CHAPTER II
The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow,silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose itsmost striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above manyof its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked toMr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of allnations almost--except his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the otherside of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good careto keep clear of his own consulate.
"Are you afraid of the consul's dog?" I asked jocularly. The consul'sdog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town asexhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, butmainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.
But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: "They areall Yankees there."
I murmured a confused "Of course."
Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before thatthe Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about tenyears old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was alittle ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime, looking like theconventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hatpushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficultywith his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not oneof those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street.It had only one row of windows above the ground floor. Dead wallsabutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark frontpresented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering lightof a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in theworld. The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in blackand white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions.Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the wayacross the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past adoor of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle. It gave access tohis rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end ofthe passage.
It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to thegarden side of the house. A large lamp was burning brightly there. Thefloor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about thoughextremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofaupholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions,some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a roundtable, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove.Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and thewarmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching coldblasts of mistral outside.
Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm,gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner where in the shadow of amonumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands butwith beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed tobe embarrassed by his stare.
As we sat enjoying the _bivouac_ hospitality (the dish was reallyexcellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked theaccomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards thatcorner. Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted bythe Empress.
"It's disagreeable," I said. "It seems to lurk there like a shy skeletonat the feast. But why do you give the name of Empress to that dummy?"
"Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a Byzantine Empress toa painter. . . I wonder where he discovered these priceless stuffs. . .You knew him, I believe?"
Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his throat some wine outof a Venetian goblet.
"This house is full of costly objects. So are all his other houses, sois his place in Paris--that mysterious Pavilion hidden away in Passysomewhere."
Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose, loosened his tongue.Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve. From their talk I gatheredthe notion of an eccentric personality, a man of great wealth, not somuch solitary as difficult of access, a collector of fine things, apainter known only to very few people and not at all to the publicmarket. But as meantime I had been emptying my Venetian goblet with acertain regularity (the amount of heat given out by that iron stove wasamazing; it parched one's throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn't seemmuch stronger than so much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and theimpressions they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind.Suddenly I perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. I hadnot noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had unbuttoned his shabbyjacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie underhis dark shaved chin. He had a strange air of insolence--or so it seemedto me. I addressed him much louder than I intended really.
"Did you know that extraordinary man?"
"To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished or verylucky. Mr. Mills here . . ."
"Yes, I have been lucky," Mills struck in. "It was my cousin who wasdistinguished. That's how I managed to enter his house in Paris--it wascalled the Pavilion--twice."
"And saw Dona Rita twice, too?" asked Blunt with an indefinite smile anda marked emphasis. Mills was also emphatic in his reply but with aserious face.
"I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she waswithout doubt the most admirable find of his amongst all the pricelessitems he had accumulated in that house--the most admirable. . . "
"Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one thatwas alive," pointed out Blunt with the slightest possible flavour ofsarcasm.
"Immensely so," affirmed Mills. "Not because she was restless, indeedshe hardly ever moved from that couch between the windows--you know."
"No. I don't know. I've never been in there," announced Blunt with thatflash of white teeth so strangely without any character of its own thatit was merely disturbing.
"But she radiated life," continued Mills. "She had plenty of it, and ithad a quality. My cousin and Henry Allegre had a lot to say to eachother and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were likeold friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were thatwe would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am notmeddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fieldsshe'll have her place in a very special company."
All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Bluntproduced another disturbing white flash and muttered:
"I should say mixed." Then louder: "As for instance . . . "
"As for instance Cleopatra," answered Mills quietly. He added after apause: "Who was not exactly pretty."
"I should have thought rather a La Valliere," Blunt dropped with anindifference of which one did not know what to make. He may have begunto be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on, for the wholepersonality was not clearly definable. I, however, was not indifferent.A woman is always an interesting subject and I was thoroughly awake tothat interest. Mills pondered for a while with a sort of dispassionatebenevolence, at last:
"Yes, Dona Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity thateven that is possible," he said. "Yes. A romantic resigned La Valliere. . . who had a big mouth."
I felt moved to make myself heard.
"Did you know La Valliere, too?" I asked impertinently.
Mills only smiled at me. "No. I am not quite so old as that," he said."But it's not very difficult to know facts of that kind about ahistorical personage. There were some ribald verses made at the time,and Louis XIV was congratulated on the possession--I really don'tremember how it goes--on the possession of:
". . . de ce bec amoureux Qui d'une oreille a l'autre va, Tra la la.
or something of the sort. It needn't be from ear to ear, but it's a factthat a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of mind andfeeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths. Beware of theothers, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, theroyalist sympathizers can't charge Dona R
ita with any lack of generosityfrom what I hear. Why should I judge her? I have known her for, say,six hours altogether. It was enough to feel the seduction of her nativeintelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that was brought hometo me so quickly," he concluded, "because she had what some Frenchman hascalled the 'terrible gift of familiarity'."
Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.
"Yes!" Mills' thoughts were still dwelling in the past. "And whensaying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance betweenherself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change ofthe physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in thepurple. Even if she did offer you her hand--as she did to me--it was asif across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out?Perhaps she's really one of those inaccessible beings. What do youthink, Blunt?"
It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range ofsensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbedme strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while heturned to me.
"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as fine as aneedle. All these statements about the seduction and then this finaldoubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included morethan six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is HenryAllegre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills."
"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills goodhumouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such aliberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life."
"And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after allthis uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her;all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his verylast breath. I don't mean to say she nursed him. He had hisconfidential man for that. He couldn't bear women about his person. Butthen apparently he couldn't bear this one out of his sight. She's theonly woman who ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a model insidehis house. That's why the 'Girl in the Hat' and the 'Byzantine Empress'have that family air, though neither of them is really a likeness of DonaRita. . . You know my mother?"
Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from hislips. Blunt's eyes were fastened on the very centre of his empty plate.
"Then perhaps you know my mother's artistic and literary associations,"Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. "My mother has been writingverse since she was a girl of fifteen. She's still writing verse. She'sstill fifteen--a spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of herpoet friends--no less than Versoy himself--to arrange for a visit toHenry Allegre's house. At first he thought he hadn't heard aright. Youmust know that for my mother a man that doesn't jump out of his skin forany woman's caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . ."
Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his eyesfrom his plate to look at him, started afresh with great deliberation.
"She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother's exquisitelyabsurd. You understand that all these painters, poets, art collectors(and dealers in bric-a-brac, he interjected through his teeth) of mymother are not in my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of the world.One day I met him at the fencing school. He was furious. He asked me totell my mother that this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobsshe gave him to do were too difficult. But I daresay he had been pleasedenough to show the influence he had in that quarter. He knew my motherwould tell the world's wife all about it. He's a spiteful, gingerylittle wretch. The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. Ibelieve he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn'tget further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormousdrawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double doorson the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for a visitfrom royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother, with her white hairdone in some 18th century fashion and her sparkling black eyes,penetrating into those splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed,vexed squirrel--and Henry Allegre coming forward to meet them like asevere prince with the face of a tombstone Crusader, big white hands,muffled silken voice, half-shut eyes, as if looking down at them from abalcony. You remember that trick of his, Mills?"
Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended cheeks.
"I daresay he was furious, too," Blunt continued dispassionately. "Buthe was extremely civil. He showed her all the 'treasures' in the room,ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, fromIndia, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He pushed hiscondescension so far as to have the 'Girl in the Hat' brought down intothe drawing-room--half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for mymother to look at. The 'Byzantine Empress' was already there, hung onthe end wall--full length, gold frame weighing half a ton. My motherfirst overwhelms the 'Master' with thanks, and then absorbs herself inthe adoration of the 'Girl in the Hat.' Then she sighs out: 'It shouldbe called Diaphaneite, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the lastexpression of modernity!' She puts up suddenly her face-a-main and lookstowards the end wall. 'And that--Byzantium itself! Who was she, thissullen and beautiful Empress?'
"'The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!' Allegre consented to answer.'Originally a slave girl--from somewhere.'
"My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her. Shefinds nothing better to do than to ask the 'Master' why he took hisinspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she wasproud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. Allegre,however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered in hissilkiest tones:
"'Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women of alltime.'
"My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She isextremely intelligent. Moreover, she ought to have known. But women canbe miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, 'Then she is awonder!' And with some notion of being complimentary goes on to say thatonly the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders of art could havediscovered something so marvellous in life. I suppose Allegre lost histemper altogether then; or perhaps he only wanted to pay my mother out,for all these 'Masters' she had been throwing at his head for the lasttwo hours. He insinuates with the utmost politeness:
"'As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like tojudge for yourself as to the inspiration of these two pictures. She isupstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she wouldn't bevery long. She might be a little surprised at first to be called downlike this, but with a few words of preparation and purely as a matter ofart . . .'
"There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself confessesthat he dropped his tall hat with a crash. I am a dutiful son, I hope,but I must say I should have liked to have seen the retreat down thegreat staircase. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly.
"That implacable brute Allegre followed them down ceremoniously and putmy mother into the fiacre at the door with the greatest deference. Hedidn't open his lips though, and made a great bow as the fiacre droveaway. My mother didn't recover from her consternation for three days. Ilunch with her almost daily and I couldn't imagine what was the matter.Then one day . . ."
He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse left thestudio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into theconsciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men.With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front of hisface clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff ofsmoke, staring stolidly across the room.
I was moved to ask in a whisper:
"Do you know him well?"
"I don't know what he is driving at," he answered drily. "But as to hismother she is not as volatile as all that. I suspect it was business.It may have been a deep plot to get a picture out of Allegre forsomebody. My
cousin as likely as not. Or simply to discover what hehad. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris there are variousways of making a little money, without actually breaking anything. Noteven the law. And Mrs. Blunt really had a position once--in the days ofthe Second Empire--and so. . ."
I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indianexperiences could not have given me an insight. But Mills checkedhimself and ended in a changed tone.
"It's not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any giveninstance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A delightful,aristocratic old lady. Only poor."
A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captainof Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as to one dish atleast), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four morebottles between the fingers of his hand.
"I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot," he remarked casually. But evenI, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had stumbledaccidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses aprofound silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously--any morethan his stumble.
"One day," he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, "mymother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in themiddle of the night. You must understand my mother's phraseology. Itmeant that she would be up and dressed by nine o'clock. This time it wasnot Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine howdelighted I was. . . ."
It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively toMills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the man. It was as if Millsrepresented something initiated and to be reckoned with. I, of course,could have no such pretensions. If I represented anything it was aperfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing ignorance, not so muchof what life may give one (as to that I had some ideas at least) but ofwhat it really contains. I knew very well that I was utterlyinsignificant in these men's eyes. Yet my attention was not checked bythat knowledge. It's true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet atthe age when this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. Myimagination would have been more stimulated probably by the adventuresand fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from flagging was Mr. Blunthimself. The play of the white gleams of his smile round the suspicionof grimness of his tone fascinated me like a moral incongruity.
So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes as ifthe need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age, I kepteasily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the contrast ofpersonalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the roughinitiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things weredominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only afloating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with theprestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For thesetwo men had _seen_ her, while to me she was only being "presented,"elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliarvoice.
She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the earlyhour of the ultra-fashionable world (so I understood), on a light bay"bit of blood" attended on the off side by that Henry Allegre mounted ona dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the other by one ofAllegre's acquaintances (the man had no real friends), distinguishedfrequenters of that mysterious Pavilion. And so that side of the framein which that woman appeared to one down the perspective of the greatAllee was not permanent. That morning when Mr. Blunt had to escort hismother there for the gratification of her irresistible curiosity (ofwhich he highly disapproved) there appeared in succession, at thatwoman's or girl's bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whomshe was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit, who talked to herwith great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage in ared fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, thevexed Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though I really couldn't seewhere the harm was) had one more chance of a good stare. The third partythat time was the Royal Pretender (Allegre had been painting his portraitlately), whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before the mountedtrio came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. There was colour inthe girl's face. She was not laughing. Her expression was serious andher eyes thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion thecharm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately framedbetween those magnificently mounted, paladin-like attendants, one olderthan the other but the two composing together admirably in the differentstages of their manhood. Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allegreso close. Allegre was riding nearest to the path on which Blunt wasdutifully giving his arm to his mother (they had got out of their fiacre)and wondering if that confounded fellow would have the impudence to takeoff his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn't notice. Allegre was nota man of wandering glances. There were silver hairs in his beard but helooked as solid as a statue. Less than three months afterwards he wasgone.
"What was it?" asked Mills, who had not changed his pose for a very longtime.
"Oh, an accident. But he lingered. They were on their way to Corsica.A yearly pilgrimage. Sentimental perhaps. It was to Corsica that hecarried her off--I mean first of all."
There was the slightest contraction of Mr. Blunt's facial muscles. Veryslight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simplesouls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have beenmental. There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: "Isuppose you know how he got hold of her?" in a tone of ease which wasastonishingly ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled,drawing-room person.
Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment. Then heleaned back in his chair and with interest--I don't mean curiosity, Imean interest: "Does anybody know besides the two parties concerned?" heasked, with something as it were renewed (or was it refreshed?) in hisunmoved quietness. "I ask because one has never heard any tales. Iremember one evening in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady--abeautiful lady--very particularly beautiful, as though she had beenstolen out of Mahomet's paradise. With Dona Rita it can't be anything asdefinite as that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I've alwaysfelt that she looked as though Allegre had caught her in the precincts ofsome temple . . . in the mountains."
