CHAPTER IV
That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe, but
always on the border between dreams and waking. The only thing
absolutely absent from it was the feeling of rest. The usual
sufferings of a youth in love had nothing to do with it. I could
leave her, go away from her, remain away from her, without an added
pang or any augmented consciousness of that torturing sentiment of
distance so acute that often it ends by wearing itself out in a few
days. Far or near was all one to me, as if one could never get any
further but also never any nearer to her secret: the state like
that of some strange wild faiths that get hold of mankind with the
cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing them of both
liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with some
hope, though. But I had no hope, and not even desire as a thing
outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was
in me just like life was in me; that life of which a popular saying
affirms that "it is sweet." For the general wisdom of mankind will
always stop short on the limit of the formidable.
What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is that it
does away with the gnawings of petty sensations. Too far gone to
be sensible to hope and desire I was spared the inferior pangs of
elation and impatience. Hours with her or hours without her were
all alike, all in her possession! But still there are shades and I
will admit that the hours of that morning were perhaps a little
more difficult to get through than the others. I had sent word of
my arrival of course. I had written a note. I had rung the bell.
Therese had appeared herself in her brown garb and as monachal as
ever. I had said to her:
"Have this sent off at once."
She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I was looking up
at her from my desk), and at last took it up with an effort of
sanctimonious repugnance. But she remained with it in her hand
looking at me as though she were piously gloating over something
she could read in my face.
"Oh, that Rita, that Rita," she murmured. "And you, too! Why are
you trying, you, too, like the others, to stand between her and the
mercy of God? What's the good of all this to you? And you such a
nice, dear, young gentleman. For no earthly good only making all
the kind saints in heaven angry, and our mother ashamed in her
place amongst the blessed."
"Mademoiselle Therese," I said, "vous etes folle."
I believed she was crazy. She was cunning, too. I added an
imperious: "Allez," and with a strange docility she glided out
without another word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and
wait till eleven o'clock.
The hour struck at last. If I could have plunged into a light wave
and been transported instantaneously to Dona Rita's door it would
no doubt have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for
analysis; but as this was impossible I elected to walk from end to
end of that long way. My emotions and sensations were childlike
and chaotic inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and
that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one could
have kept a record of one's physical sensations it would have been
a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions. Hardly
touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a sinking heart and
an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret faintness, and
yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference to it all, I
did reach the door which was frightfully like any other commonplace
door, but at the same time had a fateful character: a few planks
put together--and an awful symbol; not to be approached without
awe--and yet coming open in the ordinary way to the ring of the
bell.
It came open. Oh, yes, very much as usual. But in the ordinary
course of events the first sight in the hall should have been the
back of the ubiquitous, busy, silent maid hurrying off and already
distant. But not at all! She actually waited for me to enter. I
was extremely taken aback and I believe spoke to her for the first
time in my life.
"Bonjour, Rose."
She dropped her dark eyelids over those eyes that ought to have
been lustrous but were not, as if somebody had breathed on them the
first thing in the morning. She was a girl without smiles. She
shut the door after me, and not only did that but in the incredible
idleness of that morning she, who had never a moment to spare,
started helping me off with my overcoat. It was positively
embarrassing from its novelty. While busying herself with those
trifles she murmured without any marked intention:
"Captain Blunt is with Madame."
This didn't exactly surprise me. I knew he had come up to town; I
only happened to have forgotten his existence for the moment. I
looked at the girl also without any particular intention. But she
arrested my movement towards the dining-room door by a low,
hurried, if perfectly unemotional appeal:
"Monsieur George!"
That of course was not my name. It served me then as it will serve
for this story. In all sorts of strange places I was alluded to as
"that young gentleman they call Monsieur George." Orders came from
"Monsieur George" to men who nodded knowingly. Events pivoted
about "Monsieur George." I haven't the slightest doubt that in the
dark and tortuous streets of the old Town there were fingers
pointed at my back: there goes "Monsieur George." I had been
introduced discreetly to several considerable persons as "Monsieur
George." I had learned to answer to the name quite naturally; and
to simplify matters I was also "Monsieur George" in the street of
the Consuls and in the Villa on the Prado. I verify believe that
at that time I had the feeling that the name of George really
belonged to me. I waited for what the girl had to say. I had to
wait some time, though during that silence she gave no sign of
distress or agitation. It was for her obviously a moment of
reflection. Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic,
capable manner. I looked at her with a friendliness I really felt
towards her slight, unattractive, and dependable person.
"Well," I said at last, rather amused by this mental hesitation. I
never took it for anything else. I was sure it was not distrust.
She appreciated men and things and events solely in relation to
Dona Rita's welfare and safety. And as to that I believed myself
above suspicion. At last she spoke.
"Madame is not happy." This information was given to me not
emotionally but as it were officially. It hadn't even a tone of
warning. A mere statement. Without waiting to see the effect she
opened the dining-room door, not to announce my name in the usual
way but to go in and shut it behind her. In that short moment I
heard no voices inside. Not a sound reached me while the door
remained shut; but in a few seconds it came open again and Rose
stood aside to let me pass.
Then I heard something: Dona Rita's voice raised a little on an
impatient note (a very, very rare thing) finishing some phrase of
protest with the words " . . . Of no consequence."
I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had
that kind of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid's
statement occupied all my mind. "Madame n'est pas heureuse." It
had a dreadful precision . . . "Not happy . . ." This unhappiness
had almost a concrete form--something resembling a horrid bat. I
was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty.
What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough
to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes
of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful
to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see
there was nothing startling, at any rate from that nursery point of
view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.
With immense relief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain
Blunt warming his back at the more distant of the two fireplaces;
and as to Dona Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her attitude
either, except perhaps that her hair was all loose about her
shoulders. I hadn't the slightest doubt they had been riding
together that morning, but she, with her impatience of all costume
(and yet she could dress herself admirably and wore her dresses
triumphantly), had divested herself of her riding habit and sat
cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young savage
chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the
normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette
ascended ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.
"How are you," was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual
smile which would have been more amiable if his teeth hadn't been,
just then, clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his
voice through that shining barrier I could never understand. Dona
Rita tapped the couch engagingly by her side but I sat down instead
in the armchair nearly opposite her, which, I imagine, must have
been just vacated by Blunt. She inquired with that particular
gleam of the eyes in which there was something immemorial and gay:
"Well?"
"Perfect success."
"I could hug you."
At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the
intense whisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my
very heart; not as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion
vibrating there with an awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left
my heart heavy.
"Oh, yes, for joy," I said bitterly but very low; "for your
Royalist, Legitimist, joy." Then with that trick of very precise
politeness which I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:
"I don't want to be embraced--for the King."
And I might have stopped there. But I didn't. With a perversity
which should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are
as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake
of an old cast-off glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not
much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a
private rubbish heap because it has missed the fire."
She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips,
slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order
to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all
women. Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside
riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful
figure seated at the very source of the passions that have moved
men from the dawn of ages.
Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned
away a little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the
detachment of a man who does not want to hear. As a matter of
fact, I don't suppose he could have heard. He was too far away,
our voices were too contained. Moreover, he didn't want to hear.
There could be no doubt about it; but she addressed him
unexpectedly.
"As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty
in getting myself, I won't say understood, but simply believed."
No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that
voice. He had to hear. After a moment he altered his position as
it were reluctantly, to answer her.
"That's a difficulty that women generally have."
"Yet I have always spoken the truth."
"All women speak the truth," said Blunt imperturbably. And this
annoyed her.
"Where are the men I have deceived?" she cried.
"Yes, where?" said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had
been ready to go out and look for them outside.
"No! But show me one. I say--where is he?"
He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his
shoulders slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer to the couch,
and looked down on her with an expression of amused courtesy.
"Oh, I don't know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be
found I am certain he would turn out a very stupid person. You
can't be expected to furnish every one who approaches you with a
mind. To expect that would be too much, even from you who know how
to work wonders at such little cost to yourself."
