At this the other was heard plainly, “No, no,” and then a little lower, “You have no tact, Rita. . . .” Then came her argument in a low, penetrating voice which I caught, “Why not? Between such old friends.” However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the bare and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room, throwing to the table an airy “
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.
“
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
