CHAPTER III
Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even cold pipe
before his big face.
"H'm, shoot an arrow into that old man's heart like this? But was
there anything done?"
"A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don't know. I rather
think it's in this house. A lot of things have been sent down from
Paris here, when she gave up the Pavilion. When she goes up now
she stays in hotels, you know. I imagine it is locked up in one of
these things," went on Blunt, pointing towards the end of the
studio where amongst the monumental presses of dark oak lurked the
shy dummy which had worn the stiff robes of the Byzantine Empress
and the amazing hat of the "Girl," rakishly. I wondered whether
that dummy had travelled from Paris, too, and whether with or
without its head. Perhaps that head had been left behind, having
rolled into a corner of some empty room in the dismantled Pavilion.
I represented it to myself very lonely, without features, like a
turnip, with a mere peg sticking out where the neck should have
been. And Mr. Blunt was talking on.
"There are treasures behind these locked doors, brocades, old
jewels, unframed pictures, bronzes, chinoiseries, Japoneries."
He growled as much as a man of his accomplished manner and voice
could growl. "I don't suppose she gave away all that to her
sister, but I shouldn't be surprised if that timid rustic didn't
lay a claim to the lot for the love of God and the good of the
Church. . .
"And held on with her teeth, too," he added graphically.
Mills' face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those
little venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. Again I knew
myself utterly forgotten. But I didn't feel dull and I didn't even
feel sleepy. That last strikes me as strange at this distance of
time, in regard of my tender years and of the depressing hour which
precedes the dawn. We had been drinking that straw-coloured wine,
too, I won't say like water (nobody would have drunk water like
that) but, well . . . and the haze of tobacco smoke was like the
blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.
Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight
of all Paris. It was that old glory that opened the series of
companions of those morning rides; a series which extended through
three successive Parisian spring-times and comprised a famous
physiologist, a fellow who seemed to hint that mankind could be
made immortal or at least everlastingly old; a fashionable
philosopher and psychologist who used to lecture to enormous
audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (but never
permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that
surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and
everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated
person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a
genius. . . All this according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those
details with a sort of languid zest covering a secret irritation.
"Apart from that, you know," went on Mr. Blunt, "all she knew of
the world of men and women (I mean till Allegre's death) was what
she had seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during
four months of the year or so. Absolutely all, with Allegre self-
denyingly on her right hand, with that impenetrable air of
guardianship. Don't touch! He didn't like his treasures to be
touched unless he actually put some unique object into your hands
with a sort of triumphant murmur, 'Look close at that.' Of course
I only have heard all this. I am much too small a person, you
understand, to even . . ."
He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part
of his face, the shadowed setting of his eyes, and the slight
drawing in of his eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought
suddenly of the definition he applied to himself: "Americain,
catholique et gentil-homme" completed by that startling "I live by
my sword" uttered in a light drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour
of mockery lighter even than air.
He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allegre
a little close was that morning in the Bois with his mother. His
Majesty (whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender,
flanked the girl, still a girl, on the other side, the usual
companion for a month past or so. Allegre had suddenly taken it
into his head to paint his portrait. A sort of intimacy had sprung
up. Mrs. Blunt's remark was that of the two striking horsemen
Allegre looked the more kingly.
"The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr.
Blunt through his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without
parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak."
"That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her," said
Mills.
"The will, I believe," said Mr. Blunt moodily, "was written on a
half sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the
head. What the devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last
time that she surveyed the world of men and women from the saddle.
Less than three months later. . ."
"Allegre died and. . . " murmured Mills in an interested manner.
"And she had to dismount," broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. "Dismount
right into the middle of it. Down to the very ground, you
understand. I suppose you can guess what that would mean. She
didn't know what to do with herself. She had never been on the
ground. She . . . "
"Aha!" said Mills.
"Even eh! eh! if you like," retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined
tone, that made me open my eyes, which were well opened before,
still wider.
He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon
Mills as though that quiet man whom I admired, whom I trusted, and
for whom I had already something resembling affection had been as
much of a dummy as that other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful
and headless in its attitude of alarmed chastity.
"Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at an
enormous distance when he is interested."
I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of
vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his
tobacco pouch.
