CHAPTER III
Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even cold pipe before hisbig face.
"H'm, shoot an arrow into that old man's heart like this? But was thereanything done?"
"A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don't know. I rather thinkit's in this house. A lot of things have been sent down from Paris here,when she gave up the Pavilion. When she goes up now she stays in hotels,you know. I imagine it is locked up in one of these things," went onBlunt, pointing towards the end of the studio where amongst themonumental presses of dark oak lurked the shy dummy which had worn thestiff robes of the Byzantine Empress and the amazing hat of the "Girl,"rakishly. I wondered whether that dummy had travelled from Paris, too,and whether with or without its head. Perhaps that head had been leftbehind, having rolled into a corner of some empty room in the dismantledPavilion. I represented it to myself very lonely, without features, likea turnip, with a mere peg sticking out where the neck should have been.And Mr. Blunt was talking on.
"There are treasures behind these locked doors, brocades, old jewels,unframed pictures, bronzes, chinoiseries, Japoneries."
He growled as much as a man of his accomplished manner and voice couldgrowl. "I don't suppose she gave away all that to her sister, but Ishouldn't be surprised if that timid rustic didn't lay a claim to the lotfor the love of God and the good of the Church. . .
"And held on with her teeth, too," he added graphically.
Mills' face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those littlevenomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. Again I knew myself utterlyforgotten. But I didn't feel dull and I didn't even feel sleepy. Thatlast strikes me as strange at this distance of time, in regard of mytender years and of the depressing hour which precedes the dawn. We hadbeen drinking that straw-coloured wine, too, I won't say like water(nobody would have drunk water like that) but, well . . . and the haze oftobacco smoke was like the blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.
Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight of allParis. It was that old glory that opened the series of companions ofthose morning rides; a series which extended through three successiveParisian spring-times and comprised a famous physiologist, a fellow whoseemed to hint that mankind could be made immortal or at leasteverlastingly old; a fashionable philosopher and psychologist who used tolecture to enormous audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (butnever permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); thatsurly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybodyelse at all distinguished including also a celebrated person who turnedout later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius. . . All thisaccording to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort oflanguid zest covering a secret irritation.
"Apart from that, you know," went on Mr. Blunt, "all she knew of theworld of men and women (I mean till Allegre's death) was what she hadseen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during four months ofthe year or so. Absolutely all, with Allegre self-denyingly on her righthand, with that impenetrable air of guardianship. Don't touch! Hedidn't like his treasures to be touched unless he actually put someunique object into your hands with a sort of triumphant murmur, 'Lookclose at that.' Of course I only have heard all this. I am much toosmall a person, you understand, to even . . ."
He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part ofhis face, the shadowed setting of his eyes, and the slight drawing in ofhis eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought suddenly of thedefinition he applied to himself: "_Americain_, _catholique etgentil-homme_" completed by that startling "I live by my sword" utteredin a light drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour of mockery lighter eventhan air.
He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allegre alittle close was that morning in the Bois with his mother. His Majesty(whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender, flanked the girl,still a girl, on the other side, the usual companion for a month past orso. Allegre had suddenly taken it into his head to paint his portrait.A sort of intimacy had sprung up. Mrs. Blunt's remark was that of thetwo striking horsemen Allegre looked the more kingly.
"The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr. Bluntthrough his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without parentage.Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak."
"That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her," said Mills.
"The will, I believe," said Mr. Blunt moodily, "was written on a halfsheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the head. Whatthe devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last time that shesurveyed the world of men and women from the saddle. Less than threemonths later. . ."
"Allegre died and. . . " murmured Mills in an interested manner.
"And she had to dismount," broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. "Dismount rightinto the middle of it. Down to the very ground, you understand. Isuppose you can guess what that would mean. She didn't know what to dowith herself. She had never been on the ground. She . . . "
"Aha!" said Mills.
"Even eh! eh! if you like," retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined tone,that made me open my eyes, which were well opened before, still wider.
He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon Millsas though that quiet man whom I admired, whom I trusted, and for whom Ihad already something resembling affection had been as much of a dummy asthat other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful and headless in itsattitude of alarmed chastity.
"Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at anenormous distance when he is interested."
I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders ofvulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his tobaccopouch.
