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The Arrow of Gold

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Arrow of Gold




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 cause 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 depart
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 cafe and Madame Leonore'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 Senora Dona 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 Dona
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, Senor, 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 Dona 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, Senor, 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.

"Senor, 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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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, Senor--may God guard you from sin."



CHAPTER III



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
metier se gate." 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.

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