"To myself," she repeated in a loud tone.
"Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it."
"Such little cost!" she exclaimed under her breath.
"I mean to your person."
"Oh, yes," she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself,
then added very low: "This body."
"Well, it is you," said Blunt with visibly contained irritation.
"You don't pretend it's somebody else's. It can't be. You haven't
borrowed it. . . . It fits you too well," he ended between his
teeth.
"You take pleasure in tormenting yourself," she remonstrated,
suddenly placated; "and I would be sorry for you if I didn't think
it's the mere revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging
your pride at my expense. As to the rest of it, as to my living,
acting, working wonders at a little cost. . . . it has all but
killed me morally. Do you hear? Killed."
"Oh, you are not dead yet," he muttered,
"No," she said with gentle patience. "There is still some feeling
left in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, you
may be certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab."
He remained silent for a while and then with a polite smile and a
movement of the head in my direction he warned her.
"Our audience will get bored."
"I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here, and that he has
been breathing a very different atmosphere from what he gets in
this room. Don't you find this room extremely confined?" she asked
me.
The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt oppressed at
that moment. This mysterious quarrel between those two people,
revealing something more close in their intercourse than I had ever
before suspected, made me so profoundly unhappy that I didn't even
attempt to answer. And she continued:
"More space. More air. Give me air, air." She seized the
embroidered edges of her blue robe under her white throat and made
as if to tear them apart, to fling it open on her breast,
recklessly, before our eyes. We both remained perfectly still.
Her hands dropped nervelessly by her side. "I envy you, Monsieur
George. If I am to go under I should prefer to be drowned in the
sea with the wind on my face. What luck, to feel nothing less than
all the world closing over one's head!"
A short silence ensued before Mr. Blunt's drawing-room voice was
heard with playful familiarity.
"I have often asked myself whether you weren't really a very
ambitious person, Dona Rita."
"And I ask myself whether you have any heart." She was looking
straight at him and he gratified her with the usual cold white
flash of his even teeth before he answered.
"Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But
why do it so publicly? I mean it. One single, detached presence
is enough to make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he
returns to those regions of space and air--from which he came."
His particular trick of speaking of any third person as of a lay
figure was exasperating. Yet at the moment I did not know how to
resent it, but, in any case, Dona Rita would not have given me
time. Without a moment's hesitation she cried out:
"I only wish he could take me out there with him."
For a moment Mr. Blunt's face became as still as a mask and then
instead of an angry it assumed an indulgent expression. As to me I
had a rapid vision of Dominic's astonishment, awe, and sarcasm
which was always as tolerant as it is possible for sarcasm to be.
But what a charming, gentle, gay, and fearless companion she would
have made! I believed in her fearlessness in any adventure that
would interest her. It would be a new occasion for me, a new
viewpoint for that faculty of admiration she had awakened in me at
sight--at first sight--before she opened her lips--before she ever
turned her eyes on me. She would have to wear some sort of sailor
costume, a blue woollen shirt open at the throat. . . . Dominic's
hooded cloak would envelop her amply, and her face under the black
hood would have a luminous quality, adolescent charm, and an
enigmatic expression. The confined space of the little vessel's
quarterdeck would lend itself to her cross-legged attitudes, and
the blue sea would balance gently her characteristic immobility
that seemed to hide thoughts as old and profound as itself. As
restless, too--perhaps.
But the picture I had in my eye, coloured and simple like an
illustration to a nursery-book tale of two venturesome children's
escapade, was what fascinated me most. Indeed I felt that we two
were like children under the gaze of a man of the world--who lived
by his sword. And I said recklessly:
"Yes, you ought to come along with us for a trip. You would see a
lot of things for yourself."
Mr. Blunt's expression had grown even more indulgent if that were
possible. Yet there was something ineradicably ambiguous about
that man. I did not like the indefinable tone in which he
observed:
"You are perfectly reckless in what you say, Dona Rita. It has
become a habit with you of late."