"But that's nothing to my mother's interest. She can never see ahaystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of courseDona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert littleparagraphs. But Allegre was the sort of man. A lot came out in printabout him and a lot was talked in the world about her; and at once mydear mother perceived a haystack and naturally became unreasonablyabsorbed in it. I thought her interest would wear out. But it didn't.She had received a shock and had received an impression by means of thatgirl. My mother has never been treated with impertinence before, and theaesthetic impression must have been of extraordinary strength. I mustsuppose that it amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can't accountfor her proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in Paris ayear and a half after Allegre's death some shabby journalist (smartcreature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of Mr.Allegre. 'The heiress of Mr. Allegre has taken up her residence againamongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so well known to the eliteof the artistic, scientific, and political world, not to speak of themembers of aristocratic and even royal families. . . ' You know the sortof thing. It appeared first in the _Figaro_, I believe. And then at theend a little phrase: 'She is alone.' She was in a fair way of becoming acelebrity of a sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing.Heaven only knows who stopped it. There was a rush of 'old friends' intothat garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one orseveral of them, having influence with the press, did it. But the gossipdidn't stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very certainand very significant sort of fact, and of course the Venetian episode wastalked about in the houses frequented by my mother. It was talked aboutfrom a royalist point of view with a kind of respect. It was even saidthat the inspiration and the resolution of the war going on now over thePyrenees had come out from that head. . . Some of them talked as if shewere the guardian angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush islike."
Mr. Blunt's face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head theleast little bit. Apparently he knew.
"Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have affected mymother's brain. I was already with the royal army and of course therecould be no question
of regular postal communications with France. Mymother hears or overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr. Allegre iscontemplating a secret journey. All the noble Salons were full ofchatter about that secret naturally. So she sits down and pens anautograph: 'Madame, Informed that you are proceeding to the place onwhich the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust toyour womanly sympathy with a mother's anxious feelings, etc., etc.,' andending with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . .The coolness of my mother!"
Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed to mevery odd.
"I wonder how your mother addressed that note?"
A moment of silence ensued.
"Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think," retorted Mr. Blunt, withone of his grins that made me doubt the stability of his feelings and theconsistency of his outlook in regard to his whole tale. "My mother'smaid took it in a fiacre very late one evening to the Pavilion andbrought an answer scrawled on a scrap of paper: 'Write your messages atonce' and signed with a big capital R. So my mother sat down again toher charming writing desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacrejust before midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust intomy hand at the _avanzadas_ just as I was about to start on a nightpatrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so that shemight allay my mother's anxieties by telling her how I looked.
"It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my horsewith surprise."
"You mean to say that Dona Rita was actually at the Royal Headquarterslately?" exclaimed Mills, with evident surprise. "Why,we--everybody--thought that all this affair was over and done with."
"Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than thatepisode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at Tolosa were retained forher by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-rooms, the place wasso full of all sorts of court people; but I can assure you that for thethree days she was there she never put her head outside the door.General Mongroviejo called on her officially from the King. A general,not anybody of the household, you see. That's a distinct shade of thepresent relation. He stayed just five minutes. Some personage from theForeign department at Headquarters was closeted for about a couple ofhours. That was of course business. Then two officers from the staffcame together with some explanations or instructions to her. Then BaronH., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made so many sacrifices for thecause, raised a great to-do about seeing her and she consented to receivehim for a moment. They say he was very much frightened by her arrival,but after the interview went away all smiles. Who else? Yes, theArchbishop came. Half an hour. This is more than is necessary to give ablessing, and I can't conceive what else he had to give her. But I amsure he got something out of her. Two peasants from the upper valleywere sent for by military authorities and she saw them, too. That friarwho hangs about the court has been in and out several times. Well, andlastly, I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was the firsttime I talked to her. I would have gone that evening back to theregiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me that Iwould be ordered to escort that most loyal and noble lady back to theFrench frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I wasinclined to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and jovial person andhe laughed with me quite readily--but I got the order before dark allright. It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the rightflank of our whole front and there was some considerable disorder there.I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another. We spent one night in aruined old tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away atdaybreak under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly died of fright andone of the troopers with us was wounded. To smuggle her back across thefrontier was another job but it wasn't my job. It wouldn't have done forher to appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company of Carlistuniforms. She seems to have a fearless streak in her nature. At onetime as we were climbing a slope absolutely exposed to artillery fire Iasked her on purpose, being provoked by the way she looked about at thescenery, 'A little emotion, eh?' And she answered me in a low voice:'Oh, yes! I am moved. I used to run about these hills when I waslittle.' And note, just then the trooper close behind us had beenwounded by a shell fragment. He was swearing awfully and fighting withhis horse. The shells were falling around us about two to the minute.
"Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own. Butwomen are funny. I was afraid the maid would jump down and clear outamongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to dismount and catchher. But she didn't do that; she sat perfectly still on her mule andshrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately we came to a curiouslyshaped rock at the end of a short wooded valley. It was very still thereand the sunshine was brilliant. I said to Dona Rita: 'We will have topart in a few minutes. I understand that my mission ends at this rock.'And she said: 'I know this rock well. This is my country.'
"Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three peasantsappeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old man, with a thinnose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well knownto the whole Carlist army. The two youths stopped under the trees at adistance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at her,screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun. Then he raised his armvery slowly and took his red _boina_ off his bald head. I watched hersmiling at him all the time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knewthe old rock. Very old rock. The rock of ages--and the agedman--landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartlyforward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanishedbetween the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her unclethe Cura.
"It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open countryframed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the distance, thethin smoke of some invisible _caserios_, rising straight up here andthere. Far away behind us the guns had ceased and the echoes in thegorges had died out. I never knew what peace meant before. . .
"Nor since," muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on. "Thelittle stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family, might havebeen round the corner of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismountedto bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was only a nasty long scratch.While I was busy about it a bell began to ring in the distance. Thesound fell deliciously on the ear, clear like the morning light. But itstopped all at once. You know how a distant bell stops suddenly. Inever knew before what stillness meant. While I was wondering at it thefellow holding our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was aSpaniard, not a Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song youknow,
"'Oh bells of my native village, I am going away . . . good-bye!'
He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I remounted,but there was a charm in the spot, something particular and individualbecause while we were looking at it before turning our horses' heads awaythe singer said: 'I wonder what is the name of this place,' and the otherman remarked: 'Why, there is no village here,' and the first oneinsisted: 'No, I mean this spot, this very place.' The wounded trooperdecided that it had no name probably. But he was wrong. It had a name.The hill, or the rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard ofit by chance later. It was--Lastaola."
A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills' pipe drove between my head and thehead of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say, yawned slightly. It seemed to mean obvious affectation on the part of that man of perfect manners, and,moreover, suffering from distressing insomnia.
"This is how we first met and how we first parted," he said in a weary,indifferent tone. "It's quite possible that she did see her uncle on theway. It's perhaps on this occasion that she got her sister to come outof the wilderness. I have no doubt she had a pass from the FrenchGovernment giving her the completest freedom of action. She must havegot it in Paris before leaving."
Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles.
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p; "She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole armyover the frontier if she liked. She could get herself admitted into theForeign Office at one o'clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doorsfly open before the heiress of Mr. Allegre. She has inherited the oldfriends, the old connections . . . Of course, if she were a toothless oldwoman . . . But, you see, she isn't. The ushers in all the ministriesbow down to the ground therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctumstake on an eager tone when they say, '_Faites entrer_.' My mother knowssomething about it. She has followed her career with the greatestattention. And Rita herself is not even surprised. She accomplishesmost extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a pair of gloves.People in the shops are very polite and people in the world are likepeople in the shops. What did she know of the world? She had seen itonly from the saddle. Oh, she will get your cargo released for you allright. How will she do it? . . Well, when it's done--you follow me,Mills?--when it's done she will hardly know herself."
"It's hardly possible that she shouldn't be aware," Mills pronouncedcalmly.
"No, she isn't an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-factvoice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day that she sufferedfrom a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her ownfeelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them at leastabout which she had no doubt; and you will never guess what it was.Don't try. I happen to know, because we are pretty good friends."
At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills' staring eyesmoved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raisedmyself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put hiselbow on the table.
"I asked her what it was. I don't see," went on Mr. Blunt, with aperfectly horrible gentleness, "why I should have shown particularconsideration to the heiress of Mr. Allegre. I don't mean to thatparticular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she toldme. It's fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . ."
He added after a pause, "There can be not the slightest doubt of hercourage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear."
There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.
"A person of imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence,steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio, whereevery hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried intoshreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course," Blunt interrupted hastily, "the intellectualpersonality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I, who amneither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear ismaterial."
