The Arrow of Gold

by Joseph Conrad

  “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 p
arrot-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.