Mountain Magic (11 page)

SHE took a long time over her dressing that night, and the General was looking quite impatient when she joined him at their table on the lantern-lit terrace for a pre-dinner cocktail.,

Philip Gresham was with him, and he interrupted the older man’s vague
cl
uckings of amazement because a young woman could take so long over the business of adorning herself for the evening, with a somewhat stunned expression of approval because the time had been so obviously well spent.

“You look wonderful, Toni! Absolut
el
y wonderful! Doesn’t she, General?”

The General, after a more comprehensive study of his niece, admitted with almost as much appreciation that she did. She was wearing the apricot chiffon dress, and with the lighted windows behind her, the star-spangled night sky above her, and the lantern light shining on her hair, looked arrestingly, glowingly lovely. A golden girl, Gresham thought, and was pleased because she made him think of a golden rose.

A golden rose rescued from drudgery. He liked to think that he was most certainly responsible for that! General Cunninghame smiled at his niece.

“Well, I’ll go so far as to say you could hardly look nicer, my dear,” he told her.

They dined in an atmosphere of balloons and
streamers, and beside every lady’s plate was a small gift that added to the general festivity of the evening. Afterwards, in the flower-decorated ballroom, the real business of the evening began.

A troupe of singers and accordion players came up from the village, and before general dancing began they entertained with some time-honoured songs and dances, and got the guests into a sufficien
tl
y relaxed and abandoned humour to see the rest of the evening through a golden haze of carefree enjoyment.

Toni caught sight of Marianne dancing with a lively young man from the village, who swung her round and had her laughing and as carefree as himself in a matter of minutes, although only a short while previously, while dining with Kurt at his table, she had been looking as if something not particularly pleasant was weighing on her mind, and as if Kurt himself had transgressed in such a way that merited her paying him
little
or no attention.

And then, as more and more couples took the floor, P
hilip
seized Toni and drew her out into the middle of it, where she had to submit to a flood of bottled-up admiration that pleased her less and less as she listened and danced, because Philip had oiled his tongue with rather a lot of champagne at dinner and his compliments struck her as very fulsome indeed.

“I’ve been looking forward to this evening all day,” he told her, “and now that at last it’s here I mean to make the most of it.” He abandoned the Austrian style of dancing and swung her into his arms. “By the way, what were you and Antoine doing just before lunch
?
I saw you disappearing in the direction of that wood at the side of the house that I like to look upon as our wood, because it was there in the early days of our acquaintance that we met on two occasions.”

Toni could tell by the suspicious tone of his voice that he was working up a resentful fit of dislike of the man from whom he liked to think he had rescued Toni, and in addition he obviously considered that having rescued her and restored her to the bosom of her family he had the right to take a further active
p
art in her future. She had known for some time that he was interested in her, and that his interest had grown from the moment that she entered his room in response to his summons on the chambermaid’s be
d
.

She would never forget the acute sensation of distaste her first encounter with him had filled her with, and because of it she knew she was never likely to feel anything but a quite unconquerable repugnance whenever he was anywhere near to her. And when he looked at her with a smouldering kind of possessive jealousy in his eyes she felt frankly revolted. She resented being held by him as if she belonged to him, and she wished her uncle wasn’t so obviously keen to throw them together.

“In a short while now your uncle will be
taking
you back to England with him,” he said, as if he knew all about the General’s plans for her. “He thinks you might like to do a spot of travelling before you settle down with him. There’s no doubt about it, you’ve had a rotten time in the past few months, and you could do with a
little
light relaxation. But what you really need is someone to take care of you.... Someone apart from an uncle, I mean
—”

Toni tried to withdraw from
him,
but he held her more tightly than before. His ever-bright blue eyes frankly caressed her.

“You’re not the type of girl to go wandering round the world with an elderly man like the General, who isn’t the most observant of men in some ways. You need someone to plan your moves for you, really think for you—someone with the
right
to look after you—”

“If you’re suggesting that I find someone and marry, I’m not interested in marriage,” she said stiffly.

“No?” His eyes laughed at her sceptically. “But, my sweet child, you’re astonishingly pretty, you know —especially in that dress!—and someone will want to marry
you
!”
He realised that she was looking past him over his shoulder, and whirled until he was able to catch sight of the hotel proprietor threading his way amongst the dancers. “But not that man!” he exclaimed with emphasis, as if he could read her thoughts with
ease.
“Antoine is the kind of man I would describe as a permanent bachelor. Pretty little English girls, even with rich uncles attached, are not in the least likely to interest him! Mademoiselle Raveaux, however, does interest him up to a point. He admires her, and she’s useful, and she’s in love with him. He has no objection to anyone like Marianne—quite the most beautiful woman in this room tonight—being in love with him. It flatters his ego, and he doesn’t have to feel afraid of her!”

Toni, who had not yet recovered from the moment when Antoine kissed her that morning, swallowed something in her throat.

“Why should he feel afraid of her, anyway?” she asked. “She can’t force him into a relationship he doesn’t desire. No woman could do that.”

Gresham’s eyes gleamed at her.

“You’re right there,” he agreed. “No woman could discover a softer side—a permanent softer side—to Monsieur Antoine. She might pique him a little by being unusual, but she wouldn’t make any more progress than that. One day he would unbend—the next she might not exist. He’s that kind.”

Toni stared hard at his shoulder, and although she felt the subject would be wiser not pursued, she had to pursue it.

“I don’t know why you should feel able to make such a confident statement as that,” she observed. “You hardly know the man.”

Once again his eyes gleamed at her, this time half pitifully.

“My poor child,” he returned, “a man can always assess another man’s potentialities. He knows when to cry ‘Beware!’—if a girl needs someone to cry ‘Beware’ to her. You’re a sensible little thing, I feel sure, so that isn’t in the least likely to be necessary...”

She wrenched herself out of his arms, and made an excuse to return to their table. Although he certainly drifted from table to table talking to his guests, Antoine made no attempt to approach her and claim the dance he had asked for that morning.

She began to feel hot with humiliation, and every time she accidentally encountered his eyes, the humiliation increased. Her uncle was obviously enjoying the evening, and he talked loudly and cheerfully. Philip watched her constantly, one moment almost gloating over her, the next betraying something like suspicion in his eyes.

At last Toni decided to fall back on the pretext that she was tired and escape from them both, and she made her way out of the ballroom while the dancing was still at its height, and Marianne had just persuaded her employer to circle the room with her for the third time.

Toni made her way up to her room and then changed her mind and returned to the ground floor of the hotel. Although she had no wrap, and the night air was always cool in the mountains, she went out on to the terrace and was about to descend into the gardens when someone accosted her.

“
Little
idiot!” said Kurt Antoine, grasping her by the wrist. “Do you want to catch a chill?”

Toni stood looking up at him, a bewildered feeling at the heart of her, a pale, lost look on her face.

“I—” she stammered, and then he let her go. He drew her back into the glassed-in verandah, led her to the far end of it and placed her in a chair at one of the small tables. He took out a cigarette and lighted it, ground out the match in an ashtray, and then spoke. He was looking heartrendingly handsome in his beautifully fitting dinner-jacket, and Toni was in no mood to have her heart rent about him just then. She knew it would have been better for her if she had escaped up to her room.

“I don’t know whether you are aware of it,” he said, “but I haven’t had my dance.”

She looked back at him with a coldness that was no reflection of the state of her inner feelings.

“I don’t remember that you asked me to dance,” she replied.

He drew thoughtfully at his cigarette, and then surveyed the glowing tip of it.

“You seemed to be doing very well with Mr. Gresham, so I didn’t bother,” he told her. “It would have been a pity to spoil your evening. By the way, does that young man usually behave badly after a
little
champagne? You seemed to be objecting to the way he was holding you.”

She flushed very slightly as his dark eyes returned disconcertingly to her face.

“You’re very observant,” she remarked. “But it was nothing. Nothing offensive, I mean.”

“Merely pressing home his claim to hold you even more possessively if he felt like it? But I thought you said you were not interested.”

“I’m not.”

He stood up suddenly and wandered along the terrace. Then he came back just as suddenly to where she was seated.

“I think you have to come to a decision about your future, haven’t you?” he suggested. “Either you go back to England with your uncle and settle down with him until you marry someone like Gresham, or you assert your independence and do something entirely different.”

“Such as what?” she asked.

He ignored the question for the moment.

“After all, you don’t have to become suddenly weak and dependent and fall in with the wishes of other people. When I first met you you were doing that, and you mustn’t return to a state of servitude. I think your uncle’s a very fine man, but he has his own interests and he can get along without you. There are other things in life that you can do that have nothing whatever to do with being a dutiful niece, or marrying a man who breathes champagne fumes down your neck when he’s dancing with you, and where his first attempt to establish friendly relations between you was hardly reassuring from your point of view.”

She knew the episode to which he was referring, wondered how he had got to know about it, and bit her
li
p hard.

He nodded as if he had received confirmation.

“So it rea
ll
y was an unfortunate beginning, and you wouldn’t have a great deal of confidence in the future, would you
?
Not the future of yourself and Mr. Phi
li
p Gresham!”

“I’ve told you, I’ve no intention of considering Philip Gresham seriously—even if he wanted me to do so,” she bit out angrily, “and as a matter of fact, he’s done nothing of the kind!”

“No; but he wi
ll
.”

She made a
li
ttle impatient movement with her hands.

“Do we have to talk abou
t
a
ll
this? It can’t be a very interesting subject for—for you!”

There was sti
ll
no one near them, and he continued to stand looking down at her with an intensity of expression on his dark face that bewildered and confused her.

