Love is for Ever (4 page)

“You would like something to drink, Martine?” he asked, and indicated the seat beside Jacqueline which he had just vacated.

But Martine slipped hand inside his arm and, with a careless smile at Jacqueline, drew him away towards the end of the room where the drinks were set forth on a polished

side table, and although he accorded her a slight, formal inclination of the head before he allowed himself to be led away Jacqueline had the feeling that he probably welcomed the interruption, and that he had merely been waiting for Martine to make her appearance.

At dinner Jacqueline found herself placed between the elderly Senor Montez and his nephew. The nephew was pale and rather earnest, a law student in Madrid, at present visiting his uncle; but the uncle, Jacqueline quickly decided, was charming. He had very white hair, and the manners of a
grand seigneur
and he seemed to find the English girl particularly appealing, with the result that he concentrated all his attention upon her during the meal.

He warmed her for the first time that day with words of appreciation about her father, and she gathered that he was not merely being polite, or seeking to please her, but that he had really been genuinely fond of her father, and had held him in high esteem. When she told him that she was merely staying on the island for a brief visit—and she had made up her mind that it would have to be brief, because the hospitality of anyone so little known to her as the Senora Cortina could not be taken advantage of—he said that that would not do at all, and that they must think up some means of keeping her.

“You must come and see me and my house,” he said. “If you are interested in antiques—” and she had told him about her method of earning a livelihood in England—“I have many things to show you that will interest you, many curios, and a vast collection of books. Your father and I attempted once to sort and tabulate them, but the task was beyond us.”

Jacqueline assured him that she would love to visit him, and looking along the table she noticed that the seating arrangements had been so ordered that Martine was left free to devote herself to Dominic, while his aunt should have been entertained by the elderly Senor Montez, and she herself engaged in conversation by the younger Montez. But as it was the young man allocated to her—and she realized that the conclusion of Dominic’s sentence, which she had not been able to catch before dinner, had been to the effect that he had thought it best to provide someone to take her off his own hands for the evening, in order that any plans he and Martine had formed beforehand should not be interfered with (or perhaps, simply, because he was so much afraid of being bored!)—seemed to have little to say to anyone, even his hostess, who did her best to think of topics which might interest him, while his uncle claimed the whole of Jacqueline’s attention.

Once or twice, while the long-drawn-out meal lasted, and the blaze of crystal chandeliers shone down upon them, Jacqueline noticed her host’s eyes looking towards her, and that tiny, inscrutable smile on his lips seemed to have acquired a touch of dry, genuine amusement.

After dinner Gilberto Montez did ask Jacqueline whether she would care to walk for a while in the garden, since the moon had risen and the night was unusually warm, and
Tia
Lola managed to persuade Senor Montez to play chess with her, which apparently he did frequently when spending the evening with the Cortinas.

But the party broke up early, and Jacqueline said goodnight to her new Montez acquaintances, and then while her hostess walked with them to their car, and Dominic and Martine appeared to have withdrawn altogether, slipped out once more into the garden for a final saunter in the sweetness of the night before retiring to her room and to bed.

She found the huge, square patio enchanting at that hour, and the scents that were floating on the softest of breezes were intoxicating. The moonlight cast inky black shadows across the flagged paths, and silvered the high white surrounding walls so that they were unbelievably pure and dazzling against the star-studded night sky.

She was a little cold, but the novelty of walking out of doors at this late hour of the evening, at a season of the year when in England fires were still glowing indoors, and with nothing round her shoulders save a gauzy, sequinned stole, was so much a novelty that she hesitated to cut the experience short. And then a voice behind her said:

“You are being unwise, Miss Vaizey. If you wish to stay out here you should fetch a coat.”

“Oh!” Jacqueline exclaimed, and turned and looked up into the face of Dominic Errol.

He smiled through the white light in a way she thought a trifle mocking.

“So your elderly conquest has departed, has he?” he enquired. “And poor Gilberto had little or no opportunity to make an impression this evening! But I think you did permit him to walk with you for a while here in the garden, didn’t you?”

“Wasn’t that what you planned?” she asked, looking up at him without any self-conscious fluttering of her eyelashes.

“Was it?” He smiled and lit a cigarette. “Miss Vaizey, I’m more than ever certain that I didn’t meet you when you were here ten years ago!”

She turned away, and all at once her small face looked a little distressed. She was tired, she felt very strongly that she was amongst strangers, and that even Senora Cortina, when she met her, would be unable to persuade her that she had done the right thing in coming out here from England. Senora Cortina had been kind, but there were some kindnesses one should ignore, and this was one of them. The kindness of someone like Mr. Maplethorpe, who permitted her to live cheaply in the tiny flat above his shop, was something she should have clung on to, especially now that there were absolutely no ties for her on Sansegovia.

“Is anything wrong?” Dominic asked, more sharply, bending his head towards her a little in an attempt to look into her averted face.

“No—no,” she assured him, and averted her face still more. “Only I—I have been wondering whether—whether it was a wise thing to come here ...”

“And why should it not be wise?” he wanted to know softly.

“Oh, no real reason,” looking down at her hands that were clutching at the ends of her stole, “only I—I can’t help remembering that only a few weeks ago I was planning to come and live here with my father! He—I—” She broke off, and swallowed something in her throat.

“You are tired,” he said, and his voice was even more soft, and suddenly rather gentle, “and naturally you are missing your father. I did not think it wise to mention him to you when you arrived, because that might have caused you distress. But of course I do realize that coming here where he lived for so many years, and where you once stayed with him yourself, you are bound to recall—to feel nostalgic about that other visit of yours.”

“Yes,” she admitted, and bit her lip. Then she looked up at him in surprise—surprise at the warmth and understanding in his voice— although her eyes flickered over his face doubtfully. “All the same, it was kind of your grandmother to invite me here,” she told him, and there was real gratitude in her own voice. “I am only sorry that my arrival coincided with her being so unwell.”

