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The Arrow of Gold-Part20_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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opened the dining-room door, not to announce my name in the usual

way but to go in and shut it behind her. In that short moment I



heard no voices inside. Not a sound reached me while the door

remained shut; but in a few seconds it came open again and Rose



stood aside to let me pass.

Then I heard something: Dona Rita's voice raised a little on an



impatient note (a very, very rare thing) finishing some phrase of

protest with the words " . . . Of no consequence."



I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had

that kind of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid's



statement occupied all my mind. "Madame n'est pas heureuse." It

had a dreadfulprecision . . . "Not happy . . ." This unhappiness



had almost a concrete form - something resembling a horrid bat. I

was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty.



What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough

to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes



of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful

to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see



there was nothing startling, at any rate from that nursery point of

view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.



With immenserelief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain

Blunt warming his back at the more distant of the two fireplaces;



and as to Dona Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her attitude

either, except perhaps that her hair was all loose about her



shoulders. I hadn't the slightest doubt they had been riding

together that morning, but she, with her impatience of all costume



(and yet she could dress herself admirably and wore her dresses

triumphantly), had divested herself of her riding habit and sat



cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young savage

chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the



normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the cigarette

ascended ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.



"How are you," was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual

smile which would have been more amiable if his teeth hadn't been,



just then, clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his

voice through that shining barrier I could never understand. Dona



Rita tapped the couch engagingly by her side but I sat down instead

in the armchair nearly opposite her, which, I imagine, must have



been just vacated by Blunt. She inquired with that particular

gleam of the eyes in which there was something immemorial and gay:



"Well?"

"Perfect success."



"I could hug you."

At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the



intensewhisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my

very heart; not as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion



vibrating there with an awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left

my heart heavy.



"Oh, yes, for joy," I said bitterly but very low; "for your

Royalist, Legitimist, joy." Then with that trick of very precise



politeness which I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:

"I don't want to be embraced - for the King."



And I might have stopped there. But I didn't. With a perversity

which should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are



as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake

of an old cast-off glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not



much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a

private rubbish heap because it has missed the fire."



She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips,

slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order



to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all

women. Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside



riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful

figure seated at the very source of the passions that have moved



men from the dawn of ages.

Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned



away a little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the




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