I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in thatway, a real live woman that is, not a woman in a book. For this was nopoetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And Iwould have lost myself in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly,addressed himself to me.
"I told you that man was as fine as a needle."
And then to Mills: "Out of a temple? We know what that means." His darkeyes flashed: "And must it be really in the mountains?" he added.
"Or in a desert," conceded Mills, "if you prefer that. There have beentemples in deserts, you know."
Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose.
"As a matter of fact, Henry Allegre caught her very early one morning inhis own old garden full of thrushes and other small birds. She wassitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet inthe damp grass, and reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on ashort, black, two-penny frock (_une petite robe de deux sous_) and therewas a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw himlooking down at her thoughtfully over that ambrosian beard of his, likeJove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she wastoo startled to move; and then he murmured, "_Restez donc_." She loweredher eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away on thepath. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds fillingthe air with their noise. She was not frightened. I am telling you thispositively because she has told me the tale herself. What betterauthority can you have . . .?" Blunt paused.
"That's true. She's not the sort of person to lie about her ownsensations," murmured Mills above his clasped hands.
"Nothing can escape hi
s penetration," Blunt remarked to me with thatequivocal urbanity which made me always feel uncomfortable on Mills'account. "Positively nothing." He turned to Mills again. "After someminutes of immobility--she told me--she arose from her stone and walkedslowly on the track of that apparition. Allegre was nowhere to be seenby that time. Under the gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house,which hides the Pavilion and the garden from the street, the wife of theporter was waiting with her arms akimbo. At once she cried out to Rita:'You were caught by our gentleman.'
"As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita's aunt,allowed the girl to come into the garden whenever Allegre was away. ButAllegre's goings and comings were sudden and unannounced; and thatmorning, Rita, crossing the narrow, thronged street, had slipped inthrough the gateway in ignorance of Allegre's return and unseen by theporter's wife.
"The child, she was but little more than that then, expressed her regretof having perhaps got the kind porter's wife into trouble.
"The old woman said with a peculiar smile: 'Your face is not of the sortthat gets other people into trouble. My gentleman wasn't angry. He saysyou may come in any morning you like.'
"Rita, without saying anything to this, crossed the street back again tothe warehouse full of oranges where she spent most of her waking hours.Her dreaming, empty, idle, thoughtless, unperturbed hours, she callsthem. She crossed the street with a hole in her stocking. She had ahole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they hadaround them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) butbecause she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of herpersonal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even consciousthen of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilightlife of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, aBasque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, thepriest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at theage of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasantstock, you know. This is the true origin of the 'Girl in the Hat' and ofthe 'Byzantine Empress' which excited my dear mother so much; of themysterious girl that the privileged personalities great in art, inletters, in politics, or simply in the world, could see on the big sofaduring the gatherings in Allegre's exclusive Pavilion: the Dona Rita oftheir respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious, like an object ofart from some unknown period; the Dona Rita of the initiated Paris. DonaRita and nothing more--unique and indefinable." He stopped with adisagreeable smile.
"And of peasant stock?" I exclaimed in the strangely conscious silencethat fell between Mills and Blunt.
"Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II," saidCaptain Blunt moodily. "You see coats of arms carved over the doorwaysof the most miserable _caserios_. As far as that goes she's Dona Ritaright enough whatever else she is or is not in herself or in the eyes ofothers. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?"
For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.
"Why think about it at all?" he murmured coldly at last. "A strange birdis hatched sometimes in a nest in an unaccountable way and then the fateof such a bird is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. Andso that is how Henry Allegre saw her first? And what happened next?"
"What happened next?" repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise inhis tone. "Is it necessary to ask that question? If you had asked _how_the next happened. . . But as you may imagine she hasn't told meanything about that. She didn't," he continued with polite sarcasm,"enlarge upon the facts. That confounded Allegre, with his impudentassumption of princely airs, must have (I shouldn't wonder) made the factof his notice appear as a sort of favour dropped from Olympus. I reallycan't tell how the minds and the imaginations of such aunts and unclesare affected by such rare visitations. Mythology may give us a hint.There is the story of Danae, for instance."
"There is," remarked Mills calmly, "but I don't remember any aunt oruncle in that connection."
