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The Arrow of Gold

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I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory that most
catastrophes in family circles, surprising episodes in public
affairs and disasters in private life, had their origin in the fact
that the world was full of half-mad people. He asserted that they
were the real majority. When asked whether he considered himself
as belonging to the majority, he said frankly that he didn't think
so; unless the folly of voicing this view in a company, so utterly
unable to appreciate all its horror, could be regarded as the first
symptom of his own fate. We shouted down him and his theory, but
there is no doubt that it had thrown a chill on the gaiety of our
gathering.

We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and Senor Ortega
had ceased his muttering. For myself I had not the slightest doubt
of my own sanity. It was proved to me by the way I could apply my
intelligence to the problem of what was to be done with Senor
Ortega. Generally, he was unfit to be trusted with any mission
whatever. The unstability of his temper was sure to get him into a
scrape. Of course carrying a letter to Headquarters was not a very
complicated matter; and as to that I would have trusted willingly a
properly trained dog. My private letter to Dona Rita, the
wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for the
present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem mainly in the
terms of Dona Rita's safety. Her image presided at every council,
at every conflict of my mind, and dominated every faculty of my
senses. It floated before my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded
my right side and my left side; my ears seemed to catch the sound
of her footsteps behind me, she enveloped me with passing whiffs of
warmth and perfume, with filmy touches of the hair on my face. She
penetrated me, my head was full of her . . . And his head, too, I
thought suddenly with a side glance at my companion. He walked
quietly with hunched-up shoulders carrying his little hand-bag and
he looked the most commonplace figure imaginable.

Yes. There was between us a most horrible fellowship; the
association of his crazy torture with the sublime suffering of my
passion. We hadn't been a quarter of an hour together when that
woman had surged up fatally between us; between this miserable
wretch and myself. We were haunted by the same image. But I was
sane! I was sane! Not because I was certain that the fellow must
not be allowed to go to Tolosa, but because I was perfectly alive
to the difficulty of stopping him from going there, since the
decision was absolutely in the hands of Baron H.

If I were to go early in the morning and tell that fat, bilious
man: "Look here, your Ortega's mad," he would certainly think at
once that I was, get very frightened, and . . . one couldn't tell
what course he would take. He would eliminate me somehow out of
the affair. And yet I could not let the fellow proceed to where
Dona Rita was, because, obviously, he had been molesting her, had
filled her with uneasiness and even alarm, was an unhappy element
and a disturbing influence in her life--incredible as the thing
appeared! I couldn't let him go on to make himself a worry and a
nuisance, drive her out from a town in which she wished to be (for
whatever reason) and perhaps start some explosive scandal. And
that girl Rose seemed to fear something graver even than a scandal.
But if I were to explain the matter fully to H. he would simply
rejoice in his heart. Nothing would please him more than to have
Dona Rita driven out of Tolosa. What a relief from his anxieties
(and his wife's, too); and if I were to go further, if I even went
so far as to hint at the fears which Rose had not been able to
conceal from me, why then--I went on thinking coldly with a stoical
rejection of the most elementary faith in mankind's rectitude--why
then, that accommodating husband would simply let the ominous
messenger have his chance. He would see there only his natural
anxieties being laid to rest for ever. Horrible? Yes. But I
could not take the risk. In a twelvemonth I had travelled a long
way in my mistrust of mankind.

We paced on steadily. I thought: "How on earth am I going to stop
you?" Had this arisen only a month before, when I had the means at
hand and Dominic to confide in, I would have simply kidnapped the
fellow. A little trip to sea would not have done Senor Ortega any
harm; though no doubt it would have been abhorrent to his feelings.
But now I had not the means. I couldn't even tell where my poor
Dominic was hiding his diminished head.

Again I glanced at him sideways. I was the taller of the two and
as it happened I met in the light of the street lamp his own
stealthy glance directed up at me with an agonized expression, an
expression that made me fancy I could see the man's very soul
writhing in his body like an impaled worm. In spite of my utter
inexperience I had some notion of the images that rushed into his
mind at the sight of any man who had approached Dona Rita. It was
enough to awaken in any human being a movement of horrified
compassion; but my pity went out not to him but to Dona Rita. It
was for her that I felt sorry; I pitied her for having that damned
soul on her track. I pitied her with tenderness and indignation,
as if this had been both a danger and a dishonour.

