CHAPTER V
I took my eyes from her face and became aware that dusk was beginning tosteal into the room. How strange it seemed. Except for the glazedrotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by anorder of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and invivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings and lean youths withnarrow birds' wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Ritaand I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enrichedshopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but atthat moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive andstrangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealinga power to see and hear.
Without words, without gestures, Dona Rita was heard again. "It may havebeen as near coming to pass as this." She showed me the breadth of herlittle finger nail. "Yes, as near as that. Why? How? Just like that,for nothing. Because it had come up. Because a wild notion had entereda practical old woman's head. Yes. And the best of it is that I havenothing to complain of. Had I surrendered I would have been perfectlysafe with these two. It is they or rather he who couldn't trust me, orrather that something which I express, which I stand for. Mills wouldnever tell me what it was. Perhaps he didn't know exactly himself. Hesaid it was something like genius. My genius! Oh, I am not conscious ofit, believe me, I am not conscious of it. But if I were I wouldn't pluckit out and cast it away. I am ashamed of nothing, of nothing! Don't bestupid enough to think that I have the slightest regret. There is noregret. 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 wasonly then that she became composed enough to light an enormous cigaretteof 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 askedme 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 toone man, a fortune to another. That is very fine. But I suppose thereis a limit to your generosity somewhere."
"I don't see why there should be any limit--to fine intentions! Yes, onewould 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 asever having been anybody's captive."
"You do display some wonderful insight sometimes. My dear, I begin tosuspect that men are rather conceited about their powers. They thinkthey dominate us. Even exceptional men will think that; men too greatfor mere vanity, men like Henry Allegre for instance, who by hisconsistent and serene detachment was certainly fit to dominate all sortsof people. Yet for the most part they can only do it because womenchoose more or less consciously to let them do so. Henry Allegre, if anyman, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was achit 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 ofseventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an oldblack frock and shabby boots. I could have run away. I was perfectlycapable of it. But I stayed looking up at him and--in the end it was HEwho 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 meon the young grass in that morning sunshine. I never knew before howstill 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 '_Restezdonc_.' He was mistaken. Already then I hadn't the slightest intentionto move. And if you ask me again how far conscious all this was thenearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained on purpose, but Ididn't know for what purpose I remained. Really, that couldn't beexpected. . . . Why do you sigh like this? Would you have preferred meto be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?"
"These are not the questions that trouble me," I said. "If I sighed itis because I am weary."
"And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair. Youhad 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 lateextremely 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? Youcouldn't, you know. You are too young."
"I don't want to model myself on anybody," I said. "And anyway Blunt istoo romantic; and, moreover, he has been and is yet in love with you--athing that requires some style, an attitude, something of which I amaltogether incapable."
"You know it isn't so stupid, this what you have just said. Yes, thereis 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'tknow how wise men can be. Owls are nothing to them. Why do you try tolook like an owl? There are thousands and thousands of them waiting forme outside the door: the staring, hissing beasts. You don't know what arelief of mental ease and intimacy you have been to me in the franknessof gestures and speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have beenthrowing at each other. I have known nothing of this in my life but withyou. There had always been some fear, some constraint, lurking in thebackground 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 wasnot in love with you in any sort of style."
"No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless and withsomething in it kindred to mine, if I may say so without offence."
"You may say anything without offence. But has it never occurred to yoursagacity 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 amoment of hesitation. Then, as I did not move at once, she added withindifference: "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 shewas beginning to grow shadowy. I sat down on the couch and for a longtime no word passed between us. We made no movement. We did not eventurn towards each other. All I was conscious of was the softness of theseat which seemed somehow to cause a relaxation of my stern mood, I won'tsay against my will but without any will on my part. Another thing I wasconscious of, strangely enough, was the enormous brass bowl for cigaretteends. Quietly, with the least possible action, Dona Rita moved it to theother side of her motionless person. Slowly, the fantastic women withbutterflies' wings and the slender-limbed youths with the gorgeouspinions on their shoulders were vanishing into their black backgroundswith an effect of silent discretion, leaving us to ourselves.
