第10章

"I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot," he remarked casually.But even I, with all my innocence, never for a moment believed he had stumbled accidentally.During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a profound silence reigned; but neither of us took it seriously - any more than his stumble.

"One day," he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, "my mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in the middle of the night.You must understand my mother's phraseology.It meant that she would be up and dressed by nine o'clock.This time it was not Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I.You may imagine how delighted I was...."It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively to Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills the man.It was as if Mills represented something initiated and to be reckoned with.I, of course, could have no such pretensions.If Irepresented anything it was a perfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing ignorance, not so much of what life may give one (as to that I had some ideas at least) but of what it really contains.Iknew very well that I was utterly insignificant in these men's eyes.Yet my attention was not checked by that knowledge.It's true they were talking of a woman, but I was yet at the age when this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest.My imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the adventures and fortunes of a man.What kept my interest from flagging was Mr.Blunt himself.The play of the white gleams of his smile round the suspicion of grimness of his tone fascinated me like a moral incongruity.

So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes as if the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a distant old age, I kept easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the contrast of personalities, of the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough initiations of my West-Indian experience.And all these things were dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters.For these two men had SEEN her, while to me she was only being "presented," elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar voice.

She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the early hour of the ultra-fashionable world (so I understood), on a light bay "bit of blood" attended on the off side by that Henry Allegre mounted on a dark brown powerful weight carrier; and on the other by one of Allegre's acquaintances (the man had no real friends), distinguished frequenters of that mysterious Pavilion.

And so that side of the frame in which that woman appeared to one down the perspective of the great Allee was not permanent.That morning when Mr.Blunt had to escort his mother there for the gratification of her irresistible curiosity (of which he highly disapproved) there appeared in succession, at that woman's or girl's bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whom she was smiling; a rising politician in a grey suit, who talked to her with great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage in a red fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, the vexed Mr.Blunt and his indiscreet mother (though Ireally couldn't see where the harm was) had one more chance of a good stare.The third party that time was the Royal Pretender (Allegre had been painting his portrait lately), whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before the mounted trio came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts.There was colour in the girl's face.She was not laughing.Her expression was serious and her eyes thoughtfully downcast.Blunt admitted that on that occasion the charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately framed between those magnificently mounted, paladin-like attendants, one older than the other but the two composing together admirably in the different stages of their manhood.Mr.Blunt had never before seen Henry Allegre so close.Allegre was riding nearest to the path on which Blunt was dutifully giving his arm to his mother (they had got out of their fiacre) and wondering if that confounded fellow would have the impudence to take off his hat.

But he did not.Perhaps he didn't notice.Allegre was not a man of wandering glances.There were silver hairs in his beard but he looked as solid as a statue.Less than three months afterwards he was gone.

"What was it?" asked Mills, who had not changed his pose for a very long time.

"Oh, an accident.But he lingered.They were on their way to Corsica.A yearly pilgrimage.Sentimental perhaps.It was to Corsica that he carried her off - I mean first of all."There was the slightest contraction of Mr.Blunt's facial muscles.

Very slight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simple souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been mental.There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: "I suppose you know how he got hold of her?" in a tone of ease which was astonishingly ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled, drawing-room person.

Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment.