The Arrow of Gold

She dropped her eyes, said: “Oui, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to see the road clear.

It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house.  The black-and-white hall was empty and everything was perfectly still.  Blunt himself had no doubt gone away with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls, Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs.  I emitted a low whistle which didn’t seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down the stairs at once.  With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.

The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore.

“I have given Madame the message,” she said in her contained voice, swinging the door wide open.  Then after relieving me of my hat and coat she announced me with the simple words: “Voila Monsieur,” and hurried away.  Directly I appeared Dona Rita, away there on the couch, passed the tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwards on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the room: “The dry season has set in.”  I glanced at the pink tips of her fingers perfunctorily and then drew back.  She let her hands fall negligently as if she had no use for them any more and put on a serious expression.

“So it seems,” I said, sitting down opposite her.  “For how long, I wonder.”

“For years and years.  One gets so little encouragement.  First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don’t know how to do it.  You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don’t know what to do with your hands.”

All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed to play upon the sober surface of her thoughts.  Then seeing that I did not answer she altered the note a bit.

“Amigo George,” she said, “I take the trouble to send for you and here I am before you, talking to you and you say nothing.”

“What am I to say?”

“How can I tell?  You might say a thousand things.  You might, for instance, tell me that you were sorry for my tears.”

“I might also tell you a thousand lies.  What do I know about your tears?  I am not a susceptible idiot.  It all depends upon the cause.  There are tears of quiet happiness.  Peeling onions also will bring tears.”

“Oh, you are not susceptible,” she flew out at me.  “But you are an idiot all the same.”

“Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?” I asked with a certain animation.

“Yes.  And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned once you would have read between the lines that all I wanted you here for was to tell you what I think of you.”

“Well, tell me what you think of me.”

“I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent as you are.”

“What unexpected modesty,” I said.

“These, I suppose, are your sea manners.”

“I wouldn’t put up with half that nonsense from anybody at sea.  Don’t you remember you told me yourself to go away?  What was I to do?”

“How stupid you are.  I don’t mean that you pretend.  You really are.  Do you understand what I say?  I will spell it for you.  S-t-u-p-i-d.  Ah, now I feel better.  Oh, amigo George, my dear fellow- conspirator for the king—the king.  Such a king!  Vive le Roi!  Come, why don’t you shout Vive le Roi, too?”

“I am not your parrot,” I said.

“No, he never sulked.  He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomed to the best society, whereas you, I suppose, are nothing but a heartless vagabond like myself.”

“I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the insolence to tell you that to your face.”

“Well, very nearly.  It was what it amounted to.  I am not stupid.  There is no need to spell out simple words for me.  It just came out.  Don Juan struggled desperately to keep the truth in.  It was most pathetic.  And yet he couldn’t help himself.  He talked very much like a parrot.”

“Of the best society,” I suggested.

“Yes, the most honourable of parrots.  I don’t like parrot-talk.  It sounds so uncanny.  Had I lived in the Middle Ages I am certain I would have believed that a talking bird must be possessed by the devil.  I am sure Therese would believe that now.  My own sister!  She would cross herself many times and simply quake with terror.”

“But you were not terrified,” I said.  “May I ask when that interesting communication took place?”

“Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all days in the year.  I was sorry for him.”

“Why tell me this?  I couldn’t help noticing it.  I regretted I hadn’t my umbrella with me.”

“Those unforgiven tears!  Oh, you simple soul!  Don’t you know that people never cry for anybody but themselves? . . . Amigo George, tell me—what are we doing in this world?”

“Do you mean all the people, everybody?”

“No, only people like you and me.  Simple people, in this world which is eaten up with charlatanism of all sorts so that even we, the simple, don’t know any longer how to trust each other.”