I don't mean to say that those thoughts passed through my head
consciously. I had only the resultant, settled feeling. I had,
however, a thought, too. It came on me suddenly, and I asked
myself with rage and astonishment: "Must I then kill that brute?"
There didn't seem to be any alternative. Between him and Dona Rita
I couldn't hesitate. I believe I gave a slight laugh of
desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it
something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental
processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent
into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it
should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that it was
suggested simply by the actual declivity of the street of the
Consuls which lies on a gentle slope. We had just turned the
corner. All the houses were dark and in a perspective of complete
solitude our two shadows dodged and wheeled about our feet.

"Here we are," I said.

He was an extraordinarily chilly devil. When we stopped I could
hear his teeth chattering again. I don't know what came over me, I
had a sort of nervous fit, was incapable of finding my pockets, let
alone the latchkey. I had the illusion of a narrow streak of light
on the wall of the house as if it had been cracked. "I hope we
will be able to get in," I murmured.

Senor Ortega stood waiting patiently with his handbag, like a
rescued wayfarer. "But you live in this house, don't you?" he
observed.

"No," I said, without hesitation. I didn't know how that man would
behave if he were aware that I was staying under the same roof. He
was half mad. He might want to talk all night, try crazily to
invade my privacy. How could I tell? Moreover, I wasn't so sure
that I would remain in the house. I had some notion of going out
again and walking up and down the street of the Consuls till
daylight. "No, an absent friend lets me use . . . I had that
latchkey this morning . . . Ah! here it is."

I let him go in first. The sickly gas flame was there on duty,
undaunted, waiting for the end of the world to come and put it out.
I think that the black-and-white hall surprised Ortega. I had
closed the front door without noise and stood for a moment
listening, while he glanced about furtively. There were only two
other doors in the hall, right and left. Their panels of ebony
were decorated with bronze applications in the centre. The one on
the left was of course Blunt's door. As the passage leading beyond
it was dark at the further end I took Senor Ortega by the hand and
led him along, unresisting, like a child. For some reason or other
I moved on tip-toe and he followed my example. The light and the
warmth of the studio impressed him favourably; he laid down his
little bag, rubbed his hands together, and produced a smile of
satisfaction; but it was such a smile as a totally ruined man would
perhaps force on his lips, or a man condemned to a short shrift by
his doctor. I begged him to make himself at home and said that I
would go at once and hunt up the woman of the house who would make
him up a bed on the big couch there. He hardly listened to what I
said. What were all those things to him! He knew that his destiny
was to sleep on a bed of thorns, to feed on adders. But he tried
to show a sort of polite interest. He asked: "What is this
place?"

"It used to belong to a painter," I mumbled.

"Ah, your absent friend," he said, making a wry mouth. "I detest
all those artists, and all those writers, and all politicos who are
thieves; and I would go even farther and higher, laying a curse on
all idle lovers of women. You think perhaps I am a Royalist? No.
If there was anybody in heaven or hell to pray to I would pray for
a revolution--a red revolution everywhere."

"You astonish me," I said, just to say something.

"No! But there are half a dozen people in the world with whom I
would like to settle accounts. One could shoot them like
partridges and no questions asked. That's what revolution would
mean to me."

"It's a beautifully simple view," I said. "I imagine you are not
the only one who holds it; but I really must look after your
comforts. You mustn't forget that we have to see Baron H. early
to-morrow morning." And I went out quietly into the passage
wondering in what part of the house Therese had elected to sleep
that night. But, lo and behold, when I got to the foot of the
stairs there was Therese coming down from the upper regions in her
nightgown, like a sleep-walker. However, it wasn't that, because,
before I could exclaim, she vanished off the first floor landing
like a streak of white mist and without the slightest sound. Her
attire made it perfectly clear that she could not have heard us
coming in. In fact, she must have been certain that the house was
empty, because she was as well aware as myself that the Italian
girls after their work at the opera were going to a masked ball to
dance for their own amusement, attended of course by their
conscientious father. But what thought, need, or sudden impulse
had driven Therese out of bed like this was something I couldn't
conceive.

I didn't call out after her. I felt sure that she would return. I
went up slowly to the first floor and met her coming down again,
this time carrying a lighted candle. She had managed to make
herself presentable in an extraordinarily short time.

"Oh, my dear young Monsieur, you have given me a fright."

"Yes. And I nearly fainted, too," I said. "You looked perfectly
awful. What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

She had lighted by then the gas on the landing and I must say that
I had never seen exactly that manner of face on her before. She
wriggled, confused and shifty-eyed, before me; but I ascribed this
behaviour to her shocked modesty and without troubling myself any
more about her feelings I informed her that there was a Carlist
downstairs who must be put up for the night. Most unexpectedly she
betrayed a ridiculous consternation, but only for a moment. Then
she assumed at once that I would give him hospitality upstairs
where there was a camp-bedstead in my dressing-room. I said:

"No. Give him a shake-down in the studio, where he is now. It's
warm in there. And remember! I charge you strictly not to let him
know that I sleep in this house. In fact, I don't know myself that
I will; I have certain matters to attend to this very night. You
will also have to serve him his coffee in the morning. I will take
him away before ten o'clock."

All this seemed to impress her more than I had expected. As usual
when she felt curious, or in some other way excited, she assumed a
saintly, detached expression, and asked:

"The dear gentleman is your friend, I suppose?"

"I only know he is a Spaniard and a Carlist," I said: "and that
ought to be enough for you."

Instead of the usual effusive exclamations she murmured: "Dear me,
dear me," and departed upstairs with the candle to get together a
few blankets and pillows, I suppose. As for me I walked quietly
downstairs on my way to the studio. I had a curious sensation that
I was acting in a preordained manner, that life was not at all what
I had thought it to be, or else that I had been altogether changed
sometime during the day, and that I was a different person from the
man whom I remembered getting out of my bed in the morning.

Also feelings had altered all their values. The words, too, had
become strange. It was only the inanimate surroundings that
remained what they had always been. For instance the studio. . . .

During my absence Senor Ortega had taken off his coat and I found
him as it were in the air, sitting in his shirt sleeves on a chair
which he had taken pains to place in the very middle of the floor.
I repressed an absurd impulse to walk round him as though he had
been some sort of exhibit. His hands were spread over his knees
and he looked perfectly insensible. I don't mean strange, or
ghastly, or wooden, but just insensible--like an exhibit. And that
effect persisted even after he raised his black suspicious eyes to
my face. He lowered them almost at once. It was very mechanical.
I gave him up and became rather concerned about myself. My thought
was that I had better get out of that before any more queer notions
came into my head. So I only remained long enough to tell him that
the woman of the house was bringing down some bedding and that I
hoped that he would have a good night's rest. And directly I spoke
it struck me that this was the most extraordinary speech that ever
was addressed to a figure of that sort. He, however, did not seem
startled by it or moved in any way. He simply said:

"Thank you."

In the darkest part of the long passage outside I met Therese with
her arms full of pillows and blankets.



CHAPTER V



Coming out of the bright light of the studio I didn't make out
Therese very distinctly. She, however, having groped in dark
cupboards, must have had her pupils sufficiently dilated to have
seen that I had my hat on my head. This has its importance because
after what I had said to her upstairs it must have convinced her
that I was going out on some midnight business. I passed her
without a word and heard behind me the door of the studio close
with an unexpected crash. It strikes me now that under the
circumstances I might have without shame gone back to listen at the
keyhole. But truth to say the association of events was not so
clear in my mind as it may be to the reader of this story. Neither
were the exact connections of persons present to my mind. And,
besides, one doesn't listen at a keyhole but in pursuance of some
plan; unless one is afflicted by a vulgar and fatuous curiosity.
But that vice is not in my character. As to plan, I had none. I
moved along the passage between the dead wall and the black-and-
white marble elevation of the staircase with hushed footsteps, as
though there had been a mortally sick person somewhere in the
house. And the only person that could have answered to that
description was Senor Ortega. I moved on, stealthy, absorbed,
undecided; asking myself earnestly: "What on earth am I going to
do with him?" That exclusive preoccupation of my mind was as
dangerous to Senor Ortega as typhoid fever would have been. It
strikes me that this comparison is very exact. People recover from
typhoid fever, but generally the chance is considered poor. This
was precisely his case. His chance was poor; though I had no more
animosity towards him than a virulent disease has against the
victim it lays low. He really would have nothing to reproach me
with; he had run up against me, unwittingly, as a man enters an
infected place, and now he was very ill, very ill indeed. No, I
had no plans against him. I had only the feeling that he was in
mortal danger.

