The Arrow of Gold

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 verily 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.