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The Arrow of Gold

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I don't know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It
could not be because it was untrue. The other did not give me time
to offer any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did
I know of South American republics? I confessed that I knew very
little of them. Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in
here and there; and amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which
was of course unique, being a negro republic. On this Captain
Blunt began to talk of negroes at large. He talked of them with
knowledge, intelligence, and a sort of contemptuous affection. He
generalized, he particularized about the blacks; he told anecdotes.
I was interested, a little incredulous, and considerably surprised.
What could this man with such a boulevardier exterior that he
looked positively like, an exile in a provincial town, and with his
drawing-room manner--what could he know of negroes?

Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence, seemed
to read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and explained: "The
Captain is from South Carolina."

"Oh," I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses I heard
the second of Mr. J. K. Blunt's declarations.

"Yes," he said. "Je suis Americain, catholique et gentil-homme,"
in a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile, which, as it
were, underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to
return the smile in kind or acknowledge the words with a grave
little bow. Of course I did neither and there fell on us an odd,
equivocal silence. It marked our final abandonment of the French
language. I was the one to speak first, proposing that my
companions should sup with me, not across the way, which would be
riotous with more than one "infernal" supper, but in another much
more select establishment in a side street away from the
Cannebiere. It flattered my vanity a little to be able to say that
I had a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers,
otherwise Salon Blanc, where the atmosphere was legitimist and
extremely decorous besides--even in Carnival time. "Nine tenths of
the people there," I said, "would be of your political opinions, if
that's an inducement. Come along. Let's be festive," I encouraged
them.

I didn't feel particularly festive. What I wanted was to remain in
my company and break an inexplicable feeling of constraint of which
I was aware. Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile.

"No," said Blunt. "Why should we go there? They will be only
turning us out in the small hours, to go home and face insomnia.
Can you imagine anything more disgusting?"

He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did not lend
themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness which he tried
to achieve. He had another suggestion to offer. Why shouldn't we
adjourn to his rooms? He had there materials for a dish of his own
invention for which he was famous all along the line of the Royal
Cavalry outposts, and he would cook it for us. There were also a
few bottles of some white wine, quite possible, which we could
drink out of Venetian cut-glass goblets. A bivouac feast, in fact.
And he wouldn't turn us out in the small hours. Not he. He
couldn't sleep.

Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. But somehow I
hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my senior. He got up
without a word. This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and
of something indefinite at that, could stand against the example of
his tranquil personality.



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 its most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles
sticking out above many of its closed portals. It was the street
of Consuls and I remarked to Mr. Blunt that coming out in the
morning he could survey the flags of all nations almost--except his
own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other side of the town.) He
mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of
his own consulate.

"Are you afraid of the consul's dog?" I asked jocularly. The
consul's dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the
whole town as exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at
all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on
the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear:
"They are all Yankees there."

I murmured a confused "Of course."

Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before
that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact
only about ten years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian
gentleman. I was a little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime,
looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller,
with his opera-hat pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was
having some slight difficulty with his latch-key; for the house
before which we had stopped was not one of 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 walls abutting on
to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front presented no
marked architectural character, and in the flickering light of a
street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the
world. The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in
black and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial
proportions. Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet,
but led the way across the black and white pavement past the end of
the staircase, past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy
bronze handle. It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us
straight on to the studio at the end of the passage.

It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to
the garden side of the house. A large lamp was burning brightly
there. The floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs
scattered about though extremely worn were very costly. There was
also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an
enormous divan with many cushions, some splendid arm-chairs of
various shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, 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 the
warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold
blasts 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
a monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or
hands but with beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking
attitude, seemed to be embarrassed by his stare.

As we sat enjoying the bivouac hospitality (the dish was really
excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked the
accomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards that
corner. Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be
attracted by the Empress.

"It's disagreeable," I said. "It seems to lurk there like a shy
skeleton at 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 to a 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 out of a Venetian goblet.

"This house is full of costly objects. So are all his other
houses, so is his place in Paris--that mysterious Pavilion hidden
away in Passy somewhere."

Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose, loosened his
tongue. Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve. From their
talk I gathered the notion of an eccentric personality, a man of
great wealth, not so much solitary as difficult of access, a
collector of fine things, a painter known only to very few people
and not at all to the public market. But as meantime I had been
emptying my Venetian goblet with a certain regularity (the amount
of heat given out by that iron stove was amazing; it parched one's
throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn't seem much stronger than
so much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and the impressions
they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind. Suddenly I
perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. I had not
noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had unbuttoned his shabby
jacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie
under his dark shaved chin. He had a strange air of insolence--or
so it seemed to 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
very lucky. Mr. Mills here . . ."

"Yes, I have been lucky," Mills struck in. "It was my cousin who
was distinguished. That's how I managed to enter his house in
Paris--it was called the Pavilion--twice."

"And saw Dona Rita twice, too?" asked Blunt with an indefinite
smile and a marked emphasis. Mills was also emphatic in his reply
but with a serious face.

"I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she was
without doubt the most admirable find of his amongst all the
priceless items he had accumulated in that house--the most
admirable. . . "

"Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one
that was alive," pointed out Blunt with the slightest possible
flavour of sarcasm.

"Immensely so," affirmed Mills. "Not because she was restless,
indeed she 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 that flash of white teeth so strangely without any character
of its own that it was merely disturbing.

"But she radiated life," continued Mills. "She had plenty of it,
and it had a quality. My cousin and Henry Allegre had a lot to say
to each other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second
visit we were like old friends, which was absurd considering that
all the chances were that we would never meet again in this world
or in the next. I am not meddling with theology but it seems to me
that in the Elysian fields she'll have her place in a very special
company."

All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Blunt
produced 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 a pause: "Who was not exactly pretty."

"I should have thought rather a La Valliere," Blunt dropped with an
indifference of which one did not know what to make. He may have
begun to be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on,
for the whole personality was not clearly definable. I, however,
was not indifferent. A woman is always an interesting subject and
I was thoroughly awake to that interest. Mills pondered for a
while with a sort of dispassionate benevolence, at last:

"Yes, Dona Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity
that even 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 a historical personage. There were some ribald verses made
at the time, and Louis XIV was congratulated on the possession--I
really don't remember 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 fact that a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of
mind and feeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths.
Beware of the others, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal
sign. Well, the royalist sympathizers can't charge Dona Rita with
any lack of generosity from 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 native intelligence and of her splendid
physique. And all that was brought home to me so quickly," he
concluded, "because she had what some Frenchman has called the
'terrible gift of familiarity'."

Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.

"Yes!" Mills' thoughts were still dwelling in the past. "And when
saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance
between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect
figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed
by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her
hand--as she did to me--it was as if 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 you think, Blunt?"

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of
sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather
disturbed me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But
after a while he turned to me.

"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as
fine as a needle. All these statements about the seduction and
then this final doubt expressed after only two visits which could
not have included more than six hours altogether and this some
three years ago! But it is Henry Allegre that you should ask this
question, Mr. Mills."

"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills good
humouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a
liberty 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
all this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he
discovered her; all the time, every breathing moment of it, till,
literally, his very last breath. I don't mean to say she nursed
him. He had his confidential man for that. He couldn't bear women
about his person. But then apparently he couldn't bear this one
out of his sight. She's the only woman who ever sat to him, for he
would never suffer a model inside his 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 Dona Rita. . . You
know my mother?"

Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from
his lips. 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 writing verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She's
still writing verse. She's still fifteen--a spoiled girl of
genius. So she requested one of her poet friends--no less than
Versoy himself--to arrange for a visit to Henry Allegre's house.
At first he thought he hadn't heard aright. You must know that for
my mother a man that doesn't jump out of his skin for any woman's
caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . ."

Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his
eyes from his plate to look at him, started afresh with great
deliberation.

"She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother's
exquisitely absurd. You understand that all these painters, poets,
art collectors (and dealers in bric-a-brac, he interjected through
his teeth) of my mother 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 to tell my mother that this was the
last effort of his chivalry. The jobs she gave him to do were too
difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased enough to show the
influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother would tell the
world's wife all about it. He's a spiteful, gingery little wretch.
The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I believe he
polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn't get
further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous
drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double
doors on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if
for a visit from royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother,
with her white hair done 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 a severe prince with the face of a
tombstone Crusader, big white hands, muffled silken voice, half-
shut eyes, as if looking down at them from a balcony. 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.
"But he was extremely civil. He showed her all the 'treasures' in
the room, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities
from Japan, from India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He
pushed his condescension so far as to have the 'Girl in the Hat'
brought down into the drawing-room--half length, unframed. They
put her on a chair for my mother to look at. The 'Byzantine
Empress' was already there, hung on the end wall--full length, gold
frame weighing half a ton. My mother first overwhelms the 'Master'
with thanks, and then absorbs herself in the adoration of the 'Girl
in the Hat.' Then she sighs out: 'It should be called
Diaphaneite, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last
expression of modernity!' She puts up suddenly her face-a-main and
looks towards the end wall. 'And that--Byzantium itself! Who was
she, this sullen 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.
She finds nothing better to do than to ask the 'Master' why he took
his inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt
she was proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her.
Allegre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he
answered in his silkiest tones:

"'Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women
of all time.'