"While with you reserve is a second nature, Don Juan."
This was uttered with the gentlest, almost tender, irony. Mr.
Blunt waited a while before he said:
"Certainly. . . . Would you have liked me to be otherwise?"
She extended her hand to him on a sudden impulse.
"Forgive me! I may have been unjust, and you may only have been
loyal. The falseness is not in us. The fault is in life itself, I
suppose. I have been always frank with you."
"And I obedient," he said, bowing low over her hand. He turned
away, paused to look at me for some time and finally gave me the
correct sort of nod. But he said nothing and went out, or rather
lounged out with his worldly manner of perfect ease under all
conceivable circumstances. With her head lowered Dona Rita watched
him till he actually shut the door behind him. I was facing her
and only heard the door close.
"Don't stare at me," were the first words she said.
It was difficult to obey that request. I didn't know exactly where
to look, while I sat facing her. So I got up, vaguely full of
goodwill, prepared even to move off as far as the window, when she
commanded:
"Don't turn your back on me."
I chose to understand it symbolically.
"You know very well I could never do that. I couldn't. Not even
if I wanted to." And I added: "It's too late now."
"Well, then, sit down. Sit down on this couch."
I sat down on the couch. Unwillingly? Yes. I was at that stage
when all her words, all her gestures, all her silences were a heavy
trial to me, put a stress on my resolution, on that fidelity to
myself and to her which lay like a leaden weight on my untried
heart. But I didn't sit down very far away from her, though that
soft and billowy couch was big enough, God knows! No, not very far
from her. Self-control, dignity, hopelessness itself, have their
limits. The halo of her tawny hair stirred as I let myself drop by
her side. Whereupon she flung one arm round my neck, leaned her
temple against my shoulder and began to sob; but that I could only
guess from her slight, convulsive movements because in our relative
positions I could only see the mass of her tawny hair brushed back,
yet with a halo of escaped hair which as I bent my head over her
tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner.
We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration to a tale,
scared by their adventure. But not for long. As I instinctively,
yet timidly, sought for her other hand I felt a tear strike the
back of mine, big and heavy as if fallen from a great height. It
was too much for me. I must have given a nervous start. At once I
heard a murmur: "You had better go away now."
I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight of her head,
from this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable misery, and had the
absurd impression of leaving her suspended in the air. And I moved
away on tiptoe.
Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found my way out of
the room but really I saw nothing, till in the hall the maid
appeared by enchantment before me holding up my overcoat. I let
her help me into it. And then (again as if by enchantment) she had
my hat in her hand.
"No. Madame isn't happy," I whispered to her distractedly.
She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I was putting it
on my head I heard an austere whisper:
"Madame should listen to her heart."
Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this unexpected,
dispassionate rustle of words. I had to repress a shudder, and as
coldly as herself I murmured:
"She has done that once too often."
Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly the note
of scorn in her indulgent compassion.
"Oh, that! . . . Madame is like a child." It was impossible to get
the bearing of that utterance from that girl who, as Dona Rita
herself had told me, was the most taciturn of human beings; and yet
of all human beings the one nearest to herself. I seized her head
in my hands and turning up her face I looked straight down into her
black eyes which should have been lustrous. Like a piece of glass
breathed upon they reflected no light, revealed no depths, and
under my ardent gaze remained tarnished, misty, unconscious.
"Will Monsieur kindly let me go. Monsieur shouldn't play the
child, either." (I let her go.) "Madame could have the world at
her feet. Indeed she has it there only she doesn't care for it."
How talkative she was, this maid with unsealed lips! For some
reason or other this last statement of hers brought me immense
comfort.
"Yes?" I whispered breathlessly.
"Yes! But in that case what's the use of living in fear and
torment?" she went on, revealing a little more of herself to my
astonishment. She opened the door for me and added:
"Those that don't care to stoop ought at least make themselves
happy."
I turned in the very doorway: "There is something which prevents
that?" I suggested.
"To be sure there is. Bonjour, Monsieur."
