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 Doña 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 causé 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 départ 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
café and Madame Léonore’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 Señora Doña 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 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 Doña 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 _Salade Russe_ of styles) and introduced me
into a big, light room full of very modern furniture. The portrait _en
pied_ of an officer in a sky-blue uniform hung on the end wall. The
officer had a small head, a black beard cut square, a robust body, and
leaned with gauntleted hands on the simple hilt of a straight sword.
That striking picture dominated a massive mahogany desk, and, in front of
this desk, a very roomy, tall-backed armchair of dark green velvet. I
thought I had been announced into an empty room till glancing along the
extremely loud carpet I detected a pair of feet under the armchair.
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, Señor, 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 Doña 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,
Señor, 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 advantage.”
He had listened patiently and when he saw that there was nothing more to
come he ended the discussion.
“Señor, we should reflect upon our motives. It is salutary for our
conscience and is recommended (he crossed himself) by our Holy Mother the
Church. I have here certain letters from Paris on which I would consult
your young sagacity which is accredited to us by the most loyal Doña
Rita.”
The sound of that name on his lips was simply odious. I was convinced
that this man of forms and ceremonies and fanatical royalism was
perfectly heartless. Perhaps he reflected on his motives; but it seemed
to me that his conscience could be nothing else but a monstrous thing
which very few actions could disturb appreciably. Yet for the credit of
Doña Rita I did not withhold from him my young sagacity. What he thought
of it I don’t know. The matters we discussed were not of course of high
policy, though from the point of view of the war in the south they were
important enough. We agreed on certain things to be done, and finally,
always out of regard for Doña Rita’s credit, I put myself generally at
his disposition or of any Carlist agent he would appoint in his place;
for I did not suppose that he would remain very long in Marseilles. He
got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child might have done. The
audience was over but he noticed my eyes wandering to the portrait and he
said in his measured, breathed-out tones:
“I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here to the gracious
attention of Madame de Lastaola, who, knowing my attachment to the royal
person of my Master, has sent it down from Paris to greet me in this
house which has been given up for my occupation also through her
generosity to the Royal Cause. Unfortunately she, too, is touched by the
infection of this irreverent and unfaithful age. But she is young yet.
She is young.”
These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of menace as though he
were supernaturally aware of some suspended disasters. With his burning
eyes he was the image of an Inquisitor with an unconquerable soul in that
frail body. But suddenly he dropped his eyelids and the conversation
finished as characteristically as it had begun: with a slow, dismissing
inclination of the head and an “Adios, Señor—may God guard you from sin.”