… “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 Allègre 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 Allègre 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 Allègre 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 Allègre 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, pâte dure, not pâte 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