by Isak Dinesen
Virginie had a good deal of kindness in her nature. In her present sad situation, after she had definitely come down from the Tuileries, she would have liked her lovers better had they left her free to love them in her own way, as poor pitiful people in need of sympathy. She might have put up with her present lover, Elishama’s friend, if she could have made him see their liaison such as she herself saw it—as two lonely people’s attempt to make, in an unpretentious bourgeois way and by means of a little mutual gentleness, the best of a sorry world. But Charley was an ambitious young man who liked to see himself as a man of fashion and his mistress as a great demimondaine. His mistress, who knew the real meaning of the word, in their daily life together was tried hard by this vanity of his, and it lay at the root of most of their quarrels.
Now she sat and listened to Elishama, with her arms folded, and her lustrous eyes half closed, like a cat watching a mouse. If at this moment he had wanted to run away she would not have let him go.
“Mr. Clay,” said the young man, “is prepared to pay you a hundred guineas if, on a night appointed by him, you will come to his house. This, Miss Virginie …”
“To his house!” cried Virginie and looked up quite bewildered.
“Yes,” said he. “To his house. And this, Miss Virginie …”
Virginie rose from her chair so violently that it tumbled over, and she struck Elishama in the face with all her might.
“Jesus!” she cried. “His house! Do you know what house that is? It is my father’s house! I played in it when I was a little girl!”
She had a ring on her finger; when she struck him it scratched Elishama’s face. He wiped off a drop of blood and looked at his fingers. The sight of blood shed by her hand put Virginie into a fury beyond words, she walked to and fro in the room so that her white gown swished on the floor, and Elishama got an idea of the drama. She sat down on a chair, got up, and sat down on another.
VIII. VIRGINIE AND ELISHAMA
“That house,” she said at last, “was the only thing left me from the time when I was a rich, pretty and innocent girl. Every time that I have since then walked past it I have dreamed of how I would enter it once more!” She caught at her breath as she spoke; white spots sprang out on her face.
“So you are to enter it now, Miss Virginie,” said Elishama. “So is, Miss Virginie, the young lady of Mr. Clay’s story rich, pretty and innocent.”
Virginie stared at him as if she did not see him at all, or as if she sat gazing at a doll.
“God,” she said. “My God! Yes—‘Virginie est fine, elle s’y comprend, en ironie!’ ” She looked away, then back at him. “You may hear it all now,” she said. “My father said that to me!”
She stopped her ears with her fingers for a moment, again let her hands drop and turned straight toward him.
“You can have it all now,” she cried, “you can have it all! My father and I used to talk—in that house—of great, splendid, noble things! The Empress Eugenie of France wore her white satin shoes one single time only, then made a present of them to the convent schools for the little girls there to wear at their first communion! I was to have done the same thing—for Papa was proud of my small feet!” She lifted her skirt a little and looked down at her feet, in a pair of old slippers. “The Empress of France made a great, unexampled career for herself, and I was to have done the same. And the way to her bedroom—you can have it all now, you can have it all—the way to her bedroom ran through the Cathedral of Notre Dame! Virginie,” she added slowly, “s’y comprend, en ironie!”
Now there was a long silence.
“Listen, Miss Virginie,” said Elishama. “In the shawls …”
“Shawls?” she repeated, amazed.
“Yes, in the shawls that I brought you,” he continued, “there was a pattern. You told your friend Mr. Simpson that you liked one pattern better than another. But there was a pattern in all of them.”
Virginie had a taste for patterns; one of the things for which she despised the English was that to her mind they had no pattern in their lives. She frowned a little, but let Elishama go on.
“Only,” he went on, “sometimes the lines of a pattern will run the other way of what you expect. As in a looking-glass.”
“As in a looking-glass,” she repeated slowly.
“Yes,” he said. “But for all that it is still a pattern.” This time she looked at him in silence.
“You told me,” he said, “that the Emperor of Rome owned all the world. So does Mr. Clay own Canton and all the people of Canton”—all except myself, he thought. “Mr. Clay, and other rich merchants like him, own it. If you look out into the street you will see many hundred people going north and south, east and west. How many of them would be going at all, if they had not been told to do so by other people? And the people who have told them, Miss Virginie, are Mr. Clay and other rich merchants like him. Now he has told you to go to his house, and you will have to go.”
“No,” said Virginie.
Elishama waited a moment, but as Virginie said no more he went on.
“What Mr. Clay tells people to do,” he said, “that is what matters. You struck me a little while ago; you tremble now, because of what he told you to do. It matters very little in comparison whether you do go or not.”
“It was you who told me,” she said.
“Yes, because he told me to do so,” said Elishama.
There was another pause.
“Let down your hair over your face, Miss Virginie,” said he. “If one must sit in darkness, one should sit in one’s own darkness. I can wait for as long as you like.”
Virginie, in her very refusal to do as he advised her, furiously shook her head. Her long hair from which, when she rushed up and down the room, the ribbon had fallen, floated round her like a dark cloud, and as she let her head drop, it tumbled forward and hid her face. She sat for a while immovable in this chiaroscuro.
