第78章

I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck.From the way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane;and I felt greatly refreshed by my company during the day.

Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic.Then I dropped in at the cafe and Madame Leonore's loud "Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!" pleased me by its resonant friendliness.But I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink rather difficult to bear.That man and that woman seemed to know something.What did they know? At parting she pressed my hand significantly.What did she mean? But I didn't feel offended by these manifestations.The souls within these people's breasts were not volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders.Neither had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the fine world that wants only to get on.Somehow they had sensed that there was something wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of grins at my expense.

That day on returning home I found Therese looking out for me, a very unusual occurrence of late.She handed me a card bearing the name of the Marquis de Villarel.

"How did you come by this?" I asked.She turned on at once the tap of her volubility and I was not surprised to learn that the grandee had not done such an extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person.A young gentleman had brought it.Such a nice young gentleman, she interjected with her piously ghoulish expression.

He was not very tall.He had a very smooth complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny black moustache.Therese was sure that he must have been an officer en las filas legitimas.

With that notion in her head she had asked him about the welfare of that other model of charm and elegance, Captain Blunt.To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt.But he seemed very much interested in his surroundings, looked all round the hall, noted the costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver statuette holding up the defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs, and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the most excellent Senora Dona Rita de Lastaola.The question staggered Therese, but with great presence of mind she answered the young gentleman that she didn't know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was her property, having been given to her by her own sister.At this the young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned on his heel, and got back into his fiacre.Why should people be angry with a poor girl who had never done a single reprehensible thing in her whole life?

"I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister." She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of sighs and this was the hopeless kind) and added reflectively, "Sin on sin, wickedness on wickedness! And the longer she lives the worse it will be.It would be better for our Rita to be dead."I told "Mademoiselle Therese" that it was really impossible to tell whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I wasn't really very much shocked.These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese.

One got used to them.They were merely the expression of her rapacity and her righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my asking her whether she had any dinner ready for me that evening.

"What's the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur," she quizzed me tenderly."You just only peck like a little bird.Much better let me save the money for you." It will show the super-terrestrial nature of my misery when I say that Iwas quite surprised at Therese's view of my appetite.Perhaps she was right.I certainly did not know.I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment.

The new young gentleman within Therese's horizon didn't surprise me very much.Villarel would travel with some sort of suite, a couple of secretaries at least.I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know that the man had been (very likely was still)Captain General of the Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political (and domestic) influence at Court.The card was, under its social form, a mere command to present myself before the grandee.No Royalist devoted by conviction, as I must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning.I put the card in my pocket and after dining or not dining - I really don't remember - spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing thoughts of tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel.From time to time I looked at the dummy.I even got up once from the couch on which I had been writhing like a worm and walked towards it as if to touch it, but refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair.By and by Therese drifted in.It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed.She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which began with the words: