CHAPTER IV
Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel broughamwaiting at the door. On passing the door of the front room (it wasoriginally 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 theconversation, and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk awayfrom him after the interview. But I didn't stop--I didn't want to seehim--and before he could answer I was already half way up the stairsrunning noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered the floor ofthe landing. Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly Icaught by surprise the person who was in there watching the street halfconcealed by the window curtain. It was a woman. A totally unexpectedwoman. A perfect stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her facewas veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume and a verysimple form of hat. She murmured: "I had an idea that Monsieur was inthe house," raising a gloved hand to lift her veil. It was Rose and shegave me a shock. I had never seen her before but with her little blacksilk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her head. This outdoor dresswas like a disguise. I asked anxiously:
"What has happened to Madame?"
"Nothing. I have a letter," she murmured, and I saw it appear betweenthe fingers of her extended hand, in a very white envelope which I toreopen 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 theusual 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 criedfor years and years, and you haven't the sense to come back within thehour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic"--and a sprawlingsignature of the four magic letters at the bottom.
While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnestundertone: "I don't like to leave Madame by herself for any length oftime."
"How long have you been in my room?" I asked.
"The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won't mind the liberty. I satfor 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 afalse impression. Madame is frank and open like the day but it won't dowith everybody. There are people who would put a wrong construction onanything. 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 weekwhen 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'schair in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet, I stoleup here. I know the disposition of the apartments. I reckoned Madame'ssister 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 _coupe_ cameto the door about an hour ago and it's still waiting," she added, lookingat 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 toknow."
"Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assureMonsieur that here in this town it's perfectly safe for Madame to bealone."
"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 inthe Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn't leave Madame by herself, not forhalf 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 _coupe_ going away."
She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn'tmoved. The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost atonce.
"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 anymore tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will takethe risk of not being received."
She dropped her eyes, said: "_Oui_, Monsieur," and at my suggestionwaited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs tosee the road clear.
It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was emptyand everything was perfectly still. Blunt himself had no doubt gone awaywith his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls,Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they mighthave been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the housewould not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted alow whistle which didn't seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere morethan two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping downthe stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: "Take a fiacre," sheglided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.
The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on thePrado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and withthat marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectlyin 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 coatshe announced me with the simple words: "_Voila_ Monsieur," and hurriedaway. Directly I appeared Dona Rita, away there on the couch, passed thetips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwardson each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of theroom: "The dry season has set in." I glanced at the pink tips of herfingers perfunctorily and then drew back. She let her hands fallnegligently as if she had no use for them any more and put on a seriousexpression.
"So it seems," I said, sitting down opposite her. "For how long, Iwonder."
"For years and years. One gets so little encouragement. First you boltaway from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then whenyou come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don'tknow how to do it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair andhold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don't knowwhat to do with your hands."
All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed toplay upon the sober surface of her thoughts. Then seeing that I did notanswer she altered the note a bit.
"_Amigo_ George," she said, "I take the trouble to send for you and hereI 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, forinstance, 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 aretears of quiet happiness. Peeling onions also will bring tears."
"Oh, you are not susceptible," she flew out at me. "But you are an idiotall the same."
"Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?" I asked witha certain animation.
"Yes. And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned onceyou would have read between the lines that all I wanted you here for wasto 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'tyou 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. Doyou 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 forthe king--the king. Such a king! _Vive le Roi_! Come, why don't youshout _Vive le Roi_, too?"
"I am not your parrot," I said.
"No, he never sulked. He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomedto the best society, whereas you, I suppose, are nothing but a heartlessvagabond like myself."
"I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the insolence to tell youthat to your face."
"Well, very nearly. It was what it amounted to. I am not stupid. Thereis no need to spell out simple words for me. It just came out. Don Juanstruggled desperately to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. Andyet 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. Itsounds so uncanny. Had I lived in the Middle Ages I am certain I wouldhave believed that a talking bird must be possessed by the devil. I amsure Therese would believe that now. My own sister! She would crossherself many times and simply quake with terror."
"But you were not terrified," I said. "May I ask when that interestingcommunication took place?"
"Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all days in the year. Iwas sorry for him."
"Why tell me this? I couldn't help noticing it. I regretted I hadn't myumbrella with me."
"Those unforgiven tears! Oh, you simple soul! Don't you know thatpeople never cry for anybody but themselves? . . . _Amigo_ George, tellme--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 iseaten 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'tyou know?"
