第21章

The staircase had a crimson carpet.Mr.Blunt appeared from somewhere in the hall.He was in riding breeches and a black coat with ample square skirts.This get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by doing away with the effect of flexible slimness he produced in his evening clothes.He looked to me not at all himself but rather like a brother of the man who had been talking to us the night before.He carried about him a delicate perfume of scented soap.He gave us a flash of his white teeth and said:

"It's a perfect nuisance.We have just dismounted.I will have to lunch as I am.A lifelong habit of beginning her day on horseback.

She pretends she is unwell unless she does.I daresay, when one thinks there has been hardly a day for five or six years that she didn't begin with a ride.That's the reason she is always rushing away from Paris where she can't go out in the morning alone.Here, of course, it's different.And as I, too, am a stranger here I can go out with her.Not that I particularly care to do it."These last words were addressed to Mills specially, with the addition of a mumbled remark: "It's a confounded position." Then calmly to me with a swift smile: "We have been talking of you this morning.You are expected with impatience.""Thank you very much," I said, "but I can't help asking myself what I am doing here."The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing the staircase made us both, Blunt and I, turn round.The woman of whom I had heard so much, in a sort of way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before, was coming down the stairs, and my first sensation was that of profound astonishment at this evidence that she did really exist.And even then the visual impression was more of colour in a picture than of the forms of actual life.She was wearing a wrapper, a sort of dressing-gown of pale blue silk embroidered with black and gold designs round the neck and down the front, lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of the same material.Her slippers were of the same colour, with black bows at the instep.The white stairs, the deep crimson of the carpet, and the light blue of the dress made an effective combination of colour to set off the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis and made you think of remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on immemorial monuments and of those lying unsung in their tombs.While she moved downwards from step to step with slightly lowered eyes there flashed upon me suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of Allegre's words about her, of there being in her "something of the women of all time."At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an exhibition of teeth as dazzling as Mr.Blunt's and looking even stronger; and indeed, as she approached us she brought home to our hearts (but after all I am speaking only for myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection in beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much of grace, probably, as of absolute harmony.

She said to us, "I am sorry I kept you waiting." Her voice was low pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive gentleness.She offered her hand to Mills very frankly as to an old friend.Within the extraordinarily wide sleeve, lined with black silk, I could see the arm, very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow.But to me she extended her hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person, combined with an extremely straight glance.It was a finely shaped, capable hand.I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers.I did not look then at her face.

Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round marble-topped table in the middle of the hall.She seized one of them with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open, saying to us, "Excuse me, I must...Do go into the dining-room.Captain Blunt, show the way."

Her widened eyes stared at the paper.Mr.Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh which had in it a note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr.Blunt.He had remained on the other side, possibly to soothe.The room in which we found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many windows.It was long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite.A table laid out for four occupied very little space.The floor inlaid in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like still water.