-legged,

too, while I held forth on the qualities of different Mediterranean

sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of Dominic for the task.

I believe I gave her the whole history of the man, mentioning even the

existence of Madame Léonore, since the little café would have to be the

headquarters of the marine part of the plot.

She murmured, “_Ah_! _Une belle Romaine_,” thoughtfully. She told me

that she liked to hear people of that sort spoken of in terms of our

common humanity. She observed also that she wished to see Dominic some

day; to set her eyes for once on a man who could be absolutely depended

on. She wanted to know whether he had engaged himself in this adventure

solely for my sake.

I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been very close

associates in the West Indies from where we had returned together, and he

had a notion that I could be depended on, too. But mainly, I suppose, it

was from taste. And there was in him also a fine carelessness as to what

he did and a love of venturesome enterprise.

“And you,” she said. “Is it carelessness, too?”

“In a measure,” I said. “Within limits.”

“And very soon you will get tired.”

“When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened. I suppose

you know there are risks, I mean apart from the risk of life.”

“As for instance,” she said.

“For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to what they call

‘the galleys,’ in Ceuta.”

“And all this from that love for . . .”

“Not for Legitimacy,” I interrupted the inquiry lightly. “But what’s the

use asking such questions? It’s like asking the veiled figure of fate.

It doesn’t know its own mind nor its own heart. It has no heart. But

what if I were to start asking you—who have a heart and are not veiled to

my sight?” She dropped her charming adolescent head, so firm in

modelling, so gentle in expression. Her uncovered neck was round like

the shaft of a column. She wore the same wrapper of thick blue silk. At

that time she seemed to live either in her riding habit or in that

wrapper folded tightly round her and open low to a point in front.

Because of the absence of all trimming round the neck and from the deep

view of her bare arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put

directly on her skin and gave one the impression of one’s nearness to her

body which would have been troubling but for the perfect unconsciousness

of her manner. That day she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair. It

was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a black

ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or temple. This

smoothness added to the many varieties of her expression also that of

child-like innocence.

Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously by our

enthusiastic interest in the matter of our discourse and, in the moments

of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts. And this rapidly

growing familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all the

varieties of earnestness: serious, excited, ardent, and even gay. She

laughed in contralto; but her laugh was never very long; and when it had

ceased, the silence of the room with the light dying in all its many

windows seemed to lie about me warmed by its vibration.

As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish pause into which we

had fallen as into a vague dream, she came out of it with a start and a

quiet sigh. She said, “I had forgotten myself.” I took her hand and was

raising it naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm

to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and

the whole woman go inanimate all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand

before it reached my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell heavily on

to the divan.

I remained standing before her. She raised to me not her eyes but her

whole face, inquisitively—perhaps in appeal.

“No! This isn’t good enough for me,” I said.

The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were

precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility suggested a

creation of a distant past: immortal art, not transient life. Her voice

had a profound quietness. She excused herself.

“It’s only habit—or instinct—or what you like. I have had to practise

that in self-defence lest I should be tempted sometimes to cut the arm

off.”

I remembered the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the

white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and idiotically obstinate.

“Very ingenious. But this sort of thing is of no use to me,” I declared.

“Make it up,” suggested her mysterious voice, while her shadowy figure

remained unmoved, indifferent amongst the cushions.

I didn’t stir either. I refused in the same low tone.

“No. Not before you give it to me yourself some day.”

“Yes—some day,” she repeated in a breath in which there was no irony but

rather hesitation, reluctance what did I know?

I walked away from the house in a curious state of gloomy satisfaction

with myself.

* * * * *

And this is the last extract. A month afterwards.

—This afternoon going up to the Villa I was for the first time

accompanied in my way by some misgivings. To-morrow I sail.

First trip and therefore in the nature of a trial trip; and I can’t

overcome a certain gnawing emotion, for it is a trip that _mustn’t_ fail.

In that sort of enterprise there is no room for mistakes. Of all the

individuals engaged in it will every one be intelligent enough, faithful

enough, bold enough? Looking upon them as a whole it seems impossible;

but as each has got only a limited part to play they may be found

sufficient each for his particular trust. And will they be all punctual,

I wonder? An enterprise that hangs on the punctuality of many people, no

matter how well disposed and even heroic, hangs on a thread. This I have

perceived to be also the greatest of Dominic’s concerns. He, too,

wonders. And when he breathes his doubts the smile lurking under the

dark curl of his moustaches is not reassuring.

But there is also something exciting in such speculations and the road to

the Villa seemed to me shorter than ever before.

Let in by the silent, ever-active, dark lady’s maid, who is always on the

spot and always on the way somewhere else, opening the door with one

hand, while she passes on, turning on one for a moment her quick, black

eyes, which just miss being lustrous, as if some one had breathed on them

lightly.

On entering the long room I perceive Mills established in an armchair

which he had dragged in front of the divan. I do the same to another and

there we sit side by side facing R., tenderly amiable yet somehow distant

among her cushions, with an immemorial seriousness in her long, shaded

eyes and her fugitive smile hovering about but never settling on her

lips. Mills, who is just back from over the frontier, must have been

asking R. whether she had been worried again by her devoted friend with

the white hair. At least I concluded so because I found them talking of

the heart-broken Azzolati. And after having answered their greetings I

sit and listen to Rita addressing Mills earnestly.

“No, I assure you Azzolati had done nothing to me. I knew him. He was a

frequent visitor at the Pavilion, though I, personally, never talked with

him very much in Henry Allègre’s lifetime. Other men were more

interesting, and he himself was rather reserved in his manner to me. He

was an international politician and financier—a nobody. He, like many

others, was admitted only to feed and amuse Henry Allègre’s scorn of the

world, which was insatiable—I tell you.”

“Yes,” said Mills. “I can imagine.”

“But I know. Often when we were alone Henry Allègre used to pour it into

my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind stripped of its clothes as the

child sees the king in the German fairy tale, it’s I! Into my ears! A

child’s! Too young to die of fright. Certainly not old enough to

understand—or even to believe. But then his arm was about me. I used to

laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At this destruction—at these ruins!”

“Yes,” said Mills, very steady before her fire. “But you have at your

service the everlasting charm of life; you are a part of the

indestructible.”

“Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now. The laugh! Where is my

laugh? Give me back my laugh. . . .”

And she laughed a little on a low note. I don’t know about Mills, but

the subdued shadowy vibration of it echoed in my breast which felt empty

for a moment and like a large space that makes one giddy.

“The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate used to feel

protected. That feeling’s gone, too. And I myself will have to die some

day.”

“Certainly,” said Mills in an unaltered voice. “As to this body you . .

.”

“Oh, yes! Thanks. It’s a very poor jest. Change from body to body as

travellers used to change horses at post houses. I’ve heard of this

before. . . .”

“I’ve no doubt you have,” Mills put on a submissive air. “But are we to

hear any more about Azzolati?”

“You shall. Listen. I had heard that he was invited to shoot at

Rambouillet—a quiet party, not one of these great shoots. I hear a lot

of things. I wanted to have a certain information, also certain hints

conveyed to a diplomatic personage who was to be there, too. A personage

that would never let me get in touch with him though I had tried many

times.”

“Incredible!” mocked Mills solemnly.

“The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility. Born cautious,”

explained Doña Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of her

lips. “Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had

been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he was an old

friend. I never took any notice of those pathetic appeals before. But

in this emergency I sat down and wrote a note asking him to come and dine

with me in my hotel. I suppose you know I don’t live in the Pavilion. I

can’t bear the Pavilion now. When I have to go there I begin to feel

after an hour or so that it is haunted. I seem to catch sight of

somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here

and there. I hear light footsteps behind closed doors. . . My own!”

Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested

softly, “Yes, but Azzolati.”

Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. “Oh!

Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a

very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked

positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite

of rooms. He had never before seen me _en toilette_, you understand. In

the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress. I draped

myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go about like that suited my

indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I

used to herd goats. . . But never mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati.

I wanted to talk to him seriously.”

There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the

subtle quiver of her lips. “And behold! the same notion had occurred to

Azzolati. Imagine that for this tête-à-tête dinner the creature had got

himself up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of

all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his _frac_ and had a broad

ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon.

Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati. It was always

his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last

remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache

were like knitting needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my

hands. Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the

day. I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate

on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His

submissive attitude made me still more nervous. He was ready to do

anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he

would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You

understand the impudence of it, don’t you? And his tone was positively

abject, too. I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a

nomad. He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but

begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of

my own about the world. And you know this made me feel a homeless

outcast more than ever—like a little dog lost in the street—not knowing

where to go. I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of

me with an imbecile smile as much as to say ‘here is a poser for you.

. . .’ I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you know . . . I suppose you two

think that I am stupid.”

She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she

continued with a remark.

“I have days like that. Often one must listen to false protestations,

empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is

not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one’s way. That

idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn’t stand.

First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his

great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which

left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or

sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to

sympathize with his sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. One

must pay for service. Only I was nervous and tired. He bored me. I

told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth

should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more. I

suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and

all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me. He had

been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his

fangs. ‘No,’ he cries, ‘you can’t imagine what a satisfaction it is to

feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest, meritorious

poor wriggling and slobbering under one’s boots.’ You may tell me that

he is a contemptible animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone!

I felt my bare arms go cold like ice. A moment before I had been hot and

faint with sheer boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and

told her to bring me my fur cloak. He remained in his chair leering at

me curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone

out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life. ‘Take yourself off

instantly,’ I said. ‘Go trample on the poor if you like but never dare

speak to me again.’ At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so

long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask,

calmly—you know—whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the

corridor. He fetched an enormous sigh. ‘I have only tried to be honest

with you, Rita.’ But by the time he got to the door he had regained some

of his impudence. ‘You know how to trample on a poor fellow, too,’ he

said. ‘But I don’t mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes,

Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar

sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken

in you, that’s all.’ With that he pretends to dash a tear from his

eye-crocodile!—-and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my

teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear of anything so stupid

as this affair?” she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a

profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the

stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I

wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself

in my mind.

Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.

“It’s like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at

you. In every one. Every one. That’s what it is having to do with men

more than mere—Good-morning—Good evening. And if you try to avoid

meddling with their lids, some of them will take them off themselves.

And they don’t even know, they don’t even suspect what they are showing

you. Certain confidences—they don’t see it—are the bitterest kind of

insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble beast of prey. Just

as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined

gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman’s

troubles—and in the end make nothing of that either. Idiots!”

The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a

character of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only a

meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills

began to speak of his experiences during his visit to the army of the

Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that this man of books

could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and

bravery of the army was combined with the greatest distaste for what he

had seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the conduct of

this great enterprise he had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal

lack of decision, an absence of any reasoned plan.

He shook his head.

“I feel that you of all people, Doña Rita, ought to be told the truth. I

don’t know exactly what you have at stake.”

She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the

dawn.

“Not my heart,” she said quietly. “You must believe that.”

“I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you. . . ”

“No, _Monsieur le Philosophe_. It would not have been better. Don’t

make that serious face at me,” she went on with tenderness in a playful

note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and

playfulness the very fibre of her being. “I suppose you think that a

woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is . . .

How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?”

“I wouldn’t judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were born to?

You are as old as the world.”

She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them was

amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could hold of

seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging

glance.

“With me it is _pun d’onor_. To my first independent friend.”

“You were soon parted,” ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense

of oppression.

“Don’t think for a moment that I have been scared off,” she said. “It is

they who were frightened. I suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters

gossip?”

“Oh, yes,” Mills said meaningly. “The fair and the dark are succeeding

each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and out. I suppose

you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness.”

“Yes,” she said, “that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn’t it look

happy? And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears

amongst the ‘responsibles.’”

“Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick.

There is for instance Madame . . .”

“Oh, I don’t want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the

world.”

“Yes,” said Mills thoughtfully, “you are not a leaf, you might have been

a tornado yourself.”

“Upon my word,” she said, “there was a time that they thought I could

carry him off, away from them all—beyond them all. Verily, I am not very

proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of a great

passion. There was nothing sad there worthy of a great tenderness.”

“And is _this_ the word of the Venetian riddle?” asked Mills, fixing her

with his keen eyes.

“If it pleases you to think so, Señor,” she said indifferently. The

movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became mischievous when she

asked, “And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?”

“I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with his regiment at the

outposts. He is a most valorous captain. I heard some people describe

him as foolhardy.”

“Oh, he needn’t seek death,” she said in an indefinable tone. “I mean as

a refuge. There will be nothing in his life great enough for that.”

“You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Doña Rita.”

“Angry? No! Weary. But of course it’s very inconvenient. I can’t very

well ride out alone. A solitary amazon swallowing the dust and the salt

spray of the Corniche promenade would attract too much attention. And

then I don’t mind you two knowing that I am afraid of going out alone.”

“Afraid?” we both exclaimed together.

“You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me to be courageous? Why

shouldn’t I be afraid? Is it because there is no one in the world to

care what would happen to me?”

There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the first time. We had

not a word to say. And she added after a long silence:

“There is a very good reason. There is a danger.”

With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once:

“Something ugly.”

She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said with conviction:

“Ah! Then it can’t be anything in yourself. And if so . . . ”

I was moved to extravagant advice.

“You should come out with me to sea then. There may be some danger there

but there’s nothing ugly to fear.”

She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her, more than wonderful

to me; and suddenly as though she had seen me for the first time she

exclaimed in a tone of compunction:

“Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why should he run his head

into danger for those things that will all crumble into dust before

long?”

I said: “_You_ won’t crumble into dust.” And Mills chimed in:

“That young enthusiast will always have his sea.”

We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on me, and repeated with

a sort of whimsical enviousness:

“The sea! The violet sea—and he is longing to rejoin it! . . . At night!

Under the stars! . . . A lovers’ meeting,” she went on, thrilling me from

head to foot with those two words, accompanied by a wistful smile pointed

by a suspicion of mockery. She turned away.

“And you, Monsieur Mills?” she asked.

“I am going back to my books,” he declared with a very serious face. “My

adventure is over.”

“Each one to his love,” she bantered us gently. “Didn’t I love books,

too, at one time! They seemed to contain all wisdom and hold a magic

power, too. Tell me, Monsieur Mills, have you found amongst them in some

black-letter volume the power of foretelling a poor mortal’s destiny, the

power to look into the future? Anybody’s future . . .” Mills shook his

head. . . “What, not even mine?” she coaxed as if she really believed in

a magic power to be found in books.

Mills shook his head again. “No, I have not the power,” he said. “I am

no more a great magician, than you are a poor mortal. You have your

ancient spells. You are as old as the world. Of us two it’s you that

are more fit to foretell the future of the poor mortals on whom you

happen to cast your eyes.”

At these words she cast her eyes down and in the moment of deep silence I

watched the slight rising and falling of her breast. Then Mills

pronounced distinctly: “Good-bye, old Enchantress.”

They shook hands cordially. “Good-bye, poor Magician,” she said.

Mills made as if to speak but seemed to think better of it. Doña Rita

returned my distant bow with a slight, charmingly ceremonious inclination

of her body.

“_Bon voyage_ and a happy return,” she said formally.

I was following Mills through the door when I heard her voice behind us

raised in recall:

“Oh, a moment . . . I forgot . . .”

I turned round. The call was for me, and I walked slowly back wondering

what she could have forgotten. She waited in the middle of the room with

lowered head, with a mute gleam in her deep blue eyes. When I was near

enough she extended to me without a word her bare white arm and suddenly

pressed the back of her hand against my lips. I was too startled to

seize it with rapture. It detached itself from my lips and fell slowly

by her side. We had made it up and there was nothing to say. She turned

away to the window and I hurried out of the room.

PART THREE

CHAPTER I

It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic up to the

Villa to be presented to Doña Rita. If she wanted to look on the

embodiment of fidelity, resource, and courage, she could behold it all in

that man. Apparently she was not disappointed. Neither was Dominic

disappointed. During the half-hour’s interview they got into touch with

each other in a wonderful way as if they had some common and secret

standpoint in life. Maybe it was their common lawlessness, and their

knowledge of things as old as the world. Her seduction, his

recklessness, were both simple, masterful and, in a sense, worthy of each

other.

Dominic was, I won’t say awed by this interview. No woman could awe

Dominic. But he was, as it were, rendered thoughtful by it, like a man

who had not so much an experience as a sort of revelation vouchsafed to

him. Later, at sea, he used to refer to La Señora in a particular tone

and I knew that henceforth his devotion was not for me alone. And I

understood the inevitability of it extremely well. As to Doña Rita she,

after Dominic left the room, had turned to me with animation and said:

“But he is perfect, this man.” Afterwards she often asked after him and

used to refer to him in conversation. More than once she said to me:

“One would like to put the care of one’s personal safety into the hands

of that man. He looks as if he simply couldn’t fail one.” I admitted

that this was very true, especially at sea. Dominic couldn’t fail. But

at the same time I rather chaffed Rita on her preoccupation as to

personal safety that so often cropped up in her talk.

“One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary world,” I

used to tell her.

“That would be different. One would be standing then for something,

either worth or not worth dying for. One could even run away then and be

done with it. But I can’t run away unless I got out of my skin and left

that behind. Don’t you understand? You are very stupid . . .” But she

had the grace to add, “On purpose.”

I don’t know about the on purpose. I am not certain about the stupidity.

Her words bewildered one often and bewilderment is a sort of stupidity.

I remedied it by simply disregarding the sense of what she said. The

sound was there and also her poignant heart-gripping presence giving

occupation enough to one’s faculties. In the power of those things over

one there was mystery enough. It was more absorbing than the mere

obscurity of her speeches. But I daresay she couldn’t understand that.

Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in word and gesture that

only strengthened the natural, the invincible force of the spell.

Sometimes the brass bowl would get upset or the cigarette box would fly

up, dropping a shower of cigarettes on the floor. We would pick them up,

re-establish everything, and fall into a long silence, so close that the

sound of the first word would come with all the pain of a separation.

It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should take up my quarters

in her house in the street of the Consuls. There were certain advantages

in that move. In my present abode my sudden absences might have been in

the long run subject to comment. On the other hand, the house in the

street of Consuls was a known out-post of Legitimacy. But then it was

covered by the occult influence of her who was referred to in

confidential talks, secret communications, and discreet whispers of

Royalist salons as: “Madame de Lastaola.”

That was the name which the heiress of Henry Allègre had decided to adopt

when, according to her own expression, she had found herself precipitated

at a moment’s notice into the crowd of mankind. It is strange how the

death of Henry Allègre, which certainly the poor man had not planned,

acquired in my view the character of a heartless desertion. It gave one

a glimpse of amazing egoism in a sentiment to which one could hardly give

a name, a mysterious appropriation of one human being by another as if in

defiance of unexpressed things and for an unheard-of satisfaction of an

inconceivable pride. If he had hated her he could not have flung that

enormous fortune more brutally at her head. And his unrepentant death

seemed to lift for a moment the curtain on something lofty and sinister

like an Olympian’s caprice.

Doña Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: “You know, it

appears that one must have a name. That’s what Henry Allègre’s man of

business told me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But my name,

_amigo_, Henry Allègre had taken from me like all the rest of what I had

been once. All that is buried with him in his grave. It wouldn’t have

been true. That is how I felt about it. So I took that one.” She

whispered to herself: “Lastaola,” not as if to test the sound but as if

in a dream.

To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any human

habitation, a lonely _caserio_ with a half-effaced carving of a coat of

arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a

stony slope at the back. It might have been a hill for all I know or

perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination of all these: just a

bit of the earth’s surface. Once I asked her where exactly it was

situated and she answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of

the room: “Oh, over there.” I thought that this was all that I was going

to hear but she added moodily, “I used to take my goats there, a dozen or

so of them, for the day. From after my uncle had said his Mass till the

ringing of the evening bell.”

I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a few

words from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile, bearded beasts with cynical

heads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo of

dishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head.

The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny. Once

or twice in my hearing she had referred to “my rust-coloured hair” with

laughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints of

civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes of

Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of coveted art treasures, the heiress

of Henry Allègre. She proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faint

flash of gaiety all over her face, except her dark blue eyes that moved

so seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other human

beings.

“The goats were very good. We clambered amongst the stones together.

They beat me at that game. I used to catch my hair in the bushes.”

“Your rust-coloured hair,” I whispered.

“Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave bits of my frock on

thorns here and there. It was pretty thin, I can tell you. There wasn’t

much at that time between my skin and the blue of the sky. My legs were

as sunburnt as my face; but really I didn’t tan very much. I had plenty

of freckles though. There were no looking-glasses in the Presbytery but

uncle had a piece not bigger than my two hands for his shaving. One

Sunday I crept into his room and had a peep at myself. And wasn’t I

startled to see my own eyes looking at me! But it was fascinating, too.

I was about eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with the

goats, and I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a match.

Heavens! When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs,

it doesn’t seem to be possible. And yet it is the same one. I do

remember every single goat. They were very clever. Goats are no trouble

really; they don’t scatter much. Mine never did even if I had to hide

myself out of their sight for ever so long.”

It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she uttered

vaguely what was rather a comment on my question:

“It was like fate.” But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly, because

we were often like a pair of children.

“Oh, really,” I said, “you talk like a pagan. What could you know of

fate at that time? What was it like? Did it come down from Heaven?”

“Don’t be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track that was there and

it looked like a boy. Wasn’t he a little devil though. You understand,

I couldn’t know that. He was a wealthy cousin of mine. Round there we

are all related, all cousins—as in Brittany. He wasn’t much bigger than

myself but he was older, just a boy in blue breeches and with good shoes

on his feet, which of course interested and impressed me. He yelled to

me from below, I screamed to him from above, he came up and sat down near

me on a stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hour

before he condescended to ask me who I was. And the airs he gave

himself! He quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb. I

remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as I sat

below him on the ground.

“_C’est comique_, _eh_!” she interrupted herself to comment in a

melancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically and she went on:

“He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the slope. In

winter they used to send him to school at Tolosa. He had an enormous

opinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by and

he was about the most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen. He had an

unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was always wretched about

something: about the treatment he received, about being kept in the

country and chained to work. He was moaning and complaining and

threatening all the world, including his father and mother. He used to

curse God, yes, that boy, sitting there on a piece of rock like a

wretched little Prometheus with a sparrow pecking at his miserable little

liver. And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!”

She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something generous in

it; not infectious, but in others provoking a smile.

“Of course I, poor little animal, I didn’t know what to make of it, and I

was even a little frightened. But at first because of his miserable eyes

I was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had been a sick goat. But,

frightened or sorry, I don’t know how it is, I always wanted to laugh at

him, too, I mean from the very first day when he let me admire him for

half an hour. Yes, even then I had to put my hand over my mouth more

than once for the sake of good manners, you understand. And yet, you

know, I was never a laughing child.

“One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away from me

and told me he had been thrashed for wandering in the hills.

“‘To be with me?’ I asked. And he said: ‘To be with you! No. My people

don’t know what I do.’ I can’t tell why, but I was annoyed. So instead

of raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected me to

do, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much. He got up, he had a

switch in his hand, and walked up to me, saying, ‘I will soon show you.’

I went stiff with fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped down

by my side and kissed me on the cheek. Then he did it again, and by that

time I was gone dead all over and he could have done what he liked with

the corpse but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I

bolted away. Not very far. I couldn’t leave the goats altogether. He

chased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick for

him in his nice town boots. When he got tired of that game he started

throwing stones. After that he made my life very lively for me.

Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I had to sit still and

listen to his miserable ravings, because he would catch me round the

waist and hold me very tight. And yet, I often felt inclined to laugh.

But if I caught sight of him at a distance and tried to dodge out of the

way he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then sit

outside with a heap of stones at hand so that I daren’t show the end of

my nose for hours. He would sit there and rave and abuse me till I would

burst into a crazy laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the

leaves rolling on the ground and biting his fists with rage. Didn’t he

hate me! At the same time I was often terrified. I am convinced now

that if I had started crying he would have rushed in and perhaps

strangled me there. Then as the sun was about to set he would make me

swear that I would marry him when I was grown up. ‘Swear, you little

wretched beggar,’ he would yell to me. And I would swear. I was hungry,

and I didn’t want to be made black and blue all over with stones. Oh, I

swore ever so many times to be his wife. Thirty times a month for two

months. I couldn’t help myself. It was no use complaining to my sister

Therese. When I showed her my bruises and tried to tell her a little

about my trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful girl,

a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that, between

Therese my sister and José the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost.

But luckily at the end of the two months they sent him away from home for

good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd living all her days out

under God’s eye, as my uncle the Cura might have said. My sister Therese

was keeping house in the Presbytery. She’s a terrible person.”

“I have heard of your sister Therese,” I said.

“Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten years older than

myself perhaps? She just comes a little above my shoulder, but then I

was always a long thing. I never knew my mother. I don’t even know how

she looked. There are no paintings or photographs in our farmhouses

amongst the hills. I haven’t even heard her described to me. I believe

I was never good enough to be told these things. Therese decided that I

was a lump of wickedness, and now she believes that I will lose my soul

altogether unless I take some steps to save it. Well, I have no

particular taste that way. I suppose it is annoying to have a sister

going fast to eternal perdition, but there are compensations. The

funniest thing is that it’s Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me

out of the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them on my

return from my visit to the _Quartel Real_ last year. I couldn’t have

stayed much more than half an hour with them anyway, but still I would

have liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that Therese

persuaded my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of the hill. I

saw the old man a long way off and I understood how it was. I dismounted

at once and met him on foot. We had half an hour together walking up and

down the road. He is a peasant priest, he didn’t know how to treat me.

And of course I was uncomfortable, too. There wasn’t a single goat about

to keep me in countenance. I ought to have embraced him. I was always

fond of the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself up when I

approached him and actually took off his hat to me. So simple as that!

I bowed my head and asked for his blessing. And he said ‘I would never

refuse a blessing to a good Legitimist.’ So stern as that! And when I

think that I was perhaps the only girl of the family or in the whole

world that he ever in his priest’s life patted on the head! When I think

of that I . . . I believe at that moment I was as wretched as he was

himself. I handed him an envelope with a big red seal which quite

startled him. I had asked the Marquis de Villarel to give me a few words

for him, because my uncle has a great influence in his district; and the

Marquis penned with his own hand some compliments and an inquiry about

the spirit of the population. My uncle read the letter, looked up at me

with an air of mournful awe, and begged me to tell his excellency that

the people were all for God, their lawful King and their old privileges.

I said to him then, after he had asked me about the health of His Majesty

in an awfully gloomy tone—I said then: ‘There is only one thing that

remains for me to do, uncle, and that is to give you two pounds of the

very best snuff I have brought here for you.’ What else could I have got

for the poor old man? I had no trunks with me. I had to leave behind a

spare pair of shoes in the hotel to make room in my little bag for that

snuff. And fancy! That old priest absolutely pushed the parcel away. I

could have thrown it at his head; but I thought suddenly of that hard,

prayerful life, knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the world,

absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and then. I remembered how

wretched he used to be when he lacked a copper or two to get some snuff

with. My face was hot with indignation, but before I could fly out at

him I remembered how simple he was. So I said with great dignity that as

the present came from the King and as he wouldn’t receive it from my hand

there was nothing else for me to do but to throw it into the brook; and I

made as if I were going to do it, too. He shouted: ‘Stay, unhappy girl!

Is it really from His Majesty, whom God preserve?’ I said

contemptuously, ‘Of course.’ He looked at me with great pity in his

eyes, sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I suppose he

imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary cash out of the

King for the purchase of that snuff. You can’t imagine how simple he is.

Nothing was easier than to deceive him; but don’t imagine I deceived him

from the vainglory of a mere sinner. I lied to the dear man, simply

because I couldn’t bear the idea of him being deprived of the only

gratification his big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As I

mounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly: ‘God guard you, Señora!’

Señora! What sternness! We were off a little way already when his heart

softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: ‘The road to Heaven

is repentance!’ And then, after a silence, again the great shout

‘Repentance!’ thundered after me. Was that sternness or simplicity, I

wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there

lives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it must be my

uncle. And yet—who knows?

“Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got over the

frontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old man to send me out my sister

here. I said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had thought

suddenly of that house of mine in which you once spent the night talking

with Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I thought it would do extremely well

for Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. In hotels

they might have been molested, but I knew that I could get protection for

my house. Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I

wanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find a

trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her? I don’t know

how to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for me that or

anything else; but what could I have done myself without her? She has

looked after me from the first. It was Henry Allègre who got her for me

eight years ago. I don’t know whether he meant it for a kindness but

she’s the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows . . . What

doesn’t she know about me! She has never failed to do the right thing

for me unasked. I couldn’t part with her. And I couldn’t think of

anybody else but my sister.

“After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the wildest

idea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took care to send her some

money. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing that he

wouldn’t have given up for the service of the King. Rose went to meet

her at the railway station. She told me afterwards that there had been

no need for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese.

There was nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her. I

should think not! She had made for herself a dress of some brown stuff

like a nun’s habit and had a crooked stick and carried all her belongings

tied up in a handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint’s

shrine. Rose took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: ‘And

does this big place really belong to our Rita?’ My maid of course said

that it was mine. ‘And how long did our Rita live here?’—‘Madame has

never seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I believe

Mr. Allègre lived here for some time when he was a young man.’—‘The

sinner that’s dead?’—‘Just so,’ says Rose. You know nothing ever

startles Rose. ‘Well, his sins are gone with him,’ said my sister, and

began to make herself at home.

“Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was

back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her way about very

well already and preferred to be left to herself. Some little time

afterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The first thing she said

to me, ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, Rita,’ and I said, ‘What a funny

dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for

this house.’—‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and unless you give this house to me,

Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing to do with your

life, Rita. Your life is no secret for me.’

“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. ‘I don’t

know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I said to her, ‘but how do you

know anything about it?’ And then she told me that it was through a

cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He had finished

his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind,

in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever

he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with

whom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and

down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me

as far as the door. I heard her say to herself, ‘It’s the evil spirit in

her that makes her like this.’ She was absolutely convinced of that.

She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself. I was

quite astounded. And then I really couldn’t help myself. I burst into a

laugh. I laughed and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran

away. I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with

her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I

had to pull her out by the shoulders from there. I don’t think she was

frightened; she was only shocked. But I don’t suppose her heart is

desperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired

she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and

entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and

priests. Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner. I got away at

last. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after

me. ‘I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,’ she said.—‘Oh, yes.

I know you are a good sister,’ I said to her. I was letting myself out

when she called after me, ‘And what about this house, Rita?’ I said to

her, ‘Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.’

The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with

her mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse

is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady.

But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable. Upon my word

I think she likes to look after men. They don’t seem to be such great

sinners as women are. I think you could do worse than take up your

quarters at number 10. She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of

affection for you, too.”

I don’t know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Doña Rita’s

peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to live very

willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Doña Rita

had for me a peculiar fascination. She had only passed through the house

once as far as I knew; but it was enough. She was one of those beings

that leave a trace. I am not unreasonable—I mean for those that knew

her. That is, I suppose, because she was so unforgettable. Let us

remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier

with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No

wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity

with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the

mere knowledge that Doña Rita had passed through the very rooms in which

I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions,

was enough to fill my inner being with a great content. Her glance, her

darkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room which

most likely would be mine to slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near the

door, Therese, the peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone

and in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false

persuasiveness:

“You will be very comfortable here, Señor. It is so peaceful here in the

street. Sometimes one may think oneself in a village. It’s only a

hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King. And I shall

take such good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest.”

CHAPTER II

Doña Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister and

all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant sister

was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and

repeated a remark she had made before: “She likes young men. The younger

the better.” The mere thought of those two women being sisters aroused

one’s wonder. Physically they were altogether of different design. It

was also the difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with

a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked clay.

Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in

its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps that one could

find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull

lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was

never associated with a smile. She smiled with compressed mouth. It was

indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same

nest. And yet . . . Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one

saw those two women together that one lost all belief in the possibility

of their relationship near or far. It extended even to their common

humanity. One, as it were, doubted it. If one of the two was

representative, then the other was either something more or less than

human. One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme

of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them standing together,

speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other.

And yet! . . . Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don’t

know, we don’t perceive how superficial we are. The simplest shades

escape us, the secret of changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the

only feature (and yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in

common with her sister, as I told Doña Rita, was amiability.

“For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,” I went on.

“It’s one of your characteristics, of course much more precious than in

other people. You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own;

but after all there are no new names. You are amiable. You were most

amiable to me when I first saw you.”

“Really. I was not aware. Not specially . . . ”

“I had never the presumption to think that it was special. Moreover, my

head was in a whirl. I was lost in astonishment first of all at what I

had been listening to all night. Your history, you know, a wonderful

tale with a flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that

amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking in a corner, and

with Blunt’s smile gleaming through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from

Mills’ pipe, you know. I was feeling quite inanimate as to body and

frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time. I had never heard

anything like that talk about you before. Of course I wasn’t sleepy, but

still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt . . .”

“Kept awake all night listening to my story!” She marvelled.

“Yes. You don’t think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn’t have missed

it for the world. Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that

incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as

though he were inventing it all rather angrily. I had doubts as to your

existence.”

“Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.”

“Anybody would be,” I said. “I was. I didn’t sleep a wink. I was

expecting to see you soon—and even then I had my doubts.”

“As to my existence?”

“It wasn’t exactly that, though of course I couldn’t tell that you

weren’t a product of Captain Blunt’s sleeplessness. He seemed to dread

exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to

detain us . . .”

“He hasn’t enough imagination for that,” she said.

“It didn’t occur to me. But there was Mills, who apparently believed in

your existence. I could trust Mills. My doubts were about the

propriety. I couldn’t see any good reason for being taken to see you.

Strange that it should be my connection with the sea which brought me

here to the Villa.”

“Unexpected perhaps.”

“No. I mean particularly strange and significant.”

“Why?”

“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that

the sea is my only love. They were always chaffing me because they

couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .”

“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently.

“Why, yes. I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in

one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century. But I don’t

throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the

sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.”

“You are horrible.”

“I am surprised.”

“I mean your choice of words.”

“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as

it dropped from your lips. At least not before me.”

She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better. But I don’t see

any of them on the floor.”

“It’s you who are horrible in the implications of your language. Don’t

see any on the floor! Haven’t I caught up and treasured them all in my

heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are made.”

She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile

breathed out the word: “No.”

And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence! On this occasion

we parted from each other on a light-hearted note. But already I had

acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world

than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating

than the emanation of her charm. I meant it absolutely—not excepting the

light of the sun.

From this there was only one step further to take. The step into a

conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming like a

flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to

shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations

and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before

seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse.

A great revelation this. I don’t mean to say it was soul-shaking. The

soul was already a captive before doubt, anguish, or dismay could touch

its surrender and its exaltation. But all the same the revelation turned

many things into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of the careless

freedom of my life. If that life ever had any purpose or any aim outside

itself I would have said that it threw a shadow across its path. But it

hadn’t. There had been no path. But there was a shadow, the inseparable

companion of all light. No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the

world. After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious

because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from which one

was free before. What if they were to be victorious at the last? They,

or what perhaps lurks in them: fear, deception, desire, disillusion—all

silent at first before the song of triumphant love vibrating in the

light. Yes. Silent. Even desire itself! All silent. But not for

long!

This was, I think, before the third expedition. Yes, it must have been

the third, for I remember that it was boldly planned and that it was

carried out without a hitch. The tentative period was over; all our

arrangements had been perfected. There was, so to speak, always an

unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing lantern on the shore. Our

friends, mostly bought for hard cash and therefore valuable, had acquired

confidence in us. This, they seemed to say, is no unfathomable roguery

of penniless adventurers. This is but the reckless enterprise of men of

wealth and sense and needn’t be inquired into. The young _caballero_ has

got real gold pieces in the belt he wears next his skin; and the man with

the heavy moustaches and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of a man.

They gave to Dominic all their respect and to me a great show of

deference; for I had all the money, while they thought that Dominic had

all the sense. That judgment was not exactly correct. I had my share of

judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the years have chilled

the blood without dimming the memory. I remember going about the

business with light-hearted, clear-headed recklessness which, according

as its decisions were sudden or considered, made Dominic draw his breath

through his clenched teeth, or look hard at me before he gave me either a

slight nod of assent or a sarcastic “Oh, certainly”—just as the humour of

the moment prompted him.

One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under the lee of a rock,

side by side, watching the light of our little vessel dancing away at sea

in the windy distance, Dominic spoke suddenly to me.

“I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso, they are nothing to

you, together or separately?”

I said: “Dominic, if they were both to vanish from the earth together or

separately it would make no difference to my feelings.”

He remarked: “Just so. A man mourns only for his friends. I suppose

they are no more friends to you than they are to me. Those Carlists make

a great consumption of cartridges. That is well. But why should we do

all those mad things that you will insist on us doing till my hair,” he

pursued with grave, mocking exaggeration, “till my hair tries to stand up

on my head? and all for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his

own, for that Majesty as they call him, but after all a man like another

and—no friend.”

“Yes, why?” I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the sand.

It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds and

of wind that died and rose and died again. Dominic’s voice was heard

speaking low between the short gusts.

“Friend of the Señora, eh?”

“That’s what the world says, Dominic.”

“Half of what the world says are lies,” he pronounced dogmatically. “For

all his majesty he may be a good enough man. Yet he is only a king in

the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you. Still a woman

like that—one, somehow, would grudge her to a better king. She ought to

be set up on a high pillar for people that walk on the ground to raise

their eyes up to. But you are otherwise, you gentlemen. You, for

instance, Monsieur, you wouldn’t want to see her set up on a pillar.”

“That sort of thing, Dominic,” I said, “that sort of thing, you

understand me, ought to be done early.”

He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice was heard in the

shadow of the rock.

“I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the multitude, that only

raise their eyes. But for kings and suchlike that is not enough. Well,

no heart need despair; for there is not a woman that wouldn’t at some

time or other get down from her pillar for no bigger bribe perhaps than

just a flower which is fresh to-day and withered to-morrow. And then,

what’s the good of asking how long any woman has been up there? There is

a true saying that lips that have been kissed do not lose their

freshness.”

I don’t know what answer I could have made. I imagine Dominic thought

himself unanswerable. As a matter of fact, before I could speak, a voice

came to us down the face of the rock crying secretly, “Olà, down there!

All is safe ashore.”

It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a muleteer’s inn in a

little shallow valley with a shallow little stream in it, and where we

had been hiding most of the day before coming down to the shore. We both

started to our feet and Dominic said, “A good boy that. You didn’t hear

him either come or go above our heads. Don’t reward him with more than

one peseta, Señor, whatever he does. If you were to give him two he

would go mad at the sight of so much wealth and throw up his job at the

Fonda, where he is so useful to run errands, in that way he has of

skimming along the paths without displacing a stone.”

Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire to set alight a

small heap of dry sticks he had made ready beforehand on that spot which

in all the circuit of the Bay was perfectly screened from observation

from the land side.

The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black cloak with a hood

of a Mediterranean sailor. His eyes watched the dancing dim light to

seaward. And he talked the while.

“The only fault you have, Señor, is being too generous with your money.

In this world you must give sparingly. The only things you may deal out

without counting, in this life of ours which is but a little fight and a

little love, is blows to your enemy and kisses to a woman. . . . Ah! here

they are coming in.”

I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the shore

now. Its motion had altered. It swayed slowly as it ran towards us,

and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed wing appeared

gliding in the night. Under it a human voice shouted something

confidently.

“_Bueno_,” muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I didn’t see he poured

a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician at the end of a successful

incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice from the immense

space of the sea. And his hooded figure vanished from my sight in a

great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam.

“That’s all over,” he said, “and now we go back for more work, more toil,

more trouble, more exertion with hands and feet, for hours and hours.

And all the time the head turned over the shoulder, too.”

We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the dark,

Dominic, more familiar with it, going first and I scrambling close behind

in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my

footing. I remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped to rest.

I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I felt myself falling. I

couldn’t help doing that. But I would probably only drag him down with

me.

With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled that all

this was possible, but that it was all in the bargain, and urged me

onwards.

When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no exertion, no

danger, no fear or anger could disturb, remarked as we strode side by

side:

“I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly

foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Señora were on

us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would

approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment’s thought to us out here.

Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on three

carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions.

Even your way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men set on

defying a whole big country for the sake of—what is it exactly?—the blue

eyes, or the white arms of the Señora.”

He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a vague

shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had only the flying clouds for

company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward

shoulder of an invisible mountain. Dominic moved on.

“Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a

shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star

might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in

the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in

your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it’s pleasant as we

stumble in the dark to think of our Señora in that long room with a shiny

floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you

call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And very

still . . .”

He remembered her—whose image could not be dismissed.

I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic. Are we

in the path?”

He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language of more

formal moments.

“_Prenez mon bras_, _monsieur_. Take a firm hold, or I will have you

stumbling again and falling into one of those beastly holes, with a good

chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take offence. For,

speaking with all respect, why should you, and I with you, be here on

this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on the way to a

confounded flickering light where there will be no other supper but a

piece of a stale sausage and a draught of leathery wine out of a stinking

skin. Pah!”

I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French and

pronounced in his inflexible voice:

“For a pair of white arms, Señor. _Bueno_.”

He could understand.

CHAPTER III

On our return from that expedition we came gliding into the old harbour

so late that Dominic and I, making for the café kept by Madame Léonore,

found it empty of customers, except for two rather sinister fellows

playing cards together at a corner table near the door. The first thing

done by Madame Léonore was to put her hands on Dominic’s shoulders and

look at arm’s length into the eyes of that man of audacious deeds and

wild stratagems who smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at

that time, uncurled moustaches.

Indeed we didn’t present a neat appearance, our faces unshaven, with the

traces of dried salt sprays on our smarting skins and the sleeplessness

of full forty hours filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw

as through a mist Madame Léonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace,

setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her ample black

skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes

sparkled like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she was

tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her

reach and as it were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched

lightly Dominic’s curly head silvered on the temples (she couldn’t really

help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile, observed that I

looked very tired, and asked Dominic whether for all that I was likely to

sleep soundly to-night.

“I don’t know,” said Dominic, “He’s young. And there is always the

chance of dreams.”

“What do you men dream of in those little barques of yours tossing for

months on the water?”

“Mostly of nothing,” said Dominic. “But it has happened to me to dream

of furious fights.”

“And of furious loves, too, no doubt,” she caught him up in a mocking

voice.

“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with

his head between his hands in her ardent gaze. “The waking hours are

longer.”

“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I

suppose you do talk of your loves sometimes.”

“You may be sure, Madame Léonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness

of my voice, “that you at any rate are talked about a lot at sea.”

“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado

that you took him to see, Signorino. She went to his head like a glass

of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose

that I am another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend

to look after the café for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head, and

walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two

sitting up! And I thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor

fellows!”

She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.

“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice.

“She came flying out of the gate on horseback and it would have been all

I would have seen of her if—and this is for you, Signorino—if she hadn’t

pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He

had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very white when he smiled at

her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like

it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who used to come to

our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel, Dominic.”

“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Léonore,” I said, amused by her

expression of disgust. “That’s an American.”

“Ah! _Un Americano_! Well, never mind him. It was her that I went to

see.”

“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Doña Rita!” Dominic

addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why, you were always telling me

you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life—or

even mine, you said.”

“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a

good look. And you may be sure—that will surprise you both—that on the

way back—oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too—I wasn’t thinking of

any man at sea or on shore in that connection.”

“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said.

Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or

too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You

were thinking of a woman, though.”

“_Si_. As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world.

Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see, we women are not like you men,

indifferent to each other unless by some exception. Men say we are

always against one another but that’s only men’s conceit. What can she

be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped

Dominic’s forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare.

“With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather pleased that there

is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have

thought less of him if he hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little,

for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with

an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.” She

changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note. “A head

like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a

plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates. “Yes, Dominic!

_Antica_. I haven’t been haunted by a face since—since I was sixteen

years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on

horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I

loved him for—for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he

had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man’s hat, too, on her

head. So high!”

“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to

whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was

apparently unknown.

“_Si_. And her face has haunted me. Not so long as that other but more

touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and this is a woman. Yes, I

did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my

own to show to the world, though not so superb. And I, too, didn’t know

why I had come into the world any more than she does.”

“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between

his hands.

She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only

sighed lightly.

“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be

haunted by her face?” I asked.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh.

For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my

direction. But suddenly she roused up.

“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice. “Why should I talk of another

woman? And then she is a great lady.”

At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.

“Isn’t she? Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one

thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have

seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be

vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held.”

I caught my breath. “Inconstant,” I whispered.

“I don’t say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity.

Signorino, you don’t know much about women. And you may learn something

yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget.”

“Not to be held,” I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame

Léonore closed her outstretched hand before my face and opened it at once

to show its emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic

never moved.

I wished good-night to these two and left the café for the fresh air and

the dark spaciousness of the quays augmented by all the width of the old

Port where between the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls

appeared very black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I left

behind me the end of the Cannebière, a wide vista of tall houses and

much-lighted pavements losing itself in the distance with an extinction

of both shapes and lights. I slunk past it with only a side glance and

sought the dimness of quiet streets away from the centre of the usual

night gaieties of the town. The dress I wore was just that of a sailor

come ashore from some coaster, a thick blue woollen shirt or rather a

sort of jumper with a knitted cap like a tam-o’-shanter worn very much on

one side and with a red tuft of wool in the centre. This was even the

reason why I had lingered so long in the café. I didn’t want to be

recognized in the streets in that costume and still less to be seen

entering the house in the street of the Consuls. At that hour when the

performances were over and all the sensible citizens in their beds I

didn’t hesitate to cross the Place of the Opera. It was dark, the

audience had already dispersed. The rare passers-by I met hurrying on

their last affairs of the day paid no attention to me at all. The street

of the Consuls I expected to find empty, as usual at that time of the

night. But as I turned a corner into it I overtook three people who must

have belonged to the locality. To me, somehow, they appeared strange.

Two girls in dark cloaks walked ahead of a tall man in a top hat. I

slowed down, not wishing to pass them by, the more so that the door of

the house was only a few yards distant. But to my intense surprise those

people stopped at it and the man in the top hat, producing a latchkey,

let his two companions through, followed them, and with a heavy slam cut

himself off from my astonished self and the rest of mankind.

In the stupid way people have I stood and meditated on the sight, before

it occurred to me that this was the most useless thing to do. After

waiting a little longer to let the others get away from the hall I

entered in my turn. The small gas-jet seemed not to have been touched

ever since that distant night when Mills and I trod the black-and-white

marble hall for the first time on the heels of Captain Blunt—who lived by

his sword. And in the dimness and solitude which kept no more trace of

the three strangers than if they had been the merest ghosts I seemed to

hear the ghostly murmur, “_Américain_, _Catholique et gentilhomme_.

_Amér. . . _” Unseen by human eye I ran up the flight of steps swiftly

and on the first floor stepped into my sitting-room of which the door was

open . . . “_et gentilhomme_.” I tugged at the bell pull and somewhere

down below a bell rang as unexpected for Therese as a call from a ghost.

I had no notion whether Therese could hear me. I seemed to remember that

she slept in any bed that happened to be vacant. For all I knew she

might have been asleep in mine. As I had no matches on me I waited for a

while in the dark. The house was perfectly still. Suddenly without the

slightest preliminary sound light fell into the room and Therese stood in

the open door with a candlestick in her hand.

She had on her peasant brown skirt. The rest of her was concealed in a

black shawl which covered her head, her shoulders, arms, and elbows

completely, down to her waist. The hand holding the candle protruded

from that envelope which the other invisible hand clasped together under

her very chin. And her face looked like a face in a painting. She said

at once:

“You startled me, my young Monsieur.”

She addressed me most frequently in that way as though she liked the very

word “young.” Her manner was certainly peasant-like with a sort of

plaint in the voice, while the face was that of a serving Sister in some

small and rustic convent.

“I meant to do it,” I said. “I am a very bad person.”

“The young are always full of fun,” she said as if she were gloating over

the idea. “It is very pleasant.”

“But you are very brave,” I chaffed her, “for you didn’t expect a ring,

and after all it might have been the devil who pulled the bell.”

“It might have been. But a poor girl like me is not afraid of the devil.

I have a pure heart. I have been to confession last evening. No. But

it might have been an assassin that pulled the bell ready to kill a poor

harmless woman. This is a very lonely street. What could prevent you to

kill me now and then walk out again free as air?”

While she was talking like this she had lighted the gas and with the last

words she glided through the bedroom door leaving me thunderstruck at the

unexpected character of her thoughts.

I couldn’t know that there had been during my absence a case of atrocious

murder which had affected the imagination of the whole town; and though

Therese did not read the papers (which she imagined to be full of

impieties and immoralities invented by godless men) yet if she spoke at

all with her kind, which she must have done at least in shops, she could

not have helped hearing of it. It seems that for some days people could

talk of nothing else. She returned gliding from the bedroom hermetically

sealed in her black shawl just as she had gone in, with the protruding

hand holding the lighted candle and relieved my perplexity as to her

morbid turn of mind by telling me something of the murder story in a

strange tone of indifference even while referring to its most horrible

features. “That’s what carnal sin (_pêché de chair_) leads to,” she

commented severely and passed her tongue over her thin lips. “And then

the devil furnishes the occasion.”

“I can’t imagine the devil inciting me to murder you, Therese,” I said,

“and I didn’t like that ready way you took me for an example, as it were.

I suppose pretty near every lodger might be a potential murderer, but I

expected to be made an exception.”

With the candle held a little below her face, with that face of one tone

and without relief she looked more than ever as though she had come out

of an old, cracked, smoky painting, the subject of which was altogether

beyond human conception. And she only compressed her lips.

“All right,” I said, making myself comfortable on a sofa after pulling

off my boots. “I suppose any one is liable to commit murder all of a

sudden. Well, have you got many murderers in the house?”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s pretty good. Upstairs and downstairs,” she

sighed. “God sees to it.”

“And by the by, who is that grey-headed murderer in a tall hat whom I saw

shepherding two girls into this house?”

She put on a candid air in which one could detect a little of her peasant

cunning.

“Oh, yes. They are two dancing girls at the Opera, sisters, as different

from each other as I and our poor Rita. But they are both virtuous and

that gentleman, their father, is very severe with them. Very severe

indeed, poor motherless things. And it seems to be such a sinful

occupation.”

“I bet you make them pay a big rent, Therese. With an occupation like

that . . .”

She looked at me with eyes of invincible innocence and began to glide

towards the door, so smoothly that the flame of the candle hardly swayed.

“Good-night,” she murmured.

“Good-night, Mademoiselle.”

Then in the very doorway she turned right round as a marionette would

turn.

“Oh, you ought to know, my dear young Monsieur, that Mr. Blunt, the dear

handsome man, has arrived from Navarre three days ago or more. Oh,” she

added with a priceless air of compunction, “he is such a charming

gentleman.”

And the door shut after her.

CHAPTER IV

That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe, but always

on the border between dreams and waking. The only thing absolutely

absent from it was the feeling of rest. The usual sufferings of a youth

in love had nothing to do with it. I could leave her, go away from her,

remain away from her, without an added pang or any augmented

consciousness of that torturing sentiment of distance so acute that often

it ends by wearing itself out in a few days. Far or near was all one to

me, as if one could never get any further but also never any nearer to

her secret: the state like that of some strange wild faiths that get hold

of mankind with the cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing

them of both liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with

some hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing

outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was in me

just like life was in me; that life of which a popular saying affirms

that “it is sweet.” For the general wisdom of mankind will always stop

short on the limit of the formidable.

What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is that it does

away with the gnawings of petty sensations. Too far gone to be sensible

to hope and desire I was spared the inferior pangs of elation and

impatience. Hours with her or hours without her were all alike, all in

her possession! But still there are shades and I will admit that the

hours of that morning were perhaps a little more difficult to get through

than the others. I had sent word of my arrival of course. I had written

a note. I had rung the bell. Therese had appeared herself in her brown

garb and as monachal as ever. I had said to her:

“Have this sent off at once.”

She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I was looking up at her

from my desk), and at last took it up with an effort of sanctimonious

repugnance. But she remained with it in her hand looking at me as though

she were piously gloating over something she could read in my face.

“Oh, that Rita, that Rita,” she murmured. “And you, too! Why are you

trying, you, too, like the others, to stand between her and the mercy of

God? What’s the good of all this to you? And you such a nice, dear,

young gentleman. For no earthly good only making all the kind saints in

heaven angry, and our mother ashamed in her place amongst the blessed.”

“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “_vous êtes folle_.”

I believed she was crazy. She was cunning, too. I added an imperious:

“_Allez_,” and with a strange docility she glided out without another

word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till eleven

o’clock.

The hour struck at last. If I could have plunged into a light wave and

been transported instantaneously to Doña Rita’s door it would no doubt

have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this

was impossible I elected to walk from end to end of that long way. My

emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they

were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their

unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a record of one’s physical

sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and

contradictions. Hardly touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a

sinking heart and an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret

faintness, and yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference to

it all, I did reach the door which was frightfully like any other

commonplace door, but at the same time had a fateful character: a few

planks put together—and an awful symbol; not to be approached without

awe—and yet coming open in the ordinary way to the ring of the bell.

It came open. Oh, yes, very much as usual. But in the ordinary course

of events the first sight in the hall should have been the back of the

ubiquitous, busy, silent maid hurrying off and already distant. But not

at all! She actually waited for me to enter. I was extremely taken

aback and I believe spoke to her for the first time in my life.

“_Bonjour_, Rose.”

She dropped her dark eyelids over those eyes that ought to have been

lustrous but were not, as if somebody had breathed on them the first

thing in the morning. She was a girl without smiles. She shut the door

after me, and not only did that but in the incredible idleness of that

morning she, who had never a moment to spare, started helping me off with

my overcoat. It was positively embarrassing from its novelty. While

busying herself with those trifles she murmured without any marked

intention:

“Captain Blunt is with Madame.”

This didn’t exactly surprise me. I knew he had come up to town; I only

happened to have forgotten his existence for the moment. I looked at the

girl also without any particular intention. But she arrested my movement

towards the dining-room door by a low, hurried, if perfectly unemotional

appeal:

“Monsieur George!”

That of course was not my name. It served me then as it will serve for

this story. In all sorts of strange places I was alluded to as “that

young gentleman they call Monsieur George.” Orders came from “Monsieur

George” to men who nodded knowingly. Events pivoted about “Monsieur

George.” I haven’t the slightest doubt that in the dark and tortuous

streets of the old Town there were fingers pointed at my back: there goes

“Monsieur George.” I had been introduced discreetly to several

considerable persons as “Monsieur George.” I had learned to answer to

the name quite naturally; and to simplify matters I was also “Monsieur

George” in the street of the Consuls and in the Villa on the Prado. I

verily believe that at that time I had the feeling that the name of

George really belonged to me. I waited for what the girl had to say. I

had to wait some time, though during that silence she gave no sign of

distress or agitation. It was for her obviously a moment of reflection.

Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I

looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her slight,

unattractive, and dependable person.

“Well,” I said at last, rather amused by this mental hesitation. I never

took it for anything else. I was sure it was not distrust. She

appreciated men and things and events solely in relation to Doña Rita’s

welfare and safety. And as to that I believed myself above suspicion.

At last she spoke.

“Madame is not happy.” This information was given to me not emotionally

but as it were officially. It hadn’t even a tone of warning. A mere

statement. Without waiting to see the effect she opened the dining-room

door, not to announce my name in the usual way but to go in and shut it

behind her. In that short moment I heard no voices inside. Not a sound

reached me while the door remained shut; but in a few seconds it came

open again and Rose stood aside to let me pass.

Then I heard something: Doña Rita’s voice raised a little on an impatient

note (a very, very rare thing) finishing some phrase of protest with the

words “ . . . Of no consequence.”

I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had that kind

of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid’s statement

occupied all my mind. “_Madame n’est pas heureuse_.” It had a dreadful

precision . . . “Not happy . . .” This unhappiness had almost a concrete

form—something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited, and

generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of

unhappiness? I was still naïve enough to associate them with tears,

lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial

distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn’t know what I should

see; but in what I did see there was nothing startling, at any rate from

that nursery point of view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.

With immense relief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain Blunt

warming his back at the more distant of the two fireplaces; and as to

Doña Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her attitude either, except

perhaps that her hair was all loose about her shoulders. I hadn’t the

slightest doubt they had been riding together that morning, but she, with

her impatience of all costume (and yet she could dress herself admirably

and wore her dresses triumphantly), had divested herself of her riding

habit and sat cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young

savage chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the

normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette ascended

ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.

“How are you,” was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual smile

which would have been more amiable if his teeth hadn’t been, just then,

clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his voice through that

shining barrier I could never understand. Doña Rita tapped the couch

engagingly by her side but I sat down instead in the armchair nearly

opposite her, which, I imagine, must have been just vacated by Blunt.

She inquired with that particular gleam of the eyes in which there was

something immemorial and gay:

“Well?”

“Perfect success.”

“I could hug you.”

At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the intense

whisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my very heart; not

as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion vibrating there with an

awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left my heart heavy.

“Oh, yes, for joy,” I said bitterly but very low; “for your Royalist,

Legitimist, joy.” Then with that trick of very precise politeness which

I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:

“I don’t want to be embraced—for the King.”

And I might have stopped there. But I didn’t. With a perversity which

should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk

with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: “For the sake of an old cast-off

glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled,

flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has

missed the fire.”

She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips,

slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to

fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women.

Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the

finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very

source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.

Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a

little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the detachment of a

man who does not want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose he

could have heard. He was too far away, our voices were too contained.

Moreover, he didn’t want to hear. There could be no doubt about it; but

she addressed him unexpectedly.

“As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in

getting myself, I won’t say understood, but simply believed.”

No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice.

He had to hear. After a moment he altered his position as it were

reluctantly, to answer her.

“That’s a difficulty that women generally have.”

“Yet I have always spoken the truth.”

“All women speak the truth,” said Blunt imperturbably. And this annoyed

her.

“Where are the men I have deceived?” she cried.

“Yes, where?” said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been

ready to go out and look for them outside.

“No! But show me one. I say—where is he?”

He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders

slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer to the couch, and looked down

on her with an expression of amused courtesy.

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be found I

am certain he would turn out a very stupid person. You can’t be expected

to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. To expect that

would be too much, even from you who know how to work wonders at such

little cost to yourself.”

“To myself,” she repeated in a loud tone.

“Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it.”

“Such little cost!” she exclaimed under her breath.

“I mean to your person.”

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then

added very low: “This body.”

“Well, it is you,” said Blunt with visibly contained irritation. “You

don’t pretend it’s somebody else’s. It can’t be. You haven’t borrowed

it. . . . It fits you too well,” he ended between his teeth.

“You take pleasure in tormenting yourself,” she remonstrated, suddenly

placated; “and I would be sorry for you if I didn’t think it’s the mere

revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging your pride at my

expense. As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders

at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me morally. Do you hear?

Killed.”

“Oh, you are not dead yet,” he muttered,

“No,” she said with gentle patience. “There is still some feeling left

in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, you may be

certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab.”

He remained silent for a while and then with a polite smile and a

movement of the head in my direction he warned her.

“Our audience will get bored.”

“I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here, and that he has been

breathing a very different atmosphere from what he gets in this room.

Don’t you find this room extremely confined?” she asked me.

The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt oppressed at that

moment. This mysterious quarrel between those two people, revealing

something more close in their intercourse than I had ever before

suspected, made me so profoundly unhappy that I didn’t even attempt to

answer. And she continued:

“More space. More air. Give me air, air.” She seized the embroidered

edges of her blue robe under her white throat and made as if to tear them

apart, to fling it open on her breast, recklessly, before our eyes. We

both remained perfectly still. Her hands dropped nervelessly by her

side. “I envy you, Monsieur George. If I am to go under I should prefer

to be drowned in the sea with the wind on my face. What luck, to feel

nothing less than all the world closing over one’s head!”

A short silence ensued before Mr. Blunt’s drawing-room voice was heard

with playful familiarity.

“I have often asked myself whether you weren’t really a very ambitious

person, Doña Rita.”

“And I ask myself whether you have any heart.” She was looking straight

at him and he gratified her with the usual cold white flash of his even

teeth before he answered.

“Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But why do

it so publicly? I mean it. One single, detached presence is enough to

make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he returns to those regions

of space and air—from which he came.”

His particular trick of speaking of any third person as of a lay figure

was exasperating. Yet at the moment I did not know how to resent it,

but, in any case, Doña Rita would not have given me time. Without a

moment’s hesitation she cried out:

“I only wish he could take me out there with him.”

For a moment Mr. Blunt’s face became as still as a mask and then instead

of an angry it assumed an indulgent expression. As to me I had a rapid

vision of Dominic’s astonishment, awe, and sarcasm which was always as

tolerant as it is possible for sarcasm to be. But what a charming,

gentle, gay, and fearless companion she would have made! I believed in

her fearlessness in any adventure that would interest her. It would be a

new occasion for me, a new viewpoint for that faculty of admiration she

had awakened in me at sight—at first sight—before she opened her

lips—before she ever turned her eyes on me. She would have to wear some

sort of sailor costume, a blue woollen shirt open at the throat. . . .

Dominic’s hooded cloak would envelop her amply, and her face under the

black hood would have a luminous quality, adolescent charm, and an

enigmatic expression. The confined space of the little vessel’s

quarterdeck would lend itself to her cross-legged attitudes, and the blue

sea would balance gently her characteristic immobility that seemed to

hide thoughts as old and profound as itself. As restless, too—perhaps.

But the picture I had in my eye, coloured and simple like an illustration

to a nursery-book tale of two venturesome children’s escapade, was what

fascinated me most. Indeed I felt that we two were like children under

the gaze of a man of the world—who lived by his sword. And I said

recklessly:

“Yes, you ought to come along with us for a trip. You would see a lot of

things for yourself.”

Mr. Blunt’s expression had grown even more indulgent if that were

possible. Yet there was something ineradicably ambiguous about that man.

I did not like the indefinable tone in which he observed:

“You are perfectly reckless in what you say, Doña Rita. It has become a

habit with you of late.”

“While with you reserve is a second nature, Don Juan.”

This was uttered with the gentlest, almost tender, irony. Mr. Blunt

waited a while before he said:

“Certainly. . . . Would you have liked me to be otherwise?”

She extended her hand to him on a sudden impulse.

“Forgive me! I may have been unjust, and you may only have been loyal.

The falseness is not in us. The fault is in life itself, I suppose. I

have been always frank with you.”

“And I obedient,” he said, bowing low over her hand. He turned away,

paused to look at me for some time and finally gave me the correct sort

of nod. But he said nothing and went out, or rather lounged out with his

worldly manner of perfect ease under all conceivable circumstances. With

her head lowered Doña Rita watched him till he actually shut the door

behind him. I was facing her and only heard the door close.

“Don’t stare at me,” were the first words she said.

It was difficult to obey that request. I didn’t know exactly where to

look, while I sat facing her. So I got up, vaguely full of goodwill,

prepared even to move off as far as the window, when she commanded:

“Don’t turn your back on me.”

I chose to understand it symbolically.

“You know very well I could never do that. I couldn’t. Not even if I

wanted to.” And I added: “It’s too late now.”

“Well, then, sit down. Sit down on this couch.”

I sat down on the couch. Unwillingly? Yes. I was at that stage when

all her words, all her gestures, all her silences were a heavy trial to

me, put a stress on my resolution, on that fidelity to myself and to her

which lay like a leaden weight on my untried heart. But I didn’t sit

down very far away from her, though that soft and billowy couch was big

enough, God knows! No, not very far from her. Self-control, dignity,

hopelessness itself, have their limits. The halo of her tawny hair

stirred as I let myself drop by her side. Whereupon she flung one arm

round my neck, leaned her temple against my shoulder and began to sob;

but that I could only guess from her slight, convulsive movements because

in our relative positions I could only see the mass of her tawny hair

brushed back, yet with a halo of escaped hair which as I bent my head

over her tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner.

We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration to a tale, scared

by their adventure. But not for long. As I instinctively, yet timidly,

sought for her other hand I felt a tear strike the back of mine, big and

heavy as if fallen from a great height. It was too much for me. I must

have given a nervous start. At once I heard a murmur: “You had better go

away now.”

I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight of her head, from

this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable misery, and had the absurd

impression of leaving her suspended in the air. And I moved away on

tiptoe.

Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found my way out of the

room but really I saw nothing, till in the hall the maid appeared by

enchantment before me holding up my overcoat. I let her help me into it.

And then (again as if by enchantment) she had my hat in her hand.

“No. Madame isn’t happy,” I whispered to her distractedly.

She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I was putting it on my

head I heard an austere whisper:

“Madame should listen to her heart.”

Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this unexpected,

dispassionate rustle of words. I had to repress a shudder, and as coldly

as herself I murmured:

“She has done that once too often.”

Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly the note of

scorn in her indulgent compassion.

“Oh, that! . . . Madame is like a child.” It was impossible to get the

bearing of that utterance from that girl who, as Doña Rita herself had

told me, was the most taciturn of human beings; and yet of all human

beings the one nearest to herself. I seized her head in my hands and

turning up her face I looked straight down into her black eyes which

should have been lustrous. Like a piece of glass breathed upon they

reflected no light, revealed no depths, and under my ardent gaze remained

tarnished, misty, unconscious.

“Will Monsieur kindly let me go. Monsieur shouldn’t play the child,

either.” (I let her go.) “Madame could have the world at her feet.

Indeed she has it there only she doesn’t care for it.”

How talkative she was, this maid with unsealed lips! For some reason or

other this last statement of hers brought me immense comfort.

“Yes?” I whispered breathlessly.

“Yes! But in that case what’s the use of living in fear and torment?”

she went on, revealing a little more of herself to my astonishment. She

opened the door for me and added:

“Those that don’t care to stoop ought at least make themselves happy.”

I turned in the very doorway: “There is something which prevents that?” I

suggested.

“To be sure there is. _Bonjour_, Monsieur.”

PART FOUR

CHAPTER I

“Such a charming lady in a grey silk dress and a hand as white as snow.

She looked at me through such funny glasses on the end of a long handle.

A very great lady but her voice was as kind as the voice of a saint. I

have never seen anything like that. She made me feel so timid.”

The voice uttering these words was the voice of Therese and I looked at

her from a bed draped heavily in brown silk curtains fantastically looped

up from ceiling to floor. The glow of a sunshiny day was toned down by

closed jalousies to a mere transparency of darkness. In this thin medium

Therese’s form appeared flat, without detail, as if cut out of black

paper. It glided towards the window and with a click and a scrape let in

the full flood of light which smote my aching eyeballs painfully.

In truth all that night had been the abomination of desolation to me.

After wrestling with my thoughts, if the acute consciousness of a woman’s

existence may be called a thought, I had apparently dropped off to sleep

only to go on wrestling with a nightmare, a senseless and terrifying

dream of being in bonds which, even after waking, made me feel powerless

in all my limbs. I lay still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of

existence, unable to lift an arm, and wondering why I was not at sea, how

long I had slept, how long Therese had been talking before her voice had

reached me in that purgatory of hopeless longing and unanswerable

questions to which I was condemned.

It was Therese’s habit to begin talking directly she entered the room

with the tray of morning coffee. This was her method for waking me up.

I generally regained the consciousness of the external world on some

pious phrase asserting the spiritual comfort of early mass, or on angry

lamentations about the unconscionable rapacity of the dealers in fish and

vegetables; for after mass it was Therese’s practice to do the marketing

for the house. As a matter of fact the necessity of having to pay, to

actually give money to people, infuriated the pious Therese. But the

matter of this morning’s speech was so extraordinary that it might have

been the prolongation of a nightmare: a man in bonds having to listen to

weird and unaccountable speeches against which, he doesn’t know why, his

very soul revolts.

In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was convinced that I

was no longer dreaming. I watched Therese coming away from the window

with that helpless dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to

feel. For in such a situation even the absurd may appear ominous. She

came up close to the bed and folding her hands meekly in front of her

turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“If I had been her daughter she couldn’t have spoken more softly to me,”

she said sentimentally.

I made a great effort to speak.

“Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.”

“She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely. I was struck with

veneration for her white hair but her face, believe me, my dear young

Monsieur, has not so many wrinkles as mine.”

She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as if I could help her

wrinkles, then she sighed.

“God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?” she digressed in a tone of

great humility. “We shall have glorious faces in Paradise. But meantime

God has permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.”

“Are you going to keep on like this much longer?” I fairly shouted at

her. “What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a carriage. Not a

fiacre. I can tell a fiacre. In a little carriage shut in with glass

all in front. I suppose she is very rich. The carriage was very shiny

outside and all beautiful grey stuff inside. I opened the door to her

myself. She got out slowly like a queen. I was struck all of a heap.

Such a shiny beautiful little carriage. There were blue silk tassels

inside, beautiful silk tassels.”

Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by a brougham, though she

didn’t know the name for it. Of all the town she knew nothing but the

streets which led to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer

classes and the humble quarter around, where she did her marketing.

Besides, she was accustomed to glide along the walls with her eyes cast

down; for her natural boldness would never show itself through that

nun-like mien except when bargaining, if only on a matter of threepence.

Such a turn-out had never been presented to her notice before. The

traffic in the street of the Consuls was mostly pedestrian and far from

fashionable. And anyhow Therese never looked out of the window. She

lurked in the depths of the house like some kind of spider that shuns

attention. She used to dart at one from some dark recesses which I never

explored.

Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or

other. With her it was very difficult to distinguish between craft and

innocence.

“Do you mean to say,” I asked suspiciously, “that an old lady wants to

hire an apartment here? I hope you told her there was no room, because,

you know, this house is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.”

“Don’t make me angry, my dear young Monsieur. I have been to confession

this morning. Aren’t you comfortable? Isn’t the house appointed richly

enough for anybody?”

That girl with a peasant-nun’s face had never seen the inside of a house

other than some half-ruined _caserio_ in her native hills.

I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or comfort

but of “convenances.” She pricked up her ears at that word which

probably she had never heard before; but with woman’s uncanny intuition I

believe she understood perfectly what I meant. Her air of saintly

patience became so pronounced that with my own poor intuition I perceived

that she was raging at me inwardly. Her weather-tanned complexion,

already affected by her confined life, took on an extraordinary clayey

aspect which reminded me of a strange head painted by El Greco which my

friend Prax had hung on one of his walls and used to rail at; yet not

without a certain respect.

Therese, with her hands still meekly folded about her waist, had mastered

the feelings of anger so unbecoming to a person whose sins had been

absolved only about three hours before, and asked me with an insinuating

softness whether she wasn’t an honest girl enough to look after any old

lady belonging to a world which after all was sinful. She reminded me

that she had kept house ever since she was “so high” for her uncle the

priest: a man well-known for his saintliness in a large district

extending even beyond Pampeluna. The character of a house depended upon

the person who ruled it. She didn’t know what impenitent wretches had

been breathing within these walls in the time of that godless and wicked

man who had planted every seed of perdition in “our Rita’s” ill-disposed

heart. But he was dead and she, Therese, knew for certain that

wickedness perished utterly, because of God’s anger (_la colère du bon

Dieu_). She would have no hesitation in receiving a bishop, if need be,

since “our, Rita,” with her poor, wretched, unbelieving heart, had

nothing more to do with the house.

All this came out of her like an unctuous trickle of some acrid oil. The

low, voluble delivery was enough by itself to compel my attention.

“You think you know your sister’s heart,” I asked.

She made small eyes at me to discover if I was angry. She seemed to have

an invincible faith in the virtuous dispositions of young men. And as I

had spoken in measured tones and hadn’t got red in the face she let

herself go.

“Black, my dear young Monsieur. Black. I always knew it. Uncle, poor

saintly man, was too holy to take notice of anything. He was too busy

with his thoughts to listen to anything I had to say to him. For

instance as to her shamelessness. She was always ready to run half naked

about the hills. . . ”

“Yes. After your goats. All day long. Why didn’t you mend her frocks?”

“Oh, you know about the goats. My dear young Monsieur, I could never

tell when she would fling over her pretended sweetness and put her tongue

out at me. Did she tell you about a boy, the son of pious and rich

parents, whom she tried to lead astray into the wildness of thoughts like

her own, till the poor dear child drove her off because she outraged his

modesty? I saw him often with his parents at Sunday mass. The grace of

God preserved him and made him quite a gentleman in Paris. Perhaps it

will touch Rita’s heart, too, some day. But she was awful then. When I

wouldn’t listen to her complaints she would say: ‘All right, sister, I

would just as soon go clothed in rain and wind.’ And such a bag of

bones, too, like the picture of a devil’s imp. Ah, my dear young

Monsieur, you don’t know how wicked her heart is. You aren’t bad enough

for that yourself. I don’t believe you are evil at all in your innocent

little heart. I never heard you jeer at holy things. You are only

thoughtless. For instance, I have never seen you make the sign of the

cross in the morning. Why don’t you make a practice of crossing yourself

directly you open your eyes. It’s a very good thing. It keeps Satan off

for the day.”

She proffered that advice in a most matter-of-fact tone as if it were a

precaution against a cold, compressed her lips, then returning to her

fixed idea, “But the house is mine,” she insisted very quietly with an

accent which made me feel that Satan himself would never manage to tear

it out of her hands.

“And so I told the great lady in grey. I told her that my sister had

given it to me and that surely God would not let her take it away again.”

“You told that grey-headed lady, an utter stranger! You are getting more

crazy every day. You have neither good sense nor good feeling,

Mademoiselle Therese, let me tell you. Do you talk about your sister to

the butcher and the greengrocer, too? A downright savage would have more

restraint. What’s your object? What do you expect from it? What

pleasure do you get from it? Do you think you please God by abusing your

sister? What do you think you are?”

“A poor lone girl amongst a lot of wicked people. Do you think I wanted

to go forth amongst those abominations? it’s that poor sinful Rita that

wouldn’t let me be where I was, serving a holy man, next door to a

church, and sure of my share of Paradise. I simply obeyed my uncle.

It’s he who told me to go forth and attempt to save her soul, bring her

back to us, to a virtuous life. But what would be the good of that? She

is given over to worldly, carnal thoughts. Of course we are a good

family and my uncle is a great man in the country, but where is the

reputable farmer or God-fearing man of that kind that would dare to bring

such a girl into his house to his mother and sisters. No, let her give

her ill-gotten wealth up to the deserving and devote the rest of her life

to repentance.”

She uttered these righteous reflections and presented this programme for

the salvation of her sister’s soul in a reasonable convinced tone which

was enough to give goose flesh to one all over.

“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “you are nothing less than a monster.”

She received that true expression of my opinion as though I had given her

a sweet of a particularly delicious kind. She liked to be abused. It

pleased her to be called names. I did let her have that satisfaction to

her heart’s content. At last I stopped because I could do no more,

unless I got out of bed to beat her. I have a vague notion that she

would have liked that, too, but I didn’t try. After I had stopped she

waited a little before she raised her downcast eyes.

“You are a dear, ignorant, flighty young gentleman,” she said. “Nobody

can tell what a cross my sister is to me except the good priest in the

church where I go every day.”

“And the mysterious lady in grey,” I suggested sarcastically.

“Such a person might have guessed it,” answered Therese, seriously, “but

I told her nothing except that this house had been given me in full

property by our Rita. And I wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t spoken

to me of my sister first. I can’t tell too many people about that. One

can’t trust Rita. I know she doesn’t fear God but perhaps human respect

may keep her from taking this house back from me. If she doesn’t want me

to talk about her to people why doesn’t she give me a properly stamped

piece of paper for it?”

She said all this rapidly in one breath and at the end had a sort of

anxious gasp which gave me the opportunity to voice my surprise. It was

immense.

“That lady, the strange lady, spoke to you of your sister first!” I

cried.

“The lady asked me, after she had been in a little time, whether really

this house belonged to Madame de Lastaola. She had been so sweet and

kind and condescending that I did not mind humiliating my spirit before

such a good Christian. I told her that I didn’t know how the poor sinner

in her mad blindness called herself, but that this house had been given

to me truly enough by my sister. She raised her eyebrows at that but she

looked at me at the same time so kindly, as much as to say, ‘Don’t trust

much to that, my dear girl,’ that I couldn’t help taking up her hand,

soft as down, and kissing it. She took it away pretty quick but she was

not offended. But she only said, ‘That’s very generous on your sister’s

part,’ in a way that made me run cold all over. I suppose all the world

knows our Rita for a shameless girl. It was then that the lady took up

those glasses on a long gold handle and looked at me through them till I

felt very much abashed. She said to me, ‘There is nothing to be unhappy

about. Madame de Lastaola is a very remarkable person who has done many

surprising things. She is not to be judged like other people and as far

as I know she has never wronged a single human being. . . .’ That put

heart into me, I can tell you; and the lady told me then not to disturb

her son. She would wait till he woke up. She knew he was a bad sleeper.

I said to her: ‘Why, I can hear the dear sweet gentleman this moment

having his bath in the fencing-room,’ and I took her into the studio.

They are there now and they are going to have their lunch together at

twelve o’clock.”

“Why on earth didn’t you tell me at first that the lady was Mrs. Blunt?”

“Didn’t I? I thought I did,” she said innocently. I felt a sudden

desire to get out of that house, to fly from the reinforced Blunt element

which was to me so oppressive.

“I want to get up and dress, Mademoiselle Therese,” I said.

She gave a slight start and without looking at me again glided out of the

room, the many folds of her brown skirt remaining undisturbed as she

moved.

I looked at my watch; it was ten o’clock. Therese had been late with my

coffee. The delay was clearly caused by the unexpected arrival of Mr.

Blunt’s mother, which might or might not have been expected by her son.

The existence of those Blunts made me feel uncomfortable in a peculiar

way as though they had been the denizens of another planet with a subtly

different point of view and something in the intelligence which was bound

to remain unknown to me. It caused in me a feeling of inferiority which

I intensely disliked. This did not arise from the actual fact that those

people originated in another continent. I had met Americans before. And

the Blunts were Americans. But so little! That was the trouble.

Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as languages, tones, and

manners went. But you could not have mistaken him for one. . . . Why?

You couldn’t tell. It was something indefinite. It occurred to me while

I was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of my neck, that I could

not meet J. K. Blunt on equal terms in any relation of life except

perhaps arms in hand, and in preference with pistols, which are less

intimate, acting at a distance—but arms of some sort. For physically his

life, which could be taken away from him, was exactly like mine, held on

the same terms and of the same vanishing quality.

I would have smiled at my absurdity if all, even the most intimate,

vestige of gaiety had not been crushed out of my heart by the intolerable

weight of my love for Rita. It crushed, it overshadowed, too, it was

immense. If there were any smiles in the world (which I didn’t believe)

I could not have seen them. Love for Rita . . . if it was love, I asked

myself despairingly, while I brushed my hair before a glass. It did not

seem to have any sort of beginning as far as I could remember. A thing

the origin of which you cannot trace cannot be seriously considered. It

is an illusion. Or perhaps mine was a physical state, some sort of

disease akin to melancholia which is a form of insanity? The only

moments of relief I could remember were when she and I would start

squabbling like two passionate infants in a nursery, over anything under

heaven, over a phrase, a word sometimes, in the great light of the glass

rotunda, disregarding the quiet entrances and exits of the ever-active

Rose, in great bursts of voices and peals of laughter. . . .

I felt tears come into my eyes at the memory of her laughter, the true

memory of the senses almost more penetrating than the reality itself. It

haunted me. All that appertained to her haunted me with the same awful

intimacy, her whole form in the familiar pose, her very substance in its

colour and texture, her eyes, her lips, the gleam of her teeth, the tawny

mist of her hair, the smoothness of her forehead, the faint scent that

she used, the very shape, feel, and warmth of her high-heeled slipper

that would sometimes in the heat of the discussion drop on the floor with

a crash, and which I would (always in the heat of the discussion) pick up

and toss back on the couch without ceasing to argue. And besides being

haunted by what was Rita on earth I was haunted also by her waywardness,

her gentleness and her flame, by that which the high gods called Rita

when speaking of her amongst themselves. Oh, yes, certainly I was

haunted by her but so was her sister Therese—who was crazy. It proved

nothing. As to her tears, since I had not caused them, they only aroused

my indignation. To put her head on my shoulder, to weep these strange

tears, was nothing short of an outrageous liberty. It was a mere

emotional trick. She would have just as soon leaned her head against the

over-mantel of one of those tall, red granite chimney-pieces in order to

weep comfortably. And then when she had no longer any need of support

she dispensed with it by simply telling me to go away. How convenient!

The request had sounded pathetic, almost sacredly so, but then it might

have been the exhibition of the coolest possible impudence. With her one

could not tell. Sorrow, indifference, tears, smiles, all with her seemed

to have a hidden meaning. Nothing could be trusted. . . Heavens! Am I

as crazy as Therese I asked myself with a passing chill of fear, while

occupied in equalizing the ends of my neck-tie.

I felt suddenly that “this sort of thing” would kill me. The definition

of the cause was vague, but the thought itself was no mere morbid

artificiality of sentiment but a genuine conviction. “That sort of

thing” was what I would have to die from. It wouldn’t be from the

innumerable doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also deadly. It

wouldn’t be from a stab—a kiss would kill me as surely. It would not be

from a frown or from any particular word or any particular act—but from

having to bear them all, together and in succession—from having to live

with “that sort of thing.” About the time I finished with my neck-tie I

had done with life too. I absolutely did not care because I couldn’t

tell whether, mentally and physically, from the roots of my hair to the

soles of my feet—whether I was more weary or unhappy.

And now my toilet was finished, my occupation was gone. An immense

distress descended upon me. It has been observed that the routine of

daily life, that arbitrary system of trifles, is a great moral support.

But my toilet was finished, I had nothing more to do of those things

consecrated by usage and which leave you no option. The exercise of any

kind of volition by a man whose consciousness is reduced to the sensation

that he is being killed by “that sort of thing” cannot be anything but

mere trifling with death, an insincere pose before himself. I wasn’t

capable of it. It was then that I discovered that being killed by “that

sort of thing,” I mean the absolute conviction of it, was, so to speak,

nothing in itself. The horrible part was the waiting. That was the

cruelty, the tragedy, the bitterness of it. “Why the devil don’t I drop

dead now?” I asked myself peevishly, taking a clean handkerchief out of

the drawer and stuffing it in my pocket.

This was absolutely the last thing, the last ceremony of an imperative

rite. I was abandoned to myself now and it was terrible. Generally I

used to go out, walk down to the port, take a look at the craft I loved

with a sentiment that was extremely complex, being mixed up with the

image of a woman; perhaps go on board, not because there was anything for

me to do there but just for nothing, for happiness, simply as a man will

sit contented in the companionship of the beloved object. For lunch I

had the choice of two places, one Bohemian, the other select, even

aristocratic, where I had still my reserved table in the _petit salon_,

up the white staircase. In both places I had friends who treated my

erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with respect, in

the other with a certain amused tolerance. I owed this tolerance to the

most careless, the most confirmed of those Bohemians (his beard had

streaks of grey amongst its many other tints) who, once bringing his

heavy hand down on my shoulder, took my defence against the charge of

being disloyal and even foreign to that milieu of earnest visions taking

beautiful and revolutionary shapes in the smoke of pipes, in the jingle

of glasses.

“That fellow (_ce garçon_) is a primitive nature, but he may be an artist

in a sense. He has broken away from his conventions. He is trying to

put a special vibration and his own notion of colour into his life; and

perhaps even to give it a modelling according to his own ideas. And for

all you know he may be on the track of a masterpiece; but observe: if it

happens to be one nobody will see it. It can be only for himself. And

even he won’t be able to see it in its completeness except on his

death-bed. There is something fine in that.”

I had blushed with pleasure; such fine ideas had never entered my head.

But there was something fine. . . . How far all this seemed! How mute

and how still! What a phantom he was, that man with a beard of at least

seven tones of brown. And those shades of the other kind such as

Baptiste with the shaven diplomatic face, the _maître d’hôtel_ in charge

of the _petit salon_, taking my hat and stick from me with a deferential

remark: “Monsieur is not very often seen nowadays.” And those other

well-groomed heads raised and nodding at my passage—“_Bonjour_.”

“_Bonjour_”—following me with interested eyes; these young X.s and Z.s,

low-toned, markedly discreet, lounging up to my table on their way out

with murmurs: “Are you well?”—“Will one see you anywhere this

evening?”—not from curiosity, God forbid, but just from friendliness; and

passing on almost without waiting for an answer. What had I to do with

them, this elegant dust, these moulds of provincial fashion?

I also often lunched with Doña Rita without invitation. But that was now

unthinkable. What had I to do with a woman who allowed somebody else to

make her cry and then with an amazing lack of good feeling did her

offensive weeping on my shoulder? Obviously I could have nothing to do

with her. My five minutes’ meditation in the middle of the bedroom came

to an end without even a sigh. The dead don’t sigh, and for all

practical purposes I was that, except for the final consummation, the

growing cold, the _rigor mortis_—that blessed state! With measured steps

I crossed the landing to my sitting-room.

CHAPTER II

The windows of that room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as

usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was

soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly

quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would

imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very

solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling

of security and peace which ought to have been associated with it. It

is, I believe, generally admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest.

But I wasn’t at rest. What was wrong with that silence? There was

something incongruous in that peace. What was it that had got into that

stillness? Suddenly I remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt.

Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother my head

about it? H’m—the Blunt atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt vibration

stealing through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost more

solid stillness. Nothing to me, of course—the movements of Mme. Blunt,

_mère_. It was maternal affection which had brought her south by either

the evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the ravages of

that insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia, for a cavalry officer

perpetually on outpost duty, a real godsend, so to speak; but on leave a

truly devilish condition to be in.

The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it was

followed by a feeling of satisfaction that I, at any rate, was not

suffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In the end.

Escape into a nightmare. Wouldn’t he revel in that if he could! But

that wasn’t for him. He had to toss about open-eyed all night and get up

weary, weary. But oh, wasn’t I weary, too, waiting for a sleep without

dreams.

I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face to the

window and, I declare, not knowing what I was looking at across the

road—the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers and

forests or only the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been thinking,

apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity that when I saw him enter

the room it didn’t really make much difference. When I turned about the

door behind him was already shut. He advanced towards me, correct,

supple, hollow-eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume ready to go out

except for the old shooting jacket which he must have affectioned

particularly, for he never lost any time in getting into it at every

opportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had gone

inconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was ragged at the

elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had been made in London

by a celebrated tailor, by a distinguished specialist. Blunt came

towards me in all the elegance of his slimness and affirming in every

line of his face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and the

careless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the inexpressible

superiority, the unconscious, the unmarked, the not-to-be-described, and

even not-to-be-caught, superiority of the naturally born and the

perfectly finished man of the world, over the simple young man. He was

smiling, easy, correct, perfectly delightful, fit to kill.

He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement, to lunch with him

and his mother in about an hour’s time. He did it in a most _dégagé_

tone. His mother had given him a surprise. The completest . . . The

foundation of his mother’s psychology was her delightful unexpectedness.

She could never let things be (this in a peculiar tone which he checked

at once) and he really would take it very kindly of me if I came to break

the tête-à-tête for a while (that is if I had no other engagement. Flash

of teeth). His mother was exquisitely and tenderly absurd. She had

taken it into her head that his health was endangered in some way. And

when she took anything into her head . . . Perhaps I might find something

to say which would reassure her. His mother had two long conversations

with Mills on his passage through Paris and had heard of me (I knew how

that thick man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and his

mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially

humorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious to

have me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped

I wouldn’t mind if she treated me a little as an “interesting young man.”

His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of the

spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas.

That again got overlaid by the _sans-façon_ of a _grande dame_ of the

Second Empire.

I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a perfectly just

intonation, because I really didn’t care what I did. I only wondered

vaguely why that fellow required all the air in the room for himself.

There did not seem enough left to go down my throat. I didn’t say that I

would come with pleasure or that I would be delighted, but I said that I

would come. He seemed to forget his tongue in his head, put his hands in

his pockets and moved about vaguely. “I am a little nervous this

morning,” he said in French, stopping short and looking me straight in

the eyes. His own were deep sunk, dark, fatal. I asked with some

malice, that no one could have detected in my intonation, “How’s that

sleeplessness?”

He muttered through his teeth, “_Mal_. _Je ne dors plus_.” He moved off

to stand at the window with his back to the room. I sat down on a sofa

that was there and put my feet up, and silence took possession of the

room.

“Isn’t this street ridiculous?” said Blunt suddenly, and crossing the

room rapidly waved his hand to me, “_A bientôt donc_,” and was gone. He

had seared himself into my mind. I did not understand him nor his mother

then; which made them more impressive; but I have discovered since that

those two figures required no mystery to make them memorable. Of course

it isn’t every day that one meets a mother that lives by her wits and a

son that lives by his sword, but there was a perfect finish about their

ambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in a life-time. I

shall never forget that grey dress with ample skirts and long corsage yet

with infinite style, the ancient as if ghostly beauty of outlines, the

black lace, the silver hair, the harmonious, restrained movements of

those white, soft hands like the hands of a queen—or an abbess; and in

the general fresh effect of her person the brilliant eyes like two stars

with the calm reposeful way they had of moving on and off one, as if

nothing in the world had the right to veil itself before their once

sovereign beauty. Captain Blunt with smiling formality introduced me by

name, adding with a certain relaxation of the formal tone the comment:

“The Monsieur George! whose fame you tell me has reached even Paris.”

Mrs. Blunt’s reception of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of the

admirably corseted figure, was most friendly, approaching the limit of

half-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding in her a

captured ideal. No common experience! But I didn’t care. It was very

lucky perhaps for me that in a way I was like a very sick man who has yet

preserved all his lucidity. I was not even wondering to myself at what

on earth I was doing there. She breathed out: “_Comme c’est

romantique_,” at large to the dusty studio as it were; then pointing to a

chair at her right hand, and bending slightly towards me she said:

“I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in more than one royalist

salon.”

I didn’t say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had only an odd

thought that she could not have had such a figure, nothing like it, when

she was seventeen and wore snowy muslin dresses on the family plantation

in South Carolina, in pre-abolition days.

“You won’t mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose heart is still young

elects to call you by it,” she declared.

“Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic,” I assented with a

respectful bow.

She dropped a calm: “Yes—there is nothing like romance while one is

young. So I will call you Monsieur George,” she paused and then added,

“I could never get old,” in a matter-of-fact final tone as one would

remark, “I could never learn to swim,” and I had the presence of mind to

say in a tone to match, “_C’est évident_, Madame.” It was evident. She

couldn’t get old; and across the table her thirty-year-old son who

couldn’t get sleep sat listening with courteous detachment and the

narrowest possible line of white underlining his silky black moustache.

“Your services are immensely appreciated,” she said with an amusing touch

of importance as of a great official lady. “Immensely appreciated by

people in a position to understand the great significance of the Carlist

movement in the South. There it has to combat anarchism, too. I who

have lived through the Commune . . .”

