CHAPTER III
Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. To my
extreme surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of obviously painful
hesitation, hastened out after the man with the white hair.
In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began
to be uncomfortably conscious of it when Dona Rita, near the
window, addressed me in a raised voice.
"We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I."
I took this for an encouragement to join them. They were both
looking at me. Dona Rita added, "Mr. Mills and I are friends from
old times, you know."
Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not
fall directly into the room, standing very straight with her arms
down, before Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she
looked extremely young, and yet mature. There was even, for a
moment, a slight dimple in her cheek.
"How old, I wonder?" I said, with an answering smile.
"Oh, for ages, for ages," she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little,
then she went on addressing herself to Mills, apparently in
continuation of what she was saying before.
. . . "This man's is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn't the
worst. But that's the sort of thing. I have no account to render
to anybody, but I don't want to be dragged along all the gutters
where that man picks up his living."
She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no
angry flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The words did not ring.
I was struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of
her voice.
"Will you let me suggest," said Mills, with a grave, kindly face,
"that being what you are, you have nothing to fear?"
"And perhaps nothing to lose," she went on without bitterness.
"No. It isn't fear. It's a sort of dread. You must remember that
no nun could have had a more protected life. Henry Allegre had his
greatness. When he faced the world he also masked it. He was big
enough for that. He filled the whole field of vision for me."
"You found that enough?" asked Mills.
"Why ask now?" she remonstrated. "The truth--the truth is that I
never asked myself. Enough or not there was no room for anything
else. He was the shadow and the light and the form and the voice.
He would have it so. The morning he died they came to call me at
four o'clock. I ran into his room bare-footed. He recognized me
and whispered, 'You are flawless.' I was very frightened. He
seemed to think, and then said very plainly, 'Such is my character.
I am like that.' These were the last words he spoke. I hardly
noticed them then. I was thinking that he was lying in a very
uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should lift him up a
little higher on the pillows. You know I am very strong. I could
have done it. I had done it before. He raised his hand off the
blanket just enough to make a sign that he didn't want to be
touched. It was the last gesture he made. I hung over him and
then--and then I nearly ran out of the house just as I was, in my
night-gown. I think if I had been dressed I would have run out of
the garden, into the street--run away altogether. I had never seen
death. I may say I had never heard of it. I wanted to run from
it."
She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized sweetness and
daring of her face was made pathetic by her downcast eyes.
"Fuir la mort," she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious
voice.
Mills' big head had a little movement, nothing more. Her glance
glided for a moment towards me like a friendly recognition of my
right to be there, before she began again.
"My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a
fourth-floor window for years. When the end came it was like
falling out of a balcony into the street. It was as sudden as
that. Once I remember somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a
tale about a girl who jumped down from a fourth-floor window. . .
For love, I believe," she interjected very quickly, "and came to no
harm. Her guardian angel must have slipped his wings under her
just in time. He must have. But as to me, all I know is that I
didn't break anything--not even my heart. Don't be shocked, Mr.
Mills. It's very likely that you don't understand."
"Very likely," Mills assented, unmoved. "But don't be too sure of
that."
"Henry Allegre had the highest opinion of your intelligence," she
said unexpectedly and with evident seriousness. "But all this is
only to tell you that when he was gone I found myself down there
unhurt, but dazed, bewildered, not sufficiently stunned. It so
happened that that creature was somewhere in the neighbourhood.
How he found out. . . But it's his business to find out things.
And he knows, too, how to worm his way in anywhere. Indeed, in the
first days he was useful and somehow he made it look as if Heaven
itself had sent him. In my distress I thought I could never
sufficiently repay. . . Well, I have been paying ever since."
"What do you mean?" asked Mills softly. "In hard cash?"
"Oh, it's really so little," she said. "I told you it wasn't the
worst case. I stayed on in that house from which I nearly ran away
in my nightgown. I stayed on because I didn't know what to do
next. He vanished as he had come on the track of something else, I
suppose. You know he really has got to get his living some way or
other. But don't think I was deserted. On the contrary. People
were coming and going, all sorts of people that Henry Allegre used
to know--or had refused to know. I had a sensation of plotting and
intriguing around me, all the time. I was feeling morally bruised,
sore all over, when, one day, Don Rafael de Villarel sent in his
card. A grandee. I didn't know him, but, as you are aware, there
was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn't been
talked about in the Pavilion before me. Of him I had only heard
that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and
that sort of thing. I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow
face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk.
One missed a rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly
and I couldn't imagine what he might want. I waited for him to
pull out a crucifix and sentence me to the stake there and then.
But no; he dropped his eyes and in a cold, righteous sort of voice
informed me that he had called on behalf of the prince--he called
him His Majesty. I was amazed by the change. I wondered now why
he didn't slip his hands into the sleeves of his coat, you know, as
begging Friars do when they come for a subscription. He explained
that the Prince asked for permission to call and offer me his
condolences in person. We had seen a lot of him our last two
months in Paris that year. Henry Allegre had taken a fancy to
paint his portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning.
Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was
shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very
much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his
hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don't
know why, something moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed
out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him
but with myself too. I had my door closed to everybody else that
afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper sorrowful face,
but five minutes after he got into the room he was laughing as
usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You know his big,
irresistible laugh. . . ."
"No," said Mills, a little abruptly, "I have never seen him."
"No," she said, surprised, "and yet you . . . "
"I understand," interrupted Mills. "All this is purely accidental.
You must know that I am a solitary man of books but with a secret
taste for adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me."
She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance,
and a friendly turn of the head.
"I know you for a frank and loyal gentleman. . . Adventure--and
books? Ah, the books! Haven't I turned stacks of them over!
Haven't I? . . ."
"Yes," murmured Mills. "That's what one does."
She put out her hand and laid it lightly on Mills' sleeve.
"Listen, I don't need to justify myself, but if I had known a
single woman in the world, if I had only had the opportunity to
observe a single one of them, I would have been perhaps on my
guard. But you know I hadn't. The only woman I had anything to do
with was myself, and they say that one can't know oneself. It
never entered my head to be on my guard against his warmth and his
terrible obviousness. You and he were the only two, infinitely
different, people, who didn't approach me as if I had been a
precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece of
Chinese porcelain. That's why I have kept you in my memory so
well. Oh! you were not obvious! As to him--I soon learned to
regret I was not some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone
or bronze; a rare piece of porcelain, pate dure, not pate tendre.
A pretty specimen."
"Rare, yes. Even unique," said Mills, looking at her steadily with
a smile. "But don't try to depreciate yourself. You were never
pretty. You are not pretty. You are worse."
Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. "Do you find such sayings
in your books?" she asked.
"As a matter of fact I have," said Mills, with a little laugh,
"found this one in a book. It was a woman who said that of
herself. A woman far from common, who died some few years ago.
She was an actress. A great artist."
"A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge, that garment,
while I stand here with nothing to protect me from evil fame; a
naked temperament for any wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art
is a protection. I wonder if there would have been anything in me
if I had tried? But Henry Allegre would never let me try. He told
me that whatever I could achieve would never be good enough for
what I was. The perfection of flattery! Was it that he thought I
had not talent of any sort? It's possible. He would know. I've
had the idea since that he was jealous. He wasn't jealous of
mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his collection;
but he may have been jealous of what he could see in me, of some
passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I
shall never forget his last words. He saw me standing beside his
bed, defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say
was, 'Well, I am like that.'
I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak
with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of its life her
face preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form
themselves, fiery or pathetic, in the air, outside her lips. Their
design was hardly disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and
force as if born from the inspiration of some artist; for I had
never seen anything to come up to it in nature before or since.
All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed
to notice that Mills had the aspect of a man under a spell. If he
too was a captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my
surrender.
"And you know," she began again abruptly, "that I have been
accustomed to all the forms of respect."
"That's true," murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.
"Well, yes," she reaffirmed. "My instinct may have told me that my
only protection was obscurity, but I didn't know how and where to
find it. Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other
instincts and . . . How am I to tell you? I didn't know how to be
on guard against myself, either. Not a soul to speak to, or to get
a warning from. Some woman soul that would have known, in which
perhaps I could have seen my own reflection. I assure you the only
woman that ever addressed me directly, and that was in writing, was
. . . "
She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the ball and added
rapidly in a lowered voice,
"His mother."
The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at us right down
the room, but he didn't, as it were, follow it in his body. He
swerved to the nearest of the two big fireplaces and finding some
cigarettes on the mantelpiece remained leaning on his elbow in the
warmth of the bright wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play.
The heiress of Henry Allegre, who could secure neither obscurity
nor any other alleviation to that invidious position, looked as if
she would speak to Blunt from a distance; but in a moment the
confident eagerness of her face died out as if killed by a sudden
thought. I didn't know then her shrinking from all falsehood and
evasion; her dread of insincerity and disloyalty of every kind.
But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had
recoiled before some shadow of a suspicion. And it occurred to me,
too, to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to
transact with our odious visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make
him run out after him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little
with one of the sticks that were to be found there? White hair so
much like an expensive wig could not be considered a serious
protection. But it couldn't have been that. The transaction,
whatever it was, had been much too quiet. I must say that none of
us had looked out of the window and that I didn't know when the man
did go or if he was gone at all. As a matter of fact he was
already far away; and I may just as well say here that I never saw
him again in my life. His passage across my field of vision was
like that of other figures of that time: not to be forgotten, a
little fantastic, infinitely enlightening for my contempt,
darkening for my memory which struggles still with the clear lights
and the ugly shadows of those unforgotten days.
