What surprised me was that Mills should have remembered mine so well. I don't want to boast of my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than enough for a man like Mills to forget my very existence. As to the Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his personality. Clothes, slight figure, clearcut, thin, suntanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently professional. That imperfection was interesting, too.
You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count for interest and memoryand pretty well nothing else. Thisyou seeis the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that woman. These are like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn't my fault that they are associated with nothing better at the decisive moment than the banal splendours of a gilded cafe and the bedlamite yells of carnival in the street.
We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed attitudes of serious amiability round our table. A waiter approached for orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began charging his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the cafe in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and addressing me as
``Young Ulysses'' proposed I
should go outside on the fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites to decorate a truly infernal supper which was being organized across the road at the Maison Doreeupstairs.
With expostulatory shakes of the head and indignant glances I called his attention to the fact that I was not alone. He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery, took off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance so that the feathers swept the floor, and swaggered off the stage with his left hand resting on the hilt of the property dagger at his belt.
Meantime the wellconnected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself I was horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head apparently.
Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching blue eyes through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed about his big head. The slim, dark Captain's smile took on an amiable expression. Might he know why I was addressed as ``Young Ulysses'' by my friend? and immediately he added the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute person.
Mills did not give me time for a reply. He struck in: ``That old Greek was famed as a wandererthe first historical seaman.'' He waved his pipe vaguely at me.
`Àh! _Vraiment!_'' The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if weary. `Àre you a seaman? In what sense, pray?'' We were talking French and he used the term _homme de mer._
Again Mills interfered quietly. `Ìn the same sense in which you are a military man.'' (_Homme de guerre._)
It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking declarations. He had two of them, and this was the first.
`Ì live by my sword.''
The Arrow of Gold
Page 8
PART ONE
6
It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction with the matter made me forget my tongue in my head.
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