The Flesh and the Devil (90 page)

         
'If you will be so kind as to take me to your husband,
senora,' he said punctiliously, 'we shall see whether he and I may be of any
service to each other'

         
On the walk back to Mother Salsa's house - which ended just
before Senor Oliver's unwonted impulsiveness surrendered to his more usual
prudence - he confided to Juana that he was a lawyer and had come from England
over a year ago on behalf of the family by whom his services were chiefly
retained. She sensed that he was chattering to distract his thoughts from
various uneasy suspicions that were beginning to crowd upon him as the tone of
his surroundings declined, but she gave him the appearance of attention.
Inwardly her brain was alternating between despair and incredulous hope; she
had not believed that she would succeed in finding the captain of the
San
Martin,
 
yet she had, and this
polite, pedantic Englishman had not so far refused her irrevocably. Yet why
should such a cautious man - and a lawyer at that - consent to take two
strangers on the ship he was hiring, no doubt at great cost? It would take more
than pleading to soften his regard for the letter of the law, so much was
certain, and if Felipe proved to know nothing of the man he was seeking....

         
'. . . and I should have been back after a year, but this
blockading has made it impossible. I have kept up the search after a fashion,
of course, but I fear the gentleman will not now be found, so the baronetcy
will lapse and the estate will go to Sir Gabriel's eldest daughter. Though
perhaps it is for the best, for the young man could hardly care for an estate
he has barely seen, and his cousins are very fond of it. Very. Ah - is the
house where you live much farther?'

         
'Just there, across the street.' Juana saw a twitch of
distaste cross his pale face as she pointed, and added urgently, 'Senor, if you
and Felipe — my husband - agree well together, would you allow us to sail with
you tomorrow? This place is not fit for him.'

         
The words echoed something that Tristan had once said to
her, but she paid no heed to the reverberation of memory. To her surprise, she
saw that the lawyer's eyebrows were puckered over the bridge of his
inappropriate nose.

         
'Felipe?
'
 
The mild voice had sharpened. 'That is Philip in English, is it not?'

         
Juana nodded bewilderedly, the hot colour rising in her
cheeks, and wondered whether the lawyer had gone mad. He was muttering to
himself, and then suddenly he frowned and shook his head determinedly.

         
'No, it could not be— an impossible coincidence, nothing
more! And yet, if it were. . . .' He broke off, looking at Juana with eyes that
did not seem to see her.

         
'I cannot resolve you yet as to that. Perhaps after I have
seen your -your husband, then —'

         
Sensing defeat, Juana nodded meekly. 'Very well, senor.
Please come this way.'

         
He followed her up the noisome staircase with a fine linen
handkerchief pressed to his nostrils, to the intense interest of Mother Salsa
and several of her lodgers. Juana could sense his growing alarm as he mounted
the stairs behind her, and prayed that his courage would not desert him before
she had brought him to the door. She heard him say, 'Senora, I beg — but before
he could finish she ran up the last few steps and put her hand on the latch.
'This is where we live, senor. My husband is inside. ' She pushed the door open
with a sensation like plunging headlong into a mill-race and was about to look
back to beckon the lawyer into the room ahead of her when some charged quality
in the silence within crossed the threshold to meet her.

         
Tristan had been standing facing the wall with arms
outspread; his head had been resting against the cracked plaster, his hands
were clenched fists, but instead of straightening fully when the door opened he
still stood where he was, rigidly tense as though he had been about to tear
down the walls with his bare hands, and his slanting eyes blank with disbelief.
For interminable seconds nothing and no one else existed, and then gradually
the sounds from the rest of the lodging-house filtered back raucously to fill
the silence.

         
Juana felt herself begin to tremble, an uncontrollable
shivering that started deep within her and spread through her whole body. Shock
had set that strange face into the chilling impassivity that was Tristan's
shield, but for that one instant she thought she had seen beneath the
harshness, the dry cynicism, to something that had looked like utter despair.

         
She heard the lawyer mutter something in a stifled voice
and turned dazedly to look at him, but when she did so it was to see him
staring with almost as much stupefaction as had been in Tristan's face when he
looked up and saw her. 'Senor Oliver—' she knew her voice was shaking but she
could not control it - 'may I introduce my husband, Felipe.'

         
The English lawyer closed his mouth and swallowed once or
twice, his long fingers plucking nervously at his handkerchief as though he was
not aware of what he did. 'Is it possible —' his Spanish accent was suddenly
more atrocious than ever - 'that I am addressing Master Philip Stanford— the son
of Master Michael Stanford, of Bournton in Devonshire?'

