PART THREE
CHAPTER I
It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic up to
the Villa to be presented to Dona Rita. If she wanted to look on
the embodiment of fidelity, resource, and courage, she could behold
it all in that man. Apparently she was not disappointed. Neither
was Dominic disappointed. During the half-hour's interview they
got into touch with each other in a wonderful way as if they had
some common and secret standpoint in life. Maybe it was their
common lawlessness, and their knowledge of things as old as the
world. Her seduction, his recklessness, were both simple,
masterful and, in a sense, worthy of each other.
Dominic was, I won't say awed by this interview. No woman could
awe Dominic. But he was, as it were, rendered thoughtful by it,
like a man who had not so much an experience as a sort of
revelation vouchsafed to him. Later, at sea, he used to refer to
La Senora in a particular tone and I knew that henceforth his
devotion was not for me alone. And I understood the inevitability
of it extremely well. As to Dona Rita she, after Dominic left the
room, had turned to me with animation and said: "But he is
perfect, this man." Afterwards she often asked after him and used
to refer to him in conversation. More than once she said to me:
"One would like to put the care of one's personal safety into the
hands of that man. He looks as if he simply couldn't fail one." I
admitted that this was very true, especially at sea. Dominic
couldn't fail. But at the same time I rather chaffed Rita on her
preoccupation as to personal safety that so often cropped up in her
talk.
"One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary world,"
I used to tell her.
"That would be different. One would be standing then for
something, either worth or not worth dying for. One could even run
away then and be done with it. But I can't run away unless I got
out of my skin and left that behind. Don't you understand? You
are very stupid . . ." But she had the grace to add, "On purpose."
I don't know about the on purpose. I am not certain about the
stupidity. Her words bewildered one often and bewilderment is a
sort of stupidity. I remedied it by simply disregarding the sense
of what she said. The sound was there and also her poignant heart-
gripping presence giving occupation enough to one's faculties. In
the power of those things over one there was mystery enough. It
was more absorbing than the mere obscurity of her speeches. But I
daresay she couldn't understand that.
Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in word and
gesture that only strengthened the natural, the invincible force of
the spell. Sometimes the brass bowl would get upset or the
cigarette box would fly up, dropping a shower of cigarettes on the
floor. We would pick them up, re-establish everything, and fall
into a long silence, so close that the sound of the first word
would come with all the pain of a separation.
It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should take up my
quarters in her house in the street of the Consuls. There were
certain advantages in that move. In my present abode my sudden
absences might have been in the long run subject to comment. On
the other hand, the house in the street of Consuls was a known out-
post of Legitimacy. But then it was covered by the occult
influence of her who was referred to in confidential talks, secret
communications, and discreet whispers of Royalist salons as:
"Madame de Lastaola."
That was the name which the heiress of Henry Allegre had decided to
adopt when, according to her own expression, she had found herself
precipitated at a moment's notice into the crowd of mankind. It is
strange how the death of Henry Allegre, which certainly the poor
man had not planned, acquired in my view the character of a
heartless desertion. It gave one a glimpse of amazing egoism in a
sentiment to which one could hardly give a name, a mysterious
appropriation of one human being by another as if in defiance of
unexpressed things and for an unheard-of satisfaction of an
inconceivable pride. If he had hated her he could not have flung
that enormous fortune more brutally at her head. And his
unrepentant death seemed to lift for a moment the curtain on
something lofty and sinister like an Olympian's caprice.
Dona Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: "You know, it
appears that one must have a name. That's what Henry Allegre's man
of business told me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But
my name, amigo, Henry Allegre had taken from me like all the rest
of what I had been once. All that is buried with him in his grave.
It wouldn't have been true. That is how I felt about it. So I
took that one." She whispered to herself: "Lastaola," not as if
to test the sound but as if in a dream.
To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any
human habitation, a lonely caserio with a half-effaced carving of a
coat of arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a
ravine with a stony slope at the back. It might have been a hill
for all I know or perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a
combination of all these: just a bit of the earth's surface. Once
I asked her where exactly it was situated and she answered, waving
her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of the room: "Oh, over
there." I thought that this was all that I was going to hear but
she added moodily, "I used to take my goats there, a dozen or so of
them, for the day. From after my uncle had said his Mass till the
ringing of the evening bell."
I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a
few words from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile, bearded beasts
with cynical heads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight
with a halo of dishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head.
The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny.
Once or twice in my hearing she had referred to "my rust-coloured
hair" with laughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring
the restraints of civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute
getting into the eyes of Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of
coveted art treasures, the heiress of Henry Allegre. She proceeded
in a reminiscent mood, with a faint flash of gaiety all over her
face, except her dark blue eyes that moved so seldom out of their
fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other human beings.
"The goats were very good. We clambered amongst the stones
together. They beat me at that game. I used to catch my hair in
the bushes."
"Your rust-coloured hair," I whispered.
"Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave bits of my
frock on thorns here and there. It was pretty thin, I can tell
you. There wasn't much at that time between my skin and the blue
of the sky. My legs were as sunburnt as my face; but really I
didn't tan very much. I had plenty of freckles though. There were
no looking-glasses in the Presbytery but uncle had a piece not
bigger than my two hands for his shaving. One Sunday I crept into
his room and had a peep at myself. And wasn't I startled to see my
own eyes looking at me! But it was fascinating, too. I was about
eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with the goats, and
I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a match. Heavens!
When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs, it
doesn't seem to be possible. And yet it is the same one. I do
remember every single goat. They were very clever. Goats are no
trouble really; they don't scatter much. Mine never did even if I
had to hide myself out of their sight for ever so long."
It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she
uttered vaguely what was rather a comment on my question:
"It was like fate." But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly,
because we were often like a pair of children.
"Oh, really," I said, "you talk like a pagan. What could you know
of fate at that time? What was it like? Did it come down from
Heaven?"
"Don't be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track that was
there and it looked like a boy. Wasn't he a little devil though.
You understand, I couldn't know that. He was a wealthy cousin of
mine. Round there we are all related, all cousins--as in Brittany.
He wasn't much bigger than myself but he was older, just a boy in
blue breeches and with good shoes on his feet, which of course
interested and impressed me. He yelled to me from below, I
screamed to him from above, he came up and sat down near me on a
stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hour
before he condescended to ask me who I was. And the airs he gave
himself! He quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb. I
remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as
I sat below him on the ground.
"C'est comique, eh!" she interrupted herself to comment in a
melancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically and she went on:
"He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the
slope. In winter they used to send him to school at Tolosa. He
had an enormous opinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in
a town by and by and he was about the most dissatisfied creature I
have ever seen. He had an unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he
was always wretched about something: about the treatment he
received, about being kept in the country and chained to work. He
was moaning and complaining and threatening all the world,
including his father and mother. He used to curse God, yes, that
boy, sitting there on a piece of rock like a wretched little
Prometheus with a sparrow peeking at his miserable little liver.
And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!"
She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something
generous in it; not infectious, but in others provoking a smile.
"Of course I, poor little animal, I didn't know what to make of it,
and I was even a little frightened. But at first because of his
miserable eyes I was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had
been a sick goat. But, frightened or sorry, I don't know how it
is, I always wanted to laugh at him, too, I mean from the very
first day when he let me admire him for half an hour. Yes, even
then I had to put my hand over my mouth more than once for the sake
of good manners, you understand. And yet, you know, I was never a
laughing child.
"One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away
from me and told me he had been thrashed for wandering in the
hills.
"'To be with me?' I asked. And he said: 'To be with you! No. My
people don't know what I do.' I can't tell why, but I was annoyed.
So instead of raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose
he expected me to do, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much.
He got up, he had a switch in his hand, and walked up to me,
saying, 'I will soon show you.' I went stiff with fright; but
instead of slashing at me he dropped down by my side and kissed me
on the cheek. Then he did it again, and by that time I was gone
dead all over and he could have done what he liked with the corpse
but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I bolted
away. Not very far. I couldn't leave the goats altogether. He
chased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick
for him in his nice town boots. When he got tired of that game he
started throwing stones. After that he made my life very lively
for me. Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I had to
sit still and listen to his miserable ravings, because he would
catch me round the waist and hold me very tight. And yet, I often
felt inclined to laugh. But if I caught sight of him at a distance
and tried to dodge out of the way he would start stoning me into a
shelter I knew of and then sit outside with a heap of stones at
hand so that I daren't show the end of my nose for hours. He would
sit there and rave and abuse me till I would burst into a crazy
laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the leaves
rolling on the ground and biting his fists with rage. Didn't he
hate me! At the same time I was often terrified. I am convinced
now that if I had started crying he would have rushed in and
perhaps strangled me there. Then as the sun was about to set he
would make me swear that I would marry him when I was grown up.