"And there are also certain stories of the discovery and acquisition ofsome unique objects of art. The sly approaches, the astute negotiations,the lying and the circumventing . . . for the love of beauty, you know."
With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing about hisgrimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively satanic. Mills' hand wastoying absently with an empty glass. Again they had forgotten myexistence altogether.
"I don't know how an object of art would feel," went on Blunt, in anunexpectedly grating voice, which, however, recovered its toneimmediately. "I don't know. But I do know that Rita herself was not aDanae, never, not at any time of her life. She didn't mind the holes inher stockings. She wouldn't mind holes in her stockings now. . . That isif she manages to keep any stockings at all," he added, with a sort ofsuppressed fury so funnily unexpected that I would have burst into alaugh if I hadn't been lost in astonishment of the simplest kind.
"No--really!" There was a flash of interest from the quiet Mills.
"Yes, really," Blunt nodded and knitted his brows very devilishlyindeed. "She may yet be left without a single pair of stockings."
"The world's a thief," declared Mills, with the utmost composure. "Itwouldn't mind robbing a lonely traveller."
"He is so subtle." Blunt remembered my existence for the purpose of thatremark and as usual it made me very uncomfortable. "Perfectly true. Alonely traveller. They are all in the scramble from the lowest to thehighest. Heavens! What a gang! There was even an Archbishop in it."
"_Vous plaisantez_," said Mills, but without any marked show ofincredulity.
"I joke very seldom," Blunt protested earnestly. "That's why I haven'tmentioned His Majesty--whom God preserve. That would have been anexaggeration. . . However, the end is not yet. We were talking about thebeginning. I have heard that some dealers in fine objects, quitemercenary people of course (my mother has an experience in that world),show sometimes an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens,even at a good price. It must be very funny. It's just possible thatthe uncle and the aunt have been rolling in tears on the floor, amongsttheir oranges, or beating their heads against the walls from rage anddespair. But I doubt it. And in any case Allegre is not the sort ofperson that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it's just possible thatthose people stood open-mouthed at all that magnificence. They weren'tpoor, you know; therefore it wasn't incumbent on them to be honest. Theyare still there in the old respectable warehouse, I understand. Theyhave kept their position in their _quartier_, I believe. But they didn'tkeep their niece. It might have been an act of sacrifice! For I seem toremember hearing that after attending for a while some school round thecorner the child had been set to keep the books of that orange business.However it might have been, the first fact in Rita's and Allegre's commonhistory is a journey to Italy, and then to Corsica. You know Allegre hada house in Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything heever had; and that Corsican palace is the portion that will stick thelongest to Dona Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place likethat? I suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was havinghouses built all over the place. This very house where we are sittingbelonged to him. Dona Rita has given it to her sister, I understand. Orat any rate the sister runs it. She is my landlady . . ."
"Her sister here!" I exclaimed. "Her sister!"
Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His eyeswere in deep shadow and it struck me for the first time then that therewas something fatal in that man's aspect as soon as he fell silent. Ithink the effect was purely physical, but in consequence whatever he saidseemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace, if uneasy, soul.
"Dona Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is asleepsomewhere in this house, in one of the vacant rooms. She lets them, youknow, at extortionate prices, that is, if people will pay them, for sheis easily intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an enormous townbefore in her life, nor yet so many strange peop
le. She has been keepinghouse for the uncle-priest in some mountain gorge for years and years.It's extraordinary he should have let her go. There is somethingmysterious there, some reason or other. It's either theology or Family.The saintly uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of any otherreasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she had seen somereal money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me long enough,and I hope you will (I really can't sleep), you will see her going out tomass at half-past six; but there is nothing remarkable in her; just apeasant woman of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun. . . ."
I may as well say at once that we didn't stay as long as that. It wasnot that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the whisperinglips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass from the house ofiniquity into the early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a worldsteeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning that I saw Dona Rita'sincredible sister with her brown, dry face, her gliding motion, and herreally nun-like dress, with a black handkerchief enfolding her headtightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-likeenough. And yet not altogether. People would have turned round afterher if those dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn't been the onlyoccasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She wasfrightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a dangerbut as if of a contamination. Yet she didn't fly back to her mountainsbecause at bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant tenacity ofpurpose, predatory instincts. . . .
No, we didn't remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to see even as much asher back glide out of the house on her prayerful errand. She wasprayerful. She was terrible. Her one-idead peasant mind was asinaccessible as a closed iron safe. She was fatal. . . It's perfectlyridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now; but writing toyou like this in all sincerity I don't mind appearing ridiculous. Isuppose fatality must be expressed, embodied, like other forces of thisearth; and if so why not in such people as well as in other more gloriousor more frightful figures?
