CHAPTER VIII
Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started shouting
for Therese. "Come down at once, you wretched hypocrite," I yelled
at the foot of the stairs in a sort of frenzy as though I had been
a second Ortega. Not even an echo answered me; but all of a sudden
a small flame flickered descending from the upper darkness and
Therese appeared on the first floor landing carrying a lighted
candle in front of a livid, hard face, closed against remorse,
compassion, or mercy by the meanness of her righteousness and of
her rapacious instincts. She was fully dressed in that abominable
brown stuff with motionless folds, and as I watched her coming down
step by step she might have been made of wood. I stepped back and
pointed my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the
studio. She passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes staring
straight ahead, her face still with disappointment and fury. Yet
it is only my surmise. She might have been made thus inhuman by
the force of an invisible purpose. I waited a moment, then,
stealthily, with extreme caution, I opened the door of the so-
called Captain Blunt's room.
The glow of embers was all but out. It was cold and dark in there;
but before I closed the door behind me the dim light from the hall
showed me Dona Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left
her, statuesque in her night-dress. Even after I shut the door she
loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked up
the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one,
and lighted it. All that time Dona Rita didn't stir. When I
turned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a trance.
She was deathly pale and by contrast the melted, sapphire-blue of
her eyes looked black as coal. They moved a little in my
direction, incurious, recognizing me slowly. But when they had
recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in
them. A whole minute or more passed. Then I said in a low tone:
"Look at me," and she let them fall slowly as if accepting the
inevitable.
"Shall I make up the fire?" . . . I waited. "Do you hear me?" She
made no sound and with the tip of my finger I touched her bare
shoulder. But for its elasticity it might have been frozen. At
once I looked round for the fur coat; it seemed to me that there
was not a moment to lose if she was to be saved, as though we had
been lost on an Arctic plain. I had to put her arms into the
sleeves, myself, one after another. They were cold, lifeless, but
flexible. Then I moved in front of her and buttoned the thing
close round her throat. To do that I had actually to raise her
chin with my finger, and it sank slowly down again. I buttoned all
the other buttons right down to the ground. It was a very long and
splendid fur. Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her
feet. Mere ice. The intimacy of this sort of attendance helped
the growth of my authority. "Lie down," I murmured, "I shall pile
on you every blanket I can find here," but she only shook her head.
Not even in the days when she ran "shrill as a cicada and thin as a
match" through the chill mists of her native mountains could she
ever have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very
soul, her grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse
like an exhausted traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of
death. But when I asked her again to lie down she managed to
answer me, "Not in this room." The dumb spell was broken. She
turned her head from side to side, but oh! how cold she was! It
seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the very diamonds
on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light of the
one candle.
"Not in this room; not here," she protested, with that peculiar
suavity of tone which made her voice unforgettable, irresistible,
no matter what she said. "Not after all this! I couldn't close my
eyes in this place. It's full of corruption and ugliness all
round, in me, too, everywhere except in your heart, which has
nothing to do where I breathe. And here you may leave me. But
wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am not evil."
I said: "I don't intend to leave you here. There is my room
upstairs. You have been in it before."
"Oh, you have heard of that," she whispered. The beginning of a
wan smile vanished from her lips.
"I also think you can't stay in this room; and, surely, you needn't
hesitate . . ."
"No. It doesn't matter now. He has killed me. Rita is dead."
While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the quilted, blue
slippers and had put them on her feet. She was very tractable.
Then taking her by the arm I led her towards the door.
"He has killed me," she repeated in a sigh. "The little joy that
was in me."
"He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall," I said. She
put back like a frightened child but she couldn't be dragged on as
a child can be.
I assured her that the man was no longer there but she only
repeated, "I can't get through the hall. I can't walk. I can't .
. ."
"Well," I said, flinging the door open and seizing her suddenly in
my arms, "if you can't walk then you shall be carried," and I
lifted her from the ground so abruptly that she could not help
catching me round the neck as any child almost will do
instinctively when you pick it up.
I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my pocket. One
dropped off at the bottom of the stairs as I was stepping over an
unpleasant-looking mess on the marble pavement, and the other was
lost a little way up the flight when, for some reason (perhaps from
a sense of insecurity), she began to struggle. Though I had an odd
sense of being engaged in a sort of nursery adventure she was no
child to carry. I could just do it. But not if she chose to
struggle. I set her down hastily and only supported her round the
waist for the rest of the way. My room, of course, was perfectly
dark but I led her straight to the sofa at once and let her fall on
it. Then as if I had in sober truth rescued her from an Alpine
height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing but lighting
the gas and starting the fire. I didn't even pause to lock my
door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of
something deeper and more my own--of her existence itself--of a
small blue flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within
her frozen body. When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff
and upright, with her feet posed, hieratically on the carpet and
her head emerging out of the ample fur collar, such as a gem-like
flower above the rim of a dark vase. I tore the blankets and the
pillows off my bed and piled them up in readiness in a great heap
on the floor near the couch. My reason for this was that the room
was large, too large for the fireplace, and the couch was nearest
to the fire. She gave no sign but one of her wistful attempts at a
smile. In a most business-like way I took the arrow out of her
hair and laid it on the centre table. The tawny mass fell loose at
once about her shoulders and made her look even more desolate than
before. But there was an invincible need of gaiety in her heart.
She said funnily, looking at the arrow sparkling in the gas light:
"Ah! That poor philistinish ornament!"
An echo of our early days, not more innocent but so much more
youthful, was in her tone; and we both, as if touched with poignant
regret, looked at each other with enlightened eyes.
"Yes," I said, "how far away all this is. And you wouldn't leave
even that object behind when you came last in here. Perhaps it is
for that reason it haunted me--mostly at night. I dreamed of you
sometimes as a huntress nymph gleaming white through the foliage
and throwing this arrow like a dart straight at my heart. But it
never reached it. It always fell at my feet as I woke up. The
huntress never meant to strike down that particular quarry."
"The huntress was wild but she was not evil. And she was no nymph,
but only a goatherd girl. Dream of her no more, my dear."
I had the strength of mind to make a sign of assent and busied
myself arranging a couple of pillows at one end of the sofa. "Upon
my soul, goatherd, you are not responsible," I said. "You are not!
Lay down that uneasy head," I continued, forcing a half-playful
note into my immense sadness, "that has even dreamed of a crown--
but not for itself."
She lay down quietly. I covered her up, looked once into her eyes
and felt the restlessness of fatigue over-power me so that I wanted
to stagger out, walk straight before me, stagger on and on till I
dropped. In the end I lost myself in thought. I woke with a start
to her voice saying positively:
"No. Not even in this room. I can't close my eyes. Impossible.
I have a horror of myself. That voice in my ears. All true. All
true."
She was sitting up, two masses of tawny hair fell on each side of
her tense face. I threw away the pillows from which she had risen
and sat down behind her on the couch. "Perhaps like this," I
suggested, drawing her head gently on my breast. She didn't
resist, she didn't even sigh, she didn't look at me or attempt to
settle herself in any way. It was I who settled her after taking
up a position which I thought I should be able to keep for hours--
for ages. After a time I grew composed enough to become aware of
the ticking of the clock, even to take pleasure in it. The beat
recorded the moments of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still as
if my life depended upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the arrow of
gold gleaming and glittering dimly on the table under the lowered
gas-jet. And presently my breathing fell into the quiet rhythm of
the sleep which descended on her at last. My thought was that now
nothing mattered in the world because I had the world safe resting
in my arms--or was it in my heart?
Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my breast and half of
my breath knocked out of me. It was a tumultuous awakening. The
day had come. Dona Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my
arms, and instantly had flung herself out of them with one sudden
effort. I saw her already standing in the filtered sunshine of the
closed shutters, with all the childlike horror and shame of that
night vibrating afresh in the awakened body of the woman.
"Daylight," she whispered in an appalled voice. "Don't look at me,
George. I can't face daylight. No--not with you. Before we set
eyes on each other all that past was like nothing. I had crushed
it all in my new pride. Nothing could touch the Rita whose hand
was kissed by you. But now! Never in daylight."
