"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 G.o.d? 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 a.n.a.lysis; 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 l.u.s.trous 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 embarra.s.sing 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 pa.s.s.
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. What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still nave enough to a.s.sociate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary att.i.tudes of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn"t know what I should see; but in what I did see there was nothing startling, at any rate from that nursery point of view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.
With immense relief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain Blunt warming his back at the more distant of the two fireplaces; and as to Dona Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her att.i.tude either, except perhaps that her hair was all loose about her shoulders. I hadn"t the slightest doubt they had been riding together that morning, but she, with her impatience of all costume (and yet she could dress herself admirably and wore her dresses triumphantly), had divested herself of her riding habit and sat cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young savage chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette ascended ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.
"How are you," was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual smile which would have been more amiable if his teeth hadn"t been, just then, clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his voice through that shining barrier I could never understand. Dona Rita tapped the couch engagingly by her side but I sat down instead in the armchair nearly opposite her, which, I imagine, must have been just vacated by Blunt.
She inquired with that particular gleam of the eyes in which there was something immemorial and gay:
"Well?"
"Perfect success."
"I could hug you."
At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the intense whisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my very heart; not as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion vibrating there with an awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left my heart heavy.
"Oh, yes, for joy," I said bitterly but very low; "for your Royalist, Legitimist, joy." Then with that trick of very precise politeness which I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:
"I don"t want to be embraced-for the King."
And I might have stopped there. But I didn"t. With a perversity which should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake of an old cast-off glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has missed the fire."
She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women.
Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very source of the pa.s.sions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.
Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a little from us and his att.i.tude expressed excellently the detachment of a man who does not want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don"t suppose he could have heard. He was too far away, our voices were too contained.
Moreover, he didn"t want to hear. There could be no doubt about it; but she addressed him unexpectedly.
"As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in getting myself, I won"t say understood, but simply believed."
No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice.
He had to hear. After a moment he altered his position as it were reluctantly, to answer her.
"That"s a difficulty that women generally have."
"Yet I have always spoken the truth."
"All women speak the truth," said Blunt imperturbably. And this annoyed her.
"Where are the men I have deceived?" she cried.
"Yes, where?" said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been ready to go out and look for them outside.
"No! But show me one. I say-where is he?"
He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer to the couch, and looked down on her with an expression of amused courtesy.
"Oh, I don"t know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be found I am certain he would turn out a very stupid person. You can"t be expected to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. To expect that would be too much, even from you who know how to work wonders at such little cost to yourself."
"To myself," she repeated in a loud tone.
"Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it."
"Such little cost!" she exclaimed under her breath.
"I mean to your person."
"Oh, yes," she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then added very low: "This body."
"Well, it is you," said Blunt with visibly contained irritation. "You don"t pretend it"s somebody else"s. It can"t be. You haven"t borrowed it... . It fits you too well," he ended between his teeth.
"You take pleasure in tormenting yourself," she remonstrated, suddenly placated; "and I would be sorry for you if I didn"t think it"s the mere revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging your pride at my expense. As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders at a little cost... . it has all but killed me morally. Do you hear?
Killed."
"Oh, you are not dead yet," he muttered,
"No," she said with gentle patience. "There is still some feeling left in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, you may be certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab."