第104章

Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started shouting for Therese."Come down at once, you wretched hypocrite," I yelled at the foot of the stairs in a sort of frenzy as though I had been a second Ortega.Not even an echo answered me; but all of a sudden a small flame flickered descending from the upper darkness and Therese appeared on the first floor landing carrying a lighted candle in front of a livid, hard face, closed against remorse, compassion, or mercy by the meanness of her righteousness and of her rapacious instincts.She was fully dressed in that abominable brown stuff with motionless folds, and as I watched her coming down step by step she might have been made of wood.I stepped back and pointed my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the studio.She passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes staring straight ahead, her face still with disappointment and fury.Yet it is only my surmise.She might have been made thus inhuman by the force of an invisible purpose.I waited a moment, then, stealthily, with extreme caution, I opened the door of the so-called Captain Blunt's room.

The glow of embers was all but out.It was cold and dark in there;but before I closed the door behind me the dim light from the hall showed me Dona Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque in her night-dress.Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate.I picked up the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it.All that time Dona Rita didn't stir.When Iturned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a trance.

She was deathly pale and by contrast the melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black as coal.They moved a little in my direction, incurious, recognizing me slowly.But when they had recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in them.A whole minute or more passed.Then I said in a low tone:

"Look at me," and she let them fall slowly as if accepting the inevitable.

"Shall I make up the fire?"...I waited."Do you hear me?" She made no sound and with the tip of my finger I touched her bare shoulder.But for its elasticity it might have been frozen.At once I looked round for the fur coat; it seemed to me that there was not a moment to lose if she was to be saved, as though we had been lost on an Arctic plain.I had to put her arms into the sleeves, myself, one after another.They were cold, lifeless, but flexible.Then I moved in front of her and buttoned the thing close round her throat.To do that I had actually to raise her chin with my finger, and it sank slowly down again.I buttoned all the other buttons right down to the ground.It was a very long and splendid fur.Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her feet.Mere ice.The intimacy of this sort of attendance helped the growth of my authority."Lie down," I murmured, "I shall pile on you every blanket I can find here," but she only shook her head.

Not even in the days when she ran "shrill as a cicada and thin as a match" through the chill mists of her native mountains could she ever have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate.Her very soul, her grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death.But when I asked her again to lie down she managed to answer me, "Not in this room." The dumb spell was broken.She turned her head from side to side, but oh! how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the very diamonds on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light of the one candle.

"Not in this room; not here," she protested, with that peculiar suavity of tone which made her voice unforgettable, irresistible, no matter what she said."Not after all this! I couldn't close my eyes in this place.It's full of corruption and ugliness all round, in me, too, everywhere except in your heart, which has nothing to do where I breathe.And here you may leave me.But wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am not evil."I said: "I don't intend to leave you here.There is my room upstairs.You have been in it before.""Oh, you have heard of that," she whispered.The beginning of a wan smile vanished from her lips.

"I also think you can't stay in this room; and, surely, you needn't hesitate...""No.It doesn't matter now.He has killed me.Rita is dead."While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the quilted, blue slippers and had put them on her feet.She was very tractable.

Then taking her by the arm I led her towards the door.

"He has killed me," she repeated in a sigh."The little joy that was in me.""He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall," I said.She put back like a frightened child but she couldn't be dragged on as a child can be.

I assured her that the man was no longer there but she only repeated, "I can't get through the hall.I can't walk.I can't.

.."

"Well," I said, flinging the door open and seizing her suddenly in my arms, "if you can't walk then you shall be carried," and Ilifted her from the ground so abruptly that she could not help catching me round the neck as any child almost will do instinctively when you pick it up.