I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no longer the
adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book. A grown man's
bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of
my heart.
"All this means that you are going to desert me again?" I said with
contempt. "All right. I won't throw stones after you . . . Are
you going, then?"
She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as
if to keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all at once as if
mad.
"Then go quickly," I said. "You are afraid of living flesh and
blood. What are you running after? Honesty, as you say, or some
distinguished carcass to feed your vanity on? I know how cold you
can be--and yet live. What have I done to you? You go to sleep in
my arms, wake up and go away. Is it to impress me? Charlatanism
of character, my dear."
She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that floor which
seemed to heave up and down before my eyes as she had ever been--
goatherd child leaping on the rocks of her native hills which she
was never to see again. I snatched the arrow of gold from the
table and threw it after her.
"Don't forget this thing," I cried, "you would never forgive
yourself for leaving it behind."
It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor behind
her. She never looked round. She walked to the door, opened it
without haste, and on the landing in the diffused light from the
ground-glass skylight there appeared, rigid, like an implacable and
obscure fate, the awful Therese--waiting for her sister. The heavy
ends of a big black shawl thrown over her head hung massively in
biblical folds. With a faint cry of dismay Dona Rita stopped just
within my room.
The two women faced each other for a few moments silently. Therese
spoke first. There was no austerity in her tone. Her voice was as
usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it;
terrible in its unchanged purpose.
"I have been standing here before this door all night," she said.
"I don't know how I lived through it. I thought I would die a
hundred times for shame. So that's how you are spending your time?
You are worse than shameless. But God may still forgive you. You
have a soul. You are my sister. I will never abandon you--till
you die."
"What is it?" Dona Rita was heard wistfully, "my soul or this house
that you won't abandon."
"Come out and bow your head in humiliation. I am your sister and I
shall help you to pray to God and all the Saints. Come away from
that poor young gentleman who like all the others can have nothing
but contempt and disgust for you in his heart. Come and hide your
head where no one will reproach you--but I, your sister. Come out
and beat your breast: come, poor Sinner, and let me kiss you, for
you are my sister!"
While Therese was speaking Dona Rita stepped back a pace and as the
other moved forward still extending the hand of sisterly love, she
slammed the door in Therese's face. "You abominable girl!" she
cried fiercely. Then she turned about and walked towards me who
had not moved. I felt hardly alive but for the cruel pain that
possessed my whole being. On the way she stooped to pick up the
arrow of gold and then moved on quicker, holding it out to me in
her open palm.
"You thought I wouldn't give it to you. Amigo, I wanted nothing so
much as to give it to you. And now, perhaps--you will take it."
"Not without the woman," I said sombrely.
"Take it," she said. "I haven't the courage to deliver myself up
to Therese. No. Not even for your sake. Don't you think I have
been miserable enough yet?"
I snatched the arrow out of her hand then and ridiculously pressed
it to my breast; but as I opened my lips she who knew what was
struggling for utterance in my heart cried in a ringing tone:
"Speak no words of love, George! Not yet. Not in this house of
ill-luck and falsehood. Not within a hundred miles of this house,
where they came clinging to me all profaned from the mouth of that
man. Haven't you heard them--the horrible things? And what can
words have to do between you and me?"
Her hands were stretched out imploringly, I said, childishly
disconcerted:
"But, Rita, how can I help using words of love to you? They come
of themselves on my lips!"
"They come! Ah! But I shall seal your lips with the thing
itself," she said. "Like this. . . "
SECOND NOTE
The narrative of our man goes on for some six months more, from
this, the last night of the Carnival season up to and beyond the
season of roses. The tone of it is much less of exultation than
might have been expected. Love as is well known having nothing to
do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to
evidence, the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss
has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he
attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental interest
could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in
love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment,
so much so that a book may seem extremely interesting when read
late at night, but might appear merely a lot of vapid verbiage in
the morning. My conviction is that the mood in which the
continuation of his story would appear sympathetic is very rare.
