Therese elevated her right hand for me to see. It was broad and short with blunt fingers, as usual. The pressure of Captain Blunt’s handshake had not altered its unlovely shape.
“What was the good of telling him that our Rita was here?” went on Therese. “I would have been ashamed of her coming here and behaving as if the house belonged to her! I had already said some prayers at his intention at the half-past six mass, the brave gentleman. That maid of my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive away with her evil eyes, but I made a sign of the cross after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs and banged at your door, my dear kind young Monsieur, and shouted to Rita that she had no right to lock herself in any of my locataires’ rooms. At last she opened it—and what do you think? All her hair was loose over her shoulders. I suppose it all came down when she flung her hat on your bed. I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn’t done properly. She used your brushes to do it up again in front of your glass.”
“Wait a moment,” I said, and jumped up, upsetting my wine to run upstairs as fast as I could. I lighted the gas, all the three jets in the middle of the room, the jet by the bedside and two others flanking the dressing-table. I had been struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of Rita’s passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the drawers violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden there a scrap of paper, a note. It was perfectly mad. Of course there was no chance of that. Therese would have seen to it. I picked up one after another all the various objects on the dressing-table. On laying my hands on the brushes I had a profound emotion, and with misty eyes I examined them meticulously with the new hope of finding one of Rita’s tawny hairs entangled amongst the bristles by a miraculous chance. But Therese would have done away with that chance, too. There was nothing to be seen, though I held them up to the light with a beating heart. It was written that not even that trace of her passage on the earth should remain with me; not to help but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My unhappiness became dulled, as the grief of those who mourn for the dead gets dulled in the overwhelming sensation that everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost beyond recall taking with it all the savour of life.
I discovered Therese still on the very same spot of the floor, her hands folded over each other and facing my empty chair before which the spilled wine had soaked a large portion of the table-cloth. She hadn’t moved at all. She hadn’t even picked up the overturned glass. But directly I appeared she began to speak in an ingratiating voice.
“If you have missed anything of yours upstairs, my dear young Monsieur, you mustn’t say it’s me. You don’t know what our Rita is.”
“I wish to goodness,” I said, “that she had taken something.”
And again I became inordinately agitated as though it were my absolute fate to be everlastingly dying and reviving to the tormenting fact of her existence. Perhaps she had taken something? Anything. Some small object. I thought suddenly of a Rhenish-stone match-box. Perhaps it was that. I didn’t remember having seen it when upstairs. I wanted to make sure at once. At once. But I commanded myself to sit still.
“And she so wealthy,” Therese went on. “Even you with your dear generous little heart can do nothing for our Rita. No man can do anything for her—except perhaps one, but she is so evilly disposed towards him that she wouldn’t even see him, if in the goodness of his forgiving heart he were to offer his hand to her. It’s her bad conscience that frightens her. He loves her more than his life, the dear, charitable man.”
“You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes Doña Rita. Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you know where he hangs out you had better let him have word to be careful. I believe he, too, is mixed up in the Carlist intrigue. Don’t you know that your sister can get him shut up any day or get him expelled by the police?”
Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained virtue.
“Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is awful. I said to her, ‘Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?’ and she shouted like a fiend: ‘For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!’ She threw herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. That wicked girl who serves her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to her nose; but I had a mind to run out and fetch the priest from the church where I go to early mass. Such a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating creature (I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to night), she talked to our Rita very low and quieted her down. I am sure I don’t know what she said. She must be leagued with the devil. And then she asked me if I would go down and make a cup of chocolate for her Madame. Madame—that’s our Rita. Madame! It seems they were going off directly to Paris and her Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the day before. Fancy me being ordered to make chocolate for our Rita! However, the poor thing looked so exhausted and white-faced that I went. Ah! the devil can give you an awful shake up if he likes.”
Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes looked at me with great attention. I preserved an inscrutable expression, for I wanted to hear all she had to tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest anxiety composing her face into a cheerful expression.
“So Doña Rita is gone to Paris?” I asked negligently.
“Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight to the railway station from here. When she first got up from the couch she could hardly stand. But before, while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for her, I tried to get her to sign a paper giving over the house to me, but she only closed her eyes and begged me to try and be a good sister and leave her alone for half an hour. And she lying there looking as if she wouldn’t live a day. But she always hated me.”
I said bitterly, “You needn’t have worried her like this. If she had not lived for another day you would have had this house and everything else besides; a bigger bit than even your wolfish throat can swallow, Mademoiselle Therese.”
I then said a few more things indicative of my disgust with her rapacity, but they were quite inadequate, as I wasn’t able to find words strong enough to express my real mind. But it didn’t matter really because I don’t think Therese heard me at all. She seemed lost in rapt amazement.
“What do you say, my dear Monsieur? What! All for me without any sort of paper?”
She appeared distracted by my curt: “Yes.” Therese believed in my truthfulness. She believed me implicitly, except when I was telling her the truth about herself, mincing no words, when she used to stand smilingly bashful as if I were overwhelming her with compliments. I expected her to continue the horrible tale but apparently she had found something to think about which checked the flow. She fetched another sigh and muttered:
“Then the law can be just, if it does not require any paper. After all, I am her sister.”
“It’s very difficult to believe that—at sight,” I said roughly.
“Ah, but that I could prove. There are papers for that.”
After this declaration she began to clear the table, preserving a thoughtful silence.