“We’ll ignore the relevance or otherwise of that for the moment,” he said. “What I want to suggest is that you stay on here when your uncle leaves, and let him see that you can still be independent. Don’t return to the condition of mind you were in when I first met you. Don’t let these past few months count for nothing at all.”

She was so astonished that she simply stared up at him rather stupidly. There was no doubt about his earnestness. He was giving her advice to stay on at the hotel where he himself had not used her as well as he might, his preoccupation with her ranging from callous insistence on overwork to an occasional soft word and an unexpected kiss in the pine wood that morning.

From the hard, concentrated look on his face he had already forgotten that kiss, and the certainty made her wonder why she had risen up in revolt against him earlier.

She stood up, very slowly, and faced him.

“And if I was unwise enough to listen to you and to stay on here, what kind of a job would you have to offer me?” she asked.

She waited, her heart lurching against her ribs, a sensation as if her breath was suspended in her throat draining some of the colour out of her face, and he answered at once:

“We could find you one. Oh, I’m sure there are lots of jobs you could do here.” He was looking at her very hard, watching her hand groping for the back of her chair, gripping it. “Marianne could find you one—”

A voice spoke in the shadows behind them, triumphantly:

“And there you have it, Toni, my dear! Our friend Monsieur Antoine offers you your job back, or something similar
... you can stay on here as a barmaid, or perhaps he might find you a job in the kitchen! He or his
mistress
... you little idiot! Why do you even listen to him?”

Philip Gresham emerged from the shadows, face contorted with a mixture of fury and triumph. He looked with a particular kind of vicious triumph in
his
eyes at Antoine.

“Marianne could find her something! I daresay she could!
You
,
out of the goodness of your heart, could find her something! Wait until the General hears of this! He’ll probably give me permission to knock your block off—”

The General spoke, not very far away.

“I’ve already heard, Philip. But I don’t think you’re in a condition to champion my niece’s cause tonight. I should go to bed, and leave her to deal with the problem herself.”

His voice was very quiet, almost amiable, and Philip, who was swaying a little on his feet, looked at him in amazement.

“Go to bed, Philip,” the General repeated.

“B-but—”

“My dear boy, Toinette has coped with her own problems before, and the wisest thing we can both do is to leave her to cope with them agai
n
.” He smiled at the slender figure in the golden chiffon dress, and his smile said gently that he was very fond of her, that in future she could always look to him for assistance, but he had no intention of trying to direct her life or underlining Philip’s attitude. She must make some decisions herself.

Toni felt almost as amazed as Philip as she looked towards her uncle. His smile was very gentle—almost understanding—and he went up to her and squeezed her hands.

“If you want to come and be my housekeeper you can do so, my love. If you want to stay here you can stay. But listen to this chap, Antoine—just give him one small hearing. It’s possible you may not regret it, despite the fact that through him you once received a lump on the head the size, I believe, of a golf ball!”

He took Gresham by the arm and led him away, and Toni called helplessly after the General
.

“
But, Uncle—?”

Kurt Antoine said quietly, at her elbow:

“Go with them, if you want to. They are more your people than I am. Or so it seems very likely!” She was too confused to detect any bitterness in his voice. “But you have the right to make up your mind, and you’d better listen to me before you go to bed. In the morning we might both be viewing the world from a different standpoint.”

“What do you mean?”

His tone was so odd that she had to ask, although she had little hope that any proposition he made to her could affect the decision she had already arrived at. The decision to depart from the
Rosenhorn
the moment her uncle was ready to leave.

He did not remove his eyes from her as he repeated his previous offer.

“I suggest that you stay here and turn your back on the temptation to run away. Running away never did anyone any good. You were running away when I met you for the first time on that ledge in Switzerland —only on that occasion you were running away from yourself. Now you’re about to start running again, and I’m
asking
you to think well before you do so. Even your uncle agrees with me, I think, about that. So will you consider staying on here?”

A fierce kind of fury raged through her suddenly. He had nothing good to offer her, but he expected her to stay. For his own convenience he wanted her to stay, and when the time arrived and he could dispense with her services, she could start running in any direction she pleased.

“And this time, Monsieur Antoine, what would you suggest I do if I stay?” she asked bitingly. “Chambermaid’s work, as you’re short-staffed, or perhaps somewhat lighter duties in the office? Or would you like me to get back into that absurd outfit I was wearing at the time that I dropped the tray and smashed quite a lot of your glass? Was I such a draw that you can’t afford to do without me?”

“I’m not offering you anything along those lines,” he replied quietly.

“Then what, precisely, are you offering me?” She turned away before he could answer. “In any case, whatever it is I don’t want it,” with finality. “My mind is made up.”

In the same quiet voice he arrested her steps as she started to move away.

“That’s a pity, because it’s the one position that might have satisfied you, and from which you would certainly never have been allowed to run away. I wanted you to stay on as my wife
!”