The Arrow of Gold

are a part of the indestructible.”

“Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now.  The laugh!  Where is my laugh?  Give me back my laugh. . . .”

And she laughed a little on a low note.  I don’t know about Mills, but the subdued shadowy vibration of it echoed in my breast which felt empty for a moment and like a large space that makes one giddy.

“The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate used to feel protected.  That feeling’s gone, too.  And I myself will have to die some day.”

“Certainly,” said Mills in an unaltered voice.  “As to this body you . . .”

“Oh, yes!  Thanks.  It’s a very poor jest.  Change from body to body as travellers used to change horses at post houses.  I’ve heard of this before. . . .”

“I’ve no doubt you have,” Mills put on a submissive air.  “But are we to hear any more about Azzolati?”

“You shall.  Listen.  I had heard that he was invited to shoot at Rambouillet—a quiet party, not one of these great shoots.  I hear a lot of things.  I wanted to have a certain information, also certain hints conveyed to a diplomatic personage who was to be there, too.  A personage that would never let me get in touch with him though I had tried many times.”

“Incredible!” mocked Mills solemnly.

“The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility.  Born cautious,” explained Dona Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of her lips.  “Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he was an old friend.  I never took any notice of those pathetic appeals before.  But in this emergency I sat down and wrote a note asking him to come and dine with me in my hotel.  I suppose you know I don’t live in the Pavilion.  I can’t bear the Pavilion now.  When I have to go there I begin to feel after an hour or so that it is haunted.  I seem to catch sight of somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here and there.  I hear light footsteps behind closed doors. . . My own!”

Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested softly, “Yes, but Azzolati.”

Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine.  “Oh! Azzolati.  It was a most solemn affair.  It had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet.  It was most successful.  Azzolati looked positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite of rooms.  He had never before seen me en toilette, you understand.  In the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress.  I draped myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills.  To go about like that suited my indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I used to herd goats. . . But never mind.  My aim was to impress Azzolati.  I wanted to talk to him seriously.”

There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips.  “And behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati.  Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court.  He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his frac and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front.  An orange ribbon.  Bavarian, I should say.  Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati.  It was always his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world.  The last remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting needles.  He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my hands.  Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day.  I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings.  His submissive attitude made me still more nervous.  He was ready to do anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived.  You understand the impudence of it, don’t you?  And his tone was positively abject, too.  I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a nomad.  He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of my own about the world.  And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever—like a little dog lost in the street—not knowing where to go.  I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an imbecile smile as much as to say ‘here is a poser for you. . . .’  I gnashed my teeth at him.  Quietly, you know . . . I suppose you two think that I am stupid.”

She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she continued with a remark.

“I have days like that.  Often one must listen to false protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one’s way.  That idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn’t stand.  First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart.  His heart!  He wanted me to sympathize with his sorrows.  Of course I ought to have listened.  One must pay for service.  Only I was nervous and tired.  He bored me.  I told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more.  I suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me.  He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his fangs.  ‘No,’ he cries, ‘you can’t imagine what a satisfaction it is to feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest, meritorious poor wriggling and slobbering under one’s boots.’  You may tell me that he is a contemptible animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone!  I felt my bare arms go cold like ice.  A moment before I had been hot and faint with sheer boredom.  I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her to bring me my fur cloak.  He remained in his chair leering at me curiously.  When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life.  ‘Take yourself off instantly,’ I said.  ‘Go trample on the poor if you like but never dare speak to me again.’  At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask, calmly—you know—whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the corridor.  He fetched an enormous sigh.  ‘I have only tried to be honest with you, Rita.’  But by the time he got to the door he had regained some of his impudence.  ‘You know how to trample on a poor fellow, too,’ he said.  ‘But I don’t mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes, Rita.  I forgive you.  I thought you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind.  I was mistaken in you, that’s all.’  With that he pretends to dash a tear from his eye-crocodile!—and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?” she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both.  And the stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself in my mind.

Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.

“It’s like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at you.  In every one.  Every one.  That’s what it is having to do with men more than mere—Good-morning—Good evening.  And if you try to avoid meddling with their lids, some of them will take them off themselves.  And they don’t even know, they don’t even suspect what they are showing you.  Certain confidences—they don’t see it—are the bitterest kind of insult.  I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble beast of prey.  Just as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined gentlemen.  And as likely as not they would trade on a woman’s troubles—and in the end make nothing of that either.  Idiots!”