CHAPTER III
I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my
unlawful trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless,
like a fairly decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink. The
business was getting dangerous. The bands in the South were not
very well organized, worked with no very definite plan, and now
were beginning to be pretty closely hunted. The arrangements for
the transport of supplies were going to pieces; our friends ashore
were getting scared; and it was no joke to find after a day of
skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing place and have
to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and lurk
about the coast for another week or so, unable to trust anybody and
looking at every vessel we met with suspicion. Once we were
ambushed by a lot of "rascally Carabineers," as Dominic called
them, who hid themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of
mules well in view on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I
could never understand, Dominic detected something suspicious.
Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for
unlawful occupations may be gifted with. "There is a smell of
treachery about this," he remarked suddenly, turning at his oar.
(He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to reconnoitre.) I
couldn't detect any smell and I regard to this day our escape on
that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous. Surely some
supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the
Carabineers' rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the
Carabineers have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic,
after swearing most horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular
guardian angel that looks after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic
believed in angels in a conventional way, but laid no claim to
having one of his own. Soon afterwards, while sailing quietly at
night, we found ourselves suddenly near a small coasting vessel,
also without lights, which all at once treated us to a volley of
rifle fire. Dominic's mighty and inspired yell: "A plat ventre!"
and also an unexpected roll to windward saved all our lives.
Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a breeze
then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase.
But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the
darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: "Le
metier se gate." I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not
altogether spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care.
In fact, for my purpose it was rather better, a more potent
influence; like the stronger intoxication of raw spirit. A volley
in the dark after all was not such a bad thing. Only a moment
before we had received it, there, in that calm night of the sea
full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been looking at an
enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the tawny
hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white
neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with
brilliants and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled
ornament, which I remember often telling Rita was of a very
Philistinish conception (it was in some way connected with a
tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue place in my memory, tried to
come into some sort of significance even in my sleep. Often I
dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the gloom like a
nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect round arm
to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by hand,
like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always
woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a
chance. A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the
business some day--or night.
At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The
little vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child,
the sea itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after
a shipwreck that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a
suicide. It took away all that there was in me of independent
life, but just failed to take me out of the world, which looked
then indeed like Another World fit for no one else but unrepentant
sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his moral entity destroyed by
what to him was a most tragic ending of our common enterprise. The
lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning thunder-clap--and,
one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain still dazed
and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the railway
station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than another,
involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties with
all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a
discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a
respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel
of his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station
shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast
of a man. I hadn't any money in my pocket. I hadn't even the
bundle and the stick of a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and
unwashed, and my heart was faint within me. My attire was such
that I daren't approach the rank of fiacres, where indeed I could
perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which one suddenly drove away
while I looked. The other I gave up to the fortunate of this
earth. I didn't believe in my power of persuasion. I had no
powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the
uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of
Carnival.
Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in
an astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life,
I had lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my
companions, had parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link
with life, my touch with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone--but
a small penknife and a latchkey had never parted company with me.
With the latchkey I opened the door of refuge. The hall wore its
deaf-and-dumb air, its black-and-white stillness.
The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the
end of the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a
hair's breadth its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and
the staircase lost itself in the shadows above. Therese was
parsimonious with the lights. To see all this was surprising. It
seemed to me that all the things I had known ought to have come
down with a crash at the moment of the final catastrophe on the
Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself descending the
stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that she would
be murdered this time for certain. She had a strange, unemotional
conviction that the house was particularly convenient for a crime.
One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she
held with the stolidity of a peasant allied to the outward serenity
of a nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but
when she recognized me she got such a shock that she sat down
suddenly on the lowest step. She did not expect me for another
week at least, and, besides, she explained, the state I was in made
her blood take "one turn."
Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed
her true nature. But who had ever fathomed her nature! There was
none of her treacly volubility. There were none of her "dear young
gentlemans" and "poor little hearts" and references to sin. In
breathless silence she ran about the house getting my room ready,
lighting fires and gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up
the stairs. Yes, she did lay hands on me for that charitable
purpose. They trembled. Her pale eyes hardly left my face. "What
brought you here like this?" she whispered once.
"If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there
the hand of God."
She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell
over it. "Oh, dear heart," she murmured, and ran off to the
kitchen.
I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty
and offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and
after I drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly.
I managed to say with difficulty: "Go away," whereupon she
vanished as if by magic before the words were fairly out of my
mouth. Immediately afterwards the sunlight forced through the
slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and Therese was there
again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice: "It's midday". .
. Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for
seventeen hours.
