第7章

The street in which Mr.Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many of its closed portals.It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr.Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all nations almost - except his own.(The U.S.consulate was on the other side of the town.)He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of his own consulate.

"Are you afraid of the consul's dog?" I asked jocularly.The consul's dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear:

"They are all Yankees there."

I murmured a confused "Of course."

Books are nothing.I discovered that I had never been aware before that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten years old.Of course.He was a South Carolinian gentleman.I was a little ashamed of my want of tact.Meantime, looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty with his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not one of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street.It had only one row of windows above the ground floor.Dead walls abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden.Its dark front presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light of a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the world.The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions.Mr.Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle.It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of the passage.

It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to the garden side of the house.A large lamp was burning brightly there.The floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about though extremely worn were very costly.There was also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many cushions, some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, and in the midst of these fine things a small common iron stove.Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the warmth of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold blasts of mistral outside.

Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm, gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner where in the shadow of a monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands but with beautifully shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed to be embarrassed by his stare.

As we sat enjoying the bivouac hospitality (the dish was really excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still looked the accomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards that corner.Blunt noticed this and remarked that I seemed to be attracted by the Empress.

"It's disagreeable," I said."It seems to lurk there like a shy skeleton at the feast.But why do you give the name of Empress to that dummy?""Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a Byzantine Empress to a painter...I wonder where he discovered these priceless stuffs...You knew him, I believe?"Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his throat some wine out of a Venetian goblet.

"This house is full of costly objects.So are all his other houses, so is his place in Paris - that mysterious Pavilion hidden away in Passy somewhere."Mills knew the Pavilion.The wine had, I suppose, loosened his tongue.Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve.From their talk I gathered the notion of an eccentric personality, a man of great wealth, not so much solitary as difficult of access, a collector of fine things, a painter known only to very few people and not at all to the public market.But as meantime I had been emptying my Venetian goblet with a certain regularity (the amount of heat given out by that iron stove was amazing; it parched one's throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn't seem much stronger than so much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and the impressions they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind.Suddenly Iperceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves.I had not noticed him taking off his coat.Blunt had unbuttoned his shabby jacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie under his dark shaved chin.He had a strange air of insolence - or so it seemed to me.I addressed him much louder than I intended really.

"Did you know that extraordinary man?"

"To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished or very lucky.Mr.Mills here...""Yes, I have been lucky," Mills struck in."It was my cousin who was distinguished.That's how I managed to enter his house in Paris - it was called the Pavilion - twice.""And saw Dona Rita twice, too?" asked Blunt with an indefinite smile and a marked emphasis.Mills was also emphatic in his reply but with a serious face.

"I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she was without doubt the most admirable find of his amongst all the priceless items he had accumulated in that house - the most admirable...""Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one that was alive," pointed out Blunt with the slightest possible flavour of sarcasm.

"Immensely so," affirmed Mills."Not because she was restless, indeed she hardly ever moved from that couch between the windows -you know."