by Jane Arbor
As if to underline his role of guide he began to point out details of the panorama laid out before them, pinning her attention to one or two landmarks and giving her bearings upon them. Once, when she repeatedly failed to follow his pointed direction, he stood directly behind her in order to level his sight with hers. His left hand closed about her upper arm while his right gently tilted her head to where he wanted her to look.
“Oh - there? Yes, I see. You must think me stupid -” The few words had come cracked and rough from her throat and she broke off, too aware of his limbs closely aligned to hers from the shoulder to knee; longing to yield to the dangerous make-believe that if she allowed herself to relax against him the light touch of his fingers upon her hair might turn to a caress....
With every nerve taut, she moved too abruptly from his hold and saw the quick glance he slanted at her before he said: “You’ve had enough, I see. Well, I daresay young Haroun won’t be sorry to get to bed -” And turning, he led the way towards the narrow stairs.
She followed him down them, surefooted enough until, a few treads from the bottom, a speck from the lime washed walls flicked into her eye, causing her to stumble blindly downward as the tiny corrosive pain pricked intolerably at her eyeball.
Mark whipped about in time to make his body the rock on which she was able to steady herself. But as she made to rub at her watering eye he snatched down her hand.
“Lime? Then don’t rub it. Leave it to wash itself clear.”
She nodded, letting the tears come, then blinked her eyelashes in rapid experiment. “It’s all right now, though I was blinded for a moment. Let’s go on.”
“Just a minute -” She remained a prisoner the one tread above him which brought their heights level, while he dabbed with his handkerchief at her wet cheeks. He did it gently enough. As if, she thought with a touch of chagrin, he were tidying up a child’s traces of tears. He even had a cool air of standing back to survey the result. And yet, a split second before he kissed her, somehow she knew that he would...
Her lips fluttered once before she forced them to set unyieldingly against the pressure of his mouth. Whatever his impulse of the moment, it could not be the one she craved, and at all costs he must not realize how pitifully vulnerable she was.
He straightened. “Must I apologize for that?”
She said shakily: “Well, it wasn’t- necessary, was it?” He shrugged. “Nor welcome, evidently. I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, you know. It was merely my clumsy English version of a gallant Latin gesture of consolation which, not so long ago, I saw you accept with - Well, at least without open resentment, shall we say?”
Emma’s cheeks flared. She knew he was recalling the kisses Ramón had showered so suggestively upon her bruised hand. “That’s not fair -!” she began in protest.
Surprisingly enough, he agreed. “No, it wasn’t. And I apologize again for deluding myself that the circumstances were at all the same - in any particular. So forgive it and forget it, won’t you? It doesn’t have to embarrass you or mean a thing. Meanwhile, you’d better give me your hand for the rest of these steps.”
As she expected, he had already regretted the impulse to kiss her and wanted the incident closed. So ought she - and yet knew that she ached to live the bittersweet of the experience again.
CHAPTER SIX
EMMA fully expected to be called to a reckoning with Leonore. But after a bad night, she was unprepared for the earliness of the summons when it came - before her own breakfast and before she had had a chance to see Pilar. She felt drained and subtracted from herself and she would have given much for time in which to regain her poise and her conviction that in loving Mark Triton unasked and in secret she had injured no one but herself.
Leonore was still in bed, and after a curt: “Yes, I wanted to see you. Wait, please —” she continued for some minutes to open and read her letters while sipping at her cafe au lait.
Emma stood waiting, determined not to brook a rebuke by taking a chair uninvited. And when Leonore flung at her abruptly: “Well, perhaps you will be good enough to offer an explanation for your extraordinary conduct last night?” she saw the futility of wasting time by pretending she did not understand the charge.
She said quietly: “If you are referring, señora, to my having gone out with Mr. Triton, certainly I can explain that. He came to the villa to call upon you —”
“He said so?”
The question had cut in unexpectedly and Emma had to check while she considered it. “Not in so many words, perhaps,” she went on. “But I know he heard from Horeb that you were out, and as he must have known that I was certain to be here, I suppose he came to find me in order to see if I knew when you might be back.”