Therese came in with a dish, and for the rest of the lunch the

conversation so well begun drifted amongst the most appalling inanities

of the religious-royalist-legitimist order. The ears of all the Bourbons

in the world must have been burning. Mrs. Blunt seemed to have come into

personal contact with a good many of them and the marvellous insipidity

of her recollections was astonishing to my inexperience. I looked at her

from time to time thinking: She has seen slavery, she has seen the

Commune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil war, the glory of

the Second Empire, the horrors of two sieges; she has been in contact

with marked personalities, with great events, she has lived on her

wealth, on her personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled,

as glossy as ever, unable to get old:—a sort of Phoenix free from the

slightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent amongst those inanities

as if there had been nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste I

asked myself what sort of airy soul she had.

At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small collection of

oranges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she had bought that lot very cheap

and it did not look at all inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. “My

mother can’t stand tobacco smoke. Will you keep her company, _mon cher_,

while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous garden. The brougham

from the hotel will be here very soon.”

He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. Almost directly he

reappeared, visible from head to foot through the glass side of the

studio, pacing up and down the central path of that “ridiculous” garden:

for its elegance and its air of good breeding the most remarkable figure

that I have ever seen before or since. He had changed his coat. Madame

Blunt _mère_ lowered the long-handled glasses through which she had been

contemplating him with an appraising, absorbed expression which had

nothing maternal in it. But what she said to me was:

“You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning with the King.”

She had spoken in French and she had used the expression “_mes transes_”

but for all the rest, intonation, bearing, solemnity, she might have been

referring to one of the Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one of

them looked half as aristocratic as her son.

“I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life is so romantic.”

“Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere are doing that,” she

said very distinctly, “only their case is different. They have their

positions, their families to go back to; but we are different. We are

exiles, except of course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, the

friendships of old standing we have in France. Should my son come out

unscathed he has no one but me and I have no one but him. I have to

think of his life. Mr. Mills (what a distinguished mind that is!) has

reassured me as to my son’s health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn’t

he?”

I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone and she remarked

quaintly, with a certain curtness, “It’s so unnecessary, this worry! The

unfortunate position of an exile has its advantages. At a certain height

of social position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have been

ruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain established height one

can disregard narrow prejudices. You see examples in the aristocracies

of all the countries. A chivalrous young American may offer his life for

a remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We, in

our great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young man of good

connections and distinguished relations must settle down some day,

dispose of his life.”

“No doubt, Madame,” I said, raising my eyes to the figure

outside—“_Américain_, _Catholique et gentilhomme_”—walking up and down

the path with a cigar which he was not smoking. “For myself, I don’t

know anything about those necessities. I have broken away for ever from

those things.”

“Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a golden heart that is.

His sympathies are infinite.”

I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. Blunt, whatever his text

on me might have been: “She lives by her wits.” Was she exercising her

wits on me for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly:

“I really know your son so very little.”

“Oh, _voyons_,” she protested. “I am aware that you are very much

younger, but the similitudes of opinions, origins and perhaps at bottom,

faintly, of character, of chivalrous devotion—no, you must be able to

understand him in a measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and recklessly

brave.”

I listened deferentially to the end yet with every nerve in my body

tingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to have

got into my very hair.

“I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of your son’s bravery.

It’s extremely natural in a man who, in his own words, ‘lives by his

sword.’”

She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection, betrayed

“nerves” like a common mortal, of course very slightly, but in her it

meant more than a blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Her

admirable little foot, marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped the

floor irritably. But even in that display there was something

exquisitely delicate. The very anger in her voice was silvery, as it

were, and more like the petulance of a seventeen-year-old beauty.

“What nonsense! A Blunt doesn’t hire himself.”

“Some princely families,” I said, “were founded by men who have done that

very thing. The great Condottieri, you know.”

It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made me observe that we

were not living in the fifteenth century. She gave me also to understand

with some spirit that there was no question here of founding a family.

Her son was very far from being the first of the name. His importance

lay rather in being the last of a race which had totally perished, she

added in a completely drawing-room tone, “in our Civil War.”

She had mastered her irritation and through the glass side of the room

sent a wistful smile to his address, but I noticed the yet unextinguished

anger in her eyes full of fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. For

she was growing old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly weary,

and perhaps desperate.

CHAPTER III

Without caring much about it I was conscious of sudden illumination. I

said to myself confidently that these two people had been quarrelling all

the morning. I had discovered the secret of my invitation to that lunch.

They did not care to face the strain of some obstinate, inconclusive

discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a serious quarrel. And so

they had agreed that I should be fetched downstairs to create a

diversion. I cannot say I felt annoyed. I didn’t care. My perspicacity

did not please me either. I wished they had left me alone—but nothing

mattered. They must have been in their superiority accustomed to make

use of people, without compunction. From necessity, too. She

especially. She lived by her wits. The silence had grown so marked that

I had at last to raise my eyes; and the first thing I observed was that

Captain Blunt was no longer to be seen in the garden. Must have gone

indoors. Would rejoin us in a moment. Then I would leave mother and son

to themselves.

The next thing I noticed was that a great mellowness had descended upon

the mother of the last of his race. But these terms, irritation,

mellowness, appeared gross when applied to her. It is impossible to give

an idea of the refinement and subtlety of all her transformations. She

smiled faintly at me.

“But all this is beside the point. The real point is that my son, like

all fine natures, is a being of strange contradictions which the trials

of life have not yet reconciled in him. With me it is a little

different. The trials fell mainly to my share—and of course I have lived

longer. And then men are much more complex than women, much more

difficult, too. And you, Monsieur George? Are you complex, with

unexpected resistances and difficulties in your _être intime_—your inner

self? I wonder now . . .”

The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my skin. I disregarded

the symptom. “Madame,” I said, “I have never tried to find out what sort

of being I am.”

“Ah, that’s very wrong. We ought to reflect on what manner of beings we

are. Of course we are all sinners. My John is a sinner like the

others,” she declared further, with a sort of proud tenderness as though

our common lot must have felt honoured and to a certain extent purified

by this condescending recognition.

“You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my John,” she broke

off, leaning her elbow on the table and supporting her head on her old,

impeccably shaped, white fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still

older, lace trimming the short sleeve. “The trouble is that he suffers

from a profound discord between the necessary reactions to life and even

the impulses of nature and the lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say,

of his principles. I assure you that he won’t even let his heart speak

uncontradicted.”

I am sure I don’t know what particular devil looks after the associations

of memory, and I can’t even imagine the shock which it would have been

for Mrs. Blunt to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened

in me the visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven lady’s maid

with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless Rose handing me my hat while

breathing out the enigmatic words: “Madame should listen to her heart.”

A wave from the atmosphere of another house rolled in, overwhelming and

fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through

it as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and

distracting images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty stillness

in my breast.

After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt _mère_ talking with extreme

fluency and I even caught the individual words, but I could not in the

revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of

life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its

surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare

personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that

letters and art gave to it, the nobility and consolations there are in

aesthetics, of the privileges they confer on individuals and (this was

the first connected statement I caught) that Mills agreed with her in the

general point of view as to the inner worth of individualities and in the

particular instance of it on which she had opened to him her innermost

heart. Mills had a universal mind. His sympathy was universal, too. He

had that large comprehension—oh, not cynical, not at all cynical, in fact

rather tender—which was found in its perfection only in some rare, very

rare Englishmen. The dear creature was romantic, too. Of course he was

reserved in his speech but she understood Mills perfectly. Mills

apparently liked me very much.

It was time for me to say something. There was a challenge in the

reposeful black eyes resting upon my face. I murmured that I was very

glad to hear it. She waited a little, then uttered meaningly, “Mr. Mills

is a little bit uneasy about you.”

“It’s very good of him,” I said. And indeed I thought that it was very

good of him, though I did ask myself vaguely in my dulled brain why he

should be uneasy.

Somehow it didn’t occur to me to ask Mrs. Blunt. Whether she had

expected me to do so or not I don’t know but after a while she changed

the pose she had kept so long and folded her wonderfully preserved white

arms. She looked a perfect picture in silver and grey, with touches of

black here and there. Still I said nothing more in my dull misery. She

waited a little longer, then she woke me up with a crash. It was as if

the house had fallen, and yet she had only asked me:

“I believe you are received on very friendly terms by Madame de Lastaola

on account of your common exertions for the cause. Very good friends,

are you not?”

“You mean Rita,” I said stupidly, but I felt stupid, like a man who wakes

up only to be hit on the head.

“Oh, Rita,” she repeated with unexpected acidity, which somehow made me

feel guilty of an incredible breach of good manners. “H’m, Rita. . . .

Oh, well, let it be Rita—for the present. Though why she should be

deprived of her name in conversation about her, really I don’t

understand. Unless a very special intimacy . . .”

She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, “It isn’t her name.”

“It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a better title to

recognition on the part of the world. It didn’t strike you so before?

Well, it seems to me that choice has got more right to be respected than

heredity or law. Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola,” she continued in an

insinuating voice, “that most rare and fascinating young woman is, as a

friend like you cannot deny, outside legality altogether. Even in that

she is an exceptional creature. For she is exceptional—you agree?”

I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her.

“Oh, I see, you agree. No friend of hers could deny.”

“Madame,” I burst out, “I don’t know where a question of friendship comes

in here with a person whom you yourself call so exceptional. I really

don’t know how she looks upon me. Our intercourse is of course very

close and confidential. Is that also talked about in Paris?”

“Not at all, not in the least,” said Mrs. Blunt, easy, equable, but with

her calm, sparkling eyes holding me in angry subjection. “Nothing of the

sort is being talked about. The references to Mme. de Lastaola are in a

very different tone, I can assure you, thanks to her discretion in

remaining here. And, I must say, thanks to the discreet efforts of her

friends. I am also a friend of Mme. de Lastaola, you must know. Oh, no,

I have never spoken to her in my life and have seen her only twice, I

believe. I wrote to her though, that I admit. She or rather the image

of her has come into my life, into that part of it where art and letters

reign undisputed like a sort of religion of beauty to which I have been

faithful through all the vicissitudes of my existence. Yes, I did write

to her and I have been preoccupied with her for a long time. It arose

from a picture, from two pictures and also from a phrase pronounced by a

man, who in the science of life and in the perception of aesthetic truth

had no equal in the world of culture. He said that there was something

in her of the women of all time. I suppose he meant the inheritance of

all the gifts that make up an irresistible fascination—a great

personality. Such women are not born often. Most of them lack

opportunities. They never develop. They end obscurely. Here and there

one survives to make her mark even in history. . . . And even that is not

a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called

dangerous women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for

her success. The others have nothing to do but simply exist. You

perceive the view I take of the difference?”

I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world could

be more aristocratic. This was the slave-owning woman who had never

worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a

wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me fascinated by the

well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in her air of wisdom.

I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere

slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of that

venerable head, the assured as if royal—yes, royal even flow of the

voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now? These were no

longer considerations about fatal women. She was talking about her son

again. My interest turned into mere bitterness of contemptuous

attention. For I couldn’t withhold it though I tried to let the stuff go

by. Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen

. . . call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last cruel minute

. . . after that catastrophe end of the world—return to France—to old

friendships, infinite kindness—but a life hollow, without occupation. . .

Then 1870—and chivalrous response to adopted country’s call and again

emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without aim and handicapped not

exactly by poverty but by lack of fortune. And she, the mother, having

to look on at this wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most

chivalrous nature that practically had no future before it.

“You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature like this! It is the

most refined cruelty of fate to look at. I don’t know whether I suffered

more in times of war or in times of peace. You understand?”

I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn’t understand was why he

delayed so long in joining us again. Unless he had had enough of his

mother? I thought without any great resentment that I was being

victimized; but then it occurred to me that the cause of his absence was

quite simple. I was familiar enough with his habits by this time to know

that he often managed to snatch an hour’s sleep or so during the day. He

had gone and thrown himself on his bed.

“I admire him exceedingly,” Mrs. Blunt was saying in a tone which was not

at all maternal. “His distinction, his fastidiousness, the earnest

warmth of his heart. I know him well. I assure you that I would never

have dared to suggest,” she continued with an extraordinary haughtiness

of attitude and tone that aroused my attention, “I would never have dared

to put before him my views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain

fate of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not been certain

that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to

her and his—his—his heart engaged.”

It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. I

woke up with a great shudder to the acute perception of my own feelings

and of that aristocrat’s incredible purpose. How it could have

germinated, grown and matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable.

She had been inciting her son all the time to undertake wonderful salvage

work by annexing the heiress of Henry Allègre—the woman and the fortune.

There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own

responded by an unflinching black brilliance which suddenly seemed to

develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely

thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the

roof of my mouth. I don’t know whether it was an illusion but it seemed

to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: “You are

right, that’s so.” I made an effort to speak but it was very poor. If

she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the

faintest sound.

“His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all

around,” I mumbled.

“Altogether different. And it’s no disparagement to a woman surely. Of

course her great fortune protects her in a certain measure.”

“Does it?” I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard

me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her

well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous

device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all

human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight,

white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone

ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully

smooth as her voice when she admitted: “That protection naturally is only

partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires

guidance.”

I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only

assumed.

“I don’t think she has done badly for herself, so far,” I forced myself

to say. “I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village

goats.”

In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh,

yes, she winced; but at the end of it she smiled easily.

“No, I didn’t know. So she told you her story! Oh, well, I suppose you

are very good friends. A goatherd—really? In the fairy tale I believe

the girl that marries the prince is-—what is it?—-a _gardeuse d’oies_. And

what a thing to drag out against a woman. One might just as soon

reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world. They all do,

you know. And then they become—what you will discover when you have

lived longer, Monsieur George—for the most part futile creatures, without

any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to

dress. In a word—ordinary.”

The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed

to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was

the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and

knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it

ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing tastes!

“How many of them,” pursued Mrs. Blunt, “have had the good fortune, the

leisure to develop their intelligence and their beauty in aesthetic

conditions as this charming woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps

not one in an age.”

“The heiress of Henry Allègre,” I murmured.

“Precisely. But John wouldn’t be marrying the heiress of Henry Allègre.”

It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea, came into the

conversation and it made me feel ill with a sort of enraged faintness.

“No,” I said. “It would be Mme. de Lastaola then.”

“Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes after the success of

this war.”

“And you believe in its success?”

“Do you?”

“Not for a moment,” I declared, and was surprised to see her look

pleased.

She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really didn’t care

for anybody. She had passed through the Empire, she had lived through a

siege, had rubbed shoulders with the Commune, had seen everything, no

doubt, of what men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the

extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even for honour;

and in her precarious connection with the very highest spheres she had

kept her own honourability unscathed while she had lost all her

prejudices. She was above all that. Perhaps “the world” was the only

thing that could have the slightest checking influence; but when I

ventured to say something about the view it might take of such an

alliance she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise.

“My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life.

It’s the best that there is, but that’s only because there is nothing

merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything,

forget anything in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A

charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world

hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a

few hours every year, riding by the side of a man of unique distinction

and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a

man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have

been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was

immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been—except

for that something radiant in her that marked her apart from all the

other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in

society and who were admitted into Henry Allègre’s Pavilion treated her

with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know

she sat there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what

can they say about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death of

Allègre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be

allowed one mistake in her life. The worst they can say of her is that

she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she

found out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go

and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him she had remained

generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this,

you will allow, is rather uncommon upon the whole.”

“You make her out very magnificent,” I murmured, looking down upon the

floor.

“Isn’t she?” exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost

youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so

calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naïve and

romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. “I don’t think there

is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is

there in my son. I suppose you won’t deny that he is uncommon.” She

paused.

“Absolutely,” I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my

mettle that she should not discover what there was humanly common in my

nature. She took my answer at her own valuation and was satisfied.

“They can’t fail to understand each other on the very highest level of

idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my John thrown away on some

enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn’t even

begin to understand what he feels or what he needs.”

“Yes,” I said impenetrably, “he is not easy to understand.”

“I have reason to think,” she said with a suppressed smile, “that he has

a certain power over women. Of course I don’t know anything about his

intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating

in the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional

resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to know the

exact degree.”

I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and

was very careful in managing my voice.

“May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?”

“For two reasons,” she condescended graciously. “First of all because

Mr. Mills told me that you were much more mature than one would expect.

In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for.”

“Madame,” I interrupted her, “I may have a certain capacity for action

and for responsibility, but as to the regions into which this very

unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are

outside my interest. I have had no experience.”

“Don’t make yourself out so hopeless,” she said in a spoilt-beauty tone.

“You have your intuitions. At any rate you have a pair of eyes. You are

everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far

they are . . .”

I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of

polite enquiry:

“You think her facile, Madame?”

She looked offended. “I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is

in question here.”

And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my

part I was just beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to

wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed

sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was

holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened

the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise.

But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the

studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now

on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for a

heathen idol. It lay there prostrate, handless, without its head,

pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime.

“John is fastidious, too,” began Mrs. Blunt again. “Of course you

wouldn’t suppose anything vulgar in his resistances to a very real

sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology. He can’t leave

himself in peace. He is exquisitely absurd.”

I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in

identical terms. But perhaps “exquisitely absurd” was the Blunt family

saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some

truth in them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. She continued:

“We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me

for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires. I don’t feel

guilty. It’s he who is tormenting himself with his infinite

scrupulosity.”

“Ah,” I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some

atrocious murder. “Ah, the fortune. But that can be left alone.”

“What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn’t contained in a bag, you

can’t throw it into the sea. And moreover, it isn’t her fault. I am

astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it

isn’t her fortune that cheeks my son; it’s something much more subtle.

Not so much her history as her position. He is absurd. It isn’t what

has happened in her life. It’s her very freedom that makes him torment

himself and her, too—as far as I can understand.”

I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from

there.

Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.

“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain

extent its current opinions. He has no power over her. She intimidates

him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning

he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old

mother. There is no doubt about it—he loves her, Monsieur George. He

loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect _homme du monde_.”

The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: “It’s a

matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings so sensitive, so proud.

It has to be managed.”

I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness

that I had to beg her permission to leave her alone as I had an

engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down—and I sat down again.

“I told you I had a request to make,” she said. “I have understood from

Mr. Mills that you have been to the West Indies, that you have some

interests there.”

I was astounded. “Interests! I certainly have been there,” I said, “but

. . .”

She caught me up. “Then why not go there again? I am speaking to you

frankly because . . .”

“But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Doña Rita, even if I had

any interests elsewhere. I won’t tell you about the importance of my

work. I didn’t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I

needn’t point it out to you.”

And now we were frankly arguing with each other.

“But where will it lead you in the end? You have all your life before

you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps dreams, at any rate your own

tastes and all your life-time before you. And would you sacrifice all

this to—the Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of illustrated

papers.”’

“I never think of him,” I said curtly, “but I suppose Doña Rita’s

feelings, instincts, call it what you like—or only her chivalrous

fidelity to her mistakes—”

“Doña Rita’s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible

complications of her life in Paris has produced an excellent effect on my

son. It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as

material. It’s extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future,

and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of course, mainly of my

son. He is most exacting.”

I felt extremely sick at heart. “And so I am to drop everything and

vanish,” I said, rising from my chair again. And this time Mrs. Blunt

got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn’t dismiss me

yet.

“Yes,” she said distinctly. “All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such

an accident. What have you got to do here? You look to me like somebody

who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps

less dangerous than this one.”

She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up.

“What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?” But she did not

condescend to hear.

“And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,” she went on,

unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. “You are not absurd. But my son is.

He would shut her up in a convent for a time if he could.”

“He isn’t the only one,” I muttered.

“Indeed!” she was startled, then lower, “Yes. That woman must be the

centre of all sorts of passions,” she mused audibly. “But what have you

got to do with all this? It’s nothing to you.”

She waited for me to speak.

“Exactly, Madame,” I said, “and therefore I don’t see why I should

concern myself in all this one way or another.”

“No,” she assented with a weary air, “except that you might ask yourself

what is the good of tormenting a man of noble feelings, however absurd.

His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes. I fear—” And then

for the first time during this conversation, for the first time since I

left Doña Rita the day before, for the first time I laughed.

“Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots? I

am aware of that—from novels.”

I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite,

aristocratic old woman positively blink by my directness. There was a

faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn’t move a muscle of

her face. I made her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio.

CHAPTER IV

Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel brougham

waiting at the door. On passing the door of the front room (it was

originally meant for a drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there)

I banged with my fist on the panel and shouted: “I am obliged to go out.

Your mother’s carriage is at the door.” I didn’t think he was asleep.

My view now was that he was aware beforehand of the subject of the

conversation, and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk away

from him after the interview. But I didn’t stop—I didn’t want to see

him—and before he could answer I was already half way up the stairs

running noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered the floor of

the landing. Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I

caught by surprise the person who was in there watching the street half

concealed by the window curtain. It was a woman. A totally unexpected

woman. A perfect stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her face

was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume and a very

simple form of hat. She murmured: “I had an idea that Monsieur was in

the house,” raising a gloved hand to lift her veil. It was Rose and she

gave me a shock. I had never seen her before but with her little black

silk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her head. This outdoor dress

was like a disguise. I asked anxiously:

“What has happened to Madame?”

“Nothing. I have a letter,” she murmured, and I saw it appear between

the fingers of her extended hand, in a very white envelope which I tore

open impatiently. It consisted of a few lines only. It began abruptly:

“If you are gone to sea then I can’t forgive you for not sending the

usual word at the last moment. If you are not gone why don’t you come?

Why did you leave me yesterday? You leave me crying—I who haven’t cried

for years and years, and you haven’t the sense to come back within the

hour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic”—and a sprawling

signature of the four magic letters at the bottom.

While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnest

undertone: “I don’t like to leave Madame by herself for any length of

time.”

“How long have you been in my room?” I asked.

“The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won’t mind the liberty. I sat

for a little in the hall but then it struck me I might be seen. In fact,

Madame told me not to be seen if I could help it.”

“Why did she tell you that?”

“I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame. It might have given a

false impression. Madame is frank and open like the day but it won’t do

with everybody. There are people who would put a wrong construction on

anything. Madame’s sister told me Monsieur was out.”

“And you didn’t believe her?”

“_Non_, Monsieur. I have lived with Madame’s sister for nearly a week

when she first came into this house. She wanted me to leave the message,

but I said I would wait a little. Then I sat down in the big porter’s

chair in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet, I stole

up here. I know the disposition of the apartments. I reckoned Madame’s

sister would think that I got tired of waiting and let myself out.”

“And you have been amusing yourself watching the street ever since?”

“The time seemed long,” she answered evasively. “An empty _coupé_ came

to the door about an hour ago and it’s still waiting,” she added, looking

at me inquisitively.

“It seems strange.”

“There are some dancing girls staying in the house,” I said negligently.

“Did you leave Madame alone?”

“There’s the gardener and his wife in the house.”

“Those people keep at the back. Is Madame alone? That’s what I want to

know.”

“Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assure

Monsieur that here in this town it’s perfectly safe for Madame to be

alone.”

“And wouldn’t it be anywhere else? It’s the first I hear of it.”

“In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it’s all right, too; but in

the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn’t leave Madame by herself, not for

half an hour.”

“What is there in the Pavilion?” I asked.

“It’s a sort of feeling I have,” she murmured reluctantly . . . “Oh!

There’s that _coupé_ going away.”

She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn’t

moved. The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost at

once.

“Will Monsieur write an answer?” Rose suggested after a short silence.

“Hardly worth while,” I said. “I will be there very soon after you.

Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am not anxious to see any

more tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will take

the risk of not being received.”

She dropped her eyes, said: “_Oui_, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion

waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to

see the road clear.

It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was empty

and everything was perfectly still. Blunt himself had no doubt gone away

with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls,

Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might

have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house

would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a

low whistle which didn’t seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more

than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down

the stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she

glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.

The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the

Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with

that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly

in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore.

“I have given Madame the message,” she said in her contained voice,

swinging the door wide open. Then after relieving me of my hat and coat

she announced me with the simple words: “_Voilà_ Monsieur,” and hurried

away. Directly I appeared Doña Rita, away there on the couch, passed the

tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwards

on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the

room: “The dry season has set in.” I glanced at the pink tips of her

fingers perfunctorily and then drew back. She let her hands fall

negligently as if she had no use for them any more and put on a serious

expression.

“So it seems,” I said, sitting down opposite her. “For how long, I

wonder.”

“For years and years. One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt

away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when

you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don’t

know how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and

hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don’t know

what to do with your hands.”

All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed to

play upon the sober surface of her thoughts. Then seeing that I did not

answer she altered the note a bit.

“_Amigo_ George,” she said, “I take the trouble to send for you and here

I am before you, talking to you and you say nothing.”

“What am I to say?”

“How can I tell? You might say a thousand things. You might, for

instance, tell me that you were sorry for my tears.”

“I might also tell you a thousand lies. What do I know about your tears?

I am not a susceptible idiot. It all depends upon the cause. There are

tears of quiet happiness. Peeling onions also will bring tears.”

“Oh, you are not susceptible,” she flew out at me. “But you are an idiot

all the same.”

“Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?” I asked with

a certain animation.

“Yes. And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned once

you would have read between the lines that all I wanted you here for was

to tell you what I think of you.”

“Well, tell me what you think of me.”

“I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent as you are.”

“What unexpected modesty,” I said.

“These, I suppose, are your sea manners.”

“I wouldn’t put up with half that nonsense from anybody at sea. Don’t

you remember you told me yourself to go away? What was I to do?”

“How stupid you are. I don’t mean that you pretend. You really are. Do

you understand what I say? I will spell it for you. S-t-u-p-i-d. Ah,

now I feel better. Oh, _amigo_ George, my dear fellow-conspirator for

the king—the king. Such a king! _Vive le Roi_! Come, why don’t you

shout _Vive le Roi_, too?”

“I am not your parrot,” I said.

“No, he never sulked. He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomed

to the best society, whereas you, I suppose, are nothing but a heartless

vagabond like myself.”

“I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the insolence to tell you

that to your face.”

“Well, very nearly. It was what it amounted to. I am not stupid. There

is no need to spell out simple words for me. It just came out. Don Juan

struggled desperately to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. And

yet he couldn’t help himself. He talked very much like a parrot.”

“Of the best society,” I suggested.

“Yes, the most honourable of parrots. I don’t like parrot-talk. It

sounds so uncanny. Had I lived in the Middle Ages I am certain I would

have believed that a talking bird must be possessed by the devil. I am

sure Therese would believe that now. My own sister! She would cross

herself many times and simply quake with terror.”

“But you were not terrified,” I said. “May I ask when that interesting

communication took place?”

“Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all days in the year. I

was sorry for him.”

“Why tell me this? I couldn’t help noticing it. I regretted I hadn’t my

umbrella with me.”

“Those unforgiven tears! Oh, you simple soul! Don’t you know that

people never cry for anybody but themselves? . . . _Amigo_ George, tell

me—what are we doing in this world?”

“Do you mean all the people, everybody?”

“No, only people like you and me. Simple people, in this world which is

eaten up with charlatanism of all sorts so that even we, the simple,

don’t know any longer how to trust each other.”

“Don’t we? Then why don’t you trust him? You are dying to do so, don’t

you know?”

She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her straight eyebrows

the deep blue eyes remained fixed on me, impersonally, as if without

thought.

“What have you been doing since you left me yesterday?” she asked.

“The first thing I remember I abused your sister horribly this morning.”

“And how did she take it?”

“Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in and unfolded her

petals.”

“What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than one

would think possible, considering what she is and whence she came. It’s

true that I, too, come from the same spot.”

“She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her. I don’t say

this to boast.”

“It must be very comforting.”

“Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightful

musings on one thing and another I went to lunch with a charming lady and

spent most of the afternoon talking with her.”

Doña Rita raised her head.

“A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to me. I don’t know them.

Did you abuse her? Did she—how did you say that?—unfold her petals, too?

Was she really and truly . . .?”

“She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation was by no means

banal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would have

fallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allègre Pavilion, my dear

Rita, you were but a crowd of glorified _bourgeois_.”

She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes like

melted sapphires, around those red lips that almost without moving could

breathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that

mysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiver

under her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare moments of

gaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite

sadness, like the sunlight of our life hiding the invincible darkness in

which the universe must work out its impenetrable destiny.

“Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that’s the reason I never could feel

perfectly serious while they were demolishing the world about my ears. I

fancy now that I could tell beforehand what each of them was going to

say. They were repeating the same words over and over again, those great

clever men, very much like parrots who also seem to know what they say.

That doesn’t apply to the master of the house, who never talked much. He

sat there mostly silent and looming up three sizes bigger than any of

them.”

“The ruler of the aviary,” I muttered viciously.

“It annoys you that I should talk of that time?” she asked in a tender

voice. “Well, I won’t, except for once to say that you must not make a

mistake: in that aviary he was the man. I know because he used to talk

to me afterwards sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed to carry

all the world and me with it in his hand. . . . ”

“He dominates you yet,” I shouted.

She shook her head innocently as a child would do.

“No, no. You brought him into the conversation yourself. You think of

him much more than I do.” Her voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note.

“I hardly ever do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through

one’s mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven letters this

morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have

tangled up everything. I am quite frightened.”

And she explained to me that one of them—the long one on the top of the

pile, on the table over there—seemed to contain ugly inferences directed

at herself in a menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what I

could make of it.

I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she had

misunderstood it thoroughly and even amazingly. I proved it to her very

quickly. But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and

arose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn’t

help looking at her admiringly.

“Rita,” I said, “you are a marvellous idiot.”

“Am I? Imbecile,” she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief. “But

perhaps it only seems so to you in contrast with the lady so perfect in

her way. What is her way?”

“Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth and

seventieth year, and I have walked tête-à-tête with her for some little

distance this afternoon.”

“Heavens,” she whispered, thunderstruck. “And meantime I had the son

here. He arrived about five minutes after Rose left with that note for

you,” she went on in a tone of awe. “As a matter of fact, Rose saw him

across the street but she thought she had better go on to you.”

“I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much,” I said

bitterly. “I suppose you got him out of the house about five minutes

after you heard I was coming here. Rose ought to have turned back when

she saw him on his way to cheer your solitude. That girl is stupid after

all, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no doubt is

very useful at times.”

“I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won’t have it. Rose is

not to be abused before me.”

“I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to read your mind,

that’s all.”

“This is, without exception, the most unintelligent thing you have said

ever since I have known you. You may understand a lot about running

contraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to

Rose’s mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers yours is

absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible if

it weren’t so—what shall I call it?—babyish. You ought to be slapped and

put to bed.” There was an extraordinary earnestness in her tone and when

she ceased I listened yet to the seductive inflexions of her voice, that

no matter in what mood she spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love.

And I thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take himself off from

her presence for ever, in that voice the very anger of which seemed to

twine itself gently round one’s heart. No wonder the poor wretch could

not forget the scene and couldn’t restrain his tears on the plain of

Rambouillet. My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as they were, had

no more duration than a blaze of straw. So I only said:

“Much _you_ know about the management of children.” The corners of her

lips stirred quaintly; her animosity, especially when provoked by a

personal attack upon herself, was always tinged by a sort of wistful

humour of the most disarming kind.

“Come, _amigo_ George, let us leave poor Rose alone. You had better tell

me what you heard from the lips of the charming old lady. Perfection,

isn’t she? I have never seen her in my life, though she says she has

seen me several times. But she has written to me on three separate

occasions and every time I answered her as if I were writing to a queen.

_Amigo_ George, how does one write to a queen? How should a goatherd

that could have been mistress of a king, how should she write to an old

queen from very far away; from over the sea?”

“I will ask you as I have asked the old queen: why do you tell me all

this, Doña Rita?”

“To discover what’s in your mind,” she said, a little impatiently.

“If you don’t know that yet!” I exclaimed under my breath.

“No, not in your mind. Can any one ever tell what is in a man’s mind?

But I see you won’t tell.”

“What’s the good? You have written to her before, I understand. Do you

think of continuing the correspondence?”

“Who knows?” she said in a profound tone. “She is the only woman that

ever wrote to me. I returned her three letters to her with my last

answer, explaining humbly that I preferred her to burn them herself. And

I thought that would be the end of it. But an occasion may still arise.”

“Oh, if an occasion arises,” I said, trying to control my rage, “you may

be able to begin your letter by the words ‘_Chère Maman_.’”

The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes from

me, flew out of her hand and opening in mid-air scattered cigarettes for

quite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once and

wandered off picking them up industriously. Doña Rita’s voice behind me

said indifferently:

“Don’t trouble, I will ring for Rose.”

“No need,” I growled, without turning my head, “I can find my hat in the

hall by myself, after I’ve finished picking up . . . ”

“Bear!”

I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat

cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of her

embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her

face which she raised to mine with an air of resignation.

“George, my friend,” she said, “we have no manners.”

“You would never have made a career at court, Doña Rita,” I observed.

“You are too impulsive.”

“This is not bad manners, that’s sheer insolence. This has happened to

you before. If it happens again, as I can’t be expected to wrestle with

a savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and

lock myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did you say this to

me?”

“Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart.”

“If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had

better take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for the

pleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all,

you are rather amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me

something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old lady

who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of

happiness.”

“I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of

certain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but the

lady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. I

sat there like a fool not knowing what to say.”

“Why? You might have joined in the singing.”

“I didn’t feel in the humour, because, don’t you see, I had been

incidentally given to understand that I was an insignificant and

superfluous person who had better get out of the way of serious people.”

“Ah, _par exemple_!”

“In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the moment it made me

feel as if I had been offered a pot of mustard to sniff.”

She nodded with an amused air of understanding and I could see that she

was interested. “Anything more?” she asked, with a flash of radiant

eagerness in all her person and bending slightly forward towards me.

“Oh, it’s hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of threat wrapped up, I

believe, in genuine anxiety as to what might happen to my youthful

insignificance. If I hadn’t been rather on the alert just then I

wouldn’t even have perceived the meaning. But really an allusion to ‘hot

Southern blood’ I could have only one meaning. Of course I laughed at

it, but only ‘_pour l’honneur_’ and to show I understood perfectly. In

reality it left me completely indifferent.”

Doña Rita looked very serious for a minute.

“Indifferent to the whole conversation?”

I looked at her angrily.

“To the whole . . . You see I got up rather out of sorts this morning.

Unrefreshed, you know. As if tired of life.”

The liquid blue in her eyes remained directed at me without any

expression except that of its usual mysterious immobility, but all her

face took on a sad and thoughtful cast. Then as if she had made up her

mind under the pressure of necessity:

“Listen, _amigo_,” she said, “I have suffered domination and it didn’t

crush me because I have been strong enough to live with it; I have known

caprice, you may call it folly if you like, and it left me unharmed

because I was great enough not to be captured by anything that wasn’t

really worthy of me. My dear, it went down like a house of cards before

my breath. There is something in me that will not be dazzled by any sort

of prestige in this world, worthy or unworthy. I am telling you this

because you are younger than myself.”

“If you want me to say that there is nothing petty or mean about you,

Doña Rita, then I do say it.”

She nodded at me with an air of accepting the rendered justice and went

on with the utmost simplicity.

“And what is it that is coming to me now with all the airs of virtue?

All the lawful conventions are coming to me, all the glamours of

respectability! And nobody can say that I have made as much as the

slightest little sign to them. Not so much as lifting my little finger.

I suppose you know that?”

“I don’t know. I do not doubt your sincerity in anything you say. I am

ready to believe. You are not one of those who have to work.”

“Have to work—what do you mean?”

“It’s a phrase I have heard. What I meant was that it isn’t necessary

for you to make any signs.”

She seemed to meditate over this for a while.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” she said, with a flash of mischief, which

made her voice sound more melancholy than before. “I am not so sure

myself,” she continued with a curious, vanishing, intonation of despair.

“I don’t know the truth about myself because I never had an opportunity

to compare myself to anything in the world. I have been offered mock

adulation, treated with mock reserve or with mock devotion, I have been

fawned upon with an appalling earnestness of purpose, I can tell you; but

these later honours, my dear, came to me in the shape of a very loyal and

very scrupulous gentleman. For he is all that. And as a matter of fact

I was touched.”

“I know. Even to tears,” I said provokingly. But she wasn’t provoked,

she only shook her head in negation (which was absurd) and pursued the

trend of her spoken thoughts.

“That was yesterday,” she said. “And yesterday he was extremely correct

and very full of extreme self-esteem which expressed itself in the

exaggerated delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all his

moods. I have known him even playful. I didn’t listen to him. I was

thinking of something else. Of things that were neither correct nor

playful and that had to be looked at steadily with all the best that was

in me. And that was why, in the end—I cried—yesterday.”

“I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being moved by those tears

for a time.”

“If you want to make me cry again I warn you you won’t succeed.”

“No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry season has set in.”

“Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly unexpected.

Yesterday he was railing at the world at large, at me who certainly have

not made it, at himself and even at his mother. All this rather in

parrot language, in the words of tradition and morality as understood by

the members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. And yet when I

thought that all this, those poor hackneyed words, expressed a sincere

passion I could have found in my heart to be sorry for him. But he ended

by telling me that one couldn’t believe a single word I said, or

something like that. You were here then, you heard it yourself.”

“And it cut you to the quick,” I said. “It made you depart from your

dignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to be

there. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (men

have been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning of the

world) this sensibility seems to me childish.”

“What perspicacity,” she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then

changed her tone. “Therefore he wasn’t expected to-day when he turned

up, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms of

conversation in that studio. It never occurred to you . . . did it? No!

What had become of your perspicacity?”

“I tell you I was weary of life,” I said in a passion.

She had another faint smile of a fugitive and unrelated kind as if she

had been thinking of far-off things, then roused herself to grave

animation.

“He came in full of smiling playfulness. How well I know that mood!

Such self-command has its beauty; but it’s no great help for a man with

such fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his correct, restrained

way, and in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something that

would be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends, we

two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when coming

back dead-tired from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to it

and yet hadn’t the courage to tear himself away from here. He was as

simple as that. He’s a _très galant homme_ of absolute probity, even

with himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn’t

love but mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy,

but I didn’t like to use that word. A parrot would have added that I had

given him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized the

rights of his passion which I could very well see. He is jealous. He is

not jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustful

of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the same

way Therese does, as something that can be touched with grace or go to

perdition; and he doesn’t want to be damned with me before his own

judgment seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own

Basque peasant soul and don’t want to think that every time he goes away

from my feet—yes, _mon cher_, on this carpet, look for the marks of

scorching—that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his

moral sleeve. That! Never!”

With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in

her fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously.

“And then, I don’t love him,” she uttered slowly as if speaking to

herself and at the same time watching the very quality of that thought.

“I never did. At first he fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his

cold society smiles. But I have looked into those eyes too often. There

are too many disdains in this aristocratic republican without a home.

His fate may be cruel, but it will always be commonplace. While he sat

there trying in a worldly tone to explain to me the problems, the

scruples, of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart and I

was sorry for him. I was sorry enough for him to feel that if he had

suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, _avec délices_,

I could forgive him while I choked. How correct he was! But bitterness

against me peeped out of every second phrase. At last I raised my hand

and said to him, ‘Enough.’ I believe he was shocked by my plebeian

abruptness but he was too polite to show it. His conventions will always

stand in the way of his nature. I told him that everything that had been

said and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicable

unless on the assumption that he was in love with me,—and yet in

everything there was an implication that he couldn’t forgive me my very

existence. I did ask him whether he didn’t think that it was absurd on

his part . . . ”

“Didn’t you say that it was exquisitely absurd?” I asked.

“Exquisitely! . . . ” Doña Rita was surprised at my question. “No. Why

should I say that?”

“It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It’s their family

expression. It would have come with a familiar sound and would have been

less offensive.”

“Offensive,” Doña Rita repeated earnestly. “I don’t think he was

offended; he suffered in another way, but I didn’t care for that. It was

I that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, but

past bearing. I didn’t spare him. I told him plainly that to want a

woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice,

independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is and

at the same time to demand from her the candour and the innocence that

could be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made her

and at the same time to despise her secretly for every touch with which

her life had fashioned her—that was neither generous nor high minded; it

was positively frantic. He got up and went away to lean against the

mantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his head in his hand. You have

no idea of the charm and the distinction of his pose. I couldn’t help

admiring him: the expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of his

immobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to aesthetic impressions, I have been

educated to believe that there is a soul in them.”

With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed on me she laughed

her deep contralto laugh without mirth but also without irony, and

profoundly moving by the mere purity of the sound.

“I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in his life. His

self-command is the most admirable worldly thing I have ever seen. What

made it beautiful was that one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as in

a great work of art.”

She paused with an inscrutable smile that a great painter might have put

on the face of some symbolic figure for the speculation and wonder of

many generations. I said:

“I always thought that love for you could work great wonders. And now I

am certain.”

“Are you trying to be ironic?” she said sadly and very much as a child

might have spoken.

“I don’t know,” I answered in a tone of the same simplicity. “I find it

very difficult to be generous.”

“I, too,” she said with a sort of funny eagerness. “I didn’t treat him

very generously. Only I didn’t say much more. I found I didn’t care

what I said—and it would have been like throwing insults at a beautiful

composition. He was well inspired not to move. It has spared him some

disagreeable truths and perhaps I would even have said more than the

truth. I am not fair. I am no more fair than other people. I would

have been harsh. My very admiration was making me more angry. It’s

ridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor clothes, but there

was a funereal grace in his attitude so that he might have been

reproduced in marble on a monument to some woman in one of those

atrocious Campo Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocratic

mourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I became glad that I was

angry or else I would have laughed right out before him.”

“I have heard a woman say once, a woman of the people—do you hear me,

Doña Rita?—therefore deserving your attention, that one should never

laugh at love.”

“My dear,” she said gently, “I have been taught to laugh at most things

by a man who never laughed himself; but it’s true that he never spoke of

love to me, love as a subject that is. So perhaps . . . But why?”

“Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy), because, she said, there

was death in the mockery of love.”

Doña Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and went on:

“I am glad, then, I didn’t laugh. And I am also glad I said nothing

more. I was feeling so little generous that if I had known something

then of his mother’s allusion to ‘white geese’ I would have advised him

to get one of them and lead it away on a beautiful blue ribbon. Mrs.

Blunt was wrong, you know, to be so scornful. A white goose is exactly

what her son wants. But look how badly the world is arranged. Such

white birds cannot be got for nothing and he has not enough money even to

buy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave that tragic

quality to his pose by the mantelpiece over there. Yes, that was it.

Though no doubt I didn’t see it then. As he didn’t offer to move after I

had done speaking I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him very

gently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He moved forward then and

said to me in his usual voice and with his usual smile that it would have

been excellent advice but unfortunately I was one of those women who

can’t be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he insisted rather

darkly: ‘Oh, yes, Doña Rita, it is so. Cherish no illusions about that

fact.’ It sounded so threatening that in my surprise I didn’t even

acknowledge his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like a

wounded man retreating after a fight. No, I have nothing to reproach

myself with. I did nothing. I led him into nothing. Whatever illusions

have passed through my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal to

what he seemed to think the redeeming proprieties of the situation that

he has gone from me for good without so much as kissing the tips of my

fingers. He must have felt like a man who had betrayed himself for

nothing. It’s horrible. It’s the fault of that enormous fortune of

mine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to him; for he

couldn’t help his hatred of the thing that is: and as to his love, which

is just as real, well—could I have rushed away from him to shut myself up

in a convent? Could I? After all I have a right to my share of

daylight.”

CHAPTER V

I took my eyes from her face and became aware that dusk was beginning to

steal into the room. How strange it seemed. Except for the glazed

rotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an

order of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and in

vivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings and lean youths with

narrow birds’ wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita

and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched

shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at

that moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and

strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealing

a power to see and hear.

Without words, without gestures, Doña Rita was heard again. “It may have

been as near coming to pass as this.” She showed me the breadth of her

little finger nail. “Yes, as near as that. Why? How? Just like that,

for nothing. Because it had come up. Because a wild notion had entered

a practical old woman’s head. Yes. And the best of it is that I have

nothing to complain of. Had I surrendered I would have been perfectly

safe with these two. It is they or rather he who couldn’t trust me, or

rather that something which I express, which I stand for. Mills would

never tell me what it was. Perhaps he didn’t know exactly himself. He

said it was something like genius. My genius! Oh, I am not conscious of

it, believe me, I am not conscious of it. But if I were I wouldn’t pluck

it out and cast it away. I am ashamed of nothing, of nothing! Don’t be

stupid enough to think that I have the slightest regret. There is no

regret. First of all because I am I—and then because . . . My dear,

believe me, I have had a horrible time of it myself lately.”

This seemed to be the last word. Outwardly quiet, all the time, it was

only then that she became composed enough to light an enormous cigarette

of the same pattern as those made specially for the king—_por el Rey_!

After a time, tipping the ash into the bowl on her left hand, she asked

me in a friendly, almost tender, tone:

“What are you thinking of, _amigo_?”

“I was thinking of your immense generosity. You want to give a crown to

one man, a fortune to another. That is very fine. But I suppose there

is a limit to your generosity somewhere.”

“I don’t see why there should be any limit—to fine intentions! Yes, one

would like to pay ransom and be done with it all.”

“That’s the feeling of a captive; and yet somehow I can’t think of you as

ever having been anybody’s captive.”

“You do display some wonderful insight sometimes. My dear, I begin to

suspect that men are rather conceited about their powers. They think

they dominate us. Even exceptional men will think that; men too great

for mere vanity, men like Henry Allègre for instance, who by his

consistent and serene detachment was certainly fit to dominate all sorts

of people. Yet for the most part they can only do it because women

choose more or less consciously to let them do so. Henry Allègre, if any

man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was a

chit of a girl, I was sitting with a book where I had no business to be,

in his own garden, when he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl of

seventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an old

black frock and shabby boots. I could have run away. I was perfectly

capable of it. But I stayed looking up at him and—in the end it was HE

who went away and it was I who stayed.”

“Consciously?” I murmured.

“Consciously? You may just as well ask my shadow that lay so still by me

on the young grass in that morning sunshine. I never knew before how

still I could keep. It wasn’t the stillness of terror. I remained,

knowing perfectly well that if I ran he was not the man to run after me.

I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent ‘_Restez

donc_.’ He was mistaken. Already then I hadn’t the slightest intention

to move. And if you ask me again how far conscious all this was the

nearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained on purpose, but I

didn’t know for what purpose I remained. Really, that couldn’t be

expected. . . . Why do you sigh like this? Would you have preferred me

to be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?”

“These are not the questions that trouble me,” I said. “If I sighed it

is because I am weary.”

“And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair. You

had better get out of it and sit on this couch as you always used to do.

That, at any rate, is not Pompeiian. You have been growing of late

extremely formal, I don’t know why. If it is a pose then for goodness’

sake drop it. Are you going to model yourself on Captain Blunt? You

couldn’t, you know. You are too young.”

“I don’t want to model myself on anybody,” I said. “And anyway Blunt is

too romantic; and, moreover, he has been and is yet in love with you—a

thing that requires some style, an attitude, something of which I am

altogether incapable.”

“You know it isn’t so stupid, this what you have just said. Yes, there

is something in this.”

“I am not stupid,” I protested, without much heat.

“Oh, yes, you are. You don’t know the world enough to judge. You don’t

know how wise men can be. Owls are nothing to them. Why do you try to

look like an owl? There are thousands and thousands of them waiting for

me outside the door: the staring, hissing beasts. You don’t know what a

relief of mental ease and intimacy you have been to me in the frankness

of gestures and speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have been

throwing at each other. I have known nothing of this in my life but with

you. There had always been some fear, some constraint, lurking in the

background behind everybody, everybody—except you, my friend.”

“An unmannerly, Arcadian state of affairs. I am glad you like it.

Perhaps it’s because you were intelligent enough to perceive that I was

not in love with you in any sort of style.”

“No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless and with

something in it kindred to mine, if I may say so without offence.”

“You may say anything without offence. But has it never occurred to your

sagacity that I just, simply, loved you?”

“Just—simply,” she repeated in a wistful tone.

“You didn’t want to trouble your head about it, is that it?”

“My poor head. From your tone one might think you yearned to cut it off.

No, my dear, I have made up my mind not to lose my head.”

“You would be astonished to know how little I care for your mind.”

“Would I? Come and sit on the couch all the same,” she said after a

moment of hesitation. Then, as I did not move at once, she added with

indifference: “You may sit as far away as you like, it’s big enough,

goodness knows.”

The light was ebbing slowly out of the rotunda and to my bodily eyes she

was beginning to grow shadowy. I sat down on the couch and for a long

time no word passed between us. We made no movement. We did not even

turn towards each other. All I was conscious of was the softness of the

seat which seemed somehow to cause a relaxation of my stern mood, I won’t

say against my will but without any will on my part. Another thing I was

conscious of, strangely enough, was the enormous brass bowl for cigarette

ends. Quietly, with the least possible action, Doña Rita moved it to the

other side of her motionless person. Slowly, the fantastic women with

butterflies’ wings and the slender-limbed youths with the gorgeous

pinions on their shoulders were vanishing into their black backgrounds

with an effect of silent discretion, leaving us to ourselves.

I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome with fatigue

since I had moved; as if to sit on that Pompeiian chair had been a task

almost beyond human strength, a sort of labour that must end in collapse.

I fought against it for a moment and then my resistance gave way. Not

all at once but as if yielding to an irresistible pressure (for I was not

conscious of any irresistible attraction) I found myself with my head

resting, with a weight I felt must be crushing, on Doña Rita’s shoulder

which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent of

violets filled the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossible

to me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I remained

dry-eyed. I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught her

round the waist clinging to her not from any intention but purely by

instinct. All that time she hadn’t stirred. There was only the slight

movement of her breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closed

eyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by an incredible

meditation while I clung to her, to an immense distance from the earth.

The distance must have been immense because the silence was so perfect,

the feeling as if of eternal stillness. I had a distinct impression of

being in contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible rise

and fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of violets and through

which came a hand from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presently

my ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her heart, firm and

quick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery, disclosing itself

into my very ear—and my felicity became complete.

It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity.

Then in that warm and scented infinity, or eternity, in which I rested

lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly

audible, and fit to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. At

this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world close

about me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dusk against the

panes, and I asked in a pained voice:

“Why did you ring, Rita?”

There was a bell rope within reach of her hand. I had not felt her move,

but she said very low:

“I rang for the lights.”

“You didn’t want the lights.”

“It was time,” she whispered secretly.

Somewhere within the house a door slammed. I got away from her feeling

small and weak as if the best part of me had been torn away and

irretrievably lost. Rose must have been somewhere near the door.

“It’s abominable,” I murmured to the still, idol-like shadow on the

couch.

The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: “I tell you it was time. I

rang because I had no strength to push you away.”

I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened, light streamed

in, and Rose entered, preceding a man in a green baize apron whom I had

never seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into

vases of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the room. In the

flood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women reappeared

on the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything

having happened during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp on the

nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked in a confident

undertone.

“_Monsieur dîne_?”

I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, but

I heard the words distinctly. I heard also the silence which ensued. I

sat up and took the responsibility of the answer on myself.

“Impossible. I am going to sea this evening.”

This was perfectly true only I had totally forgotten it till then. For

the last two days my being was no longer composed of memories but

exclusively of sensations of the most absorbing, disturbing, exhausting

nature. I was like a man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mob

till he loses all hold on the world in the misery of his helplessness.

But now I was recovering. And naturally the first thing I remembered was

the fact that I was going to sea.

“You have heard, Rose,” Doña Rita said at last with some impatience.

The girl waited a moment longer before she said:

“Oh, yes! There is a man waiting for Monsieur in the hall. A seaman.”

It could be no one but Dominic. It dawned upon me that since the evening

of our return I had not been near him or the ship, which was completely

unusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.

“I have seen him before,” continued Rose, “and as he told me he has been

pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and didn’t like to go away without

seeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till

Monsieur was at liberty.”

I said: “Very well,” and with a sudden resumption of her extremely busy,

not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose departed from the room. I lingered in

an imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a

mad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under the sky arched

above its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me like

its own proper atmosphere. But everything vanished at the sound of Doña

Rita’s loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to make one’s hair

stir on one’s head.

“_Mon Dieu_! And what is going to happen now?”

She got down from the couch and walked to a window. When the lights had

been brought into the room all the panes had turned inky black; for the

night had come and the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screening

off the gas lamps of the main alley of the Prado. Whatever the question

meant she was not likely to see an answer to it outside. But her whisper

had offended me, had hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtle

and infinitely clear-eyed in my nature. I said after her from the couch

on which I had remained, “Don’t lose your composure. You will always

have some sort of bell at hand.”

I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently. Her forehead was

against the very blackness of the panes; pulled upward from the

beautiful, strong nape of her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hair

was held high upon her head by the arrow of gold.

“You set up for being unforgiving,” she said without anger.

I sprang to my feet while she turned about and came towards me bravely,

with a wistful smile on her bold, adolescent face.

“It seems to me,” she went on in a voice like a wave of love itself,

“that one should try to understand before one sets up for being

unforgiving. Forgiveness is a very fine word. It is a fine invocation.”

“There are other fine words in the language such as fascination,

fidelity, also frivolity; and as for invocations there are plenty of

them, too; for instance: alas, heaven help me.”

We stood very close together, her narrow eyes were as enigmatic as ever,

but that face, which, like some ideal conception of art, was incapable of

anything like untruth and grimace, expressed by some mysterious means

such a depth of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed of

myself.

“This thing is beyond words altogether,” I said. “Beyond forgiveness,

beyond forgetting, beyond anger or jealousy. . . . There is nothing

between us two that could make us act together.”

“Then we must fall back perhaps on something within us, that—you admit

it?—we have in common.”

“Don’t be childish,” I said. “You give one with a perpetual and intense

freshness feelings and sensations that are as old as the world itself,

and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any

time! But it can’t be broken. And forgetfulness, like everything else,

can only come from you. It’s an impossible situation to stand up

against.”

She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some further

resonances.

“There is a sort of generous ardour about you,” she said, “which I don’t

really understand. No, I don’t know it. Believe me, it is not of myself

I am thinking. And you—you are going out to-night to make another

landing.”

“Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from you

to try my luck once more.”

“Your wonderful luck,” she breathed out.

“Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky. Unless the luck really is yours—in

having found somebody like me, who cares at the same time so much and so

little for what you have at heart.”

“What time will you be leaving the harbour?” she asked.

“Some time between midnight and daybreak. Our men may be a little late

in joining, but certainly we will be gone before the first streak of

light.”

“What freedom!” she murmured enviously. “It’s something I shall never

know. . . .”

“Freedom!” I protested. “I am a slave to my word. There will be a

siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a most

ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and

sweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet

in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will

never fail them. That’s my freedom. I wonder what they would think if

they knew of your existence.”

“I don’t exist,” she said.

“That’s easy to say. But I will go as if you didn’t exist—yet only

because you do exist. You exist in me. I don’t know where I end and you

begin. You have got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.”

“Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,” she said in a tone

of timid entreaty.

“Heroically,” I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

“Well, yes, heroically,” she said; and there passed between us dim

smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth. We

were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on

a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs,

with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained,

decorative attitudes. Doña Rita made a step towards me, and as I

attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck. I felt

their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and

desperate effort I resisted. And all the time she was repeating with

nervous insistence:

“But it is true that you will go. You will surely. Not because of those

people but because of me. You will go away because you feel you must.”

With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my

head closer to her breast. I submitted, knowing well that I could free

myself by one more effort which it was in my power to make. But before I

made it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollow

of her throat. And lo—there was no need for any effort. With a stifled

cry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot. I must

have been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing I

knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of

the ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged

figures. Something in the quality of her exclamation, something utterly

unexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she was

looking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated attention,

disconcerted me exceedingly. I knew perfectly well what I had done and

yet I felt that I didn’t understand what had happened. I became suddenly

abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss that poor

Dominic. She made no answer, gave no sign. She stood there lost in a

vision—or was it a sensation?—of the most absorbing kind. I hurried out

into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she wasn’t

looking. And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort of

stupefaction on her features—in her whole attitude—as though she had

never even heard of such a thing as a kiss in her life.

A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall

practically dark. Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner,

was but a little more opaque shadow than the others. He had expected me

on board every moment till about three o’clock, but as I didn’t turn up

and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt. He

sought news of me from the _garçons_ at the various cafés, from the

_cochers de fiacre_ in front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist lady

at the counter of the fashionable _Débit de Tabac_, from the old man who

sold papers outside the _cercle_, and from the flower-girl at the door of

the fashionable restaurant where I had my table. That young woman, whose

business name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day. She said to

Dominic: “I think I’ve seen all his friends this morning but I haven’t

seen him for a week. What has become of him?”

“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Dominic replied in a fury and then

went back to the harbour on the chance that I might have called either on

board or at Madame Léonore’s café.

I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an old

hen over a chick. It wasn’t like him at all. And he said that “_en

effet_” it was Madame Léonore who wouldn’t give him any peace. He hoped

I wouldn’t mind, it was best to humour women in little things; and so he

started off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was told

there that I wasn’t at home but the woman of the house looked so funny

that he didn’t know what to make of it. Therefore, after some

hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and being

told that I couldn’t be disturbed, had made up his mind not to go on

board without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my own

lips that nothing was changed as to sailing orders.

“There is nothing changed, Dominic,” I said.

“No change of any sort?” he insisted, looking very sombre and speaking

gloomily from under his black moustaches in the dim glow of the alabaster

lamp hanging above his head. He peered at me in an extraordinary manner

as if he wanted to make sure that I had all my limbs about me. I asked

him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, and

he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that

ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Léonore was not easy in

her mind about me.

As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appeared

before me.

“Monsieur will dine after all,” she whispered calmly.

“My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.”

“What am I going to do with Madame?” she murmured to herself. “She will

insist on returning to Paris.”

“Oh, have you heard of it?”

“I never get more than two hours’ notice,” she said. “But I know how it

will be,” her voice lost its calmness. “I can look after Madame up to a

certain point but I cannot be altogether responsible. There is a

dangerous person who is everlastingly trying to see Madame alone. I have

managed to keep him off several times but there is a beastly old

journalist who is encouraging him in his attempts, and I daren’t even

speak to Madame about it.”

“What sort of person do you mean?”

“Why, a man,” she said scornfully.

I snatched up my coat and hat.

“Aren’t there dozens of them?”

“Oh! But this one is dangerous. Madame must have given him a hold on

her in some way. I ought not to talk like this about Madame and I

wouldn’t to anybody but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what is

a poor girl to do? . . . Isn’t Monsieur going back to Madame?”

“No, I am not going back. Not this time.” A mist seemed to fall before

my eyes. I could hardly see the girl standing by the closed door of the

Pempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voice

was firm enough. “Not this time,” I repeated, and became aware of the

great noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rain

squall against the door.

“Perhaps some other time,” I added.

I heard her say twice to herself: “_Mon Dieu_! _Mon_, _Dieu_!” and then

a dismayed: “What can Monsieur expect me to do?” But I had to appear

insensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I

had no option but to go away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness in

my attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my hand

on the knob of the front door.

“You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please her. Tell her that

I am gone—heroically.”

Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by a despairing outward

movement of her hands as though she were giving everything up.

“I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends,” she declared with such

a force of restrained bitterness that it nearly made me pause. But the

very obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out through

the doorway muttering: “Everything is as Madame wishes it.”

She shot at me a swift: “You should resist,” of an extraordinary

intensity, but I strode on down the path. Then Rose’s schooled temper

gave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously

through the wind and rain: “No! Madame has no friends. Not one!”

PART FIVE

CHAPTER I

That night I didn’t get on board till just before midnight and Dominic

could not conceal his relief at having me safely there. Why he should

have been so uneasy it was impossible to say but at the time I had a sort

of impression that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had

affected my appearance, that my doom was as it were written on my face.

I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the

vanity of all things. My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of

dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of

the time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting

kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no other person

than myself. As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive

to the moods of those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth. But I

know nothing about it. The observer, more or less alert, whom each of us

carries in his own consciousness, failed me altogether, had turned away

his face in sheer horror, or else had fainted from the strain. And thus

I had to live alone, unobserved even by myself.

But the trip had been successful. We re-entered the harbour very quietly

as usual and when our craft had been moored unostentatiously amongst the

plebeian stone-carriers, Dominic, whose grim joviality had subsided in

the last twenty-four hours of our homeward run, abandoned me to myself as

though indeed I had been a doomed man. He only stuck his head for a

moment into our little cuddy where I was changing my clothes and being

told in answer to his question that I had no special orders to give went

ashore without waiting for me.

Generally we used to step on the quay together and I never failed to

enter for a moment Madame Léonore’s café. But this time when I got on

the quay Dominic was nowhere to be seen. What was it?

Abandonment—discretion—or had he quarrelled with his Léonore before

leaving on the trip?

My way led me past the café and through the glass panes I saw that he was

already there. On the other side of the little marble table Madame

Léonore, leaning with mature grace on her elbow, was listening to him

absorbed. Then I passed on and—what would you have!—I ended by making my

way into the street of the Consuls. I had nowhere else to go. There

were my things in the apartment on the first floor. I couldn’t bear the

thought of meeting anybody I knew.

The feeble gas flame in the hall was still there, on duty, as though it

had never been turned off since I last crossed the hall at half-past

eleven in the evening to go to the harbour. The small flame had watched

me letting myself out; and now, exactly of the same size, the poor little

tongue of light (there was something wrong with that burner) watched me

letting myself in, as indeed it had done many times before. Generally

the impression was that of entering an untenanted house, but this time

before I could reach the foot of the stairs Therese glided out of the

passage leading into the studio. After the usual exclamations she

assured me that everything was ready for me upstairs, had been for days,

and offered to get me something to eat at once. I accepted and said I

would be down in the studio in half an hour. I found her there by the

side of the laid table ready for conversation. She began by telling

me—the dear, poor young Monsieur—in a sort of plaintive chant, that there

were no letters for me, no letters of any kind, no letters from anybody.

Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with flashes of

cunning swept over me from head to foot while I tried to eat.

“Are you giving me Captain Blunt’s wine to drink?” I asked, noting the

straw-coloured liquid in my glass.

She screwed up her mouth as if she had a twinge of toothache and assured

me that the wine belonged to the house. I would have to pay her for it.

As far as personal feelings go, Blunt, who addressed her always with

polite seriousness, was not a favourite with her. The “charming, brave

Monsieur” was now fighting for the King and religion against the impious

Liberals. He went away the very morning after I had left and, oh! she

remembered, he had asked her before going away whether I was still in the

house. Wanted probably to say good-bye to me, shake my hand, the dear,

polite Monsieur.

I let her run on in dread expectation of what she would say next but she

stuck to the subject of Blunt for some time longer. He had written to

her once about some of his things which he wanted her to send to Paris to

his mother’s address; but she was going to do nothing of the kind. She

announced this with a pious smile; and in answer to my questions I

discovered that it was a stratagem to make Captain Blunt return to the

house.

“You will get yourself into trouble with the police, Mademoiselle

Therese, if you go on like that,” I said. But she was as obstinate as a

mule and assured me with the utmost confidence that many people would be

ready to defend a poor honest girl. There was something behind this

attitude which I could not fathom. Suddenly she fetched a deep sigh.

“Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister.”

The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of speech for the

moment. The poor mad sinner had rushed off to some of her wickednesses

in Paris. Did I know? No? How could she tell whether I did know or

not? Well! I had hardly left the house, so to speak, when Rita was down

with her maid behaving as if the house did really still belong to

her. . .

“What time was it?” I managed to ask. And with the words my life itself

was being forced out through my lips. But Therese, not noticing anything

strange about me, said it was something like half-past seven in the

morning. The “poor sinner” was all in black as if she were going to

church (except for her expression, which was enough to shock any honest

person), and after ordering her with frightful menaces not to let anybody

know she was in the house she rushed upstairs and locked herself up in my

bedroom, while “that French creature” (whom she seemed to love more than

her own sister) went into my salon and hid herself behind the window

curtain.

I had recovered sufficiently to ask in a quiet natural voice whether Doña

Rita and Captain Blunt had seen each other. Apparently they had not seen

each other. The polite captain had looked so stern while packing up his

kit that Therese dared not speak to him at all. And he was in a hurry,

too. He had to see his dear mother off to Paris before his own

departure. Very stern. But he shook her hand with a very nice bow.

Therese elevated her right hand for me to see. It was broad and short

with blunt fingers, as usual. The pressure of Captain Blunt’s handshake

had not altered its unlovely shape.

“What was the good of telling him that our Rita was here?” went on

Therese. “I would have been ashamed of her coming here and behaving as

if the house belonged to her! I had already said some prayers at his

intention at the half-past six mass, the brave gentleman. That maid of

my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive away with her evil eyes,

but I made a sign of the cross after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs

and banged at your door, my dear kind young Monsieur, and shouted to Rita

that she had no right to lock herself in any of my _locataires_’ rooms.

At last she opened it—and what do you think? All her hair was loose over

her shoulders. I suppose it all came down when she flung her hat on your

bed. I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn’t done properly. She

used your brushes to do it up again in front of your glass.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, and jumped up, upsetting my wine to run upstairs

as fast as I could. I lighted the gas, all the three jets in the middle

of the room, the jet by the bedside and two others flanking the

dressing-table. I had been struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of

Rita’s passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the drawers

violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden there a scrap of paper, a

note. It was perfectly mad. Of course there was no chance of that.

Therese would have seen to it. I picked up one after another all the

various objects on the dressing-table. On laying my hands on the brushes

I had a profound emotion, and with misty eyes I examined them

meticulously with the new hope of finding one of Rita’s tawny hairs

entangled amongst the bristles by a miraculous chance. But Therese would

have done away with that chance, too. There was nothing to be seen,

though I held them up to the light with a beating heart. It was written

that not even that trace of her passage on the earth should remain with

me; not to help but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a

cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My unhappiness became dulled, as

the grief of those who mourn for the dead gets dulled in the overwhelming

sensation that everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost

beyond recall taking with it all the savour of life.

I discovered Therese still on the very same spot of the floor, her hands

folded over each other and facing my empty chair before which the spilled

wine had soaked a large portion of the table-cloth. She hadn’t moved at

all. She hadn’t even picked up the overturned glass. But directly I

appeared she began to speak in an ingratiating voice.

“If you have missed anything of yours upstairs, my dear young Monsieur,

you mustn’t say it’s me. You don’t know what our Rita is.”

“I wish to goodness,” I said, “that she had taken something.”

And again I became inordinately agitated as though it were my absolute

fate to be everlastingly dying and reviving to the tormenting fact of her

existence. Perhaps she had taken something? Anything. Some small

object. I thought suddenly of a Rhenish-stone match-box. Perhaps it was

that. I didn’t remember having seen it when upstairs. I wanted to make

sure at once. At once. But I commanded myself to sit still.

“And she so wealthy,” Therese went on. “Even you with your dear generous

little heart can do nothing for our Rita. No man can do anything for

her—except perhaps one, but she is so evilly disposed towards him that

she wouldn’t even see him, if in the goodness of his forgiving heart he

were to offer his hand to her. It’s her bad conscience that frightens

her. He loves her more than his life, the dear, charitable man.”

“You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes Doña Rita.

Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you know where he hangs out you had

better let him have word to be careful. I believe he, too, is mixed up

in the Carlist intrigue. Don’t you know that your sister can get him

shut up any day or get him expelled by the police?”

Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained virtue.

“Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is

awful. I said to her, ‘Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?’ and

she shouted like a fiend: ‘For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!’ She threw

herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and

laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with

the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young

Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. That wicked girl who

serves her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to her nose; but

I had a mind to run out and fetch the priest from the church where I go

to early mass. Such a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating

creature (I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to night), she

talked to our Rita very low and quieted her down. I am sure I don’t know

what she said. She must be leagued with the devil. And then she asked

me if I would go down and make a cup of chocolate for her Madame.

Madame—that’s our Rita. Madame! It seems they were going off directly

to Paris and her Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the

day before. Fancy me being ordered to make chocolate for our Rita!

However, the poor thing looked so exhausted and white-faced that I went.

Ah! the devil can give you an awful shake up if he likes.”

Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes looked at me with

great attention. I preserved an inscrutable expression, for I wanted to

hear all she had to tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest

anxiety composing her face into a cheerful expression.

“So Doña Rita is gone to Paris?” I asked negligently.

“Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight to the railway

station from here. When she first got up from the couch she could hardly

stand. But before, while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for

her, I tried to get her to sign a paper giving over the house to me, but

she only closed her eyes and begged me to try and be a good sister and

leave her alone for half an hour. And she lying there looking as if she

wouldn’t live a day. But she always hated me.”

