I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my unlawful
trade with a sort of desperation, dogged and hopeless, like a fairly
decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink. The business was getting
dangerous. The bands in the South were not very well organized, worked
with no very definite plan, and now were beginning to be pretty closely
hunted. The arrangements for the transport of supplies were going to
pieces; our friends ashore were getting scared; and it was no joke to
find after a day of skilful dodging that there was no one at the landing
place and have to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and
lurk about the coast for another week or so, unable to trust anybody and
looking at every vessel we met with suspicion. Once we were ambushed by
a lot of “rascally Carabineers,” as Dominic called them, who hid
themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of mules well in view
on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand,
Dominic detected something suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some
sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with.
“There is a smell of treachery about this,” he remarked suddenly, turning
at his oar. (He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to
reconnoitre.) I couldn’t detect any smell and I regard to this day our
escape on that occasion as, properly speaking, miraculous. Surely some
supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the
Carabineers’ rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the Carabineers
have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic, after swearing most
horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that looks
after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic believed in angels in a
conventional way, but laid no claim to having one of his own. Soon
afterwards, while sailing quietly at night, we found ourselves suddenly
near a small coasting vessel, also without lights, which all at once
treated us to a volley of rifle fire. Dominic’s mighty and inspired
yell: “_A plat ventre_!” and also an unexpected roll to windward saved
all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a
breeze then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase.
But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the
darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: “_Le métier se
gâte_.” I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not altogether
spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care. In fact, for my
purpose it was rather better, a more potent influence; like the stronger
intoxication of raw spirit. A volley in the dark after all was not such
a bad thing. Only a moment before we had received it, there, in that
calm night of the sea full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been
looking at an enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the
tawny hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white
neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with brilliants
and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled ornament, which
I remember often telling Rita was of a very Philistinish conception (it
was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue
place in my memory, tried to come into some sort of significance even in
my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the
gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect
round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by
hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always
woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a chance.
A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some
day—or night.
* * * * *
At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The little
vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child, the sea
itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck
that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took
away all that there was in me of independent life, but just failed to
take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit
for no one else but unrepentant sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his
moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our
common enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning
thunder-clap—and, one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain
still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the
railway station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than
another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties
with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a
discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a
respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of
his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station shunning
its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man. I
hadn’t any money in my pocket. I hadn’t even the bundle and the stick of
a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart was
faint within me. My attire was such that I daren’t approach the rank of
fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which
one suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave up to the
fortunate of this earth. I didn’t believe in my power of persuasion. I
had no powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the
uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of
Carnival.
Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in an
astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life, I had
lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my companions, had
parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link with life, my touch
with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone—but a small penknife and a
latchkey had never parted company with me. With the latchkey I opened
the door of refuge. The hall wore its deaf-and-dumb air, its
black-and-white stillness.
The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the end of
the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a hair’s breadth
its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and the staircase lost
itself in the shadows above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights.
To see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the things I
had known ought to have come down with a crash at the moment of the final
catastrophe on the Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself
descending the stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that
she would be murdered this time for certain. She had a strange,
unemotional conviction that the house was particularly convenient for a
crime. One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she
held with the stolidity of a peasant allied to the outward serenity of a
nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but when she
recognized me she got such a shock that she sat down suddenly on the
lowest step. She did not expect me for another week at least, and,
besides, she explained, the state I was in made her blood take “one
turn.”
Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed her
true nature. But who had ever fathomed her nature! There was none of
her treacly volubility. There were none of her “dear young gentlemans”
and “poor little hearts” and references to sin. In breathless silence
she ran about the house getting my room ready, lighting fires and
gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up the stairs. Yes, she did
lay hands on me for that charitable purpose. They trembled. Her pale
eyes hardly left my face. “What brought you here like this?” she
whispered once.
“If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there the
hand of God.”
She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell over
it. “Oh, dear heart,” she murmured, and ran off to the kitchen.
I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty and
offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and after I
drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly. I managed to
say with difficulty: “Go away,” whereupon she vanished as if by magic
before the words were fairly out of my mouth. Immediately afterwards the
sunlight forced through the slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and
Therese was there again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice: “It’s
midday”. . . Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for
seventeen hours.
I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such an awakening: the sense
of catastrophe, the shrinking from the necessity of beginning life again,
the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must be paid for by a
hanging. In the course of the morning Therese informed me that the
apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was vacant and added mysteriously
that she intended to keep it vacant for a time, because she had been
instructed to do so. I couldn’t imagine why Blunt should wish to return
to Marseilles. She told me also that the house was empty except for
myself and the two dancing girls with their father. Those people had
been away for some time as the girls had engagements in some Italian
summer theatres, but apparently they had secured a re-engagement for the
winter and were now back. I let Therese talk because it kept my
imagination from going to work on subjects which, I had made up my mind,
were no concern of mine. But I went out early to perform an unpleasant
task. It was only proper that I should let the Carlist agent ensconced
in the Prado Villa know of the sudden ending of my activities. It would
be grave enough news for him, and I did not like to be its bearer for
reasons which were mainly personal. I resembled Dominic in so far that
I, too, disliked failure.
