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 perso
n 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 mysteri
ous 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.”
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 407
