CHAPTER II
Dona Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister
and all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant
sister was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue
amusingly and repeated a remark she had made before: "She likes
young men. The younger the better." The mere thought of those two
women being sisters aroused one's wonder. Physically they were
altogether of different design. It was also the difference between
living tissue of glowing loveliness with a divine breath, and a
hard hollow figure of baked clay.
Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful
enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps
that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to
get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little
inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile. She
smiled with compressed mouth. It was indeed difficult to conceive
of those two birds coming from the same nest. And yet . . .
Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one saw those two
women together that one lost all belief in the possibility of their
relationship near or far. It extended even to their common
humanity. One, as it were, doubted it. If one of the two was
representative, then the other was either something more or less
than human. One wondered whether these two women belonged to the
same scheme of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them
standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common,
understanding each other. And yet! . . . Our psychological sense
is the crudest of all; we don't know, we don't perceive how
superficial we are. The simplest shades escape us, the secret of
changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the only feature (and
yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in common with her
sister, as I told Dona Rita, was amiability.
"For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself," I went on.
"It's one of your characteristics, of course much more precious
than in other people. You transmute the commonest traits into gold
of your own; but after all there are no new names. You are
amiable. You were most amiable to me when I first saw you."
"Really. I was not aware. Not specially . . . "
"I had never the presumption to think that it was special.
Moreover, my head was in a whirl. I was lost in astonishment first
of all at what I had been listening to all night. Your history,
you know, a wonderful tale with a flavour of wine in it and
wreathed in clouds, with that amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy
of a woman lurking in a corner, and with Blunt's smile gleaming
through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills' pipe, you know. I
was feeling quite inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated
as to mind all the time. I had never heard anything like that talk
about you before. Of course I wasn't sleepy, but still I am not
used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt . . ."
"Kept awake all night listening to my story!" She marvelled.
"Yes. You don't think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn't have
missed it for the world. Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white
tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird.
It seemed as though he were inventing it all rather angrily. I had
doubts as to your existence."
"Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story."
"Anybody would be," I said. "I was. I didn't sleep a wink. I was
expecting to see you soon--and even then I had my doubts."
"As to my existence?"
"It wasn't exactly that, though of course I couldn't tell that you
weren't a product of Captain Blunt's sleeplessness. He seemed to
dread exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a
device to detain us . . ."
"He hasn't enough imagination for that," she said.
"It didn't occur to me. But there was Mills, who apparently
believed in your existence. I could trust Mills. My doubts were
about the propriety. I couldn't see any good reason for being
taken to see you. Strange that it should be my connection with the
sea which brought me here to the Villa."
"Unexpected perhaps."
"No. I mean particularly strange and significant."
"Why?"
"Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other)
that the sea is my only love. They were always chaffing me because
they couldn't see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret.
. ."
"And is that really so?" she inquired negligently.
"Why, yes. I don't mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd
in one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century.
But I don't throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be
all true about the sea; but some people would say that they love
sausages."
"You are horrible."
"I am surprised."
"I mean your choice of words."
"And you have never uttered a word yet that didn't change into a
pearl as it dropped from your lips. At least not before me."
She glanced down deliberately and said, "This is better. But I
don't see any of them on the floor."
"It's you who are horrible in the implications of your language.
Don't see any on the floor! Haven't I caught up and treasured them
all in my heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are
made."
She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile
breathed out the word: "No."
And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence! On this
occasion we parted from each other on a light-hearted note. But
already I had acquired the conviction that there was nothing more
lovable in the world than that woman; nothing more life-giving,
inspiring, and illuminating than the emanation of her charm. I
meant it absolutely--not excepting the light of the sun.
From this there was only one step further to take. The step into a
conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming
like a flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new
depth to shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to
all sensations and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had
been lived before seemed to have been lived in a drab world and
with a languid pulse.
A great revelation this. I don't mean to say it was soul-shaking.
The soul was already a captive before doubt, anguish, or dismay
could touch its surrender and its exaltation. But all the same the
revelation turned many things into dust; and, amongst others, the
sense of the careless freedom of my life. If that life ever had
any purpose or any aim outside itself I would have said that it
threw a shadow across its path. But it hadn't. There had been no
path. But there was a shadow, the inseparable companion of all
light. No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the world.
After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious
because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from
which one was free before. What if they were to be victorious at
the last? They, or what perhaps lurks in them: fear, deception,
desire, disillusion--all silent at first before the song of
triumphant love vibrating in the light. Yes. Silent. Even desire
itself! All silent. But not for long!
This was, I think, before the third expedition. Yes, it must have
been the third, for I remember that it was boldly planned and that
it was carried out without a hitch. The tentative period was over;
all our arrangements had been perfected. There was, so to speak,
always an unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing lantern on
the shore. Our friends, mostly bought for hard cash and therefore
valuable, had acquired confidence in us. This, they seemed to say,
is no unfathomable roguery of penniless adventurers. This is but
the reckless enterprise of men of wealth and sense and needn't be
inquired into. The young caballero has got real gold pieces in the
belt he wears next his skin; and the man with the heavy moustaches
and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of a man. They gave to
Dominic all their respect and to me a great show of deference; for
I had all the money, while they thought that Dominic had all the
sense. That judgment was not exactly correct. I had my share of
judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the years have
chilled the blood without dimming the memory. I remember going
about the business with light-hearted, clear-headed recklessness
which, according as its decisions were sudden or considered, made
Dominic draw his breath through his clenched teeth, or look hard at
me before he gave me either a slight nod of assent or a sarcastic
"Oh, certainly"--just as the humour of the moment prompted him.