I said bitterly, “You needn’t have worried her like this. If she had not

lived for another day you would have had this house and everything else

besides; a bigger bit than even your wolfish throat can swallow,

Mademoiselle Therese.”

I then said a few more things indicative of my disgust with her rapacity,

but they were quite inadequate, as I wasn’t able to find words strong

enough to express my real mind. But it didn’t matter really because I

don’t think Therese heard me at all. She seemed lost in rapt amazement.

“What do you say, my dear Monsieur? What! All for me without any sort

of paper?”

She appeared distracted by my curt: “Yes.” Therese believed in my

truthfulness. She believed me implicitly, except when I was telling her

the truth about herself, mincing no words, when she used to stand

smilingly bashful as if I were overwhelming her with compliments. I

expected her to continue the horrible tale but apparently she had found

something to think about which checked the flow. She fetched another

sigh and muttered:

“Then the law can be just, if it does not require any paper. After all,

I am her sister.”

“It’s very difficult to believe that—at sight,” I said roughly.

“Ah, but that I could prove. There are papers for that.”

After this declaration she began to clear the table, preserving a

thoughtful silence.

I was not very surprised at the news of Doña Rita’s departure for Paris.

It was not necessary to ask myself why she had gone. I didn’t even ask

myself whether she had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever.

Later talking again with Therese, I learned that her sister had given it

up for the use of the Carlist cause and that some sort of unofficial

Consul, a Carlist agent of some sort, either was going to live there or

had already taken possession. This, Rita herself had told her before her

departure on that agitated morning spent in the house—in my rooms. A

close investigation demonstrated to me that there was nothing missing

from them. Even the wretched match-box which I really hoped was gone

turned up in a drawer after I had, delightedly, given it up. It was a

great blow. She might have taken that at least! She knew I used to

carry it about with me constantly while ashore. She might have taken it!

Apparently she meant that there should be no bond left even of that kind;

and yet it was a long time before I gave up visiting and revisiting all

the corners of all possible receptacles for something that she might have

left behind on purpose. It was like the mania of those disordered minds

who spend their days hunting for a treasure. I hoped for a forgotten

hairpin, for some tiny piece of ribbon. Sometimes at night I reflected

that such hopes were altogether insensate; but I remember once getting up

at two in the morning to search for a little cardboard box in the

bathroom, into which, I remembered, I had not looked before. Of course

it was empty; and, anyway, Rita could not possibly have known of its

existence. I got back to bed shivering violently, though the night was

warm, and with a distinct impression that this thing would end by making

me mad. It was no longer a question of “this sort of thing” killing me.

The moral atmosphere of this torture was different. It would make me

mad. And at that thought great shudders ran down my prone body, because,

once, I had visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me a

poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought he had been

abominably fooled by a woman. They told me that his grievance was quite

imaginary. He was a young man with a thin fair beard, huddled up on the

edge of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant and

lamentable wailing filled the long bare corridor, striking a chill into

one’s heart long before one came to the door of his cell.

And there was no one from whom I could hear, to whom I could speak, with

whom I could evoke the image of Rita. Of course I could utter that word

of four letters to Therese; but Therese for some reason took it into her

head to avoid all topics connected with her sister. I felt as if I could

pull out great handfuls of her hair hidden modestly under the black

handkerchief of which the ends were sometimes tied under her chin. But,

really, I could not have given her any intelligible excuse for that

outrage. Moreover, she was very busy from the very top to the very

bottom of the house, which she persisted in running alone because she

couldn’t make up her mind to part with a few francs every month to a

servant. It seemed to me that I was no longer such a favourite with her

as I used to be. That, strange to say, was exasperating, too. It was as

if some idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer and

more humane emotions. She went about with brooms and dusters wearing an

air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness.

The man who to a certain extent took my place in Therese’s favour was the

old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall

hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be

button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably

with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried

to edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn’t put a great value on

Therese’s favour. Our stay in harbour was prolonged this time and I kept

indoors like an invalid. One evening I asked that old man to come in and

drink and smoke with me in the studio. He made no difficulties to

accept, brought his wooden pipe with him, and was very entertaining in a

pleasant voice. One couldn’t tell whether he was an uncommon person or

simply a ruffian, but in any case with his white beard he looked quite

venerable. Naturally he couldn’t give me much of his company as he had

to look closely after his girls and their admirers; not that the girls

were unduly frivolous, but of course being very young they had no

experience. They were friendly creatures with pleasant, merry voices and

he was very much devoted to them. He was a muscular man with a high

colour and silvery locks curling round his bald pate and over his ears,

like a _barocco_ apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and

had seen some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood

in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to

them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a certain

truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their

generosity—which was encouraged. I sometimes wondered whether those two

careless, merry hard-working creatures understood the secret moral beauty

of the situation.

My real company was the dummy in the studio and I can’t say it was

exactly satisfying. After taking possession of the studio I had raised

it tenderly, dusted its mangled limbs and insensible, hard-wood bosom,

and then had propped it up in a corner where it seemed to take on, of

itself, a shy attitude. I knew its history. It was not an ordinary

dummy. One day, talking with Doña Rita about her sister, I had told her

that I thought Therese used to knock it down on purpose with a broom, and

Doña Rita had laughed very much. This, she had said, was an instance of

dislike from mere instinct. That dummy had been made to measure years

before. It had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine robes in

which Doña Rita sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds

and bends of the stuff had to be preserved as in the first sketch. Doña

Rita described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room

while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures down

on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the maker, who presently

returned it with an angry letter stating that those proportions were

altogether impossible in any woman. Apparently Rose had muddled them all

up; and it was a long time before the figure was finished and sent to the

Pavilion in a long basket to take on itself the robes and the hieratic

pose of the Empress. Later, it wore with the same patience the

marvellous hat of the “Girl in the Hat.” But Doña Rita couldn’t

understand how the poor thing ever found its way to Marseilles minus its

turnip head. Probably it came down with the robes and a quantity of

precious brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris. The

knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain Blunt’s references to

it, with Therese’s shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary

reproduction with a sort of charm, gave me a faint and miserable illusion

of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less precise, too.

. . . But it can’t be explained. I felt positively friendly to it as if it

had been Rita’s trusted personal attendant. I even went so far as to

discover that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went so far

as to address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or

drag it out from there for contemplation. I left it in peace. I wasn’t

mad. I was only convinced that I soon would be.

CHAPTER II

Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account of

all these Royalist affairs which I couldn’t very well drop, and in truth

did not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which

somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or

elsewhere. On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact

with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the

mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one

acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence

born from the dealings with the elemental powers of nature. I couldn’t

give all that up. And besides all this was related to Doña Rita. I had,

as it were, received it all from her own hand, from that hand the clasp

of which was as frank as a man’s and yet conveyed a unique sensation.

The very memory of it would go through me like a wave of heat. It was

over that hand that we first got into the habit of quarrelling, with the

irritability of sufferers from some obscure pain and yet half unconscious

of their disease. Rita’s own spirit hovered over the troubled waters of

Legitimity. But as to the sound of the four magic letters of her name I

was not very likely to hear it fall sweetly on my ear. For instance, the

distinguished personality in the world of finance with whom I had to

confer several times, alluded to the irresistible seduction of the power

which reigned over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious and

unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together with the

unfathomable splendour of the night as—Madame de Lastaola. That’s how

that steel-grey man called the greatest mystery of the universe. When

uttering that assumed name he would make for himself a guardedly solemn

and reserved face as though he were afraid lest I should presume to

smile, lest he himself should venture to smile, and the sacred formality

of our relations should be outraged beyond mending.

He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame de Lastaola’s wishes,

plans, activities, instructions, movements; or picking up a letter from

the usual litter of paper found on such men’s desks, glance at it to

refresh his memory; and, while the very sight of the handwriting would

make my lips go dry, would ask me in a bloodless voice whether perchance

I had “a direct communication from—er—Paris lately.” And there would be

other maddening circumstances connected with those visits. He would

treat me as a serious person having a clear view of certain

eventualities, while at the very moment my vision could see nothing but

streaming across the wall at his back, abundant and misty, unearthly and

adorable, a mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks tangled in

it. Another nuisance was the atmosphere of Royalism, of Legitimacy, that

pervaded the room, thin as air, intangible, as though no Legitimist of

flesh and blood had ever existed to the man’s mind except perhaps myself.

He, of course, was just simply a banker, a very distinguished, a very

influential, and a very impeccable banker. He persisted also in

deferring to my judgment and sense with an over-emphasis called out by

his perpetual surprise at my youth. Though he had seen me many times (I

even knew his wife) he could never get over my immature age. He himself

was born about fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers

and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during

a conversation. On one occasion he said to me. “By the by, the Marquis

of Villarel is here for a time. He inquired after you the last time he

called on me. May I let him know that you are in town?”

I didn’t say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don

Rafael of Rita’s own story. What had I to do with Spanish grandees? And

for that matter what had she, the woman of all time, to do with all the

villainous or splendid disguises human dust takes upon itself? All this

was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me there was no

present, no future, nothing but a hollow pain, a vain passion of such

magnitude that being locked up within my breast it gave me an illusion of

lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars. But

when I made up my mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call

on the banker’s wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the

Marquis de Villarel was “amongst us.” She said it joyously. If in her

husband’s room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated principle,

in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons. “_Il m’a causé beaucoup

de vous_,” she said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to

be proud. I slunk away from her. I couldn’t believe that the grandee

had talked to her about me. I had never felt myself part of the great

Royalist enterprise. I confess that I was so indifferent to everything,

so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I

hadn’t the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my

volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order

to tell them with a little gesture, “Look! Over there—in that corner.

That’s the notorious Monsieur George.” At last she herself drove me out

by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over “_ce

cher_ Monsieur Mills” and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a

perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice, dragging in the

name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether I was really so much in

the confidence of that astonishing person. “_Vous devez bien regretter

son départ pour Paris_,” she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness at

her fan. . . . How I got out of the room I really don’t know. There was

also a staircase. I did not fall down it head first—that much I am

certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long time about the

seashore and went home very late, by the way of the Prado, giving in

passing a fearful glance at the Villa. It showed not a gleam of light

through the thin foliage of its trees.

I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the

shipwrights at work on her deck. From the way they went about their

business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly

refreshed by my company during the day. Dominic, too, devoted himself to

his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic. Then I dropped in at the

café and Madame Léonore’s loud “Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!”

pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But I found the sparkle of her

black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my

drink rather difficult to bear. That man and that woman seemed to know

something. What did they know? At parting she pressed my hand

significantly. What did she mean? But I didn’t feel offended by these

manifestations. The souls within these people’s breasts were not

volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders.

Neither had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the fine

world that wants only to get on. Somehow they had sensed that there was

something wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for

themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of

grins at my expense.

That day on returning home I found Therese looking out for me, a very

unusual occurrence of late. She handed me a card bearing the name of the

Marquis de Villarel.

“How did you come by this?” I asked. She turned on at once the tap of

her volubility and I was not surprised to learn that the grandee had not

done such an extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person. A young

gentleman had brought it. Such a nice young gentleman, she interjected

with her piously ghoulish expression. He was not very tall. He had a

very smooth complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny

black moustache. Therese was sure that he must have been an officer _en

las filas legitimas_. With that notion in her head she had asked him

about the welfare of that other model of charm and elegance, Captain

Blunt. To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with

beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt. But he seemed very

much interested in his surroundings, looked all round the hall, noted the

costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver

statuette holding up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs,

and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the most

excellent Señora Doña Rita de Lastaola. The question staggered Therese,

but with great presence of mind she answered the young gentleman that she

didn’t know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was

her property, having been given to her by her own sister. At this the

young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and

got back into his fiacre. Why should people be angry with a poor girl

who had never done a single reprehensible thing in her whole life?

“I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister.”

She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of sighs and this was the

hopeless kind) and added reflectively, “Sin on sin, wickedness on

wickedness! And the longer she lives the worse it will be. It would be

better for our Rita to be dead.”

I told “Mademoiselle Therese” that it was really impossible to tell

whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I wasn’t really very much

shocked. These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese. One got

used to them. They were merely the expression of her rapacity and her

righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my asking her whether

she had any dinner ready for me that evening.

“What’s the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur,”

she quizzed me tenderly. “You just only peck like a little bird. Much

better let me save the money for you.” It will show the

super-terrestrial nature of my misery when I say that I was quite

surprised at Therese’s view of my appetite. Perhaps she was right. I

certainly did not know. I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted

that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment.

The new young gentleman within Therese’s horizon didn’t surprise me very

much. Villarel would travel with some sort of suite, a couple of

secretaries at least. I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know

that the man had been (very likely was still) Captain General of the

Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political (and domestic)

influence at Court. The card was, under its social form, a mere command

to present myself before the grandee. No Royalist devoted by conviction,

as I must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning. I put

the card in my pocket and after dining or not dining—I really don’t

remember—spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing thoughts of

tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From time to time I

looked at the dummy. I even got up once from the couch on which I had

been writhing like a worm and walked towards it as if to touch it, but

refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by

Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way

to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started

propounding to me a conundrum which began with the words:

“If our Rita were to die before long . . .”

She didn’t get any further because I had jumped up and frightened her by

shouting: “Is she ill? What has happened? Have you had a letter?”

She had had a letter. I didn’t ask her to show it to me, though I

daresay she would have done so. I had an idea that there was no meaning

in anything, at least no meaning that mattered. But the interruption had

made Therese apparently forget her sinister conundrum. She observed me

with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for a bit, and then with the fatuous

remark about the Law being just she left me to the horrors of the studio.

I believe I went to sleep there from sheer exhaustion. Some time during

the night I woke up chilled to the bone and in the dark. These were

horrors and no mistake. I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the

indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The

black-and-white hall was like an ice-house.

The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of

Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Doña Rita’s,

her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by

her and no one else. I couldn’t bear the idea of her being criticized by

every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart from

that, nothing mattered much, why, then—I would get this over.

But it appeared that I had not reflected sufficiently on all the

consequences of that step. First of all the sight of the Villa looking

shabbily cheerful in the sunshine (but not containing her any longer) was

so perturbing that I very nearly went away from the gate. Then when I

got in after much hesitation—being admitted by the man in the green baize

apron who recognized me—the thought of entering that room, out of which

she was gone as completely as if she had been dead, gave me such an

emotion that I had to steady myself against the table till the faintness

was past. Yet I was irritated as at a treason when the man in the baize

apron instead of letting me into the Pompeiian dining-room crossed the

hall to another door not at all in the Pompeiian style (more Louis XV

rather—that Villa was like a _Salade Russe_ of styles) and introduced me

into a big, light room full of very modern furniture. The portrait _en

pied_ of an officer in a sky-blue uniform hung on the end wall. The

officer had a small head, a black beard cut square, a robust body, and

leaned with gauntleted hands on the simple hilt of a straight sword.

That striking picture dominated a massive mahogany desk, and, in front of

this desk, a very roomy, tall-backed armchair of dark green velvet. I

thought I had been announced into an empty room till glancing along the

extremely loud carpet I detected a pair of feet under the armchair.

I advanced towards it and discovered a little man, who had made no sound

or movement till I came into his view, sunk deep in the green velvet. He

altered his position slowly and rested his hollow, black, quietly burning

eyes on my face in prolonged scrutiny. I detected something comminatory

in his yellow, emaciated countenance, but I believe now he was simply

startled by my youth. I bowed profoundly. He extended a meagre little

hand.

“Take a chair, Don Jorge.”

He was very small, frail, and thin, but his voice was not languid, though

he spoke hardly above his breath. Such was the envelope and the voice of

the fanatical soul belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and

Captain General of the Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the Legitimist

Court, now detached on a special mission. He was all fidelity,

inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but like some great saints he had

very little body to keep all these merits in.

“You are very young,” he remarked, to begin with. “The matters on which

I desired to converse with you are very grave.”

“I was under the impression that your Excellency wished to see me at

once. But if your Excellency prefers it I will return in, say, seven

years’ time when I may perhaps be old enough to talk about grave

matters.”

He didn’t stir hand or foot and not even the quiver of an eyelid proved

that he had heard my shockingly unbecoming retort.

“You have been recommended to us by a noble and loyal lady, in whom His

Majesty—whom God preserve—reposes an entire confidence. God will reward

her as she deserves and you, too, Señor, according to the disposition you

bring to this great work which has the blessing (here he crossed himself)

of our Holy Mother the Church.”

“I suppose your Excellency understands that in all this I am not looking

for reward of any kind.”

At this he made a faint, almost ethereal grimace.

“I was speaking of the spiritual blessing which rewards the service of

religion and will be of benefit to your soul,” he explained with a slight

touch of acidity. “The other is perfectly understood and your fidelity

is taken for granted. His Majesty—whom God preserve—has been already

pleased to signify his satisfaction with your services to the most noble

and loyal Doña Rita by a letter in his own hand.”

Perhaps he expected me to acknowledge this announcement in some way,

speech, or bow, or something, because before my immobility he made a

slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. “I am afraid,

Señor, that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence

which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and I are

strangers, I believe. Are you a young man of that sort?”

“I am a very good gun-runner, your Excellency,” I answered quietly.

He bowed his head gravely. “We are aware. But I was looking for the

motives which ought to have their pure source in religion.”

“I must confess frankly that I have not reflected on my motives,” I said.

“It is enough for me to know that they are not dishonourable and that

anybody can see they are not the motives of an adventurer seeking some

sordid advantage.”

He had listened patiently and when he saw that there was nothing more to

come he ended the discussion.

“Señor, we should reflect upon our motives. It is salutary for our

conscience and is recommended (he crossed himself) by our Holy Mother the

Church. I have here certain letters from Paris on which I would consult

your young sagacity which is accredited to us by the most loyal Doña

Rita.”

The sound of that name on his lips was simply odious. I was convinced

that this man of forms and ceremonies and fanatical royalism was

perfectly heartless. Perhaps he reflected on his motives; but it seemed

to me that his conscience could be nothing else but a monstrous thing

which very few actions could disturb appreciably. Yet for the credit of

Doña Rita I did not withhold from him my young sagacity. What he thought

of it I don’t know. The matters we discussed were not of course of high

policy, though from the point of view of the war in the south they were

important enough. We agreed on certain things to be done, and finally,

always out of regard for Doña Rita’s credit, I put myself generally at

his disposition or of any Carlist agent he would appoint in his place;

for I did not suppose that he would remain very long in Marseilles. He

got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child might have done. The

audience was over but he noticed my eyes wandering to the portrait and he

said in his measured, breathed-out tones:

“I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here to the gracious

attention of Madame de Lastaola, who, knowing my attachment to the royal

person of my Master, has sent it down from Paris to greet me in this

house which has been given up for my occupation also through her

generosity to the Royal Cause. Unfortunately she, too, is touched by the

infection of this irreverent and unfaithful age. But she is young yet.

She is young.”

These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of menace as though he

were supernaturally aware of some suspended disasters. With his burning

eyes he was the image of an Inquisitor with an unconquerable soul in that

frail body. But suddenly he dropped his eyelids and the conversation

finished as characteristically as it had begun: with a slow, dismissing

inclination of the head and an “Adios, Señor—may God guard you from sin.”

CHAPTER III

I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my unlawful

trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless, like a fairly

decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink. The business was getting

dangerous. The bands in the South were not very well organized, worked

with no very definite plan, and now were beginning to be pretty closely

hunted. The arrangements for the transport of supplies were going to

pieces; our friends ashore were getting scared; and it was no joke to

find after a day of skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing

place and have to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and

lurk about the coast for another week or so, unable to trust anybody and

looking at every vessel we met with suspicion. Once we were ambushed by

a lot of “rascally Carabineers,” as Dominic called them, who hid

themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of mules well in view

on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand,

Dominic detected something suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some

sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with.

“There is a smell of treachery about this,” he remarked suddenly, turning

at his oar. (He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to

reconnoitre.) I couldn’t detect any smell and I regard to this day our

escape on that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous. Surely some

supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the

Carabineers’ rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the Carabineers

have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic, after swearing most

horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that looks

after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic believed in angels in a

conventional way, but laid no claim to having one of his own. Soon

afterwards, while sailing quietly at night, we found ourselves suddenly

near a small coasting vessel, also without lights, which all at once

treated us to a volley of rifle fire. Dominic’s mighty and inspired

yell: “_A plat ventre_!” and also an unexpected roll to windward saved

all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a

breeze then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase.

But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the

darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: “_Le métier se

gâte_.” I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not altogether

spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care. In fact, for my

purpose it was rather better, a more potent influence; like the stronger

intoxication of raw spirit. A volley in the dark after all was not such

a bad thing. Only a moment before we had received it, there, in that

calm night of the sea full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been

looking at an enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the

tawny hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white

neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with brilliants

and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled ornament, which

I remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it

was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue

place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in

my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the

gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect

round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by

hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always

woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a chance.

A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some

day—or night.

* * * * *

At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The little

vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child, the sea

itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck

that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took

away all that there was in me of independent life, but just failed to

take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit

for no one else but unrepentant sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his

moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our

common enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning

thunder-clap—and, one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain

still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the

railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than

another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties

with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a

discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a

respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of

his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station shunning

its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man. I

hadn’t any money in my pocket. I hadn’t even the bundle and the stick of

a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart was

faint within me. My attire was such that I daren’t approach the rank of

fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which

one suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave up to the

fortunate of this earth. I didn’t believe in my power of persuasion. I

had no powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the

uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of

Carnival.

Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in an

astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life, I had

lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my companions, had

parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link with life, my touch

with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone—but a small penknife and a

latchkey had never parted company with me. With the latchkey I opened

the door of refuge. The hall wore its deaf-and-dumb air, its

black-and-white stillness.

The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the end of

the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a hair’s breadth

its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and the staircase lost

itself in the shadows above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights.

To see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the things I

had known ought to have come down with a crash at the moment of the final

catastrophe on the Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself

descending the stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that

she would be murdered this time for certain. She had a strange,

unemotional conviction that the house was particularly convenient for a

crime. One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she

held with the stolidity of a peasant allied to the outward serenity of a

nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but when she

recognized me she got such a shock that she sat down suddenly on the

lowest step. She did not expect me for another week at least, and,

besides, she explained, the state I was in made her blood take “one

turn.”

Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed her

true nature. But who had ever fathomed her nature! There was none of

her treacly volubility. There were none of her “dear young gentlemans”

and “poor little hearts” and references to sin. In breathless silence

she ran about the house getting my room ready, lighting fires and

gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up the stairs. Yes, she did

lay hands on me for that charitable purpose. They trembled. Her pale

eyes hardly left my face. “What brought you here like this?” she

whispered once.

“If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there the

hand of God.”

She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell over

it. “Oh, dear heart,” she murmured, and ran off to the kitchen.

I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty and

offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and after I

drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly. I managed to

say with difficulty: “Go away,” whereupon she vanished as if by magic

before the words were fairly out of my mouth. Immediately afterwards the

sunlight forced through the slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and