In that particular Dantes manner, he did not look at Luis squarely. “Sit down,” he said, unfolding his hands. He started fidgeting with the gold cigarette lighter on the wide glass-topped desk. Luis sat on one of the green leather upholstered chairs that ringed the Old Man’s desk. Still without looking at him, Dantes stood up and proceeded to the window. He looked through the clear polished glass as if lost in thought. He brought out a Sobranie but did not offer Luis one. Yes, his eyes were quite swollen.
“How well did you know my daughter, Luis?” he asked distinctly.
Luis was startled. “I wish you’d tell me first why you are asking me this question, sir,” he said, wondering what Ester had done. Had she finally gone to her father, just as he had gone to his, and confronted him?
Dantes faced him, his eyes red and filmy. He stuck the cigarette into his thin mouth but did not light it, then he took it and squashed it on the ashtray on his desk. “You are always wary, always trying to walk out of traps,” he said. His countenance continued to be sullen.
“That is not a fair observation, sir,” Luis said, feeling badgered. “I thought I was impulsive most of the time.”
Dantes shook his head and went back to his desk. “This is not a business discussion, Luis, but it is important — perhaps more important than business.”
“But I wouldn’t be able to know her more than you do,” Luis said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“You could have been in love with her,” Dantes suggested, looking away.
Luis settled back in his chair and laughed hollowly. “You must be joking, sir. You know, of course, that I have just gotten married.”
Dantes turned away, took another cigarette, and lighted it. He inhaled deeply. “That makes it simpler,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
Dantes sounded remote and his voice was raspy. “Ester is dead, Luis. I hope this means something to you.”
Luis clutched the arms of his chair, half rose, then slumped back. “No — this cannot be. No!” he cried, but this was Ester’s father telling him that Ester was dead. “I am very sorry, sir,” he stammered, “but how — only last night—”
“Suicide.”
“No,” he cried again. “Why did she do it? It’s unthinkable — Ester!”
“This morning,” Dantes continued calmly now, “she didn’t come down for breakfast. Her room was locked from the inside, so we forced it open. Sleeping tablets — one whole bottle.”
Now, with sudden and vicious truculence, bits of Luis’s talk with her came back and clawed at him. “She was with me last night,” Luis said. “We went out for a drive, and she had dinner in the house. My cook prepared paella, and we talked. We talked. I wanted to drive her back, because I had picked her up. She said she would go home alone. I got her a cab at the boulevard—”
“Was there anything to indicate that she would do this?” The publisher’s tone was demanding.
He gripped the edge of the publisher’s desk. “I don’t know what you are driving at, sir,” Luis said grimly. “I liked your daughter very much — although we had arguments, too. I felt great affection for her. I do not deny this, but to imply that I am the cause—”
“No,” Dantes cut him short. “I am not saying that, but did she confide anything? I must get to the bottom of it, can you not see?”
Luis sat back and shook his head. “Am I to know everything?”
“Do not misunderstand,” Dantes said, opening his drawer. “I have a letter for you from her. It was on her dresser. It surprised me very much that she wrote to you at all.”
Luis felt a chill ride to the tips of his fingers. “I’d do anything to have her back,” he said with great feeling. “Ester — she is one of the most wonderful people I have ever met.”
“She wrote only two notes,” Dantes said. His voice seemed about to break, and he paused for a while. “The other was for her mother and me.” He placed the sealed letter on his table. Luis took it and hastily opened it. It was, like the address on the envelope, in Ester’s hand. “Dear Luis [the greeting was so prosaic!] — Did you know that I once won the school hundred-meter dash? Please forgive me. Ester.”
“There is not much here,” Luis lied, shoving the letter back.
“Nothing?”
“See for yourself.”
Dantes fingered the note silently. “There’s nothing? But everything is here. Why should she ask for your forgiveness?”
“She regarded me, I think, as her best friend. She knew that I would not approve of what she did. She was running away all the time — like me. Most of the time. Sir, this you will not understand.”
“What was she running away from?”
“I don’t know. It could be life itself, and she got tired of running. We talked about it.”
Dantes was silent again. “May I keep this note?” he said after a while.
“I’ve seen it,” Luis said simply.
Dantes’s lips were drawn. “You don’t care — and you say that you are her best friend or sweetheart—”
“Don’t think of me that way,” Luis said softly. “I admired her very much and loved her in my own way, but not in the way you think. Not that way.” He was speaking with candor, and he could hear his heart pounding, the words rushing out in a torrent. “There were many things we had in common. We had a sense of communion although we argued and quarreled, but we were alive, Mr. Dantes. That you must understand. We were not two pieces of furniture. We were alive then, but now she is dead. Do you think this does not pain me at all?”
“Will you tell me why she did it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Did you love her enough to want to elope with her — marry her?”
Luis’s slight laugh was hollow. “It never crossed our minds. I don’t want to make it look as if she was not beautiful, that she had no virtues. Yes, maybe — the friendship could have been more than what it was, but marriage was out of the question. As you can see, I got married — but not to her. No, it was not like that at all. Something I cannot explain — something more.”
“What could be more?” Dantes whined, and balling his fists, he struck the glass top of his desk, shaking the big flower vase and the menagerie of blotters, inkstands, and clay figurines that cluttered it. He was now sobbing uncontrollably, and he turned away, his lean frame shaking. “She had everything she wanted. I wanted her to marry properly and be comfortable and not have a single worry in the world! This is how fathers are — wait and see.” He turned expectantly back to Luis, his eyes misty and red. “Tell me that you loved her — it would be the best way, and I would understand.”
Luis closed his eyes, and in the dark, incongruous depths of his mind there formed slowly, clearly, the image of Ester, just as it was the first time he drove her out to that lonely beach in Cavite and she lay in the shade of the low, thorny trees, listening to the pounding surf. “No,” Luis said, gritting his teeth. “It was not that kind of love, or else I should have asked her to marry me way, way back. She knew that, sir. It was something else, just as tender and precious.”