I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome with fatiguesince I had moved; as if to sit on that Pompeiian chair had been a taskalmost 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. Notall at once but as if yielding to an irresistible pressure (for I was notconscious of any irresistible attraction) I found myself with my headresting, with a weight I felt must be crushing, on Dona Rita's shoulderwhich yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent ofviolets filled the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossibleto me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I remaineddry-eyed. I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught herround the waist clinging to her not from any intention but purely byinstinct. All that time she hadn't stirred. There was only
the slightmovement of her breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closedeyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by an incrediblemeditation 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 ofbeing in contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible riseand fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of violets and throughwhich came a hand from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presentlymy ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her heart, firm andquick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery, disclosing itselfinto 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 restedlost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardlyaudible, and fit to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. Atthis sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world closeabout me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dusk against thepanes, 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 feelingsmall and weak as if the best part of me had been torn away andirretrievably lost. Rose must have been somewhere near the door.
"It's abominable," I murmured to the still, idol-like shadow on thecouch.
The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: "I tell you it was time. Irang because I had no strength to push you away."
I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened, light streamedin, and Rose entered, preceding a man in a green baize apron whom I hadnever seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted intovases of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the room. In theflood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women reappearedon the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anythinghaving happened during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp on thenearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked in a confidentundertone.
"_Monsieur dine_?"
I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, butI heard the words distinctly. I heard also the silence which ensued. Isat 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. Forthe last two days my being was no longer composed of memories butexclusively of sensations of the most absorbing, disturbing, exhaustingnature. I was like a man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mobtill 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 wasthe fact that I was going to sea.
"You have heard, Rose," Dona 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 eveningof our return I had not been near him or the ship, which was completelyunusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.
"I have seen him before," continued Rose, "and as he told me he has beenpursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and didn't like to go away withoutseeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall tillMonsieur 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 inan imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with amad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under the sky archedabove its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me likeits own proper atmosphere. But everything vanished at the sound of DonaRita's loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to make one's hairstir 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 hadbeen brought into the room all the panes had turned inky black; for thenight had come and the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screeningoff the gas lamps of the main alley of the Prado. Whatever the questionmeant she was not likely to see an answer to it outside. But her whisperhad offended me, had hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtleand infinitely clear-eyed in my nature. I said after her from the couchon which I had remained, "Don't lose your composure. You will alwayshave some sort of bell at hand."
I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently. Her forehead wasagainst the very blackness of the panes; pulled upward from thebeautiful, strong nape of her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hairwas 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 beingunforgiving. 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 ofthem, 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 ofanything like untruth and grimace, expressed by some mysterious meanssuch a depth of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed ofmyself.
"This thing is beyond words altogether," I said. "Beyond forgiveness,beyond forgetting, beyond anger or jealousy. . . . There is nothingbetween us two that could make us act together."
"Then we must fall back perhaps on something within us, that--you admitit?--we have in common."
"Don't be childish," I said. "You give one with a perpetual and intensefreshness feelings and sensations that are as old as the world itself,and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at anytime! But it can't be broken. And forgetfulness, like everything else,can only come from you. It's an impossible situation to stand upagainst."
She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some furtherresonances.
"There is a sort of generous ardour about you," she said, "which I don'treally understand. No, I don't know it. Believe me, it is not of myselfI am thinking. And you--you are going out to-night to make anotherlanding."
"Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from youto try my luck once more."
"Your wonderful luck," she breathed out.
"Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky. Unless the luck really is yours--inhaving found somebody like me, who cares at the same time so much and solittle 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 latein joining, but certainly we will be gone before the first streak oflight."
"What freedom!" she murmured enviously. "It's something I shall neverknow. . . ."
"Freedom!" I protested. "I am a slave to my word. There will be asiring of carts and mules on a certain part of the coast, and a mostruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children andsweethearts, who from the very moment they start on a trip risk a bulletin the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I willnever fail them. That's my freedom. I wonder what they would think ifthey 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 onlybecause you do exist. You exist in me. I don't know where I
end and youbegin. 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 toneof timid entreaty.