This consideration has induced me to suppress it--all but the
actual facts which round up the previous events and satisfy such
curiosity as might have been aroused by the foregoing narrative.
It is to be remarked that this period is characterized more by a
deep and joyous tenderness than by sheer passion. All fierceness
of spirit seems to have burnt itself out in their preliminary
hesitations and struggles against each other and themselves.
Whether love in its entirety has, speaking generally, the same
elementary meaning for women as for men, is very doubtful.
Civilization has been at work there. But the fact is that those
two display, in every phase of discovery and response, an exact
accord. Both show themselves amazingly ingenuous in the practice
of sentiment. I believe that those who know women won't be
surprised to hear me say that she was as new to love as he was.
During their retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small
house built of dry stones and embowered with roses, they appear all
through to be less like released lovers than as companions who had
found out each other's fitness in a specially intense way. Upon
the whole, I think that there must be some truth in his insistence
of there having always been something childlike in their relation.
In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all
impressions, all sensations, we see the naiveness of a children's
foolhardy adventure. This unreserved expressed for him the whole
truth of the situation. With her it may have been different. It
might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian; and
even comedians themselves have got to believe in the part they
play. Of the two she appears much the more assured and confident.
But if in this she was a comedienne then it was but a great
achievement of her ineradicable honesty. Having once renounced her
honourable scruples she took good care that he should taste no
flavour of misgivings in the cup. Being older it was she who
imparted its character to the situation. As to the man if he had
any superiority of his own it was simply the superiority of him who
loves with the greater self-surrender.
This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly suppressed--
partly out of regard for the pages themselves. In every, even
terrestrial, mystery there is as it were a sacred core. A
sustained commentary on love is not fit for every eye. A universal
experience is exactly the sort of thing which is most difficult to
appraise justly in a particular instance.
How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the only
companion of the two hermits in their rose-embowered hut of stones,
I regret not to be able to report; but I will venture to say that
for reasons on which I need not enlarge, the girl could not have
been very reassured by what she saw. It seems to me that her
devotion could never be appeased; for the conviction must have been
growing on her that, no matter what happened, Madame could never
have any friends. It may be that Dona Rita had given her a glimpse
of the unavoidable end, and that the girl's tarnished eyes masked a
certain amount of apprehensive, helpless desolation.
What meantime was becoming of the fortune of Henry Allegre is
another curious question. We have been told that it was too big to
be tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea. That part of it
represented by the fabulous collections was still being protected
by the police. But for the rest, it may be assumed that its power
and significance were lost to an interested world for something
like six months. What is certain is that the late Henry Allegre's
man of affairs found himself comparatively idle. The holiday must
have done much good to his harassed brain. He had received a note
from Dona Rita saying that she had gone into retreat and that she
did not mean to send him her address, not being in the humour to be
worried with letters on any subject whatever. "It's enough for
you"--she wrote--"to know that I am alive." Later, at irregular
intervals, he received scraps of paper bearing the stamps of
various post offices and containing the simple statement: "I am
still alive," signed with an enormous, flourished exuberant R. I
imagine Rose had to travel some distances by rail to post those
messages. A thick veil of secrecy had been lowered between the
world and the lovers; yet even this veil turned out not altogether
impenetrable.
He--it would be convenient to call him Monsieur George to the end--
shared with Dona Rita her perfect detachment from all mundane
affairs; but he had to make two short visits to Marseilles. The
first was prompted by his loyal affection for Dominic. He wanted
to discover what had happened or was happening to Dominic and to
find out whether he could do something for that man. But Dominic
was not the sort of person for whom one can do much. Monsieur
George did not even see him. It looked uncommonly as if Dominic's
heart were broken. Monsieur George remained concealed for twenty-
four hours in the very house in which Madame Leonore had her cafe.
He spent most of that time in conversing with Madame Leonore about
Dominic. She was distressed, but her mind was made up. That
bright-eyed, nonchalant, and passionate woman was making
arrangements to dispose of her cafe before departing to join
Dominic. She would not say where. Having ascertained that his
assistance was not required Monsieur George, in his own words,
"managed to sneak out of the town without being seen by a single
soul that mattered."
