asking her whether she had any dinner ready for me that evening.
“What’s the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur,” she quizzed me tenderly. “You just only peck like a little bird. Much better let me save the money for you.” It will show the super-terrestrial nature of my misery when I say that I was quite surprised at Therese’s view of my appetite. Perhaps she was right. I certainly did not know. I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment.
The new young gentleman within Therese’s horizon didn’t surprise me very much. Villarel would travel with some sort of suite, a couple of secretaries at least. I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know that the man had been (very likely was still) Captain General of the Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political (and domestic) influence at Court. The card was, under its social form, a mere command to present myself before the grandee. No Royalist devoted by conviction, as I must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning. I put the card in my pocket and after dining or not dining—I really don’t remember—spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing thoughts of tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From time to time I looked at the dummy. I even got up once from the couch on which I had been writhing like a worm and walked towards it as if to touch it, but refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which began with the words:
“If our Rita were to die before long . . .”
She didn’t get any further because I had jumped up and frightened her by shouting: “Is she ill? What has happened? Have you had a letter?”
She had had a letter. I didn’t ask her to show it to me, though I daresay she would have done so. I had an idea that there was no meaning in anything, at least no meaning that mattered. But the interruption had made Therese apparently forget her sinister conundrum. She observed me with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for a bit, and then with the fatuous remark about the Law being just she left me to the horrors of the studio. I believe I went to sleep there from sheer exhaustion. Some time during the night I woke up chilled to the bone and in the dark. These were horrors and no mistake. I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The black-and-white hall was like an ice-house.
The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Dona Rita’s, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no one else. I couldn’t bear the idea of her being criticized by every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart from that, nothing mattered much, why, then—I would get this over.
But it appeared that I had not reflected sufficiently on all the consequences of that step. First of all the sight of the Villa looking shabbily cheerful in the sunshine (but not containing her any longer) was so perturbing that I very nearly went away from the gate. Then when I got in after much hesitation—being admitted by the man in the green baize apron who recognized me—the thought of entering that room, out of which she was gone as completely as if she had been dead, gave me such an emotion that I had to steady myself against the table till the faintness was past. Yet I was irritated as at a treason when the man in the baize apron instead of letting me into the Pompeiian dining-room crossed the hall to another door not at all in the Pompeiian style (more Louis XV rather— that Villa was like a
I advanced towards it and discovered a little man, who had made no sound or movement till I came into his view, sunk deep in the green velvet. He altered his position slowly and rested his hollow, black, quietly burning eyes on my face in prolonged scrutiny. I detected something comminatory in his yellow, emaciated countenance, but I believe now he was simply startled by my youth. I bowed profoundly. He extended a meagre little hand.
“Take a chair, Don Jorge.”
He was very small, frail, and thin, but his voice was not languid, though he spoke hardly above his breath. Such was the envelope and the voice of the fanatical soul belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and Captain General of the Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the Legitimist Court, now detached on a special mission. He was all fidelity, inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but like some great saints he had very little body to keep all these merits in.
“You are very young,” he remarked, to begin with. “The matters on which I desired to converse with you are very grave.”
“I was under the impression that your Excellency wished to see me at once. But if your Excellency prefers it I will return in, say, seven years’ time when I may perhaps be old enough to talk about grave matters.”
He didn’t stir hand or foot and not even the quiver of an eyelid proved that he had heard my shockingly unbecoming retort.
“You have been recommended to us by a noble and loyal lady, in whom His Majesty—whom God preserve— reposes an entire confidence. God will reward her as she deserves and you, too, Senor, according to the disposition you bring to this great work which has the blessing (here he crossed himself) of our Holy Mother the Church.”
“I suppose your Excellency understands that in all this I am not looking for reward of any kind.”
At this he made a faint, almost ethereal grimace.
“I was speaking of the spiritual blessing which rewards the service of religion and will be of benefit to your soul,” he explained with a slight touch of acidity. “The other is perfectly understood and your fidelity is taken for granted. His Majesty—whom God preserve—has been already pleased to signify his satisfaction with your services to the most noble and loyal Dona Rita by a letter in his own hand.”
Perhaps he expected me to acknowledge this announcement in some way, speech, or bow, or something, because before my immobility he made a slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. “I am afraid, Senor, that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and I are strangers, I believe. Are you a young man of that sort?”
“I am a very good gun-runner, your Excellency,” I answered quietly.
He bowed his head gravely. “We are aware. But I was looking for the motives which ought to have their pure source in religion.”
“I must confess frankly that I have not reflected on my motives,” I said. “It is enough for me to know that they are not dishonourable and that anybody can see they are not the motives of an adventurer seeking some sordid