“She will be better tomorrow,” he assured her. “And tomorrow she will be anxious to see you.”

“I—I am looking forward to meeting her again.”

“Then you do remember her?” he said.

“Oh, yes.” She smiled suddenly in the silvery light. “I remember her perfectly, and I remember the only occasion on which I took tea with her. She was so kind, and although I was only twelve at the time I have never forgotten her kindness.”

“I should imagine that almost anyone would have been kind to you when you were twelve,” Dominic remarked looking down at her as if there was something about her that intrigued him.

“I assure you that at that age I was completely insignificant.” And then they heard Martine’s voice calling clearly: “Dominic! ...
Dominic!
...” and her voice hardened and grew a little cold as she added: “So insignificant that I won’t take up your time talking about me as I was! Goodnight, Mr. Errol!”

But he caught at her arm as she turned to leave him, and his fingers felt strong and virile against her bare flesh.

“If there is anything you want at any time—you will be sure to ask for it?” he said. “Anything you wish to do, anywhere you wish to go—you will be sure to let me know about it?”

“You are very kind,” she replied, but her cool upward look had a tinge of the mockery that had been in his own look when he discovered her there in the garden. “But I wouldn’t dream of trespassing upon your time, Mr. Errol, and I shall be quite capable of seeing all I want to see by myself once I have been here a little while and know my way about.”

“In Sansegovia young women of your age do not explore on their own,” he told her a little sternly.

“No?” She felt that his blue glance was sparkling a little with something that might have meant he was issuing to her a kind of challenge, and just at that moment the challenge amused her. “But I think you are referring to young
Spanish
women, Senor Cortina, and I—I am English!” She added, softly:
“Buenas noches, senor
!”

As she fled towards the house she thought she caught a glimpse of Martine’s golden dress glittering at the edge of the lawn, and Martine’s voice sounded more impatient as she called again:

“Where are you, Dominic?”

But by the time Jacqueline reached the house she had not heard Dominic call an answer.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning, about eleven o’clock, Jacqueline received her first summons to the Senora Cortina’s apartments.

The senora, somewhat to her surprise, was up and dressed and sitting in a straight-backed chair to receive her. The chair was richly carved and looked as if its framework was ebony, while the cushions were a very rich crimson. Against them the ivory pallor of the little old lady in a gown of brocade and velvet was almost startling. She still wore a mantilla, and her eyes were as dark and as wonderful as ever, but the silvery hair was very thin and wispish, and the hand that rested on the silver head of a slender ebony cane looked almost as clawlike as a skeleton’s.

Jacqueline was shocked because ten years had produced

such a profound change in the Senora Cortina, and she realized that she must be very old. Her room looked very beautiful and Spanish, equipped with little occasional tables encrusted with mother-of-pearl, other straight backed chairs as beautifully carved as the one in which she sat enthroned, rare ornaments, and a few personal knick-knacks. The windows stood open on to a balcony which overlooked the garden, and one of the greenest of the lawns, and shady trees overhung the lawn and cast a veil of shadow. In bright sunlight there were beds of vivid-hued flowers, including roses, and a high white arch facing the windows was smothered in a positive tumult of clematis and jasmine.

“Sit down, my dear,” said the Senora Cortina, indicating a rather low stool drawn up close to her chair. “If you sit there I can see you really well, and I am very anxious to see you after all this time. You have,” she remarked, with a strangely sweet smile, “grown into a very attractive young woman!”

“Thank you,” Jacqueline replied, actually blushing a little at the compliment. “And thank you,” she added, “for inviting me to Sansegovia.”

“It was your father’s home for so many years that I felt you should come and see again the place where he labored so conscientiously,” the Senora Cortina told her. She was studying Jacqueline all the time she spoke, and very intently. “There never was an infant he failed to take an interest in if it developed something unpromising, or an old woman he failed to visit if she could not visit him. Indeed, the young and the old on the island will miss him.”

“But, Dr. Barr—Dr. Barr will take his place very adequately, I should think,” Jacqueline found herself murmuring.

The old eyes looked, she thought, a little skeptical. “Dr. Barr is young, and the young have new methods as well as new medicines. They also have not the patience that such a man as your father found indispensable in his dealings with some of the simpler minded of our people here on Sansegovia. But Dr. Barr will have time to prove himself—we shall see!” she said.

Jacqueline smiled at her. Such words of praise offered so unstintingly in the case of her late father’s memory were nectar and ambrosia to her just then.

“It didn’t seem quite real to me that I wasn’t going to stay at the bungalow when I got here,” she confessed to her hostess, with a kind of engaging simplicity. “But Dr. Barr, I understand, lives there now.”

“Yes.” The old head nodded several times, and the other frail white hand crossed itself above the one that was resting on the head of her cane. “The place will be full of memories for you, child, when you see the inside—
if
,” she corrected herself, “you ever do see the inside—but such personal possessions as your father had collected around him that were not sent on to you in England have been carefully stored away here to await your arrival. Any time you wish to do so, my dear child, they are yours to sort.”

“Thank you,” Jacqueline barely whispered. “That was kind of you,
senora
.”

“Nonsense.” The old eyes plainly liked resting on her. “Your father and I got to know one another very well throughout the years, and I miss him now that he is gone. He was much younger than I, and yet I am the one who lingers on and causes occasional perturbation, and constant inconvenience, to members of my family.” A faintly whimsical smile flitted across the parchment-like face, and then abruptly she introduced a fresh topic of conversation. “My grandson met you when you came off the steamer yesterday, and
Tia
Lola saw to it that you are comfortably housed? Your room is as you like it, and you have everything you want?”