"But that's nothing to my mother's interest. She can never see a
haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of
course Dona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert
little paragraphs. But Allegre was the sort of man. A lot came
out in print about him and a lot was talked in the world about her;
and at once my dear mother perceived a haystack and naturally
became unreasonably absorbed in it. I thought her interest would
wear out. But it didn't. She had received a shock and had
received an impression by means of that girl. My mother has never
been treated with impertinence before, and the aesthetic impression
must have been of extraordinary strength. I must suppose that it
amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can't account for her
proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in Paris a year
and a half after Allegre's death some shabby journalist (smart
creature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of
Mr. Allegre. 'The heiress of Mr. Allegre has taken up her
residence again amongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so
well known to the elite of the artistic, scientific, and political
world, not to speak of the members of aristocratic and even royal
families. . . ' You know the sort of thing. It appeared first in
the Figaro, I believe. And then at the end a little phrase: 'She
is alone.' She was in a fair way of becoming a celebrity of a
sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing. Heaven only
knows who stopped it. There was a rush of 'old friends' into that
garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one
or several of them, having influence with the press, did it. But
the gossip didn't stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed
a very certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the
Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented by my
mother. It was talked about from a royalist point of view with a
kind of respect. It was even said that the inspiration and the
resolution of the war going on now over the Pyrenees had come out
from that head. . . Some of them talked as if she were the guardian
angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is like."
Mr. Blunt's face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head
the least little bit. Apparently he knew.
"Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have
affected my mother's brain. I was already with the royal army and
of course there could be no question of regular postal
communications with France. My mother hears or overhears somewhere
that the heiress of Mr. Allegre is contemplating a secret journey.
All the noble Salons were full of chatter about that secret
naturally. So she sits down and pens an autograph: 'Madame,
Informed that you are proceeding to the place on which the hopes of
all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to your womanly
sympathy with a mother's anxious feelings, etc., etc.,' and ending
with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . . The
coolness of my mother!"
Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed
to me very odd.
"I wonder how your mother addressed that note?"
A moment of silence ensued.
"Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think," retorted Mr.
Blunt, with one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of
his feelings and the consistency of his outlook in regard to his
whole tale. "My mother's maid took it in a fiacre very late one
evening to the Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap
of paper: 'Write your messages at once' and signed with a big
capital R. So my mother sat down again to her charming writing
desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre just before
midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into my
hand at the avanzadas just as I was about to start on a night
patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so
that she might allay my mother's anxieties by telling her how I
looked.
"It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my
horse with surprise."
"You mean to say that Dona Rita was actually at the Royal
Headquarters lately?" exclaimed Mills, with evident surprise.
"Why, we--everybody--thought that all this affair was over and done
with."
"Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than
that episode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at Tolosa were
retained for her by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-
rooms, the place was so full of all sorts of court people; but I
can assure you that for the three days she was there she never put
her head outside the door. General Mongroviejo called on her
officially from the King. A general, not anybody of the household,
you see. That's a distinct shade of the present relation. He
stayed just five minutes. Some personage from the Foreign
department at Headquarters was closeted for about a couple of
hours. That was of course business. Then two officers from the
staff came together with some explanations or instructions to her.
Then Baron H., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made so many
sacrifices for the cause, raised a great to-do about seeing her and
she consented to receive him for a moment. They say he was very
much frightened by her arrival, but after the interview went away
all smiles. Who else? Yes, the Archbishop came. Half an hour.
This is more than is necessary to give a blessing, and I can't
conceive what else he had to give her. But I am sure he got
something out of her. Two peasants from the upper valley were sent
for by military authorities and she saw them, too. That friar who
hangs about the court has been in and out several times. Well, and
lastly, I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was the
first time I talked to her. I would have gone that evening back to
the regiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me
that I would be ordered to escort that most loyal and noble lady
back to the French frontier as a personal mission of the highest
honour. I was inclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery
and jovial person and he laughed with me quite readily--but I got
the order before dark all right. It was rather a job, as the
Alphonsists were attacking the right flank of our whole front and
there was some considerable disorder there. I mounted her on a
mule and her maid on another. We spent one night in a ruined old
tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away at daybreak
under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly died of fright and
one of the troopers with us was wounded. To smuggle her back
across the frontier was another job but it wasn't my job. It
wouldn't have done for her to appear in sight of French frontier
posts in the company of Carlist uniforms. She seems to have a
fearless streak in her nature. At one time as we were climbing a
slope absolutely exposed to artillery fire I asked her on purpose,
being provoked by the way she looked about at the scenery, 'A
little emotion, eh?' And she answered me in a low voice: 'Oh,
yes! I am moved. I used to run about these hills when I was
little.' And note, just then the trooper close behind us had been
wounded by a shell fragment. He was swearing awfully and fighting
with his horse. The shells were falling around us about two to the
minute.
"Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own.
But women are funny. I was afraid the maid would jump down and
clear out amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to
dismount and catch her. But she didn't do that; she sat perfectly
still on her mule and shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately
we came to a curiously shaped rock at the end of a short wooded
valley. It was very still there and the sunshine was brilliant. I
said to Dona Rita: 'We will have to part in a few minutes. I
understand that my mission ends at this rock.' And she said: 'I
know this rock well. This is my country.'
"Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three
peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old
man, with a thin nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes,
a character well known to the whole Carlist army. The two youths
stopped under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came
quite close up and gazed at her, screwing up his eyes as if looking
at the sun. Then he raised his arm very slowly and took his red
boina off his bald head. I watched her smiling at him all the
time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock.
Very old rock. The rock of ages--and the aged man--landmarks of
her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with
the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between
the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle
the Cura.
"It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open
country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the
distance, the thin smoke of some invisible caserios, rising
straight up here and there. Far away behind us the guns had ceased
and the echoes in the gorges had died out. I never knew what peace
meant before. . .
"Nor since," muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on.
"The little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family,
might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest
hill. I dismounted to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was
only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began
to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear,
clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You
know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I never knew before what
stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a Spaniard, not a
Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you know,
"'Oh bells of my native village,
I am going away . . . good-bye!'
He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I
remounted, but there was a charm in the spot, something particular
and individual because while we were looking at it before turning
our horses' heads away the singer said: 'I wonder what is the name
of this place,' and the other man remarked: 'Why, there is no
village here,' and the first one insisted: 'No, I mean this spot,
this very place.' The wounded trooper decided that it had no name
probably. But he was wrong. It had a name. The hill, or the
rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard of it by
chance later. It was--Lastaola."
A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills' pipe drove between my head and
the head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say, yawned slightly. It
seemed to me an obvious affectation on the part of that man of
perfect manners, and, moreover, suffering from distressing
insomnia.
"This is how we first met and how we first parted," he said in a
weary, indifferent tone. "It's quite possible that she did see her
uncle on the way. It's perhaps on this occasion that she got her
sister to come out of the wilderness. I have no doubt she had a
pass from the French Government giving her the completest freedom
of action. She must have got it in Paris before leaving."
Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles.
"She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole
army over the frontier if she liked. She could get herself
admitted into the Foreign Office at one o'clock in the morning if
it so pleased her. Doors fly open before the heiress of Mr.
Allegre. She has inherited the old friends, the old connections .
. . Of course, if she were a toothless old woman . . . But, you
see, she isn't. The ushers in all the ministries bow down to the
ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums take on an
eager tone when they say, 'Faites entrer.' My mother knows
something about it. She has followed her career with the greatest
attention. And Rita herself is not even surprised. She
accomplishes most extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a
pair of gloves. People in the shops are very polite and people in
the world are like people in the shops. What did she know of the
world? She had seen it only from the saddle. Oh, she will get
your cargo released for you all right. How will she do it? . .
Well, when it's done--you follow me, Mills?--when it's done she
will hardly know herself."
"It's hardly possible that she shouldn't be aware," Mills
pronounced calmly.
"No, she isn't an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-
of-fact voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day
that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at
any rate she had her own feelings surely. And she said to me:
Yes, there was one of them at least about which she had no doubt;
and you will never guess what it was. Don't try. I happen to
know, because we are pretty good friends."
At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills'
staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying
the divan, raised myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt,
with half a turn, put his elbow on the table.
"I asked her what it was. I don't see," went on Mr. Blunt, with a
perfectly horrible gentleness, "why I should have shown particular
consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allegre. I don't mean to that
particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she
told me. It's fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . ."
He added after a pause, "There can be not the slightest doubt of
her courage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear."
There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.
"A person of imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence,
steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio,
where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been
worried into shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs,
you know . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course," Blunt interrupted hastily, "the intellectual
personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I,
who am neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the
fear is material."
"Because she confessed to it being that?" insinuated Mills.
"No, because she didn't," contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown
and in an extremely suave voice. "In fact, she bit her tongue.
And considering what good friends we are (under fire together and
all that) I conclude that there is nothing there to boast of.
Neither is my friendship, as a matter of fact."
Mills' face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was
looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might
mean, I had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.
"My leave is a farce," Captain Blunt burst out, with a most
unexpected exasperation. "As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no
more standing than a bandit. I ought to have been interned in
those filthy old barracks in Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I
not? Because Dona Rita exists and for no other reason on earth.
Of course it's known that I am about. She has only to whisper over
the wires to the Minister of the Interior, 'Put that bird in a cage
for me,' and the thing would be done without any more formalities
than that. . . Sad world this," he commented in a changed tone.
"Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that
sort of thing."
It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a
deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from
that quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away
the secret hardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous
laugh.
"But the truth of the matter is that I am 'en mission,'" continued
Captain Blunt. "I have been instructed to settle some things, to
set other things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be
the intermediary for all those objects. And why? Because every
bald head in this Republican Government gets pink at the top
whenever her dress rustles outside the door. They bow with immense
deference when the door opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because
of those Venetian days. That confounded Versoy shoved his nose
into that business; he says accidentally. He saw them together on
the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote what he
calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too) under that very
title. There was in it a Prince and a lady and a big dog. He
described how the Prince on landing from the gondola emptied his
purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar, while the lady, a
little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the dog
romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy's beautiful
prose vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column. But
some other papers that didn't care a cent for literature rehashed
the mere fact. And that's the sort of fact that impresses your
political man, especially if the lady is, well, such as she is . .
."
He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the
direction of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated
cynicism.
"So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.
Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I have."
I don't know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant,
he seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting
expressions on his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of
his meagre brown hands amongst the objects on the table. With some
pipe ash amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a
capital R. Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly. I have
a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a yokel at a
play. Mills' pipe was lying quite a foot away in front of him,
empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr. Blunt assumed
his dandified air--nervously.
"Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive
drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where
the gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying
that she has got a 'coup de coeur' for some one. Whereas I think
she is utterly incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian
affair, the beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing but a
coup de tete, and all those activities in which I am involved, as
you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but
that, all this connection, all this intimacy into which I have
dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who is delightful, but as
irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that shock their
Royal families. . . "
He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills' eyes seemed
to have grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that
tranquil face it was a great play of feature. "An intimacy," began
Mr. Blunt, with an extremely refined grimness of tone, "an intimacy
with the heiress of Mr. Allegre on the part of . . . on my part,
well, it isn't exactly . . . it's open . . . well, I leave it to
you, what does it look like?"
"Is there anybody looking on?" Mills let fall, gently, through his
kindly lips.
"Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don't need to tell a
man of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen.
And that they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of
the fortune."
Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into
it made himself heard while he looked for his hat.
"Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless."
Mr. Blunt muttered the word "Obviously."
By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove glowed no longer
and the lamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty glasses, had
grown dimmer.
I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions
of the divan.
"We will meet again in a few hours," said Mr. Blunt.
"Don't forget to come," he said, addressing me. "Oh, yes, do.
Have no scruples. I am authorized to make invitations."
He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment.
And indeed I didn't know what to say.
"I assure you there isn't anything incorrect in your coming," he
insisted, with the greatest civility. "You will be introduced by
two good friends, Mills and myself. Surely you are not afraid of a
very charming woman. . . ."
I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at
him mutely.
"Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along. I am
sorry you two are going. I shall throw myself on the bed for an
hour or two, but I am sure I won't sleep."
He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall,
where the low gas flame glimmered forlornly. When he opened the
front door the cold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of
the Consuls made me shiver to the very marrow of my bones.
Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards the
centre of the town. In the chill tempestuous dawn he strolled
along musingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the
depressing influence of the hour, the desolation of the empty
streets in which the dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind
us, flew upon us from the side streets. The masks had gone home
and our footsteps echoed on the flagstones with unequal sound as of
men without purpose, without hope.
"I suppose you will come," said Mills suddenly.
"I really don't know," I said.
"Don't you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I
am staying at the Hotel de Louvre and I shall leave there at a
quarter to twelve for that lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a
minute later. I suppose you can sleep?"
I laughed.
"Charming age, yours," said Mills, as we came out on the quays.
Already dim figures of the workers moved in the biting dawn and the
masted forms of ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye
could reach down the old harbour.
"Well," Mills began again, "you may oversleep yourself."
This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands
at the lower end of the Cannebiere. He looked very burly as he
walked away from me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was
very full of confused images, but I was really too tired to think.