I believe that men of the most daring character (and I make no
claim to it) often do shrink from the logical processes of thought.
It is only the devil, they say, that loves logic. But I was not a
devil. I was not even a victim of the devil. It was only that I
had given up the direction of my intelligence before the problem;
or rather that the problem had dispossessed my intelligence and
reigned in its stead side by side with a superstitious awe. A
dreadful order seemed to lurk in the darkest shadows of life. The
madness of that Carlist with the soul of a Jacobin, the vile fears
of Baron H., that excellent organizer of supplies, the contact of
their two ferocious stupidities, and last, by a remote disaster at
sea, my love brought into direct contact with the situation: all
that was enough to make one shudder--not at the chance, but at the
design.

For it was my love that was called upon to act here, and nothing
else. And love which elevates us above all safeguards, above
restraining principles, above all littlenesses of self-possession,
yet keeps its feet always firmly on earth, remains marvellously
practical in its suggestions.

I discovered that however much I had imagined I had given up Rita,
that whatever agonies I had gone through, my hope of her had never
been lost. Plucked out, stamped down, torn to shreds, it had
remained with me secret, intact, invincible. Before the danger of
the situation it sprang, full of life, up in arms--the undying
child of immortal love. What incited me was independent of honour
and compassion; it was the prompting of a love supreme, practical,
remorseless in its aim; it was the practical thought that no woman
need be counted as lost for ever, unless she be dead!

This excluded for the moment all considerations of ways and means
and risks and difficulties. Its tremendous intensity robbed it of
all direction and left me adrift in the big black-and-white hall as
on a silent sea. It was not, properly speaking, irresolution. It
was merely hesitation as to the next immediate step, and that step
even of no great importance: hesitation merely as to the best way
I could spend the rest of the night. I didn't think further
forward for many reasons, more or less optimistic, but mainly
because I have no homicidal vein in my composition. The
disposition to gloat over homicide was in that miserable creature
in the studio, the potential Jacobin; in that confounded buyer of
agricultural produce, the punctual employe of Hernandez Brothers,
the jealous wretch with an obscene tongue and an imagination of the
same kind to drive him mad. I thought of him without pity but also
without contempt. I reflected that there were no means of sending
a warning to Dona Rita in Tolosa; for of course no postal
communication existed with the Headquarters. And moreover what
would a warning be worth in this particular case, supposing it
would reach her, that she would believe it, and that she would know
what to do? How could I communicate to another that certitude
which was in my mind, the more absolute because without proofs that
one could produce?