'Swear, you little wretched beggar,' he would yell to me. And I
would swear. I was hungry, and I didn't want to be made black and
blue all over with stones. Oh, I swore ever so many times to be
his wife. Thirty times a month for two months. I couldn't help
myself. It was no use complaining to my sister Therese. When I
showed her my bruises and tried to tell her a little about my
trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful girl, a
shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that,
between Therese my sister and Jose the boy, I lived in a state of
idiocy almost. But luckily at the end of the two months they sent
him away from home for good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd
living all her days out under God's eye, as my uncle the Cura might
have said. My sister Therese was keeping house in the Presbytery.
She's a terrible person."
"I have heard of your sister Therese," I said.
"Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten years older than
myself perhaps? She just comes a little above my shoulder, but
then I was always a long thing. I never knew my mother. I don't
even know how she looked. There are no paintings or photographs in
our farmhouses amongst the hills. I haven't even heard her
described to me. I believe I was never good enough to be told
these things. Therese decided that I was a lump of wickedness, and
now she believes that I will lose my soul altogether unless I take
some steps to save it. Well, I have no particular taste that way.
I suppose it is annoying to have a sister going fast to eternal
perdition, but there are compensations. The funniest thing is that
it's Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me out of the
Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them on my
return from my visit to the Quartel Real last year. I couldn't
have stayed much more than half an hour with them anyway, but still
I would have liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that
Therese persuaded my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of
the hill. I saw the old man a long way off and I understood how it
was. I dismounted at once and met him on foot. We had half an
hour together walking up and down the road. He is a peasant
priest, he didn't know how to treat me. And of course I was
uncomfortable, too. There wasn't a single goat about to keep me in
countenance. I ought to have embraced him. I was always fond of
the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself up when I
approached him and actually took off his hat to me. So simple as
that! I bowed my head and asked for his blessing. And he said 'I
would never refuse a blessing to a good Legitimist.' So stern as
that! And when I think that I was perhaps the only girl of the
family or in the whole world that he ever in his priest's life
patted on the head! When I think of that I . . . I believe at that
moment I was as wretched as he was himself. I handed him an
envelope with a big red seal which quite startled him. I had asked
the Marquis de Villarel to give me a few words for him, because my
uncle has a great influence in his district; and the Marquis penned
with his own hand some compliments and an inquiry about the spirit
of the population. My uncle read the letter, looked up at me with
an air of mournful awe, and begged me to tell his excellency that
the people were all for God, their lawful King and their old
privileges. I said to him then, after he had asked me about the
health of His Majesty in an awfully gloomy tone--I said then:
'There is only one thing that remains for me to do, uncle, and that
is to give you two pounds of the very best snuff I have brought
here for you.' What else could I have got for the poor old man? I
had no trunks with me. I had to leave behind a spare pair of shoes
in the hotel to make room in my little bag for that snuff. And
fancy! That old priest absolutely pushed the parcel away. I could
have thrown it at his head; but I thought suddenly of that hard,
prayerful life, knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the
world, absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and then. I
remembered how wretched he used to be when he lacked a copper or
two to get some snuff with. My face was hot with indignation, but
before I could fly out at him I remembered how simple he was. So I
said with great dignity that as the present came from the King and
as he wouldn't receive it from my hand there was nothing else for
me to do but to throw it into the brook; and I made as if I were
going to do it, too. He shouted: 'Stay, unhappy girl! Is it
really from His Majesty, whom God preserve?' I said
contemptuously, 'Of course.' He looked at me with great pity in
his eyes, sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I
suppose he imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary
cash out of the King for the purchase of that snuff. You can't
imagine how simple he is. Nothing was easier than to deceive him;
but don't imagine I deceived him from the vainglory of a mere
sinner. I lied to the dear man, simply because I couldn't bear the
idea of him being deprived of the only gratification his big,
ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As I mounted my mule to go
away he murmured coldly: 'God guard you, Senora!' Senora! What
sternness! We were off a little way already when his heart
softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: 'The road to
Heaven is repentance!' And then, after a silence, again the great
shout 'Repentance!' thundered after me. Was that sternness or
simplicity, I wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a
mechanical thing? If there lives anybody completely honest in this
world, surely it must be my uncle. And yet--who knows?
"Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got
over the frontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old man to send
me out my sister here. I said it was for the service of the King.
You see, I had thought suddenly of that house of mine in which you
once spent the night talking with Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I
thought it would do extremely well for Carlist officers coming this
way on leave or on a mission. In hotels they might have been
molested, but I knew that I could get protection for my house.
Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I
wanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find a
trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her? I don't
know how to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for
me that or anything else; but what could I have done myself without
her? She has looked after me from the first. It was Henry Allegre
who got her for me eight years ago. I don't know whether he meant
it for a kindness but she's the only human being on whom I can
lean. She knows . . . What doesn't she know about me! She has
never failed to do the right thing for me unasked. I couldn't part
with her. And I couldn't think of anybody else but my sister.
"After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the
wildest idea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took care to send
her some money. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing
that he wouldn't have given up for the service of the King. Rose
went to meet her at the railway station. She told me afterwards
that there had been no need for me to be anxious about her
recognizing Mademoiselle Therese. There was nobody else in the
train that could be mistaken for her. I should think not! She had
made for herself a dress of some brown stuff like a nun's habit and
had a crooked stick and carried all her belongings tied up in a
handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint's shrine. Rose
took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: 'And does this
big place really belong to our Rita?' My maid of course said that
it was mine. 'And how long did our Rita live here?'--'Madame has
never seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I
believe Mr. Allegre lived here for some time when he was a young
man.'--'The sinner that's dead?'--'Just so,' says Rose. You know
nothing ever startles Rose. 'Well, his sins are gone with him,'
said my sister, and began to make herself at home.
"Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day
she was back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her
way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself.
Some little time afterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The
first thing she said to me, 'I wouldn't have recognized you, Rita,'
and I said, 'What a funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the
portress of a convent than for this house.'--'Yes,' she said, 'and
unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our
country. I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita. Your
life is no secret for me.'
"I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. 'I
don't know that my life is a secret to anybody,' I said to her,
'but how do you know anything about it?' And then she told me that
it was through a cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you
know. He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish
commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it
his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or
ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a
girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and down the room
(we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far
as the door. I heard her say to herself, 'It's the evil spirit in
her that makes her like this.' She was absolutely convinced of
that. She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect
herself. I was quite astounded. And then I really couldn't help
myself. I burst into a laugh. I laughed and laughed; I really
couldn't stop till Therese ran away. I went downstairs still
laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and
her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I had to pull her
out by the shoulders from there. I don't think she was frightened;
she was only shocked. But I don't suppose her heart is desperately
bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she
came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and
entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of
saints and priests. Quite a little programme for a reformed
sinner. I got away at last. I left her sunk on her heels before
the empty chair looking after me. 'I pray for you every night and
morning, Rita,' she said.--'Oh, yes. I know you are a good
sister,' I said to her. I was letting myself out when she called
after me, 'And what about this house, Rita?' I said to her, 'Oh,
you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.' The
last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with
her mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our
intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with
some great lady. But I believe she really knows how to make men
comfortable. Upon my word I think she likes to look after men.
They don't seem to be such great sinners as women are. I think you
could do worse than take up your quarters at number 10. She will
no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too."
I don't know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Dona
Rita's peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to
live very willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected
with Dona Rita had for me a peculiar fascination. She had only
passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough.
She was one of those beings that leave a trace. I am not
unreasonable--I mean for those that knew her. That is, I suppose,
because she was so unforgettable. Let us remember the tragedy of
Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier with a criminal
soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No wonder, then,
that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity with being
much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the mere
knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through the very rooms in which
I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-
expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being with a great
content. Her glance, her darkly brilliant blue glance, had run
over the walls of that room which most likely would be mine to
slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near the door, Therese, the
peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone and in an
amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false
persuasiveness:
"You will be very comfortable here, Senor. It is so peaceful here
in the street. Sometimes one may think oneself in a village. It's
only a hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King.
And I shall take such good care of you that your very heart will be
able to rest."