We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt's half-hidden acrimonydevelop itself or prey on itself in further talk about the man Allegreand the girl Rita. Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story,passed on to what he called the second act, the disclosure, with, what hecalled, the characteristic Allegre impudence--which surpassed theimpudence of kings, millionaires, or tramps, by many degrees--therevelation of Rita's existence to the world at large. It wasn't a verylarge world, but then it was most choicely composed. How is one todescribe it shortly? In a sentence it was the world that rides in themorning in the Bois.
In something less than a year and a half from the time he found hersitting on a broken fragment of stone work buried in the grass of hiswild garden, full of thrushes, starlings, and other innocent creatures ofthe air, he had given her amongst other accomplishments the art ofsitting admirably on a horse, and directly they returned to Paris he tookher out with him for their first morning ride.
"I leave you to judge of the sensation," continued Mr. Blunt, with afaint grimace, as though the words had an acrid taste in his mouth. "Andthe consternation," he added venomously. "Many of those men on thatgreat morning had some one of their womankind with them. But their hatshad to go off all the same, especially the hats of the fellows who wereunder some sort of obligation to Allegre. You would be astonished tohear the names of people, of real personalities in the world, who, not tomince matters, owed money to Allegre. And I don't mean in the world ofart only. In the first rout of the surprise some story of an adopteddaughter was set abroad hastily, I believe. You know 'adopted' with apeculiar accent on the word--and it was plausible enough. I have beentold that at that time she looked extremely youthful by his side, I meanextremely youthful in expression, in the eyes, in the smile. She musthave been . . ."
Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not to let theconfused murmur of the word "adorable" reach our attentive ears.
The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. The effect on mewas more inward, a strange emotion which left me perfectly still; and forthe moment of silence Blunt looked more fatal than ever.
"I understand it didn't last very long," he addressed us politely again."And no wonder! The sort of talk she would have heard during that firstspringtime in Paris would have put an impress on a much less receptivepersonality; for of course Allegre didn't close his doors to his friendsand this new apparition was not of the sort to make them keep away.After that first morning she always had somebody to ride at her bridlehand. Old Doyen, the sculptor, was the first to approach them. At thatage a man may venture on anything. He rides a strange animal like acircus horse. Rita had spotted him out of the corner of her eye as hepassed them, putting up his enormous paw in a still more enormous glove,airily, you know, like this" (Blunt waved his hand above his head), "toAllegre. He passes on. All at once he wheels his fantastic animal roundand comes trotting after them. With the merest casual '_Bonjour_,Allegre' he ranges close to her on the other side and addresses her, hatin hand, in that booming voice of his like a deferential roar of the seavery far away. His articulation is not good, and the first words shereally made out were 'I am an old sculptor. . . Of course there is thathabit. . . But I can see you through all that. . . '
He put his hat on very much on one side. 'I am a great sculptor ofwomen,' he declared. 'I gave up my life to them, poor unfortunatecreatures, the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the most loved. . . Twogenerations of them. . . Just look at me full in the eyes, _mon enfant_.'
"They stared at each other. Dona Rita confessed to me that the oldfellow made her heart beat with such force that she couldn't manage tosmile at him. And she saw his eyes run full of tears. He wiped themsimply with the back of his hand and went on booming faintly. 'Thoughtso. You are enough to make one cry. I thought my artist's life wasfinished, and here you come along from devil knows where with this youngfriend of mine, who isn't a bad smearer of canvases--but it's marble andbronze that you want. . . I shall finish my artist's life with your face;but I shall want a bit of those shoulders, too. . . You hear, Allegre, Imust have a bit of her shoulders, too. I can see through the cloth thatthey are divine. If they aren't divine I will eat my hat. Yes, I willdo your head and then--_nunc dimittis_.'
"These were the first words with which the world greeted her, or should Isay civilization did; already both her native mountains and the cavern oforanges belonged to a prehistoric age. 'Why don't you ask him to comethis afternoon?' Allegre's voice suggested gently. 'He knows the way tothe house.'
"The old man said with extraordinary fervour, 'Oh, yes I will,' pulled uphis horse and they went on. She told me that she could feel herheart-beats for a long time. The remote power of that voice, those oldeyes full of tears, that noble and ruined face, had affected herextraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her was the shadow,the still living shadow of a great passion in the man's heart.
"Allegre remarked to her calmly: 'He has been a little mad all hislife.'"