The last expression of Rose's distress rang again in my ears:
"Madame has no friends. Not one!" and I saw Dona Rita's complete
loneliness beset by all sorts of insincerities, surrounded by
pitfalls; her greatest dangers within herself, in her generosity,
in her fears, in her courage, too. What I had to do first of all
was to stop that wretch at all costs. I became aware of a great
mistrust of Therese. I didn't want her to find me in the hall, but
I was reluctant to go upstairs to my rooms from an unreasonable
feeling that there I would be too much out of the way; not
sufficiently on the spot. There was the alternative of a live-long
night of watching outside, before the dark front of the house. It
was a most distasteful prospect. And then it occurred to me that
Blunt's former room would be an extremely good place to keep a
watch from. I knew that room. When Henry Allegre gave the house
to Rita in the early days (long before he made his will) he had
planned a complete renovation and this room had been meant for the
drawing-room. Furniture had been made for it specially,
upholstered in beautiful ribbed stuff, made to order, of dull gold
colour with a pale blue tracery of arabesques and oval medallions
enclosing Rita's monogram, repeated on the backs of chairs and
sofas, and on the heavy curtains reaching from ceiling to floor.
To the same time belonged the ebony and bronze doors, the silver
statuette at the foot of the stairs, the forged iron balustrade
reproducing right up the marble staircase Rita's decorative
monogram in its complicated design. Afterwards the work was
stopped and the house had fallen into disrepair. When Rita devoted
it to the Carlist cause a bed was put into that drawing-room, just
simply the bed. The room next to that yellow salon had been in
Allegre's young days fitted as a fencing-room containing also a
bath, and a complicated system of all sorts of shower and jet
arrangements, then quite up to date. That room was very large,
lighted from the top, and one wall of it was covered by trophies of
arms of all sorts, a choice collection of cold steel disposed on a
background of Indian mats and rugs Blunt used it as a dressing-
room. It communicated by a small door with the studio.

I had only to extend my hand and make one step to reach the
magnificent bronze handle of the ebony door, and if I didn't want
to be caught by Therese there was no time to lose. I made the step
and extended the hand, thinking that it would be just like my luck
to find the door locked. But the door came open to my push. In
contrast to the dark hall the room was most unexpectedly dazzling
to my eyes, as if illuminated a giorno for a reception. No voice
came from it, but nothing could have stopped me now. As I turned
round to shut the door behind me noiselessly I caught sight of a
woman's dress on a chair, of other articles of apparel scattered
about. The mahogany bed with a piece of light silk which Therese
found somewhere and used for a counterpane was a magnificent
combination of white and crimson between the gleaming surfaces of
dark wood; and the whole room had an air of splendour with marble
consoles, gilt carvings, long mirrors and a sumptuous Venetian
lustre depending from the ceiling: a darkling mass of icy pendants
catching a spark here and there from the candles of an eight-
branched candelabra standing on a little table near the head of a
sofa which had been dragged round to face the fireplace. The
faintest possible whiff of a familiar perfume made my head swim
with its suggestion.

I grabbed the back of the nearest piece of furniture and the
splendour of marbles and mirrors, of cut crystals and carvings,
swung before my eyes in the golden mist of walls and draperies
round an extremely conspicuous pair of black stockings thrown over
a music stool which remained motionless. The silence was profound.
It was like being in an enchanted place. Suddenly a voice began to
speak, clear, detached, infinitely touching in its calm weariness.

"Haven't you tormented me enough to-day?" it said. . . . My head
was steady now but my heart began to beat violently. I listened to
the end without moving, "Can't you make up your mind to leave me
alone for to-night?" It pleaded with an accent of charitable
scorn.

The penetrating quality of these tones which I had not heard for so
many, many days made my eyes run full of tears. I guessed easily
that the appeal was addressed to the atrocious Therese. The
speaker was concealed from me by the high back of the sofa, but her
apprehension was perfectly justified. For was it not I who had
turned back Therese the pious, the insatiable, coming downstairs in
her nightgown to torment her sister some more? Mere surprise at
Dona Rita's presence in the house was enough to paralyze me; but I
was also overcome by an enormous sense of relief, by the assurance
of security for her and for myself. I didn't even ask myself how
she came there. It was enough for me that she was not in Tolosa.
I could have smiled at the thought that all I had to do now was to
hasten the departure of that abominable lunatic--for Tolosa: an
easy task, almost no task at all. Yes, I would have smiled, had
not I felt outraged by the presence of Senor Ortega under the same
roof with Dona Rita. The mere fact was repugnant to me, morally
revolting; so that I should have liked to rush at him and throw him
out into the street. But that was not to be done for various
reasons. One of them was pity. I was suddenly at peace with all
mankind, with all nature. I felt as if I couldn't hurt a fly. The
intensity of my emotion sealed my lips. With a fearful joy tugging
at my heart I moved round the head of the couch without a word.

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