第39章

"Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was back with me with the remark that Mlle.Therese knew her way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself.

Some little time afterwards I went to see that sister of mine.The first thing she said to me, 'I wouldn't have recognized you, Rita,'

and I said, 'What a funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for this house.' - 'Yes,' she said, 'and unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our country.I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita.Your life is no secret for me.'

"I was going from room to room and Therese was following me.'Idon't know that my life is a secret to anybody,' I said to her, 'but how do you know anything about it?' And then she told me that it was through a cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know.He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a girl.I got suddenly very furious.I raged up and down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door.I heard her say to herself, 'It's the evil spirit in her that makes her like this.' She was absolutely convinced of that.She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself.I was quite astounded.And then I really couldn't help myself.I burst into a laugh.I laughed and laughed; I really couldn't stop till Therese ran away.I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner.I had to pull her out by the shoulders from there.I don't think she was frightened;she was only shocked.But I don't suppose her heart is desperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and priests.Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner.I got away at last.I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after me.'I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,' she said.- 'Oh, yes.I know you are a good sister,' I said to her.I was letting myself out when she called after me, 'And what about this house, Rita?' I said to her, 'Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.' The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with her mouth open.I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady.But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable.Upon my word I think she likes to look after men.

They don't seem to be such great sinners as women are.I think you could do worse than take up your quarters at number 10.She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too."I don't know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Dona Rita's peasant sister was very fascinating to me.If I went to live very willingly at No.10 it was because everything connected with Dona Rita had for me a peculiar fascination.She had only passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough.

She was one of those beings that leave a trace.I am not unreasonable - I mean for those that knew her.That is, I suppose, because she was so unforgettable.Let us remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears.No wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the mere knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through the very rooms in which I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being with a great content.Her glance, her darkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room which most likely would be mine to slumber in.Behind me, somewhere near the door, Therese, the peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone and in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false persuasiveness:

"You will be very comfortable here, Senor.It is so peaceful here in the street.Sometimes one may think oneself in a village.It's only a hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King.

And I shall take such good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest."