The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes

by Joseph Conrad

  CHAPTER II

  The windows of that room gave out on the street of the Consuls which asusual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me wassoundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumblyquiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one wouldimagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was verysolidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feelingof security and peace which ought to have been associated with it. Itis, I believe, generally admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest.But I wasn't at rest. What was wrong with that silence? There wassomething incongruous in that peace. What was it that had got into thatstillness? Suddenly I remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt.

  Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother my headabout it? H'm--the Blunt atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt vibrationstealing through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost moresolid stillness. Nothing to me, of course--the movements of Mme. Blunt,_mere_. It was maternal affection which had brought her south by eitherthe evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the ravages ofthat insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia, for a cavalry officerperpetually on outpost duty, a real godsend, so to speak; but on leave atruly devilish condition to be in.

  The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it wasfollowed by a feeling of satisfaction that I, at any rate, was notsuffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In the end.Escape into a nightmare. Wouldn't he revel in that if he could! Butthat wasn't for him. He had to toss about open-eyed all night and get upweary, weary. But oh, wasn't I weary, too, waiting for a sleep withoutdreams.

  I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face to thewindow and, I declare, not knowing what I was looking at across theroad--the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers andforests or only the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been thinking,apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity that when I saw him enterthe room it didn't really make much difference. When I turned about thedoor behind him was already shut. He advanced towards me, correct,supple, hollow-eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume ready to go outexcept for the old shooting jacket which he must have affectionedparticularly, for he never lost any time in getting into it at everyopportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had goneinconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was ragged at theelbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had been made in Londonby a celebrated tailor, by a distinguished specialist. Blunt cametowards me in all the elegance of his slimness and affirming in everyline of his face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and thecareless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the inexpressiblesuperiority, the unconscious, the unmarked, the not-to-be-described, andeven not-to-be-caught, superiority of the naturally born and theperfectly finished man of the world, over the simple young man. He wassmiling, easy, correct, perfectly delightful, fit to kill.

  He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement, to lunch with himand his mother in about an hour's time. He did it in a most _degage_tone. His mother had given him a surprise. The completest . . . Thefoundation of his mother's psychology was her delightful unexpectedness.She could never let things be (this in a peculiar tone which he checkedat once) and he really would take it very kindly of me if I came to breakthe tete-a-tete for a while (that is if I had no other engagement. Flashof teeth). His mother was exquisitely and tenderly absurd. She hadtaken it into her head that his health was endangered in some way. Andwhen she took anything into her head . . . Perhaps I might find somethingto say which would reassure her. His mother had two long conversationswith Mills on his passage through Paris and had heard of me (I knew howthat thick man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and hismother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filiallyhumorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious tohave me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hopedI wouldn't mind if she treated me a little as an "interesting young man."His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of thespoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas.That again got overlaid by the _sans-facon_ of a _grande dame_ of theSecond Empire.

  I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a perfectly justintonation, because I really didn't care what I did. I only wonderedvaguely why that fellow required all the air in the room for himself.There did not seem enough left to go down my throat. I didn't say that Iwould come with pleasure or that I would be delighted, but I said that Iwould come. He seemed to forget his tongue in his head, put his hands inhis pockets and moved about vaguely. "I am a little nervous thismorning," he said in French, stopping short and looking me straight inthe eyes. His own were deep sunk, dark, fatal. I asked with somemalice, that no one could have detected in my intonation, "How's thatsleeplessness?"

  He muttered through his teeth, "_Mal_. _Je ne dors plus_." He moved offto stand at the window with his back to the room. I sat down on a sofathat was there and put my feet up, and silence took possession of theroom.

  "Isn't this street ridiculous?" said Blunt suddenly, and crossing theroom rapidly waved his hand to me, "_A bientot donc_," and was gone. Hehad seared himself into my mind. I did not understand him nor his motherthen; which made them more impressive; but I have discovered since thatthose two figures required no mystery to make them memorable. Of courseit isn't every day that one meets a mother that lives by her wits and ason that lives by his sword, but there was a perfect finish about theirambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in a life-time. Ishall never forget that grey dress with ample skirts and long corsage yetwith infinite style, the ancient as if ghostly beauty of outlines, theblack lace, the silver hair, the harmonious, restrained movements ofthose white, soft hands like the hands of a queen--or an abbess; and inthe general fresh effect of her person the brilliant eyes like two starswith the calm reposeful way they had of moving on and off one, as ifnothing in the world had the right to veil itself before their oncesovereign beauty. Captain Blunt with smiling formality introduced me byname, adding with a certain relaxation of the formal tone the comment:"The Monsieur George! whose fame you tell me has reached even Paris."Mrs. Blunt's reception of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of theadmirably corseted figure, was most friendly, approaching the limit ofhalf-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding in her acaptured ideal. No common experience! But I didn't care. It was verylucky perhaps for me that in a way I was like a very sick man who has yetpreserved all his lucidity. I was not even wondering to myself at whaton earth I was doing there. She breathed out: "_Comme c'estromantique_," at large to the dusty studio as it were; then pointing to achair at her right hand, and bending slightly towards me she said:

  "I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in more than one royalistsalon."