She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her straight eyebrowsthe deep blue eyes remained fixed on me, impersonally, as if withoutthought.
"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 herpetals."
"What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than onewould think possible, considering what she is and whence she came. It'strue that I, too, come from the same spot."
"She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her. I don't saythis to boast."
"It must be very comforting."
"Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightfulmusings on one thing and another I went to lunch with a charming lady andspent most of the afternoon talking with her."
Dona 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 meansbanal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would havefallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allegre Pavilion, my dearRita, you were but a crowd of glorified _bourgeois_."
She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes likemelted sapphires, around those red lips that almost without moving couldbreathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, thatmysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiverunder her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare moments ofgaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinitesadness, like the sunlight of our life hiding the invincible darkness inwhich the universe must work out its impenetrable destiny.
"Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that's the reason I never could feelperfectly serious while they were demolishing the world about my ears. Ifancy now that I could tell beforehand what each of them was going tosay. They were repeating the same words over and over again, those greatclever 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. Hesat there mostly silent and looming up three sizes bigger than any ofthem."
"The ruler of the aviary," I muttered viciously.
"It annoys you that I should talk of that time?" she asked in a tendervoice. "Well, I won't, except for once to say that you must not make amistake: in that aviary he was the man. I know because he used to talkto me afterwards sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed to carryall 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 ofhim 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 throughone's mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven letters thismorning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which havetangled up everything. I am quite frightened."
And she explained to me that one of them--the long one on the top of thepile, on the table over there--seemed to contain ugly inferences directedat herself in a menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what Icould make of it.
I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she hadmisunderstood it thoroughly and even amazingly. I proved it to her veryquickly. But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness andarose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn'thelp looking at her admiringly.
"Rita," I said, "you are a marvellous idiot."
"Am I? Imbecile," she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief. "Butperhaps it only seems so to you in contrast with the lady so perfect inher way. What is her way?"
"Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth andseventieth year, and I have walked tete-a-tete with her for some littledistance this afternoon."
"Heavens," she whispered, thunderstruck. "And meantime I had the sonhere. He arrived about five minutes after Rose left with that note foryou," she went on in a tone of awe. "As a matter of fact, Rose saw himacross the street but she thought she had better go on to you."
"I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much," I saidbitterly. "I suppose you got him out of the house about five minutesafter you heard I was coming here. Rose ought to have turned back whenshe saw him on his way to cheer your solitude. That girl is stupid afterall, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no doubt isvery useful at times."
"I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won't have it. Rose isnot 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 saidever since I have known you. You may understand a lot about runningcontraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as toRose's mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers yours isabsolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible ifit weren't so--what shall I call it?--babyish. You ought to be slappedand put to bed." There was an extraordinary earnestness in her tone andwhen 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 andlove. And I thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take himselfoff from her presence for ever, in that voice the very anger of whichseemed to twine itself gently round one's heart. No wonder the poorwretch could not forget the scene and couldn't restrain his tears on theplain of Rambouillet. My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as theywere, had no more duration than a blaze of straw. So I only said:
"Much _you_ know a
bout the management of children." The corners of herlips stirred quaintly; her animosity, especially when provoked by apersonal attack upon herself, was always tinged by a sort of wistfulhumour of the most disarming kind.
"Come, _amigo_ George, let us leave poor Rose alone. You had better tellme 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 hasseen me several times. But she has written to me on three separateoccasions 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 goatherdthat could have been mistress of a king, how should she write to an oldqueen from very far away; from over the sea?"
"I will ask you as I have asked the old queen: why do you tell me allthis, Dona 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 youthink of continuing the correspondence?"
"Who knows?" she said in a profound tone. "She is the only woman thatever wrote to me. I returned her three letters to her with my lastanswer, explaining humbly that I preferred her to burn them herself. AndI 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 maybe able to begin your letter by the words '_Chere Maman_.'"
The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes fromme, flew out of her hand and opening in mid-air scattered cigarettes forquite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once andwandered off picking them up industriously. Dona Rita's voice behind mesaid indifferently:
"Don't trouble, I will ring for Rose."
"No need," I growled, without turning my head, "I can find my hat in thehall by myself, after I've finished picking up . . . "
"Bear!"
I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She satcross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of herembroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about herface 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, Dona Rita," I observed."You are too impulsive."
"This is not bad manners, that's sheer insolence. This has happened toyou before. If it happens again, as I can't be expected to wrestle witha savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs andlock myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did you say this tome?"
"Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart."
"If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you hadbetter take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for thepleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all,you are rather amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell mesomething of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old ladywho thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit ofhappiness."
"I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness ofcertain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but thelady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. Isat 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 beenincidentally given to understand that I was an insignificant andsuperfluous 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 mefeel 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 shewas interested. "Anything more?" she asked, with a flash of radianteagerness in all her person and bending slightly forward towards me.
"Oh, it's hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of threat wrapped up, Ibelieve, in genuine anxiety as to what might happen to my youthfulinsignificance. If I hadn't been rather on the alert just then Iwouldn't even have perceived the meaning. But really an allusion to 'hotSouthern blood' I could have only one meaning. Of course I laughed atit, but only '_pour l'honneur_' and to show I understood perfectly. Inreality it left me completely indifferent."
Dona 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 anyexpression except that of its usual mysterious immobility, but all herface took on a sad and thoughtful cast. Then as if she had made up hermind under the pressure of necessity:
"Listen, _amigo_," she said, "I have suffered domination and it didn'tcrush me because I have been strong enough to live with it; I have knowncaprice, you may call it folly if you like, and it left me unharmedbecause I was great enough not to be captured by anything that wasn'treally worthy of me. My dear, it went down like a house of cards beforemy breath. There is something in me that will not be dazzled by any sortof prestige in this world, worthy or unworthy. I am telling you thisbecause you are younger than myself."
"If you want me to say that there is nothing petty or mean about you,Dona Rita, then I do say it."
She nodded at me with an air of accepting the rendered justice and wenton 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 ofrespectability! And nobody can say that I have made as much as theslightest 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 amready 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 necessaryfor 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, whichmade her voice sound more melancholy than before. "I am not so suremyself," she continued with a curious, vanishing, intonation of despair."I don't know the truth about myself because I never had an opportunityto compare myself to anything in the world. I have been offered mockadulation, treated with mock reserve or with mock devotion, I have beenfawned upon with an appalling earnestness of purpose, I can tell you; butthese later honours, my dear, came to me in the shape of a very loyal andvery scrupulous gentleman. For he is all that. And as a matter of factI 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 thetrend of her spoken thoughts.
"That was yesterday," she said. "And yesterday he was extremely correctand very full of extreme self-esteem which expressed itself in theexaggerated delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all hismoods. I have known him even playful. I didn't listen to him. I wasthinking of something else. Of things that were neither correct norplayful and that had to be looked at steadily with all the best that wasin 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 tearsfor 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 havenot made it, at himself and even at his mother. All this rather inparrot language, in the words of tra
dition and morality as understood bythe members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. And yet when Ithought that all this, those poor hackneyed words, expressed a sincerepassion I could have found in my heart to be sorry for him. But he endedby telling me that one couldn't believe a single word I said, orsomething like that. You were here then, you heard it yourself."
"And it cut you to the quick," I said. "It made you depart from yourdignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to bethere. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (menhave been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning of theworld) this sensibility seems to me childish."
"What perspicacity," she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, thenchanged her tone. "Therefore he wasn't expected to-day when he turnedup, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms ofconversation 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 shehad been thinking of far-off things, then roused herself to graveanimation.
"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 withsuch fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his correct, restrainedway, and in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something thatwould be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends, wetwo, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when comingback dead-tired from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to itand yet hadn't the courage to tear himself away from here. He was assimple as that. He's a _tres galant homme_ of absolute probity, evenwith himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn'tlove 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 hadgiven him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized therights of his passion which I could very well see. He is jealous. He isnot jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustfulof me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the sameway Therese does, as something that can be touched with grace or go toperdition; and he doesn't want to be damned with me before his ownjudgment seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my ownBasque peasant soul and don't want to think that every time he goes awayfrom my feet--yes, _mon cher_, on this carpet, look for the marks ofscorching--that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off hismoral sleeve. That! Never!"
With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it inher fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously.
