The Arrow of Gold

CHAPTER II

Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account of all these Royalist affairs which I couldn’t very well drop, and in truth did not wish to drop.  They were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or elsewhere.  On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence born from the dealings with the elemental powers of nature.  I couldn’t give all that up.  And besides all this was related to Dona Rita.  I had, as it were, received it all from her own hand, from that hand the clasp of which was as frank as a man’s and yet conveyed a unique sensation.  The very memory of it would go through me like a wave of heat.  It was over that hand that we first got into the habit of quarrelling, with the irritability of sufferers from some obscure pain and yet half unconscious of their disease.  Rita’s own spirit hovered over the troubled waters of Legitimity.  But as to the sound of the four magic letters of her name I was not very likely to hear it fall sweetly on my ear.  For instance, the distinguished personality in the world of finance with whom I had to confer several times, alluded to the irresistible seduction of the power which reigned over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious and unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together with the unfathomable splendour of the night as—Madame de Lastaola.  That’s how that steel-grey man called the greatest mystery of the universe.  When uttering that assumed name he would make for himself a guardedly solemn and reserved face as though he were afraid lest I should presume to smile, lest he himself should venture to smile, and the sacred formality of our relations should be outraged beyond mending.

He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame de Lastaola’s wishes, plans, activities, instructions, movements; or picking up a letter from the usual litter of paper found on such men’s desks, glance at it to refresh his memory; and, while the very sight of the handwriting would make my lips go dry, would ask me in a bloodless voice whether perchance I had “a direct communication from—er—Paris lately.”  And there would be other maddening circumstances connected with those visits.  He would treat me as a serious person having a clear view of certain eventualities, while at the very moment my vision could see nothing but streaming across the wall at his back, abundant and misty, unearthly and adorable, a mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks tangled in it.  Another nuisance was the atmosphere of Royalism, of Legitimacy, that pervaded the room, thin as air, intangible, as though no Legitimist of flesh and blood had ever existed to the man’s mind except perhaps myself.  He, of course, was just simply a banker, a very distinguished, a very influential, and a very impeccable banker.  He persisted also in deferring to my judgment and sense with an over-emphasis called out by his perpetual surprise at my youth.  Though he had seen me many times (I even knew his wife) he could never get over my immature age.  He himself was born about fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during a conversation.  On one occasion he said to me.  “By the by, the Marquis of Villarel is here for a time.  He inquired after you the last time he called on me.  May I let him know that you are in town?”

I didn’t say anything to that.  The Marquis of Villarel was the Don Rafael of Rita’s own story.  What had I to do with Spanish grandees?  And for that matter what had she, the woman of all time, to do with all the villainous or splendid disguises human dust takes upon itself?  All this was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me there was no present, no future, nothing but a hollow pain, a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked up within my breast it gave me an illusion of lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars.  But when I made up my mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call on the banker’s wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the Marquis de Villarel was “amongst us.”  She said it joyously.  If in her husband’s room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated principle, in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons.  “Il m’a cause beaucoup de vous,” she said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to be proud.  I slunk away from her.  I couldn’t believe that the grandee had talked to her about me.  I had never felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise.  I confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn’t the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order to tell them with a little gesture, “Look!  Over there—in that corner.  That’s the notorious Monsieur George.”  At last she herself drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over “ce cher Monsieur Mills” and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice, dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether I was really so much in the confidence of that astonishing person.  “Vous devez bien regretter son depart pour Paris,” she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness at her fan. . . . How I got out of the room I really don’t know.  There was also a staircase.  I did not fall down it head first—that much I am certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long time about the seashore and went home very late, by the way of the Prado, giving in passing a fearful glance at the Villa.  It showed not a gleam of light through the thin foliage of its trees.

I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck.  From the way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly refreshed by my company during the day.  Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic.  Then I dropped in at the cafe and Madame Leonore’s loud “Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!” pleased me by its resonant friendliness.  But I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink rather difficult to bear.  That man and that woman seemed to know something.  What did they know?  At parting she pressed my hand significantly.  What did she mean?  But I didn’t feel offended by these manifestations.  The souls within these people’s breasts were not volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders.  Neither had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the fine world that wants only to get on.  Somehow they had sensed that there was something wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of grins at my expense.

That day on returning home I found Therese looking out for me, a very unusual occurrence of late.  She handed me a card bearing the name of the Marquis de Villarel.

“How did you come by this?” I asked.  She turned on at once the tap of her volubility and I was not surprised to learn that the grandee had not done such an extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person.  A young gentleman had brought it.  Such a nice young gentleman, she interjected with her piously ghoulish expression.  He was not very tall.  He had a very smooth complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny black moustache.  Therese was sure that he must have been an officer en las filas legitimas.  With that notion in her head she had asked him about the welfare of that other model of charm and elegance, Captain Blunt.  To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt.  But he seemed very much interested in his surroundings, looked all round the hall, noted the costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver statuette holding up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs, and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the most excellent Senora Dona Rita de Lastaola.  The question staggered Therese, but with great presence of mind she answered the young gentleman that she didn’t know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was her property, having been given to her by her own sister.  At this the young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and got back into his fiacre.  Why should people be angry with a poor girl who had never done a single reprehensible thing in her whole life?

“I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister.”  She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of sighs and this was the hopeless kind) and added reflectively, “Sin on sin, wickedness on wickedness!  And the longer she lives the worse it will be.  It would be better for our Rita to be dead.”

I told “Mademoiselle Therese” that it was really impossible to tell whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I wasn’t really very much shocked.  These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese.  One got used to them.  They were merely the expression of her rapacity and her righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my