I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such an awakening: the
sense of catastrophe, the shrinking from the necessity of beginning
life again, the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must
be paid for by a hanging. In the course of the morning Therese
informed me that the apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was
vacant and added mysteriously that she intended to keep it vacant
for a time, because she had been instructed to do so. I couldn't
imagine why Blunt should wish to return to Marseilles. She told me
also that the house was empty except for myself and the two dancing
girls with their father. Those people had been away for some time
as the girls had engagements in some Italian summer theatres, but
apparently they had secured a re-engagement for the winter and were
now back. I let Therese talk because it kept my imagination from
going to work on subjects which, I had made up my mind, were no
concern of mine. But I went out early to perform an unpleasant
task. It was only proper that I should let the Carlist agent
ensconced in the Prado Villa know of the sudden ending of my
activities. It would be grave enough news for him, and I did not
like to be its bearer for reasons which were mainly personal. I
resembled Dominic in so far that I, too, disliked failure.
The Marquis of Villarel had of course gone long before. The man
who was there was another type of Carlist altogether, and his
temperament was that of a trader. He was the chief purveyor of the
Legitimist armies, an honest broker of stores, and enjoyed a great
reputation for cleverness. His important task kept him, of course,
in France, but his young wife, whose beauty and devotion to her
King were well known, represented him worthily at Headquarters,
where his own appearances were extremely rare. The dissimilar but
united loyalties of those two people had been rewarded by the title
of baron and the ribbon of some order or other. The gossip of the
Legitimist circles appreciated those favours with smiling
indulgence. He was the man who had been so distressed and
frightened by Dona Rita's first visit to Tolosa. He had an extreme
regard for his wife. And in that sphere of clashing arms and
unceasing intrigue nobody would have smiled then at his agitation
if the man himself hadn't been somewhat grotesque.
He must have been startled when I sent in my name, for he didn't of
course expect to see me yet--nobody expected me. He advanced soft-
footed down the room. With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and
sable garments he recalled an obese raven, and when he heard of the
disaster he manifested his astonishment and concern in a most
plebeian manner by a low and expressive whistle. I, of course,
could not share his consternation. My feelings in that connection
were of a different order; but I was annoyed at his unintelligent
stare.
"I suppose," I said, "you will take it on yourself to advise Dona
Rita, who is greatly interested in this affair."
"Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame de Lastaola was to
leave Paris either yesterday or this morning."
It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage to ask: "For
Tolosa?" in a very knowing tone.
Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or some other
subtle cause, his nose seemed to have grown perceptibly longer.
"That, Senor, is the place where the news has got to be conveyed
without undue delay," he said in an agitated wheeze. "I could, of
course, telegraph to our agent in Bayonne who would find a
messenger. But I don't like, I don't like! The Alphonsists have
agents, too, who hang about the telegraph offices. It's no use
letting the enemy get that news."
He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying to think of two
different things at once.
"Sit down, Don George, sit down." He absolutely forced a cigar on
me. "I am extremely distressed. That--I mean Dona Rita is
undoubtedly on her way to Tolosa. This is very frightful."
I must say, however, that there was in the man some sense of duty.
He mastered his private fears. After some cogitation he murmured:
"There is another way of getting the news to Headquarters. Suppose
you write me a formal letter just stating the facts, the
unfortunate facts, which I will be able to forward. There is an
agent of ours, a fellow I have been employing for purchasing
supplies, a perfectly honest man. He is coming here from the north
by the ten o'clock train with some papers for me of a confidential
nature. I was rather embarrassed about it. It wouldn't do for him
to get into any sort of trouble. He is not very intelligent. I
wonder, Don George, whether you would consent to meet him at the
station and take care of him generally till to-morrow. I don't
like the idea of him going about alone. Then, to-morrow night, we
would send him on to Tolosa by the west coast route, with the news;
and then he can also call on Dona Rita who will no doubt be already
there. . . ." He became again distracted all in a moment and
actually went so far as to wring his fat hands. "Oh, yes, she will
be there!" he exclaimed in most pathetic accents.
I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he must have been
satisfied with the gravity with which I beheld his extraordinary
antics. My mind was very far away. I thought: Why not? Why
shouldn't I also write a letter to Dona Rita, telling her that now
nothing stood in the way of my leaving Europe, because, really, the
enterprise couldn't be begun again; that things that come to an end
can never be begun again. The idea--never again--had complete
possession of my mind. I could think of nothing else. Yes, I
would write. The worthy Commissary General of the Carlist forces
was under the impression that I was looking at him; but what I had
in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women and winged youths and the
soft sheen of Argand lamps gleaming on an arrow of gold in the hair
of a head that seemed to evade my outstretched hand.
"Oh, yes," I said, "I have nothing to do and even nothing to think
of just now, I will meet your man as he gets off the train at ten
o'clock to-night. What's he like?"
"Oh, he has a black moustache and whiskers, and his chin is
shaved," said the newly-fledged baron cordially. "A very honest
fellow. I always found him very useful. His name is Jose Ortega."
He was perfectly self-possessed now, and walking soft-footed
accompanied me to the door of the room. He shook hands with a
melancholy smile. "This is a very frightful situation. My poor
wife will be quite distracted. She is such a patriot. Many
thanks, Don George. You relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather
stupid and rather bad-tempered. Queer creature, but very honest!
Oh, very honest!"