"My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She
is extremely intelligent. Moreover, she ought to have known. But
women can be miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, 'Then
she is a wonder!' And with some notion of being complimentary goes
on to say that only the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders
of art could have discovered something so marvellous in life. I
suppose Allegre lost his temper 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 last two hours. He insinuates with
the utmost politeness:

"'As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like
to judge for yourself as to the inspiration of these two pictures.
She is upstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she
wouldn't be very long. She might be a little surprised at first to
be called down like this, but with a few words of preparation and
purely as a matter of art . . .'

"There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself
confesses that 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 the great staircase. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly.

"That implacable brute Allegre followed them down ceremoniously and
put my mother into the fiacre at the door with the greatest
deference. He didn't open his lips though, and made a great bow as
the fiacre drove away. My mother didn't recover from her
consternation for three days. I lunch 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 the studio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into
the consciousness 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 his face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now
and then a puff of smoke, 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 his mother 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 for somebody. My cousin as likely as not. Or simply to
discover what he had. The Blunts lost all their property and in
Paris there are various ways of making a little money, without
actually breaking anything. Not even the law. And Mrs. Blunt
really had a position once--in the days of the Second Empire--and
so. . ."

I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indian
experiences could not have given me an insight. But Mills checked
himself and ended in a changed tone.

"It's not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any given
instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A delightful,
aristocratic old lady. Only poor."

A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt,
Captain of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as
to one dish at least), and generous host, entered clutching the
necks of four more bottles between the fingers of his hand.

"I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot," he remarked casually. But
even I, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had
stumbled accidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of
glasses a profound silence reigned; but neither of us took it
seriously--any more than his stumble.

"One day," he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of
his, "my mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get
up in the middle of the night. You must understand my mother's
phraseology. It meant that she would be up and dressed by nine
o'clock. This time it was not Versoy that was commanded for
attendance, but I. You may imagine how delighted I was. . . ."

It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself
exclusively to Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the
man. It was as if Mills represented something initiated and to be
reckoned with. I, of course, could have no such pretensions. If I
represented anything it was a perfect freshness of sensations and a
refreshing ignorance, not so much of what life may give one (as to
that I had some ideas at least) but of what it really contains. I
knew very well that I was utterly insignificant in these men's
eyes. Yet my attention was not checked by that knowledge. It's
true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet at the age when
this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. My
imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the
adventures and fortunes of a man. What kept my interest from
flagging was Mr. Blunt himself. The play of the white gleams of
his smile round the suspicion of grimness of his tone fascinated me
like a moral incongruity.

So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes
as if the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age,
I kept easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the
contrast of personalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook
with the rough initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all
these things were dominated by a feminine figure which to my
imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the
grace of girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct
in both these characters. For these two men had SEEN her, while to
me she was only being "presented," elusively, in vanishing words,
in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar voice.

She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the
early hour 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 on a dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the
other by one of Allegre's acquaintances (the man had no real
friends), distinguished frequenters of that mysterious Pavilion.
And so that side of the frame in which that woman appeared to one
down the perspective of the great Allee was not permanent. That
morning when Mr. Blunt had to escort his mother there for the
gratification of her irresistible curiosity (of which he highly
disapproved) there appeared in succession, at that woman's or
girl's bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whom she
was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit, who talked to her
with great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage
in a red fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time
afterwards, the vexed Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though I
really couldn't see where the harm was) had one more chance of a
good stare. The third party that time was the Royal Pretender
(Allegre had been painting his portrait lately), whose hearty,
sonorous laugh was heard long before the mounted trio came riding
very slowly abreast of the Blunts. There was colour in the girl's
face. She was not laughing. Her expression was serious and her
eyes thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion
the charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately
framed between those magnificently mounted, paladin-like
attendants, one older than the other but the two composing together
admirably in the different stages of their manhood. Mr. Blunt had
never before seen Henry Allegre so close. Allegre was riding
nearest to the path on which Blunt was dutifully giving his arm to
his mother (they had got out of their fiacre) and wondering if that
confounded fellow would have the impudence to take off his hat.
But he did not. Perhaps he didn't notice. Allegre was not a man
of wandering glances. There were silver hairs in his beard but he
looked as solid as a statue. Less than three months afterwards he
was gone.

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