“That way of which you spoke,” said Elishama, “which ran through the Cathedral of Notre Dame—it is in this pattern. Only in this pattern it is reversed.”
From behind her veil of hair Virginie said: “Reversed?”
“Yes,” said Elishama. “Reversed. In this pattern the road runs the other way. And runs on.”
The strange sweetness of his voice, against her own will, caught Virginie’s ear.
“You will make a career for yourself, Miss Virginie,” said Elishama, “no less than the Empress of France. Only it runs the other way. And why not, Miss Virginie?”
Virginie, after a minute, asked: “Did you know my father?”
“No, I did not know him,” said Elishama.
“Then,” she asked again, “from where do you know that the pattern of which you speak does run in my family, and that there it is called a tradition?”
Elishama did not answer her, because he did not know the meaning of the word.
After another minute she said very slowly: “And pourquoi pas?”
She flung back her hair, raised her head, and sat behind her table like a saleswoman behind her desk. To Elishama her face looked broader and flatter than before, as if a roller had passed over it.
“Tell Mr. Clay from me,” she said, “that I will not come for the price which he has offered me. But that I shall come for the price of three hundred guineas. That, if you like, is a pattern. Or—in such terms as Mr. Clay will understand—it is an old debt.”
“Is that your last word, Miss Virginie?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Virginie.
“Your very last word?” he asked again.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then, if it is so,” he said, “I shall now hand you over three hundred guineas.” He took up his wallet and laid the notes on the table.
“Do you want a receipt?” she asked.
“No,” he said, reflecting that this bargain would be safer without a receipt.
Virginie swept the notes and the playing cards, all together, into the drawer of the table. Sh
e was not going to play any more patience today.
“How do you know,” she said and looked Elishama in the face, “that I shall not set fire to the house in the morning, before I leave it again, and burn your master in it?”
Elishama had been about to go; now he stood still.
“I shall tell you one thing before I go,” said he. “This story is the end of Mr. Clay.”
“Do you believe that he is going to die with malice?” asked Virginie.
“No,” said he. “No, I cannot tell. But one way or another, it will be the end of him. No man in the world, not the richest man within it, can take a story which people have invented and told and make it happen.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
He waited a moment. “If you add up a column of figures,” he said slowly so as to make the matter clear to her, “you begin from your right-hand side, with the lowest figure, and move left, to the tens, the hundreds, the thousands and the ten thousands. But if a man took into his head to add up a column the other way, from the left, what would he find? He would find that his total would come out wrong, and that his account-books would be worth nothing. Mr. Clay’s total will come out wrong, and his books will be worth nothing. And what will Mr. Clay do without his books? It is not a good thing for me myself, Miss Virginie. I have been in his employ for seven years, and I shall now lose my situation. But there is no getting away from it.” This was the first time that Elishama ever spoke confidentially about his master to a third party.
“Where are you going now?” Virginie asked him.
“Me?” he said, surprised that anybody should take an interest in his movements. “I am going home now to my own room.”
“I wonder,” said she with a kind of awe in her voice, “where that will be. And what it will be like. Had you a home when you were a child?”
“No,” said he.
“Had you brothers and sisters?” she asked again.
“No,” said he.
“No, I thought so,” said Virginie. “For I see now who you are. When you came in, I thought that you were a small rat, out of Mr. Clay’s storehouses. Mais toi—tu es le Juif Errant!”
Elishama gave her a quick deep glance from his veiled eyes and walked away.
IX. THE HERO OF THE STORY
On the night which Mr. Clay had destined for his story to materialize, the full moon shone down upon the city of Canton and the China Sea. It was an April night, the air was warm and sweet, and already innumerable bats were soundlessly swishing to and fro in it. The oleander bushes in Mr. Clay’s garden looked almost colorless in the moonlight; the wheels of his victoria made but a low whisper on the gravel of his drive.
Mr. Clay with much trouble had been dressed and got into his carriage. Now he sat in it gravely, erect against the silk upholstering, in a black cloak and with a London top hat on his head. On the smaller seat opposite to him Elishama, cutting a less magnificent figure, silently watched his master’s face. This dying man was driving out to manifest his omnipotence, and to do the thing that could not be done.
They passed from the rich quarters of the town, with its villas and gardens, down into the streets by the harbor, where many people were about and the air was filled with noises and smells. At this time of day nobody was in a hurry; people walked about leisurely or stood still and talked together; the carriage had to drive along slowly. Here and there lamps in many colors were hung out from the houses like bright jewels in the pale evening air.
Mr. Clay from his seat looked sharply at the men on the pavement. He had never before watched the faces of men in the street; the situation was new to him and would not be repeated.
A lonely sailor came walking up the street, gazing about him, and Mr. Clay ordered Elishama to stop the carriage and accost him. So the clerk got out and under his master’s eye addressed the stranger.
“Good evening,” he said. “My master, in this carriage, requests me to tell you that you are a fine-looking sailor. He asks you wether you would like to earn five guineas tonight.”
