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``Yes?'' I whispered breathlessly.
The Arrow of Gold
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II
48
``Yes! But in that case what's the use of living in fear and torment?'' she
went on, revealing a little more of herself to my astonishment. She opened
the door for me and added:
``Those that don't care to stoop ought at least make themselves happy.''
I turned in the very doorway: ``There is something which prevents that?'' I
suggested.
``To be sure there is. _Bonjour,_ Monsieur.''
PART FOUR
I
``Such a charming lady in a grey silk dress and a hand as white as snow. She
looked at me through such funny glasses on the end of a long handle. A very
great lady but her voice was as kind as the voice of a saint.
I have never seen anything like that. She made me feel so timid.''
The voice uttering these words was the voice of Therese and I looked at her
from a bed draped heavily in brown silk curtains fantastically looped up
from ceiling to floor. The glow of a sunshiny day was toned down by closed
jalousies to a mere transparency of darkness. In this thin medium Therese's
form appeared flat, without detail, as if cut out of black paper. It glided
towards the window and with a click and a scrape let in the full flood of
light which smote my aching eyeballs painfully.
In truth all that night had been the abomination of desolation to me. After
wrestling with my thoughts, if the acute consciousness of a woman's
existence may be called a thought, I had apparently dropped off to sleep
only to go on wrestling with a nightmare, a senseless and terrifying dream of
being in bonds which, even after waking, made me feel powerless in all my
limbs. I lay still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of existence,
unable to lift an arm, and wondering why I was not at sea, how long I had
slept, how long Therese had been talking before her voice had reached me in
that purgatory of hopeless longing and unanswerable questions to which I was
condemned.
It was Therese's habit to begin talking directly she entered the room with
the tray of morning coffee. This was her method for waking me up. I
generally regained the consciousness of the external world on some pious
phrase asserting the spiritual comfort of early mass, or on angry
lamentations about the unconscionable rapacity of the dealers in fish and
vegetables; for after mass it was Therese's practice to do the marketing for
the house. As a matter of fact the necessity of having to pay, to actually
give money to people, infuriated the pious Therese. But the matter of this
morning's speech was so extraordinary that it might have been the
prolongation of a nightmare: a man in bonds having to listen to weird and
unaccountable speeches against which, he doesn't know why, his very soul
revolts.
In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was convinced that I was
no longer dreaming. I watched
Therese coming away from the window with that helpless dread a man bound
hand and foot may be excused to feel. For in such a situation even the
absurd may appear ominous. She came up close to the bed and folding her
hands meekly in front of her turned her eyes up to the ceiling, ``If I had
been her daughter she couldn't have spoken more softly to me,'' she said
sentimentally, I made a great effort to speak.
``Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.''
The Arrow of Gold
PART FOUR
49
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``She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely. I was struck with
veneration for her white hair but her face, believe me, my dear young
Monsieur, has not so many wrinkles as mine.''
She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as if I could help her
wrinkles, then she sighed.
``God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?'' she digressed in a tone of
great humility. ``We shall have glorious faces in Paradise. But meantime God
has permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.''
``Are you going to keep on like this much longer?'' I fairly shouted at her.
``What are you talking about?''
``I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a carriage. Not a
fiacre. I can tell a fiacre. In a little carriage shut in with glass all in
front. I suppose she is very rich. The carriage was very shiny outside and
all beautiful grey stuff inside. I opened the door to her myself. She got
out slowly like a queen. I was struck all of a heap. Such a shiny beautiful
little carriage. There were blue silk tassels inside, beautiful silk
tassels.''
Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by a brougham, though she
didn't know the name for it. Of all the town she knew nothing but the
streets which led to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer
classes and the humble quarter around, where she did her marketing. Besides,
she was accustomed to glide along the walls with her eyes cast down; for her
natural boldness would never show itself through that nunlike mien except
when bargaining, if only on a matter of threepence. Such a turnout had never
been presented to her notice before. The traffic in the street of the
Consuls was mostly pedestrian and far from fashionable. And anyhow Therese
never looked out of the window. She lurked in the depths of the house like
some kind of spider that shuns attention. She used to dart at one from some
dark recesses which I never explored.
Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or
other. With her it was very difficult to distinguish between craft and
innocence.
``Do you mean to say,'' I asked suspiciously, ``that an old lady wants to
hire an apartment here? I hope you told her there was no room, because, you
know, this house is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.''
``Don't make me angry, my dear young Monsieur. I have been to confession
this morning. Aren't you comfortable? Isn't the house appointed richly
enough for anybody?''
That girl with a peasantnun's face had never seen the inside of a house
other than some halfruined
_caserio_ in her native hills.
I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or comfort but
of ``convenances.'' She pricked up her ears at that word which probably she
had never heard before; but with woman's uncanny intuition I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]