"Because she confessed to it being that?" insinuated Mills.
"No, because she didn't," contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and inan extremely suave voice. "In fact, she bit her tongue. And consideringwhat good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I concludethat there is nothing there to boast of. Neither is my friendship, as amatter of fact."
Mills' face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who waslooking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might mean, Ihad a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.
"My leave is a farce," Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpectedexasperation. "As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no more standing thana bandit. I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks inAvignon a long time ago. . . Why am I not? Because Dona Rita exists andfor no other reason on earth. Of course it's known that I am about. Shehas only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, 'Putthat bird in a cage for me,' and the thing would be done without any moreformalities than that. . . Sad world this," he commented in a changedtone. "Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to thatsort of thing."
It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a deep,pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from thatquality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secrethardness of hearts. But neither was it a very joyous laugh.
"But the truth of the matter is that I am '_en mission_,'" continuedCaptain Blunt. "I have been instructed to settle some things, to setother things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be theintermediary for all those objects. And why? Because every bald head inthis Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dressrustles outside the door. They bow with immense deference when the dooropens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days. Thatconfounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he saysaccidentally. He saw them together on the Lido and (those writingfellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I supposeaccidentally, too) under that very title. There was in it a Prince and alady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on landing from thegondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar,while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with thedog romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy's beautiful prosevignettes in a great daily that has a literary column. But some otherpapers that didn't care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.And that's the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especiallyif the lady is, well, such as she is . . ."
He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the directionof the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism.
"So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I have."
I don't know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, heseemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions onhis thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown handsamongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a littlespilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into anempty glass profoundly. I have a notion that I sat there staring andlistening like a yokel at a play. Mills' pipe was lying quite a footaway in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr.Blunt assumed his dandified air--nervously.
"Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusivedrawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where thegossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying that shehas got a '_coup de coeur_' for some one. Whereas I think she is utterlyincapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian affair, the beginning ofit and the end of it, was nothing but a _coup de tete_, and all thoseactivities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters,ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all thisintimacy into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, whois delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses thatshock their Royal families. . . "
He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills' eyes seemed tohave grown wider than I had ever seen them before. In that tranquil faceit was a great play of feature. "An intimacy," began Mr. Blunt, with anextremely refined grimness of tone, "an intimacy with the heiress of Mr.Allegre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it isn't exactly . . .it's open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?"
"Is there anybody looking on?" Mills let fall, gently, through his kindlylips.
"Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don't need to tell a manof the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen. And thatthey are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune."
Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into itmade himself heard while he looked for his hat.
"Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless."
Mr. Blunt muttered the word "Obviously."
By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove glowed no longer and thelamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty glasses, had grown dimmer.
I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions of thedivan.
"We will meet again in a few hours," said Mr. Blunt.
"Don't forget to come," he said, address
ing me. "Oh, yes, do. Have noscruples. I am authorized to make invitations."
He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment. Andindeed I didn't know what to say.
"I assure you there isn't anything incorrect in your coming," heinsisted, with the greatest civility. "You will be introduced by twogood friends, Mills and myself. Surely you are not afraid of a verycharming woman. . . ."
I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at himmutely.
"Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along. I am sorry youtwo are going. I shall throw myself on the bed for an hour or two, but Iam sure I won't sleep."
He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall, wherethe low gas flame glimmered forlornly. When he opened the front door thecold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made meshiver to the very marrow of my bones.
Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards thecentre of the town. In the chill tempestuous dawn he strolled alongmusingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the depressinginfluence of the hour, the desolation of the empty streets in which thedry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew upon us from theside streets. The masks had gone home and our footsteps echoed on theflagstones with unequal sound as of men without purpose, without hope.
"I suppose you will come," said Mills suddenly.
"I really don't know," I said.
"Don't you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I amstaying at the Hotel de Louvre and I shall leave there at a quarter totwelve for that lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later. Isuppose you can sleep?"
I laughed.
"Charming age, yours," said Mills, as we came out on the quays. Alreadydim figures of the workers moved in the biting dawn and the masted formsof ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down theold harbour.
"Well," Mills began again, "you may oversleep yourself."
This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands atthe lower end of the Cannebiere. He looked very burly as he walked awayfrom me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was very full ofconfused images, but I was really too tired to think.