One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under the lee of a
rock, side by side, watching the light of our little vessel dancing
away at sea in the windy distance, Dominic spoke suddenly to me.
"I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso, they are
nothing to you, together or separately?"
I said: "Dominic, if they were both to vanish from the earth
together or separately it would make no difference to my feelings."
He remarked: "Just so. A man mourns only for his friends. I
suppose they are no more friends to you than they are to me. Those
Carlists make a great consumption of cartridges. That is well.
But why should we do all those mad things that you will insist on
us doing till my hair," he pursued with grave, mocking
exaggeration, "till my hair tries to stand up on my head? and all
for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his own, for that
Majesty as they call him, but after all a man like another and--no
friend."
"Yes, why?" I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the
sand.
It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds
and of wind that died and rose and died again. Dominic's voice was
heard speaking low between the short gusts.
"Friend of the Senora, eh?"
"That's what the world says, Dominic."
"Half of what the world says are lies," he pronounced dogmatically.
"For all his majesty he may be a good enough man. Yet he is only a
king in the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you.
Still a woman like that--one, somehow, would grudge her to a better
king. She ought to be set up on a high pillar for people that walk
on the ground to raise their eyes up to. But you are otherwise,
you gentlemen. You, for instance, Monsieur, you wouldn't want to
see her set up on a pillar."
"That sort of thing, Dominic," I said, "that sort of thing, you
understand me, ought to be done early."
He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice was heard in
the shadow of the rock.
"I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the multitude, that
only raise their eyes. But for kings and suchlike that is not
enough. Well, no heart need despair; for there is not a woman that
wouldn't at some time or other get down from her pillar for no
bigger bribe perhaps than just a flower which is fresh to-day and
withered to-morrow. And then, what's the good of asking how long
any woman has been up there? There is a true saying that lips that
have been kissed do not lose their freshness."
I don't know what answer I could have made. I imagine Dominic
thought himself unanswerable. As a matter of fact, before I could
speak, a voice came to us down the face of the rock crying
secretly, "Ola, down there! All is safe ashore."
It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a muleteer's
inn in a little shallow valley with a shallow little stream in it,
and where we had been hiding most of the day before coming down to
the shore. We both started to our feet and Dominic said, "A good
boy that. You didn't hear him either come or go above our heads.
Don't reward him with more than one peseta, Senor, whatever he
does. If you were to give him two he would go mad at the sight of
so much wealth and throw up his job at the Fonda, where he is so
useful to run errands, in that way he has of skimming along the
paths without displacing a stone."
Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire to set alight
a small heap of dry sticks he had made ready beforehand on that
spot which in all the circuit of the Bay was perfectly screened
from observation from the land side.
The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black cloak with a
hood of a Mediterranean sailor. His eyes watched the dancing dim
light to seaward. And he talked the while.
"The only fault you have, Senor, is being too generous with your
money. In this world you must give sparingly. The only things you
may deal out without counting, in this life of ours which is but a
little fight and a little love, is blows to your enemy and kisses
to a woman. . . . Ah! here they are coming in."
I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the
shore now. Its motion had altered. It swayed slowly as it ran
towards us, and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed
wing appeared gliding in the night. Under it a human voice shouted
something confidently.
"Bueno," muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I didn't see he
poured a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician at the end of a
successful incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice
from the immense space of the sea. And his hooded figure vanished
from my sight in a great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam.
"That's all over," he said, "and now we go back for more work, more
toil, more trouble, more exertion with hands and feet, for hours
and hours. And all the time the head turned over the shoulder,
too."
We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the
dark, Dominic, more familiar with it, going first and I scrambling
close behind in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced
to slip or miss my footing. I remonstrated against this
arrangement as we stopped to rest. I had no doubt I would grab at
his cloak if I felt myself falling. I couldn't help doing that.
But I would probably only drag him down with me.
With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled
that all this was possible, but that it was all in the bargain, and
urged me onwards.
When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no
exertion, no danger, no fear or anger could disturb, remarked as we
strode side by side:
"I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly
foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Senora
were on us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more
than she would approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment's
thought to us out here. Now, for instance, in the next half hour,
we may come any moment on three carabineers who would let off their
pieces without asking questions. Even your way of flinging money
about cannot make safety for men set on defying a whole big country
for the sake of--what is it exactly?--the blue eyes, or the white
arms of the Senora."
He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a
vague shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had only the flying
clouds for company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little
way up the seaward shoulder of an invisible mountain. Dominic
moved on.
"Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed
by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen.
A star might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear
nights in the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch
of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it's
pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think of our Senora in that
long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end,
sitting on that divan, you call it, covered with carpets as if
expecting a king indeed. And very still . . ."
He remembered her--whose image could not be dismissed.
I laid my hand on his shoulder.
"That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic.
Are we in the path?"
He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language
of more formal moments.
"Prenez mon bras, monsieur. Take a firm hold, or I will have you
stumbling again and falling into one of those beastly holes, with a
good chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take
offence. For, speaking with all respect, why should you, and I
with you, be here on this lonely spot, barking our shins in the
dark on the way to a confounded flickering light where there will
be no other supper but a piece of a stale sausage and a draught of
leathery wine out of a stinking skin. Pah!"
I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French
and pronounced in his inflexible voice:
"For a pair of white arms, Senor. Bueno."
He could understand.