         
Tristan withdrew his gaze from Juana's. There was a very
slight smile on his scarred mouth, and as he turned his head a shaft of
sunlight through the shutters struck the springing hair at his temple so that
it glinted like name.

         
'At your service, sir.' His voice was light and almost
indifferent, as though he were not really attending. 'Although my father was a
resident in the town of Villenos at the time of his death. I am Philip Tristram
Stanford.'

         
Senor Oliver hurried forward and burst into a spate of
English that made Juana's head reel. She stood, dazed and shaking, by the door
as he wrung Tristan's hand between both his, asked a question or two which were
answered in a few brief words, and then said something that made Tristan
stiffen with an arrested look on his face and rap out sharp enquiry. The
resulting flood of explanation left her bewildered, and she could only close
the door belatedly and lean against it with her eyes dosed while she tried to
stop the quivering of her limbs.

         
It was almost as if the lawyer had known Felipe, she was
thinking, even before he asked his name; yet when he did so, Tristan had
responded with a lie. His quick brain may have seen a chance in the mention of
somewhere in England that was familiar to him; and he would have recognized the
Englishman's accent the moment he spoke, she thought wearily. For that one
instant she had thought that what she saw in his eyes was the thing she had
dreamed of, but he had moved from it so swiftly and begun lying with such
negligent conviction that she herself had almost believed what she knew to be
false. Now her imagined enchantment had faded as quickly as it had come, as she
waited with a sick heart for Tristan to make a mistake that would betray him to
the lawyer's undoubtedly astute brain; from the number of questions that he was
asking now, Senor Oliver did not intend to take a stranger's word upon trust.

         
It seemed to go on for hours, the lawyer's questions
becoming less terse and more excited, Tristan's answers remaining crisp and
unemotional. Juana could not under stand the strange lack of urgency in him;
his eyes, despite their brilliance, had a curiously stunned look. None of it
made sense to her, and she could not begin to grasp at its meaning through her
own confusion and disappointment. Once she tried to intervene, with a caution
to Tristan to sit down and rest his leg, but his attention only wavered from
the other man long enough to grip her crushingly by the shoulders and draw her
down to sit beside him as the talk began again.

         
She sat rigid within his grasp, breathlessly aware of the
relentlessness in his grip and the slights caressing movements of his
fingertips over the bones of her shoulder that made her skin throb; two or
three times she turned to him. in mute pleading, only to see him sitting
apparently motionless, his harsh face absorbed, no trace of the fierce claim
she felt in his touch showing in his expression.

         
The lawyer rose from the bed where he had perched so
dubiously, beaming. There was an air of elation about him now, a new decision
in his voice, as he brushed his cloak with a scrupulousness that was an
unconscious insult and bowed to Juana.

         
'Madam —' even the way he addressed her had changed, she
noticed— 'I must thank you for bringing me here. I did not think I could be
glad of the delay that held me in Spain, but I had rather go back late and in
triumph than promptly but without success. And my clients will agree with me, I
know.'

         
She stared. Had her husband told him that he knew the man
he sought for?

         
And how had a stranger known the name he had taken in
Villenos as Elena's guest from England? But before she could utter a word,
Senor Oliver had begun to take his leave.

         
'It is concluded then, and the
San Martin
 
sails tomorrow at dawn. Senor - Sir Philip - I
shall expect you.' An unexpectedly elfin smile crossed his scholarly face as he
moved towards the door, fading into polite enquiry as Juana started impulsively
to her feet, deaf to the strange way he had addressed Tristan.

         
'Senor - it is agreed? Will you allow us to come with you?'
Oliver blinked.

         
'Of course. You heard, did you not? I thought that you -'

         
'You spoke in English, and I did not understand.' The
relief was coursing through her veins like wine as she bade him a disjointed
farewell, too dazed to protest when she heard her husband dismissing the elder
man as if he were a wellmeaning but tedious servant. Then somehow, before she
was aware of it, Senor Oliver was gone and the door was closed behind him.

         
'What did you say to make him agree to take us? Sne spoke
quickly, to be before Tristan, her voice strained.

         
He was watching her intently, and the piercing gaze made
her feel like a butterfly on a pin. He had stared at her so in the Gistillo
Benaventee when he watched her for weaknesses that would enable him to trap
her, and the Sharpness of the memory made the blood mount in her checks.

         
'I told him who I am,' he answered levelly, as though he
were addressing an idiot child. 'My uncle is dead, and becuuse he had no son I
am the inheritor of his estates and title.'