“What is that?” said the sailor. Elishama repeated his phrase.
The sailor took a step toward the carriage to have a better look at the old man in it, then turned to Elishama. “Say that again, will you?” he said.
As Elishama spoke the words for the third time, the sailor’s mouth fell open. Suddenly he turned round and walked off as fast as he could, took the first turning into a side street and disappeared.
Upon a sign from Mr. Clay, Elishama got back into the carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive on.
A little farther on, a square-built young man with the look of a seaman was about to cross the street, and had to stop before the carriage; he and Mr. Clay looked each other in the face even before it halted. Elishama once more got out, and spoke to him in the same words as to the first sailor. This young man obviously came from a public house, and was somewhat unsteady on his legs. He too made the clerk repeat the sentence to him, but before Elishama had finished it the second time he burst out laughing and beat his thigh.
“Why, God help me!” he cried out. “This, I know, is what happens to a good-looking sailor when he visits the landlubbers. You need not say any more! I am coming with you, old master, and you have hit on the right man, too. Jesus Christ!”
He vaulted into the carriage by Mr. Clay’s side, stared at him, at Elishama and at the coachman, and let his hand run along the seat.
“All silk!” he cried out, laughing. “All silk and softness! And more to come!”
As they drove on he began to whistle, then took off his cap to cool his head. All at once he clapped both hands to his face and sat like that for a moment, then without a word jumped out of the carriage, began to run, and disappeared into a side street just as the first sailor had done.
Mr. Clay made the carriage turn and go back along the same street, then turn once more and drive back slowly. But he did not stop it again. He said nothing during the drive, and Elishama, who now kept his eyes off him, began to wonder if they were to drive like this all night. Then suddenly Mr. Clay ordered the coachman to return to the house.
They had already got out of the narrow streets near the harbor and on to the road leading to Mr. Clay’s house, when three young sailors came straight toward them, arm in arm. As the carriage approached, the two at the sides let go their hold of the one in the middle and ran on leaving the last one in front of it.
Mr. Clay stopped the carriage and held up his hand to Elishama.
“I will get out myself this time,” he said.
Slowly and laboriously he descended upon the arm of his clerk, took a step toward the sailor, stood still before him as straight as a pillar, and poked his stick at him. When he spoke, his voice was hard and cracked, with a little deadly note to it.
“Good evening,” he said. “You are a fine-looking sailor. Do you want to earn five guineas tonight?”
The young sailor was tall, broad and large-limbed, with very big hands. His hair was so fair and stood out so long and thick round his head, that at first Elishama believed him to have on a white fur cap. He did not speak or move, but looked at Mr. Clay quietly and dully, somewhat in the manner of a young bull. In his right hand he carried a big bundle; he now shifted it over to the left and began to rub his free hand up and down his thigh as if at the next moment he meant to strike out a blow. But instead he reached out and took hold of Mr. Clay’s hand.
The old man swallowed, and repeated his proposal. “You are a fine-looking sailor, my young friend,” he said. “Do you want to earn five guineas tonight?”
The boy for a moment thought the question over. “Yes,” he said. “I want to earn five guineas. I was thinking about it just now, in what way I was to earn five guineas. I shall come with you, old gentleman.”
He spoke slowly, with a stop between each of his phrases and with a quaint, strong accent.
“Then,” said Mr. Clay, “you will get into my carriage. And when we arrive at my house I shall t
ell you more.”
The sailor set down his bundle on the bottom of the carriage, but did not get in himself. “No,” he said, “your carriage is too fine. My clothes are all dirty and tarred. I shall run beside, and I can go as fast as you.”
He placed his big hand on the mudguard, and as the carriage started he began to run. He kept pace with the two tall English horses all the way, and when they stopped at the front door of Mr. Clay’s house he did not seem to be much out of breath.
Mr. Clay’s Chinese servants came out to receive their master and to help him out of his carriage and his cloak, and the butler of the house, a fat and bald Chinaman all dressed in green silk, appeared on the verandah and held up a lantern on a long pole. In the golden light of the lamp Elishama took a look at the host and the guest.
Mr. Clay had strangely come to life. It was as if the young runner by his carriage had made his own old blood run freer; he even had a faint pink in his cheeks, like that of a painted woman. He was satisfied with his catch out of the harbor of Canton. And very likely there was not another fish of just that kind to be caught there.
The sailor was little more than a boy. He had a broad tanned face and clear light blue eyes. He was so very lean, his big bones showing wherever his clothes did not cover him, and his young face was so grave, that there was something uncanny about him, as about a man come from a dungeon. He was poorly dressed, in a blue shirt and a pair of canvas trousers, with bare feet in his old shoes. He lifted his bundle from the carriage and slowly followed the butler with the lantern into Mr. Clay’s house.
X. THE SUPPER OF THE STORY
The lighted candles on the dinner table, in heavy silver candlesticks, were manifoldly reflected in the gilt-framed glasses on the walls, so that the whole long room glittered with a hundred little bright flames. The table was laid, the food ready and the bottles drawn.