“Don’t we? Then why don’t you trust him? You are dying to do so, don’t you know?”
She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her straight eyebrows the deep blue eyes remained fixed on me, impersonally, as if without thought.
“What have you been doing since you left me yesterday?” she asked.
“The first thing I remember I abused your sister horribly this morning.”
“And how did she take it?”
“Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in and unfolded her petals.”
“What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than one would think possible, considering what she is and whence she came. It’s true that I, too, come from the same spot.”
“She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her. I don’t say this to boast.”
“It must be very comforting.”
“Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightful musings on one thing and another I went to lunch with a charming lady and spent most of the afternoon talking with her.”
Dona Rita raised her head.
“A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to me. I don’t know them. Did you abuse her? Did she— how did you say that?—unfold her petals, too? Was she really and truly . . .?”
“She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation was by no means banal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would have fallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allegre Pavilion, my dear Rita, you were but a crowd of glorified
She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes like melted sapphires, around those red lips that almost without moving could breathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that mysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiver under her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare moments of gaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite sadness, like the sunlight of our life hiding the invincible darkness in which the universe must work out its impenetrable destiny.
“Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that’s the reason I never could feel perfectly serious while they were demolishing the world about my ears. I fancy now that I could tell beforehand what each of them was going to say. They were repeating the same words over and over again, those great clever men, very much like parrots who also seem to know what they say. That doesn’t apply to the master of the house, who never talked much. He sat there mostly silent and looming up three sizes bigger than any of them.”
“The ruler of the aviary,” I muttered viciously.
“It annoys you that I should talk of that time?” she asked in a tender voice. “Well, I won’t, except for once to say that you must not make a mistake: in that aviary he was the man. I know because he used to talk to me afterwards sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed to carry all the world and me with it in his hand. . . . ”
“He dominates you yet,” I shouted.
She shook her head innocently as a child would do.
“No, no. You brought him into the conversation yourself. You think of him much more than I do.” Her voice drooped sadly to a hopeless note. “I hardly ever do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through one’s mind and so I have no time. Look. I had eleven letters this morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have tangled up everything. I am quite frightened.”
And she explained to me that one of them—the long one on the top of the pile, on the table over there— seemed to contain ugly inferences directed at herself in a menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what I could make of it.
I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she had misunderstood it thoroughly and even amazingly. I proved it to her very quickly. But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and arose so obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn’t help looking at her admiringly.
“Rita,” I said, “you are a marvellous idiot.”
“Am I? Imbecile,” she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief. “But perhaps it only seems so to you in contrast with the lady so perfect in her way. What is her way?”
“Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth and seventieth year, and I have walked tete-a- tete with her for some little distance this afternoon.”
“Heavens,” she whispered, thunderstruck. “And meantime I had the son here. He arrived about five minutes after Rose left with that note for you,” she went on in a tone of awe. “As a matter of fact, Rose saw him across the street but she thought she had better go on to you.”
“I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much,” I said bitterly. “I suppose you got him out of the house about five minutes after you heard I was coming here. Rose ought to have turned back when she saw him on his way to cheer your solitude. That girl is stupid after all, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no doubt is very useful at times.”
“I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won’t have it. Rose is not to be abused before me.”
“I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to read your mind, that’s all.”
“This is, without exception, the most unintelligent thing you have said ever since I have known you. You may understand a lot about running contraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to Rose’s mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers yours is absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible if it weren’t so—what shall I call it?—babyish. You ought to be slapped and put to bed.” There was an extraordinary earnestness in her tone and when she ceased I listened yet to the seductive inflexions of her voice, that no matter in what mood she spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love. And I thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take himself off from her presence for ever, in that voice the very anger of which seemed to twine itself gently round one’s heart. No wonder the poor wretch could not forget the scene and couldn’t restrain his tears on the plain of Rambouillet. My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as they were, had no more duration