The second occasion was very prosaic and shockingly incongruous
with the super-mundane colouring of these days. He had neither the
fortune of Henry Allegre nor a man of affairs of his own. But some
rent had to be paid to somebody for the stone hut and Rose could
not go marketing in the tiny hamlet at the foot of the hill without
a little money. There came a time when Monsieur George had to
descend from the heights of his love in order, in his own words,
"to get a supply of cash." As he had disappeared very suddenly and
completely for a time from the eyes of mankind it was necessary
that he should show himself and sign some papers. That business
was transacted in the office of the banker mentioned in the story.
Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man himself but in this
he did not succeed. The interview was short. The banker naturally
asked no questions, made no allusions to persons and events, and
didn't even mention the great Legitimist Principle which presented
to him now no interest whatever. But for the moment all the world
was talking of the Carlist enterprise. It had collapsed utterly,
leaving behind, as usual, a large crop of recriminations, charges
of incompetency and treachery, and a certain amount of scandalous
gossip. The banker (his wife's salon had been very Carlist indeed)
declared that he had never believed in the success of the cause.
"You are well out of it," he remarked with a chilly smile to
Monsieur George. The latter merely observed that he had been very
little "in it" as a matter of fact, and that he was quite
indifferent to the whole affair.
"You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless," the banker
concluded with a wooden face and with the curtness of a man who
knows.
Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next train out of the
town but he yielded to the temptation to discover what had happened
to the house in the street of the Consuls after he and Dona Rita
had stolen out of it like two scared yet jubilant children. All he
discovered was a strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had,
apparently, been put in as a caretaker by the man of affairs. She
made some difficulties to admit that she had been in charge for the
last four months; ever since the person who was there before had
eloped with some Spaniard who had been lying in the house ill with
fever for more than six weeks. No, she never saw the person.
Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard the talk of
the street. Of course she didn't know where these people had gone.
She manifested some impatience to get rid of Monsieur George and
even attempted to push him towards the door. It was, he says, a
very funny experience. He noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet
in the hall still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of
the world.
Then he decided to have a bit of dinner at the Restaurant de la
Gare where he felt pretty certain he would not meet any of his
friends. He could not have asked Madame Leonore for hospitality
because Madame Leonore had gone away already. His acquaintances
were not the sort of people likely to happen casually into a
restaurant of that kind and moreover he took the precaution to seat
himself at a small table so as to face the wall. Yet before long
he felt a hand laid gently on his shoulder, and, looking up, saw
one of his acquaintances, a member of the Royalist club, a young
man of a very cheerful disposition but whose face looked down at
him with a grave and anxious expression.
Monsieur George was far from delighted. His surprise was extreme
when in the course of the first phrases exchanged with him he
learned that this acquaintance had come to the station with the
hope of finding him there.
"You haven't been seen for some time," he said. "You were perhaps
somewhere where the news from the world couldn't reach you? There
have been many changes amongst our friends and amongst people one
used to hear of so much. There is Madame de Lastaola for instance,
who seems to have vanished from the world which was so much
interested in her. You have no idea where she may be now?"
Monsieur George remarked grumpily that he couldn't say.
The other tried to appear at ease. Tongues were wagging about it
in Paris. There was a sort of international financier, a fellow
with an Italian name, a shady personality, who had been looking for
her all over Europe and talked in clubs--astonishing how such
fellows get into the best clubs--oh! Azzolati was his name. But
perhaps what a fellow like that said did not matter. The funniest
thing was that there was no man of any position in the world who
had disappeared at the same time. A friend in Paris wrote to him
that a certain well-known journalist had rushed South to
investigate the mystery but had returned no wiser than he went.
Monsieur George remarked more unamiably than before that he really
could not help all that.
"No," said the other with extreme gentleness, "only of all the
people more or less connected with the Carlist affair you are the
only one that had also disappeared before the final collapse."
"What!" cried Monsieur George.
"Just so," said the other meaningly. "You know that all my people
like you very much, though they hold various opinions as to your
discretion. Only the other day Jane, you know my married sister,
and I were talking about you. She was extremely distressed. I
assured her that you must be very far away or very deeply buried
somewhere not to have given a sign of life under this provocation.
Naturally Monsieur George wanted to know what it was all about; and
the other appeared greatly relieved.
"I was sure you couldn't have heard. I don't want to be
indiscreet, I don't want to ask you where you were. It came to my
ears that you had been seen at the bank to-day and I made a special
effort to lay hold of you before you vanished again; for, after
all, we have been always good friends and all our lot here liked
you very much. Listen. You know a certain Captain Blunt, don't
you?"
Monsieur George owned to knowing Captain Blunt but only very
slightly. His friend then informed him that this Captain Blunt was
apparently well acquainted with Madame de Lastaola, or, at any
rate, pretended to be. He was an honourable man, a member of a
good club, he was very Parisian in a way, and all this, he
continued, made all the worse that of which he was under the
painful necessity of warning Monsieur George. This Blunt on three
distinct occasions when the name of Madame de Lastaola came up in
conversation in a mixed company of men had expressed his regret
that she should have become the prey of a young adventurer who was
exploiting her shamelessly. He talked like a man certain of his
facts and as he mentioned names . . .
"In fact," the young man burst out excitedly, "it is your name that
he mentions. And in order to fix the exact personality he always
takes care to add that you are that young fellow who was known as
Monsieur George all over the South amongst the initiated Carlists."
How Blunt had got enough information to base that atrocious calumny
upon, Monsieur George couldn't imagine. But there it was. He kept
silent in his indignation till his friend murmured, "I expect you
will want him to know that you are here."
"Yes," said Monsieur George, "and I hope you will consent to act
for me altogether. First of all, pray, let him know by wire that I
am waiting for him. This will be enough to fetch him down here, I
can assure you. You may ask him also to bring two friends with
him. I don't intend this to be an affair for Parisian journalists
to write paragraphs about."
"Yes. That sort of thing must be stopped at once," the other
admitted. He assented to Monsieur George's request that the
meeting should be arranged for at his elder brother's country place
where the family stayed very seldom. There was a most convenient
walled garden there. And then Monsieur George caught his train
promising to be back on the fourth day and leaving all further
arrangements to his friend. He prided himself on his
impenetrability before Dona Rita; on the happiness without a shadow
of those four days. However, Dona Rita must have had the intuition
of there being something in the wind, because on the evening of the
very same day on which he left her again on some pretence or other,
she was already ensconced in the house in the street of the
Consuls, with the trustworthy Rose scouting all over the town to
gain information.
Of the proceedings in the walled garden there is no need to speak
in detail. They were conventionally correct, but an earnestness of
purpose which could be felt in the very air lifted the business
above the common run of affairs of honour. One bit of byplay
unnoticed by the seconds, very busy for the moment with their
arrangements, must be mentioned. Disregarding the severe rules of
conduct in such cases Monsieur George approached his adversary and
addressed him directly.
"Captain Blunt," he said, "the result of this meeting may go
against me. In that case you will recognize publicly that you were
wrong. For you are wrong and you know it. May I trust your
honour?"
In answer to that appeal Captain Blunt, always correct, didn't open
his lips but only made a little bow. For the rest he was perfectly
ruthless. If he was utterly incapable of being carried away by
love there was nothing equivocal about his jealousy. Such
psychology is not very rare and really from the point of view of
the combat itself one cannot very well blame him. What happened
was this. Monsieur George fired on the word and, whether luck or
skill, managed to hit Captain Blunt in the upper part of the arm
which was holding the pistol. That gentleman's arm dropped
powerless by his side. But he did not drop his weapon. There was
nothing equivocal about his determination. With the greatest
deliberation he reached with his left hand for his pistol and
taking careful aim shot Monsieur George through the left side of
his breast. One may imagine the consternation of the four seconds
and the activity of the two surgeons in the confined, drowsy heat
of that walled garden. It was within an easy drive of the town and
as Monsieur George was being conveyed there at a walking pace a
little brougham coming from the opposite direction pulled up at the
side of the road. A thickly veiled woman's head looked out of the
window, took in the state of affairs at a glance, and called out in
a firm voice: "Follow my carriage." The brougham turning round
took the lead. Long before this convoy reached the town another
carriage containing four gentlemen (of whom one was leaning back
languidly with his arm in a sling) whisked past and vanished ahead
in a cloud of white, Provencal dust. And this is the last
appearance of Captain Blunt in Monsieur George's narrative. Of
course he was only told of it later. At the time he was not in a
condition to notice things. Its interest in his surroundings
remained of a hazy and nightmarish kind for many days together.