"Heroically," I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.
"Well, yes, heroically," she said; and there passed between us dimsmiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth. Wewere standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours ona 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. Dona Rita made a step towards me, and as Iattempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck. I felttheir strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind anddesperate effort I resisted. And all the time she was repeating withnervous insistence:
"But it is true that you will go. You will surely. Not because of thosepeople 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 myhead closer to her breast. I submitted, knowing well that I could freemyself by one more effort which it was in my power to make. But before Imade it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollowof her throat. And lo--there was no need for any effort. With a stifledcry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot. I musthave been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing Iknew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow ofthe ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the wingedfigures. Something in the quality of her exclamation, something utterlyunexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she waslooking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated attention,disconcerted me exceedingly. I knew perfectly well what I had done andyet I felt that I didn't understand what had happened. I became suddenlyabashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss that poorDominic. She made no answer, gave no sign. She stood there lost in avision--or was it a sensation?--of the most absorbing kind. I hurriedout into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while shewasn't looking. And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort ofstupefaction on her features--in her whole attitude--as though she hadnever 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 hallpractically dark. Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner,was but a little more opaque shadow than the others. He had expected meon board every moment till about three o'clock, but as I didn't turn upand gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt. Hesought news of me from the _garcons_ at the various cafes, from the_cochers de fiacre_ in front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist ladyat the counter of the fashionable _Debit de Tabac_, from the old man whosold papers outside the _cercle_, and from the flower-girl at the door ofthe fashionable restaurant where I had my table. That young woman, whosebusiness name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day. She said toDominic: "I think I've seen all his friends this morning but I haven'tseen him for a week. What has become of him?"
"That's exactly what I want to know," Dominic replied in a fury and thenwent back to the harbour on the chance that I might have called either onboard or at Madame Leonore's cafe.
I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an oldhen over a chick. It wasn't like him at all. And he said that "_eneffet_" it was Madame Leonore who wouldn't give him any peace. He hopedI wouldn't mind, it was best to humour women in little things; and so hestarted off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was toldthere that I wasn't at home but the woman of the house looked so funnythat he didn't know what to make of it. Therefore, after somehesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and beingtold that I couldn't be disturbed, had made up his mind not to go onboard without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my ownlips 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 speakinggloomily from under his black moustaches in the dim glow of the alabasterlamp hanging above his head. He peered at me in an extraordinary manneras if he wanted to make sure that I had all my limbs about me. I askedhim to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, andhe departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically thatever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Leonore was not easy inher mind about me.
As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appearedbefore 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 willinsist on returning to Paris."
"Oh, have you heard of it?"
"I never get more than two hours' notice," she said. "But I know how itwill be," her voice lost its calmness. "I can look after Madame up to acertain point but I cannot be altogether responsible. There is adangerous person who is everlastingly trying to see Madame alone. I havemanaged to keep him off several times but there is a beastly oldjournalist who is encouraging him in his attempts, and I daren't evenspeak 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 onher in some way. I ought not to talk like this about Madame and Iwouldn't to anybody but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what isa 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 beforemy eyes. I could hardly see the girl standing by the closed door of thePempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voicewas firm enough. "Not this time," I repeated, and became aware of thegreat noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rainsquall against the door.
"Perhaps some other time," I added.
I heard her say twice to herself: "_Mon Dieu_! _Mon_, _Dieu_!" and thena dismayed: "What can Monsieur expect me to do?" But I had to appearinsensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, Ihad no option but to go away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness inmy attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my handon the knob of the front door.
"You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please her. Tell her thatI am gone--heroically."
Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by a despairing outwardmovement of her hands as though she were giving everything up.
"I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends," she declared with sucha force of restrained bitterness that it nearly made me pause. But thevery obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out throughthe doorway muttering: "Everything is as Madame wishes it."
She shot at me a swift: "You should resist," of an extraordinaryintensity, but I strode on down the path. Then Rose's schooled tempergave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiouslythrough the wind and rain: "No! Madame has no friends. Not one!"
The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes Page 17
