Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. "Oh!
Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite of rooms. He had never before seen me _en toilette_, you understand. In the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress. I draped myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go about like that suited my indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I used to herd goats... But never mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati.
I wanted to talk to him seriously."
There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips. "And behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati. Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his _frac_ and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon.
Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati. It was always his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my hands. Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day. I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a gla.s.s, throw a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His submissive att.i.tude made me still more nervous. He was ready to do anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You understand the impudence of it, don"t you? And his tone was positively abject, too. I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a nomad. He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of my own about the world. And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever-like a little dog lost in the street-not knowing where to go. I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an imbecile smile as much as to say "here is a poser for you.
..." I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you know ... I suppose you two think that I am stupid."
She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she continued with a remark.
"I have days like that. Often one must listen to false protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one"s way. That idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn"t stand.
First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to sympathize with his sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. One must pay for service. Only I was nervous and tired. He bored me. I told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more. I suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me. He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his fangs. "No," he cries, "you can"t imagine what a satisfaction it is to feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest, meritorious poor wriggling and s...o...b..ring under one"s boots." You may tell me that he is a contemptible animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone!
I felt my bare arms go cold like ice. A moment before I had been hot and faint with sheer boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her to bring me my fur cloak. He remained in his chair leering at me curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life. "Take yourself off instantly," I said. "Go trample on the poor if you like but never dare speak to me again." At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask, calmly-you know-whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the corridor. He fetched an enormous sigh. "I have only tried to be honest with you, Rita." But by the time he got to the door he had regained some of his impudence. "You know how to trample on a poor fellow, too," he said. "But I don"t mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes, Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken in you, that"s all." With that he pretends to dash a tear from his eye-crocodile!--and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets... Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?" she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself in my mind.
Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.
"It"s like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at you. In every one. Every one. That"s what it is having to do with men more than mere-Good-morning-Good evening. And if you try to avoid meddling with their lids, some of them will take them off themselves.
And they don"t even know, they don"t even suspect what they are showing you. Certain confidences-they don"t see it-are the bitterest kind of insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a n.o.ble beast of prey. Just as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, n.o.ble, and refined gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman"s troubles-and in the end make nothing of that either. Idiots!"
The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a character of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only a meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills began to speak of his experiences during his visit to the army of the Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that this man of books could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and bravery of the army was combined with the greatest distaste for what he had seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the conduct of this great enterprise he had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal lack of decision, an absence of any reasoned plan.
He shook his head.
"I feel that you of all people, Dona Rita, ought to be told the truth. I don"t know exactly what you have at stake."
She was rosy like some impa.s.sive statue in a desert in the flush of the dawn.
"Not my heart," she said quietly. "You must believe that."
"I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you... "
"No, _Monsieur le Philosophe_. It would not have been better. Don"t make that serious face at me," she went on with tenderness in a playful note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and playfulness the very fibre of her being. "I suppose you think that a woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is ...
How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?"
"I wouldn"t judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were born to?
You are as old as the world."
She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them was amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing like that could hold of seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging glance.
"With me it is _pun d"onor_. To my first independent friend."
"You were soon parted," ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense of oppression.
"Don"t think for a moment that I have been scared off," she said. "It is they who were frightened. I suppose you heard a lot of Headquarters gossip?"
"Oh, yes," Mills said meaningly. "The fair and the dark are succeeding each other like leaves blown in the wind dancing in and out. I suppose you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness."
"Yes," she said, "that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn"t it look happy? And so I suppose there is no uneasiness, no occasion for fears amongst the "responsibles.""
"Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick.
There is for instance Madame ..."
"Oh, I don"t want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the world."
"Yes," said Mills thoughtfully, "you are not a leaf, you might have been a tornado yourself."
"Upon my word," she said, "there was a time that they thought I could carry him off, away from them all-beyond them all. Verily, I am not very proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of a great pa.s.sion. There was nothing sad there worthy of a great tenderness."
"And is _this_ the word of the Venetian riddle?" asked Mills, fixing her with his keen eyes.
"If it pleases you to think so, Senor," she said indifferently. The movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became mischievous when she asked, "And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?"
"I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with his regiment at the outposts. He is a most valorous captain. I heard some people describe him as foolhardy."
"Oh, he needn"t seek death," she said in an indefinable tone. "I mean as a refuge. There will be nothing in his life great enough for that."
"You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Dona Rita."
"Angry? No! Weary. But of course it"s very inconvenient. I can"t very well ride out alone. A solitary amazon swallowing the dust and the salt spray of the Corniche promenade would attract too much attention. And then I don"t mind you two knowing that I am afraid of going out alone."
"Afraid?" we both exclaimed together.
"You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me to be courageous? Why shouldn"t I be afraid? Is it because there is no one in the world to care what would happen to me?"
There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the first time. We had not a word to say. And she added after a long silence:
"There is a very good reason. There is a danger."
With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once:
"Something ugly."
She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said with conviction:
"Ah! Then it can"t be anything in yourself. And if so ... "
I was moved to extravagant advice.
"You should come out with me to sea then. There may be some danger there but there"s nothing ugly to fear."
She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her, more than wonderful to me; and suddenly as though she had seen me for the first time she exclaimed in a tone of compunction:
"Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why should he run his head into danger for those things that will all crumble into dust before long?"
I said: "_You_ won"t crumble into dust." And Mills chimed in:
"That young enthusiast will always have his sea."
We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on me, and repeated with a sort of whimsical enviousness: