Then she said,
“I have, of course, not said anything of this to my father. But he told me that this was what I was to say and he knew that the English would accept it. They would also understand why I have been brought up in a Convent.”
Sir John was contemplating what she had said and thinking that it was a typically brilliant idea on the part of Gavron Murillo.
He had always seemed to have an answer for every difficulty, but this was one he had not expected to happen.
Then he was aware that Melita was gazing at him in the same sort of scrutinising way which he remembered Gavron always used when he was contemplating a problem that had just been brought to him to solve.
“I thought,” Melita said, “that Papa would have told you all this, but perhaps he was too ill to do so.”
“He sent for me,” Sir John explained, “and told me that he wanted me to marry you and, because he had done so much for my father and myself, it would be impossible for me to refuse.”
“Even though you wanted to,” Melita enquired.
Sir John did not answer her and after a moment’s silence she went on,
“I can understand that you do not want to marry me and I have no wish to marry you.”
Sir John stared at her in sheer astonishment.
“You don’t want to marry me!” he exclaimed at once. “Then why did you consent to do so?”
Melita smiled.
“You knew my father. You know that what he says is always right, always very clever and always successful. Did you refuse him?”
Sir John laughed because he could not help himself.
“Of course not!” he replied. “He told me I must marry you because I owed him so much and so I naturally said ‘yes’.”
“Then what are we going to do about it?” Melita asked.
“I never expected to have this conversation with you,” Sir John said. “But, of course, because, as I say, your father has done so much for me and my father, although I had no wish to marry for a long time, I agreed. When I did so, I am sure that he died a happy man.”
“Papa was always happy when he got just what he wanted,” Melita said. “Like you I found it impossible to argue with him. When he told me to go to England and pretend that my father was an Englishman and make my family accept me, which, as he said he was quite certain that they would do as I am so rich, I obeyed.”
“Do you realise that your father has left you all his money and everything he possessed?” Sir John asked.
“Yes, I knew that before I left him and, when I had time on the ship coming here, I realised that I should be more than acceptable to any family simply because I am so rich,” Melita replied.
“Also you look, according to your father, exactly like your mother.”
“I do hope so. After all she was considered a great beauty and apparently there were a considerable number of different men she could have married.”
“Then why do you think she married your father?” Sir John quizzed her.
He knew as he spoke that the answer was because he was so rich.
“She loved him because he was so clever,” Melita said somewhat surprisingly. “She said once to my teacher that most men who had proposed to her she found, sooner or later, exceedingly boring. But where my father was concerned it was impossible to be bored and one was too breathless trying to keep up with him to have time for any feeling of admiration or love.”
Sir John stared at her.
“Is that what you would expect to find?” he asked.
“Of course. I find it difficult to believe that you are as clever as my father, while you will undoubtedly say that you do not expect me to be as beautiful as my mother!”
Sir John laughed.
He had never anticipated that he would be having this sort of conversation with a woman and certainly not with a young girl.
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“I would suspect that you are grinding your teeth and feeling infuriated at being caught in the matrimonial trap. But, of course, I understand that you could not refuse Papa when he was dying and as you said yourself you were very much in his debt.”
“That is true,” Sir John admitted.
“Well, I am under no obligation to you except that, because I loved my father, I want to do what he asked and he was absolutely convinced that you were the right man for me to marry. So I suppose I will have to marry you.”
She did not sound very excited or delighted at the idea.
Then Sir John said,
“I suppose we could both, if we so wished, turn our backs on our promises to your father and go our own way.”
There was a pause before Melita responded,
“I think that I would always feel that I had betrayed him and, wherever he is now, he will know whether I have obeyed him or disobeyed him.”
Sir John smiled.
“I think I should feel the same. He died believing that I was telling him the truth. Therefore, whether we like it or not we have to keep our honourable oaths and marry each other.”
“But I do not wish to be married like that,” Melita asserted. “Therefore I have an idea which I would like to tell you about.”
“Of course I will listen to anything that you have to say,” Sir John replied. “Your father said that you had your mother’s looks and his brain. If you have his brain, why should we worry? You have the answer as he had to every problem.”
Melita was listening to him with wide eyes.
And after a moment’s pause she said,
“I think, as we both dislike the idea of marrying, despite the fact that we have both given our oaths to Papa, it would be a mistake.”
“So what do you suggest?” Sir John asked.
“As I have his brain, I have thought of a way out,” Melita replied.
“I am listening,” Sir John answered.
Melita then looked over her shoulder as if to be quite certain that no one could overhear her.
Then she drew a little nearer to him on the seat on which they were sitting, before she said,
“This is what I was thinking about before I arrived and I hope you will listen to it.”
“I am all ears,” Sir John insisted.
CHAPTER FOUR
It seemed to Sir John a very long silence before she began to speak slowly and in a very soft voice,
“I had no idea who my father was,” she said, “until I was seventeen. Then my father thought, on my birthday, that it was time that I learnt the truth. Actually I think that he imagined I might at any moment leave the Convent.”
Sir John settled himself more comfortably on the seat.
He thought the way Melita was speaking was very attractive.
The more he gazed at her the more he realised that she was indeed exceedingly beautiful.
“What the Mother Superior told me,” Melita went on, “and what was later confirmed by my father, was that when he and my mother were together and he had fallen very much in love with her and she was very attracted to him, there was an uprising amongst the native people in the North of the country.”
She smiled at Sir John.
“There was also a great disturbance amongst those in the South,” she continued. “From one or the other there came a young leader who was determined not only to seize control of the whole country but also to drive out all the foreigners who for him were mainly the English, who had sent a Regiment to try to maintain order.”
Sir John merely nodded and she went on,
“They would have got much further if the English had not been of a smaller number than those against them. Leading the Northern part was a young Officer who was so efficient and so determined to conquer the whole country. Everyone was aware of him and thought that the English in Bangkok realised that he was more dangerous than anyone they had encountered before.”
She paused for breath.
“It was then,” she went on, “that my father thought that my mother
, being English, was in danger and he sent her to the Convent. He had the idea that the native Army would not do any harm to the Convent, which was very sympathetic in attending to the wounded and bandaging those who required it.”
Sir John was listening to her thinking that this was something he did not know, which had not exactly been in the history books, but which he found fascinating, knowing the country as he did.
“I think it was then,” Melita carried on, “because he was determined to give her all his money if anything did happen to him, that my father married my mother secretly and no one had any idea that they were anything more than friends. When things calmed down a little and there was a ceasefire, they were exceedingly happy.”
She sighed as she said,
“He adored her and she loved him. And from what I gather they were both blissfully happy when they were together.”
She stopped a moment before resuming,
“But because she was English and he knew that the English would disapprove, my father never said a word to anyone that he was married or that Lady Sternwood meant anything more to him than that he was beginning to have a connection to British industries and was prepared to help, if it was possible, anyone who was English.”
“I can understand that,” Sir John said, thinking how clever Gavron had always been in being exceedingly polite to anyone he came into contact with who was in his mind a business challenge.
“What happened,” Melita went on, “was that the English who were fighting against the Northerners were more successful than they had expected. For a while there was almost peace in that part of the country.”
Sir John sat listening intently and she said,
“By this time my father and mother were together whenever it was possible and, as you can well imagine, were both worried and delighted when they realised that she was having a baby.”
Melita gave a sigh as she spoke and looked out over the garden as if she was stepping back into the time before she was born and realised, as if she had been there, how thrilled her father and mother were at the idea of their child being born.
Sir John thought that to Gavron it must have meant someone, if it turned out to be a boy, who would carry on the marvellous businesses he had created for himself.
And, if it was a girl, she would be as beautiful as her mother.
“So what happened?” Sir John asked, feeling that Melita had almost forgotten him.
She gave a little jerk as if she had come back to the present from the past.
“No one knows exactly what started it again,” she said, “but the battle began to rage and increase day by day, month by month. Both the North and South of the country were determined to have the upper hand. The only thing in which they agreed was that the English should not in any way participate in their spoils.”
She shifted a little in her seat as if to make herself more comfortable.
Then she said,
“It was at that moment, because he was exceedingly nervous that his wife might be very upset by the number of casualties that were occurring every day, that he sent my mother to the Convent.”
She gave another deep sigh.
“They were delighted to have her and he was, as usual, very discreet as to why he was taking her there. He insisted that he was a friend of her family in England and had promised that he would look after her as her husband was taking part in the civil war.”
She stopped for a moment before she told him,
“He had invented the father when she first entered the Convent as a visitor simply because he thought that it was a mistake for anyone at that moment to know that he had an English wife.”
Sir John did not speak and she went on,
“But, as it all became more tense and she was with child, he made it clear that the father of the baby, which was not yet born, was an Englishman. They both agreed to this, my father told me.”
Melita smiled.
“It was only when she died bringing me into the world that he realised he would have to give the child a name. My mother had entered the Convent without her title and had only said that she was married to an English soldier.”
The birds were singing in the trees overhead, but Sir John only heard Melita’s voice as she said,
“At the same time as I was born, an Englishman who was much prized as a soldier of the British Army was killed and many of the English soldiers were withdrawn from the battlefield.”
Melita paused for a moment and then, as Sir John did not speak, she carried on,
“It was therefore easy as my father told me later for him to say that the lady he had been kind to in the Convent had been secretly married to the English Officer who had been so brilliant against the rebels in both the North and South.”
Melita gave another sigh.
“As my mother died in childbirth,” she continued, “it was not possible for her to say anything and the Mother Superior said that, as the Convent was frequently visited by the native people, it would be a mistake for her to declare publicly that she was married to a white man.”
There was silence before Melita went on,
“This of, course, suited both my mother and father. It made it even easier for him when my mother died.”
She paused for a moment.
“Living in the Convent I was not all that interested in people I could not see. Gavron Murillo was always extremely kind to me and brought me presents every time he visited. There were, as it happened, quite a number of children from different parts of the East.”
Sir John was still listening intently.
“I became great friends,” Melita continued, “with a girl from Greece whose parents were moving about and therefore found it more convenient to leave the child at the Convent than to take her with them. Mixed up with the native children were children from almost every nation.”
She smiled again.
“I cannot say that I missed the English,” she went on, “as I was obviously not particularly interested in them. It was only as I grew older that I began to wonder whether I was expected to become a nun or if I would go out into the world as many of the other children had done.”
“When did you learn that Gavron Murillo was your real father?” Sir John asked.
“You will not be surprised to know that he kept it a secret until I was very nearly grown up,” she told him. “I thought of him more as a Fairy Godfather than a human one because he was always so generous and I realised that the Convent was kept going almost entirely through the money he spent on them. They were so grateful that they almost curtseyed when he appeared. The fact that I was his protégée made things much easier and more comfortable for me.”
“Then eventually he told you the truth.”
“I was not at all surprised, in fact I was delighted,” Melita replied. “I had never met the English soldier, who they declared was my father and because I had never been to England I was much more interested in the East than anywhere else.”
Again she paused.
“The nuns were very intelligent. They told us of the world events and I was aware that the English were much respected in Thailand, except by the hostile rebels, and that Gavron, my real father, was almost the right-hand man to the King. It was difficult for me to learn anything about my mother or her family.”
She stopped speaking and Sir John nodded.
“That was because he did not meet any of them until he went to England,” she told him. “Even then, as he said jokingly, he was accepted only because he had gold in his pocket. But it told me very little about my mother’s antecedence or those I could rightfully call my relations.”
“It’s an extraordinary story,” Sir John said, “but go on. When did you learn that Gavron Murillo was actually your father and not, as you thought, a kind well-wisher?”
“As I grew older, I learnt instinctively how much my mother must have meant to him as his voice altered when he spoke about her. At times, when he described her beauty and talked of her,
there were tears in his eyes.”
She took a deep breath as she continued,
“I realised that he must have loved her very deeply. But I was not aware that I was the child of two people who had loved each other literally to distraction.”
She paused for a moment and then resumed,
“My father once said, ‘I knew when I married your mother that her family would be horrified that she should have married someone from the East. Someone whose skin was not the same colour as hers. Although they admired the enormous fortune I made, they were always convinced in their minds that I was of less consequence to the world than they were’.”
Sir John laughed as if he could not help it.
“That is the sort of thing that Gavron would say,” he remarked. “But when I knew him he would always let us contradict him when we said that he was brilliant and that his money could open every door from Buckingham Palace downwards.”
“I think he was too clever to believe you,” Melita said. “I knew from the way that the nuns who were French, English and German spoke of the native people that in their heart of hearts they despised them.”
There was a poignant silence for a moment before she went on,
“When my father came to see me a few months ago I knew that he was not well. As he was getting old, the lines were beginning to show on his face. But he was still very good-looking. I could understand even better than he expected me to do why my mother had loved him and why as a proof of that love – I had come into the world.”
There was a throb in her voice as she spoke which made Sir John realise how much her father had meant to her.
Almost as if he had asked the question, Melita said,
“You do understand that as Papa, as I thought of him, was the only man I was allowed to see except for the Priest who occasionally visited us, I thought him extremely handsome and very attractive as a man, as well as being my father.”
“I can appreciate your thinking,” Sir John replied. “I must have been six when I first saw him and I thought then that he was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. There was something about him which, despite his colour, made him seem like a leader who one instinctively followed.”
Their Search for Real Love Page 6