"And then, I don't love him," she uttered slowly as if speaking toherself 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 hiscold society smiles. But I have looked into those eyes too often. Thereare too many disdains in this aristocratic republican without a home.His fate may be cruel, but it will always be commonplace. While he satthere trying in a worldly tone to explain to me the problems, thescruples, of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart and Iwas sorry for him. I was sorry enough for him to feel that if he hadsuddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, _avec delices_,I could forgive him while I choked. How correct he was! But bitternessagainst me peeped out of every second phrase. At last I raised my handand said to him, 'Enough.' I believe he was shocked by my plebeianabruptness but he was too polite to show it. His conventions will alwaysstand in the way of his nature. I told him that everything that had beensaid and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicableunless on the assumption that he was in love with me,--and yet ineverything there was an implication that he couldn't forgive me my veryexistence. I did ask him whether he didn't think that it was absurd onhis part . . . "
"Didn't you say that it was exquisitely absurd?" I asked.
"Exquisitely! . . . " Dona Rita was surprised at my question. "No. Whyshould I say that?"
"It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It's their familyexpression. It would have come with a familiar sound and would have beenless offensive."
"Offensive," Dona Rita repeated earnestly. "I don't think he wasoffended; he suffered in another way, but I didn't care for that. It wasI that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, butpast bearing. I didn't spare him. I told him plainly that to want awoman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice,independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is andat the same time to demand from her the candour and the innocence thatcould be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made herand at the same time to despise her secretly for every touch with whichher life had fashioned her--that was neither generous nor high minded; itwas positively frantic. He got up and went away to lean against themantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his head in his hand. You haveno idea of the charm and the distinction of his pose. I couldn't helpadmiring him: the expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of hisimmobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to aesthetic impressions, I have beeneducated to believe that there is a soul in them."
With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed on me she laughedher deep contralto laugh without mirth but also without irony, andprofoundly moving by the mere purity of the sound.
"I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in his life. Hisself-command is the most admirable worldly thing I have ever seen. Whatmade it beautiful was that one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as ina great work of art."
She paused with an inscrutable smile that a great painter might have puton the face of some symbolic figure for the speculation and wonder ofmany generations. I said:
"I always thought that love for you could work great wonders. And now Iam certain."
"Are you trying to be ironic?" she said sadly and very much as a childmight have spoken.
"I don't know," I answered in a tone of the same simplicity. "I find itvery difficult to be generous."
"I, too," she said with a sort of funny eagerness. "I didn't treat himvery generously. Only I didn't say much more. I found I didn't carewhat I said--and it would have been like throwing insults at a beautifulcomposition. He was well inspired not to move. It has spared him somedisagreeable truths and perhaps I would even have said more than thetruth. I am not fair. I am no more fair than other people. I wouldhave been harsh. My very admiration was making me more angry. It'sridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor clothes, but therewas a funereal grace in his attitude so that he might have beenreproduced in marble on a monument to some woman in one of thoseatrocious Campo Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocraticmourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I became glad that I wasangry 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,Dona Rita?--therefore deserving your attention, that one should neverlaugh at love."
"My dear," she said gently, "I have been taught to laugh at most thingsby a man who never laughed himself; but it's true that he never spoke oflove to me, love as a subject that is. So perhaps . . . But why?"
"Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy), because, she said, therewas death in the mockery of love."
Dona Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and went on:
"I am glad, then, I didn't laugh. And I am also glad I said nothingmore. I was feeling so little generous that if I had known somethingthen of his mother's allusion to 'white geese' I would have advised himto 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 exactlywhat her son wants. But look how badly the world is arranged. Suchwhite birds cannot be got for nothing and he has not enough money even tobuy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave that tragicquality 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 Ihad done speaking I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him verygently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He moved forward then andsaid to me in his usual voice and with his usual smile that it would havebeen excellent advice but unfortunately I was one of those women whocan't be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he insisted ratherdarkly: 'Oh, yes, Dona Rita, it is so. Cherish no illusions about thatfact.' It sounded so threatening that in my surprise I didn't evenacknowledge his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like awounded man retreating after a fight. No, I have nothing to reproachmyself with. I did nothing. I led him into nothing. Whatever illusionshave passed through my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal towhat he seemed to think the redeeming proprieties of the situation thathe has gone from me for good without so much as kissing the tips of myfingers. He must have felt like a man who had betrayed himself fornothing. It's horrible. It's the fault of that enormous fortune ofmine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to him; for hecouldn't help his hatred of the thing that is: and as to his love, whichis just as real, well--could I have rushed away from him to shut myselfup in a convent? Could I? After all I have a right to my share ofdaylight."
The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes Page 16
