第32章

When I have to go there I begin to feel after an hour or so that it is haunted.I seem to catch sight of somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here and there.Ihear light footsteps behind closed doors...My own!"Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested softly, "Yes, but Azzolati."Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine."Oh!

Azzolati.It was a most solemn affair.It had occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet.It was most successful.Azzolati looked positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite of rooms.He had never before seen me en toilette, you understand.In the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress.I draped myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills.To go about like that suited my indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I used to herd goats...But never mind.My aim was to impress Azzolati.I wanted to talk to him seriously."There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips."And behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati.Imagine that for this tete-e-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court.He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his frac and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front.An orange ribbon.Bavarian, I should say.Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati.It was always his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world.The last remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting needles.He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my hands.

Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day.

I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings.His submissive attitude made me still more nervous.He was ready to do anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived.You understand the impudence of it, don't you? And his tone was positively abject, too.I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a nomad.He bowed ironically till his nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of my own about the world.

And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever -like a little dog lost in the street - not knowing where to go.Iwas ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an imbecile smile as much as to say 'here is a poser for you....'

I gnashed my teeth at him.Quietly, you know...I suppose you two think that I am stupid."She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she continued with a remark.

"I have days like that.Often one must listen to false protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one's way.That idiot treated me to a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn't stand.First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of his great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities of existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart.His heart! He wanted me to sympathize with his sorrows.Of course I ought to have listened.One must pay for service.Only I was nervous and tired.He bored me.I told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on going like this reaching for more and more.Isuppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and all at once he let out an atrocity which was too much for me.He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his fangs.'No,' he cries, 'you can't imagine what a satisfaction it is to feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the dear, honest, meritorious poor wriggling and slobbering under one's boots.' You may tell me that he is a contemptible animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone! I felt my bare arms go cold like ice.A moment before I had been hot and faint with sheer boredom.I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her to bring me my fur cloak.He remained in his chair leering at me curiously.When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone out of the room I gave him the surprise of his life.'Take yourself off instantly,' I said.'Go trample on the poor if you like but never dare speak to me again.' At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask, calmly - you know - whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the corridor.He fetched an enormous sigh.'I have only tried to be honest with you, Rita.' But by the time he got to the door he had regained some of his impudence.

'You know how to trample on a poor fellows too,' he said.'But Idon't mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes, Rita.Iforgive you.I thought you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind.I was mistaken in you, that's all.' With that he pretends to dash a tear from his eye-crocodile! - and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets...Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?" she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both.And the stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself in my mind.

Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.