  I didn't say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had only an oddthought that she could not have had such a figure, nothing like it, whenshe was seventeen and wore snowy muslin dresses on the family plantationin South Carolina, in pre-abolition days.

  "You won't mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose heart is still youngelects to call you by it," she declared.

  "Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic," I assented with arespectful bow.

  She dropped a calm: "Yes--there is nothing like romance while one isyoung. So I will call you Monsieur George," she paused and then added,"I could never get old," in a matter-of-fact final tone as one wouldremark, "I could never learn to swim," and I had the presence of mind tosay in a tone to match, "_C'est evident_, Madame." It was evident. Shecouldn't get old; and across the table her thirty-year-old son whocouldn't get sleep sat listening with courteous detachment and thenarrowest possible line of white underlining his silky black moustache.

  "Your services are immensely appreciated," she said with an amusing touchof importance as of a great official lady. "Immensely appreciated bypeopl
e in a position to understand the great significance of the Carlistmovement in the South. There it has to combat anarchism, too. I whohave lived through the Commune . . ."

  Therese came in with a dish, and for the rest of the lunch theconversation so well begun drifted amongst the most appalling inanitiesof the religious-royalist-legitimist order. The ears of all the Bourbonsin the world must have been burning. Mrs. Blunt seemed to have come intopersonal contact with a good many of them and the marvellous insipidityof her recollections was astonishing to my inexperience. I looked at herfrom time to time thinking: She has seen slavery, she has seen theCommune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil war, the glory ofthe Second Empire, the horrors of two sieges; she has been in contactwith marked personalities, with great events, she has lived on herwealth, on her personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled,as glossy as ever, unable to get old:--a sort of Phoenix free from theslightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent amongst those inanitiesas if there had been nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste Iasked myself what sort of airy soul she had.

  At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small collection oforanges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she had bought that lot very cheapand it did not look at all inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. "Mymother can't stand tobacco smoke. Will you keep her company, _mon cher_,while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous garden. The broughamfrom the hotel will be here very soon."

  He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. Almost directly hereappeared, visible from head to foot through the glass side of thestudio, pacing up and down the central path of that "ridiculous" garden:for its elegance and its air of good breeding the most remarkable figurethat I have ever seen before or since. He had changed his coat. MadameBlunt _mere_ lowered the long-handled glasses through which she had beencontemplating him with an appraising, absorbed expression which hadnothing maternal in it. But what she said to me was:

  "You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning with the King."

  She had spoken in French and she had used the expression "_mes transes_"but for all the rest, intonation, bearing, solemnity, she might have beenreferring to one of the Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one ofthem looked half as aristocratic as her son.

  "I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life is so romantic."

  "Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere are doing that," shesaid very distinctly, "only their case is different. They have theirpositions, their families to go back to; but we are different. We areexiles, except of course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, thefriendships of old standing we have in France. Should my son come outunscathed he has no one but me and I have no one but him. I have tothink of his life. Mr. Mills (what a distinguished mind that is!) hasreassured me as to my son's health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn'the?"

  I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone and she remarkedquaintly, with a certain curtness, "It's so unnecessary, this worry! Theunfortunate position of an exile has its advantages. At a certain heightof social position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have beenruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain established height onecan disregard narrow prejudices. You see examples in the aristocraciesof all the countries. A chivalrous young American may offer his life fora remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We, inour great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young man of goodconnections and distinguished relations must settle down some day,dispose of his life."

  "No doubt, Madame," I said, raising my eyes to the figureoutside--"_Americain_, _Catholique et gentilhomme_"--walking up and downthe path with a cigar which he was not smoking. "For myself, I don'tknow anything about those necessities. I have broken away for ever fromthose things."

  "Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a golden heart that is.His sympathies are infinite."

  I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. Blunt, whatever his texton me might have been: "She lives by her wits." Was she exercising herwits on me for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly:

  "I really know your son so very little."

  "Oh, _voyons_," she protested. "I am aware that you are very muchyounger, but the similitudes of opinions, origins and perhaps at bottom,faintly, of character, of chivalrous devotion--no, you must be able tounderstand him in a measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and recklesslybrave."

  I listened deferentially to the end yet with every nerve in my bodytingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to havegot into my very hair.

  "I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of your son's bravery.It's extremely natural in a man who, in his own words, 'lives by hissword.'"

  She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection, betrayed"nerves" like a common mortal, of course very slightly, but in her itmeant more than a blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Heradmirable little foot, marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped thefloor irritably. But even in that display there was somethingexquisitely delicate. The very anger in her voice was silvery, as itwere, and more like the petulance of a seventeen-year-old beauty.

  "What nonsense! A Blunt doesn't hire himself."

  "Some princely families," I said, "were founded by men who have done thatvery thing. The great Condottieri, you know."

  It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made me observe that wewere not living in the fifteenth century. She gave me also to understandwith some spirit that there was no question here of founding a family.Her son was very far from being the first of the name. His importancelay rather in being the last of a race which had totally perished, sheadded in a completely drawing-room tone, "in our Civil War."

  She had mastered her irritation and through the glass side of the roomsent a wistful smile to his address, but I noticed the yet unextinguishedanger in her eyes full of fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. Forshe was growing old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly weary,and perhaps desperate.