The Arrow of Gold

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.