The Arrow of Gold | Page 3

feel lonely, since I was neither
masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any other way in harmony
with the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a
state of sobriety. I had just returned from my second West Indies
voyage. My eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my memory of
my experiences, lawful and lawless, which had their charm and their
thrill; for they had startled me a little and had amused me considerably.
But they had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men's
adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of responsibility which I
had acquired they had not matured me. I was as young as before.
Inconceivably young--still beautifully unthinking--infinitely receptive.
You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos and his fight for
a kingdom. Why should I? You don't want to think of things which you
meet every day in the newspapers and in conversation. I had paid some
calls since my return and most of my acquaintance were legitimists and
intensely interested in the events of the frontier of Spain, for political,
religious, or romantic reasons. But I was not interested. Apparently I
was not romantic enough. Or was it that I was even more romantic than
all those good people? The affair seemed to me commonplace. That
man was attending to his business of a Pretender.
On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table near me,
he looked picturesque enough, seated on a boulder, a big strong man
with a square-cut beard, his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry
sabre--and all around him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught
my eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There were no inane
snapshot-reproductions in those days.) It was the obvious romance for
the use of royalists but it arrested my attention.
Just then some masks from outside invaded the cafe, dancing hand in
hand in a single file led by a burly man with a cardboard nose. He
gambolled in wildly and behind him twenty others perhaps, mostly
Pierrots and Pierrettes holding each other by the hand and winding in
and out between the chairs and tables: eyes shining in the holes of
cardboard faces, breasts panting; but all preserving a mysterious

silence.
They were people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots,
costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn
over with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the
skirt. Most of the ordinary clients of the cafe didn't even look up from
their games or papers. I, being alone and idle, stared abstractedly. The
girl costumed as Night wore a small black velvet mask, what is called
in French a "loup." What made her daintiness join that obviously rough
lot I can't imagine. Her uncovered mouth and chin suggested refined
prettiness.
They filed past my table; the Night noticed perhaps my fixed gaze and
throwing her body forward out of the wriggling chain shot out at me a
slender tongue like a pink dart. I was not prepared for this, not even to
the extent of an appreciative "Tres foli," before she wriggled and
hopped away. But having been thus distinguished I could do no less
than follow her with my eyes to the door where the chain of hands
being broken all the masks were trying to get out at once. Two
gentlemen coming in out of the street stood arrested in the crush. The
Night (it must have been her idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them,
too. The taller of the two (he was in evening clothes under a light
wide-open overcoat) with great presence of mind chucked her under the
chin, giving me the view at the same time of a flash of white teeth in
his dark, lean face. The other man was very different; fair, with smooth,
ruddy cheeks and burly shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit,
obviously bought ready- made, for it seemed too tight for his powerful
frame.
That man was not altogether a stranger to me. For the last week or so I
had been rather on the look-out for him in all the public places where in
a provincial town men may expect to meet each other. I saw him for the
first time (wearing that same grey ready- made suit) in a legitimist
drawing-room where, clearly, he was an object of interest, especially to
the women. I had caught his name as Monsieur Mills. The lady who
had introduced me took the earliest opportunity to murmur into my ear:
"A relation of Lord X." (Un proche parent de Lord X.) And then she

added, casting up her eyes: "A good