From time to time he had the impression that he was in a room
strangely familiar to him, that he had unsatisfactory visions of
Dona Rita, to whom he tried to speak as if nothing had happened,
but that she always put her hand on his mouth to prevent him and
then spoke to him herself in a very strange voice which sometimes
resembled the voice of Rose. The face, too, sometimes resembled
the face of Rose. There were also one or two men's faces which he
seemed to know well enough though he didn't recall their names. He
could have done so with a slight effort, but it would have been too
much trouble. Then came a time when the hallucinations of Dona
Rita and the faithful Rose left him altogether. Next came a
period, perhaps a year, or perhaps an hour, during which he seemed
to dream all through his past life. He felt no apprehension, he
didn't try to speculate as to the future. He felt that all
possible conclusions were out of his power, and therefore he was
indifferent to everything. He was like that dream's disinterested
spectator who doesn't know what is going to happen next. Suddenly
for the first time in his life he had the soul-satisfying
consciousness of floating off into deep slumber.
When he woke up after an hour, or a day, or a month, there was dusk
in the room; but he recognized it perfectly. It was his apartment
in Dona Rita's house; those were the familiar surroundings in which
he had so often told himself that he must either die or go mad.
But now he felt perfectly clear-headed and the full sensation of
being alive came all over him, languidly delicious. The greatest
beauty of it was that there was no need to move. This gave him a
sort of moral satisfaction. Then the first thought independent of
personal sensations came into his head. He wondered when Therese
would come in and begin talking. He saw vaguely a human figure in
the room but that was a man. He was speaking in a deadened voice
which had yet a preternatural distinctness.
"This is the second case I have had in this house, and I am sure
that directly or indirectly it was connected with that woman. She
will go on like this leaving a track behind her and then some day
there will be really a corpse. This young fellow might have been
it."
"In this case, Doctor," said another voice, "one can't blame the
woman very much. I assure you she made a very determined fight."
"What do you mean? That she didn't want to. . . "
"Yes. A very good fight. I heard all about it. It is easy to
blame her, but, as she asked me despairingly, could she go through
life veiled from head to foot or go out of it altogether into a
convent? No, she isn't guilty. She is simply--what she is."
"And what's that?"
"Very much of a woman. Perhaps a little more at the mercy of
contradictory impulses than other women. But that's not her fault.
I really think she has been very honest."
The voices sank suddenly to a still lower murmur and presently the
shape of the man went out of the room. Monsieur George heard
distinctly the door open and shut. Then he spoke for the first
time, discovering, with a particular pleasure, that it was quite
easy to speak. He was even under the impression that he had
shouted:
"Who is here?"
From the shadow of the room (he recognized at once the
characteristic outlines of the bulky shape) Mills advanced to the
side of the bed. Dona Rita had telegraphed to him on the day of
the duel and the man of books, leaving his retreat, had come as
fast as boats and trains could carry him South. For, as he said
later to Monsieur George, he had become fully awake to his part of
responsibility. And he added: "It was not of you alone that I was
thinking." But the very first question that Monsieur George put to
him was:
"How long is it since I saw you last?"
"Something like ten months," answered Mills' kindly voice.
"Ah! Is Therese outside the door? She stood there all night, you
know."
"Yes, I heard of it. She is hundreds of miles away now."
"Well, then, ask Rita to come in."