The Marquis of Villarel had of course gone long before. The man who was
there was another type of Carlist altogether, and his temperament was
that of a trader. He was the chief purveyor of the Legitimist armies, an
honest broker of stores, and enjoyed a great reputation for cleverness.
His important task kept him, of course, in France, but his young wife,
whose beauty and devotion to her King were well known, represented him
worthily at Headquarters, where his own appearances were extremely rare.
The dissimilar but united loyalties of those two people had been rewarded
by the title of baron and the ribbon of some order or other. The gossip
of the Legitimist circles appreciated those favours with smiling
indulgence. He was the man who had been so distressed and frightened by
Doña Rita’s first visit to Tolosa. He had an extreme regard for his
wife. And in that sphere of clashing arms and unceasing intrigue nobody
would have smiled then at his agitation if the man himself hadn’t been
somewhat grotesque.
He must have been startled when I sent in my name, for he didn’t of
course expect to see me yet—nobody expected me. He advanced soft-footed
down the room. With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and sable
garments he recalled an obese raven, and when he heard of the disaster he
manifested his astonishment and concern in a most plebeian manner by a
low and expressive whistle. I, of course, could not share his
consternation. My feelings in that connection were of a different order;
but I was annoyed at his unintelligent stare.
“I suppose,” I said, “you will take it on yourself to advise Doña Rita,
who is greatly interested in this affair.”
“Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame de Lastaola was to leave
Paris either yesterday or this morning.”
It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage to ask: “For
Tolosa?” in a very knowing tone.
Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or some other subtle
cause, his nose seemed to have grown perceptibly longer.
“That, Señor, is the place where the news has got to be conveyed without
undue delay,” he said in an agitated wheeze. “I could, of course,
telegraph to our agent in Bayonne who would find a messenger. But I
don’t like, I don’t like! The Alphonsists have agents, too, who hang
about the telegraph offices. It’s no use letting the enemy get that
news.”
He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying to think of two
different things at once.
“Sit down, Don George, sit down.” He absolutely forced a cigar on me.
“I am extremely distressed. That—I mean Doña Rita is undoubtedly on her
way to Tolosa. This is very frightful.”
I must say, however, that there was in the man some sense of duty. He
mastered his private fears. After some cogitation he murmured: “There is
another way of getting the news to Headquarters. Suppose you write me a
formal letter just stating the facts, the unfortunate facts, which I will
be able to forward. There is an agent of ours, a fellow I have been
employing for purchasing supplies, a perfectly honest man. He is coming
here from the north by the ten o’clock train with some papers for me of a
confidential nature. I was rather embarrassed about it. It wouldn’t do
for him to get into any sort of trouble. He is not very intelligent. I
wonder, Don George, whether you would consent to meet him at the station
and take care of him generally till to-morrow. I don’t like the idea of
him going about alone. Then, to-morrow night, we would send him on to
Tolosa by the west coast route, with the news; and then he can also call
on Doña Rita who will no doubt be already there. . . .” He became again
distracted all in a moment and actually went so far as to wring his fat
hands. “Oh, yes, she will be there!” he exclaimed in most pathetic
accents.
I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he must have been
satisfied with the gravity with which I beheld his extraordinary antics.
My mind was very far away. I thought: Why not? Why shouldn’t I also
write a letter to Doña Rita, telling her that now nothing stood in the
way of my leaving Europe, because, really, the enterprise couldn’t be
begun again; that things that come to an end can never be begun again.
The idea—never again—had complete possession of my mind. I could think
of nothing else. Yes, I would write. The worthy Commissary General of
the Carlist forces was under the impression that I was looking at him;
but what I had in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women and winged
youths and the soft sheen of Argand lamps gleaming on an arrow of gold in
the hair of a head that seemed to evade my outstretched hand.
“Oh, yes,” I said, “I have nothing to do and even nothing to think of
just now, I will meet your man as he gets off the train at ten o’clock
to-night. What’s he like?”
“Oh, he has a black moustache and whiskers, and his chin is shaved,” said
the newly-fledged baron cordially. “A very honest fellow. I always
found him very useful. His name is José Ortega.”
He was perfectly self-possessed now, and walking soft-footed accompanied
me to the door of the room. He shook hands with a melancholy smile.
“This is a very frightful situation. My poor wife will be quite
distracted. She is such a patriot. Many thanks, Don George. You
relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather stupid and rather bad-tempered.
Queer creature, but very honest! Oh, very honest!”