said, was an instance of dislike from mere instinct.
That dummy had been made to measure years before.
It had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine
robes in which Dona Rita sat only once or twice herself;
but of course the folds and bends of the stuff had
to be preserved as in the first sketch. Dona
Rita described amusingly how she had to stand in the
middle of her room while Rose walked around her with
a tape measure noting the figures down on a small
piece of paper which was then sent to the maker, who
presently returned it with an angry letter stating
that those proportions were altogether impossible
in any woman. Apparently Rose had muddled them
all up; and it was a long time before the figure was
finished and sent to the Pavilion in a long basket
to take on itself the robes and the hieratic pose
of the Empress. Later, it wore with the same
patience the marvellous hat of the “Girl in
the Hat.” But Dona Rita couldn’t
understand how the poor thing ever found its way to
Marseilles minus its turnip head. Probably it
came down with the robes and a quantity of precious
brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris.
The knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain
Blunt’s references to it, with Therese’s
shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary
reproduction with a sort of charm, gave me a faint
and miserable illusion of the original, less artificial
than a photograph, less precise, too. . . . But
it can’t be explained. I felt positively
friendly to it as if it had been Rita’s trusted
personal attendant. I even went so far as to
discover that it had a sort of grace of its own.
But I never went so far as to address set speeches
to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or drag
it out from there for contemplation. I left
it in peace. I wasn’t mad. I was
only convinced that I soon would be.
CHAPTER II
Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few
people on account of all these Royalist affairs which
I couldn’t very well drop, and in truth did
not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining
in Europe, which somehow I had not the strength of
mind to leave for the West Indies, or elsewhere.
On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me
in contact with the sea where I found occupation,
protection, consolation, the mental relief of grappling
with concrete problems, the sanity one acquires from
close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence
born from the dealings with the elemental powers of
nature. I couldn’t give all that up.
And besides all this was related to Dona Rita.
I had, as it were, received it all from her own hand,
from that hand the clasp of which was as frank as
a man’s and yet conveyed a unique sensation.
The very memory of it would go through me like a wave
of heat. It was over that hand that we first
got into the habit of quarrelling, with the irritability
of sufferers from some obscure pain and yet half unconscious