"I can't do that, my dear boy," said Mills with affectionate
gentleness. He hesitated a moment. "Dona Rita went away
yesterday," he said softly.
"Went away? Why?" asked Monsieur George.
"Because, I am thankful to say, your life is no longer in danger.
And I have told you that she is gone because, strange as it may
seem, I believe you can stand this news better now than later when
you get stronger."
It must be believed that Mills was right. Monsieur George fell
asleep before he could feel any pang at that intelligence. A sort
of confused surprise was in his mind but nothing else, and then his
eyes closed. The awakening was another matter. But that, too,
Mills had foreseen. For days he attended the bedside patiently
letting the man in the bed talk to him of Dona Rita but saying
little himself; till one day he was asked pointedly whether she had
ever talked to him openly. And then he said that she had, on more
than one occasion. "She told me amongst other things," Mills said,
"if this is any satisfaction to you to know, that till she met you
she knew nothing of love. That you were to her in more senses than
one a complete revelation."
"And then she went away. Ran away from the revelation," said the
man in the bed bitterly.
"What's the good of being angry?" remonstrated Mills, gently. "You
know that this world is not a world for lovers, not even for such
lovers as you two who have nothing to do with the world as it is.
No, a world of lovers would be impossible. It would be a mere ruin
of lives which seem to be meant for something else. What this
something is, I don't know; and I am certain," he said with playful
compassion, "that she and you will never find out."
A few days later they were again talking of Dona Rita Mills said:
"Before she left the house she gave me that arrow she used to wear
in her hair to hand over to you as a keepsake and also to prevent
you, she said, from dreaming of her. This message sounds rather
cryptic."
"Oh, I understand perfectly," said Monsieur George. "Don't give me
the thing now. Leave it somewhere where I can find it some day
when I am alone. But when you write to her you may tell her that
now at last--surer than Mr. Blunt's bullet--the arrow has found its
mark. There will be no more dreaming. Tell her. She will
understand."
"I don't even know where she is," murmured Mills.
"No, but her man of affairs knows. . . . Tell me, Mills, what will
become of her?"
"She will be wasted," said Mills sadly. "She is a most unfortunate
creature. Not even poverty could save her now. She cannot go back
to her goats. Yet who can tell? She may find something in life.
She may! It won't be love. She has sacrificed that chance to the
integrity of your life--heroically. Do you remember telling her
once that you meant to live your life integrally--oh, you lawless
young pedant! Well, she is gone; but you may be sure that whatever
she finds now in life it will not be peace. You understand me?
Not even in a convent."
"She was supremely lovable," said the wounded man, speaking of her
as if she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart.
"And elusive," struck in Mills in a low voice. "Some of them are
like that. She will never change. Amid all the shames and shadows
of that life there will always lie the ray of her perfect honesty.
I don't know about your honesty, but yours will be the easier lot.
You will always have your . . . other love--you pig-headed
enthusiast of the sea."
"Then let me go to it," cried the enthusiast. "Let me go to it."
He went to it as soon as he had strength enough to feel the
crushing weight of his loss (or his gain) fully, and discovered
that he could bear it without flinching. After this discovery he
was fit to face anything. He tells his correspondent that if he
had been more romantic he would never have looked at any other
woman. But on the contrary. No face worthy of attention escaped
him. He looked at them all; and each reminded him of Dona Rita,
either by some profound resemblance or by the startling force of
contrast.
The faithful austerity of the sea protected him from the rumours
that fly on the tongues of men. He never heard of her. Even the
echoes of the sale of the great Allegre collection failed to reach
him. And that event must have made noise enough in the world. But
he never heard. He does not know. Then, years later, he was
deprived even of the arrow. It was lost to him in a stormy
catastrophe; and he confesses that next day he stood on a rocky,
wind-assaulted shore, looking at the seas raging over the very spot
of his loss and thought that it was well. It was not a thing that
one could leave behind one for strange hands--for the cold eyes of
ignorance. Like the old King of Thule with the gold goblet of his
mistress he would have had to cast it into the sea, before he died.
He says he smiled at the romantic notion. But what else could he
have done with it?
