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as a picture on a wall, Therese pressing with fervour the key into the
fevered palm of the rich, prestigious, virtuous cousin, so that he should go
and urge his selfsacrificing offer to Rita, and gain merit before Him whose
Eye sees all the actions of men. And this image of those two with the key
in the studio seemed to me a most monstrous conception of fanaticism, of a
perfectly horrible aberration. For who could mistake the state that made
Jose Ortega the figure he was, inspiring both pity and fear? I could not
deny that I understood, not the full extent but the exact nature of his
suffering. Young as I was I had solved for myself that grotesque and sombre
personality. His contact with me, the personal contact with (as he thought)
one of the actual lovers of that woman who brought to him as a boy the
curse of the gods, had tipped over the trembling scales. No doubt I was very
near death in the ``grand salon'' of the Maison Doree, only that his torture
had gone too far. It seemed to me that I
ought to have heard his very soul scream while we were seated at supper. But
in a moment he had ceased to care for me. I was nothing. To the crazy
exaggeration of his jealousy I was but one amongst a hundred thousand. What
was my death? Nothing. All mankind had possessed that woman. I knew what his
wooing of her would be: Mineor Dead.
All this ought to have had the clearness of noonday, even to the veriest
idiot that ever lived; and Therese was, properly speaking, exactly that. An
idiot. A oneideaed creature. Only the idea was complex; therefore it was
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impossible really to say what she wasn't capable of. This was what made her
obscure processes so awful. She had at times the most amazing perceptions.
Who could tell where her simplicity ended and her cunning began? She had
also the faculty of never forgetting any fact bearing upon her one idea; and
I
remembered now that the conversation with me about the will had produced on
her an indelible impression of the Law's surprising justice. Recalling her
naive admiration of the ``just'' law that required no ``paper'' from a
sister, I saw her casting loose the raging fate with a sanctimonious air.
And Therese would naturally give the key of the fencingroom to her dear,
virtuous, grateful, disinterested cousin, to that damned soul with delicate
whiskers, because she would think it just possible that Rita might have
locked the door leading from her room into the hall; whereas there was no
earthly reason, not the slightest likelihood, that she would bother about
the other. Righteousness demanded that the erring sister should be taken
unawares.
All the above is the analysis of one short moment. Images are to words like
light to soundincomparably swifter. And all this was really one flash of
light through my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that both doors
were locked and that really there was no danger.
However, there had been that noisethe why and the how of it? Of course in
the dark he might have fallen into the bath, but that wouldn't have been a
faint noise. It wouldn't have been a rattle. There was absolutely nothing he
could knock over. He might have dropped a candlestick if Therese had left
him her own. That was possible, but then those thick matsand then, anyway,
why should he drop it? and, hang it all, why shouldn't he have gone straight
on and tried the door? I had suddenly a sickening vision of the fellow
crouching at the keyhole, listening, listening, listening, for some movement
or sigh of the sleeper he was ready to tear away from the world, alive or
dead. I had a conviction that he was still listening. Why?
Goodness knows! He may have been only gloating over the assurance that the
night was long and that he had all these hours to himself.
I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing of our whispers, the
room was too big for that and the door too solid. I hadn't the same
confidence in the efficiency of the lock. Still! . . . Guarding my lips with
my hand I urged Dona Rita to go back to the sofa. She wouldn't answer me and
when I got hold of her arm I
discovered that she wouldn't move. She had taken root in that thickpile
Aubusson carpet; and she was so rigidly still all over that the brilliant
stones in the shaft of the arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head
of the sofa blazing full on them, emitted no sparkle.
I was extremely anxious that she shouldn't betray herself. I reasoned, save
the mark, as a psychologist. I had no doubt that the man knew of her being
there; but he only knew it by hearsay. And that was bad enough. I
The Arrow of Gold
VII
95
could not help feeling that if he obtained some evidence for his senses by
any sort of noise, voice, or movement, his madness would gain strength
enough to burst the lock. I was rather ridiculously worried about the locks.
A horrid mistrust of the whole house possessed me. I saw it in the light of
a deadly trap. I had no weapon, I couldn't say whether he had one or not. I
wasn't afraid of a struggle as far as I, myself, was concerned, but I was
afraid of it for Dona Rita. To be rolling at her feet, locked in a literally
toothandnail struggle with Ortega would have been odious. I wanted to spare
her feelings, just as I would have been anxious to save from any contact
with mud the feet of that goatherd of the mountains with a symbolic face. I
looked at her face. For immobility it might have been a carving. I wished I
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knew how to deal with that embodied mystery, to influence it, to manage it.
Oh, how I longed for the gift of authority! In addition, since I
had become completely sane, all my scruples against laying hold of her had
returned. I felt shy and embarrassed. My eyes were fixed on the bronze
handle of the fencingroom door as if it were something alive. I braced myself
up against the moment when it would move. This was what was going to happen
next.
It would move very gently. My heart began to thump. But I was prepared to
keep myself as still as death and
I hoped Dona Rita would have sense enough to do the same. I stole another [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]