“He asked you where I was? Did you tell him?” This time anxiety, if not alarm, sounded in Leonore’s tone. It was clear that her other question had sought reassurance that Mark had expected to find her at home, and, by these. two, she betrayed her fear that by some means he might have learned where she had gone and with whom.
Emma’s lashes briefly brushed her cheeks. “You hadn’t told me where you were going, señora. And when Mr. Triton heard that I should be dining alone he very kindly suggested he should fulfil a promise he had once made - to show me some aspects of Moorish life which he had warned me against trying to explore for myself. He asked me to dine with him as the guest of his friend, the Shereef Mulay Kassem.”
“And you accepted with something more than alacrity, I daresay?”
“No, I refused on the score that I oughtn’t to leave Pilar. But on hearing that she was already asleep, Mr. Triton made nothing of that as a reason for my refusal, and when I had asked Ayesha to listen for Pilar, he took me to dine with his friend, as I have said. And as I expect Ayesha will have told you, he brought me back well before midnight, and, in the meanwhile, Pilar hadn’t roused.”
“I see. You felt yourself to be adequately chaperoned by the patriarchal Kassem and exonerated from your responsibility for Pilar since she didn’t happen to wake? But did you ever question, on the one hand, how complacent I might be about the outing? Or, on the other, just how much your eagerness to step into my place with him for an evening might cheapen any respect Mark may have had for you until now?”
Emma’s knuckles whitened as her nails dug deep into her palms. “If I questioned the first, señora, I should have concluded that Mr. Triton would not have invited me if he thought you could misunderstand his motives in doing so. That made it his business and yours. And if I questioned the second —” Emma paused, choosing her words - “I should have been quite sure whose business that was. Neither yours nor his, but mine! What’s more, I think I have the right to be believed when I repeat that I did not accept eagerly at all.”
For all their brilliance and focus Leonore’s eyes went narrow. “No, but you went, didn’t you?” she claimed. “And if you cannot realize what could be made of your driving alone with Mark at night, let me tell you that among our friends there are a dozen scandalmongers ready to snigger over the idea that he may be amusing himself on the side with my sister-in-law’s little English companion. Do you imagine that I find that agreeable?”
Emma said, doggedly: “I’m sorry if you feel I have embarrassed you, señora. But as I’ve told you, I am convinced Mr. Triton would not have asked me if he thought doing so would compromise you in any way. And you can rest assured that even the risk won’t be incurred again.”
“I hope not,” Leonore allowed grudgingly. “I meant to point out that I would not tolerate a repetition of any attempt, however inept, to poach Mark Triton’s attention. But if you realize already that you have been gauche, that is just as well. It guarantees that you won’t repeat it. All the same one wonders what may have happened in the course of your evening to bring you to your senses? Did you, perhaps, try to make the most of your brief opportunity, only to be snubbed for your pains?”
For all her resolve to betray nothing of her feelings to thi
s woman, Emma winced at the gibe. “Please, señora -!” she began.
Leonore’s smile was unexpected. It was also malicious. “So! Evidently one must not inquire into an experience so pride-searing as to determine you that ‘the risk won’t be incurred again’, and certainly not so soon or in as full view as, for instance, at the Flower Ball tonight. Which brings me directly to the other matter I wished to speak about -I have arranged for Ramón Galatas to act as your particular squire and partner for the evening. I ought to have told you earlier, perhaps. But if Mark has somehow contrived to wound your pride, you should find it doubly easy to be particularly nice to Ramón.”
It was the opportunity for protest which Emma had been waiting for. She said stiffly: “I am sorry, but I would prefer not to be partnered conspicuously by Señor Galatas. Until now I have managed not to protest against your efforts to link us together. But I would like you to know now that I don’t find him particularly congenial and I am quite sure that he is not at all attracted to me. So as Pilar and I had expected to go to the Ball with the freedom to choose our own partners from among the friends we have made at the English Club, I’d be very grateful if we could still do this.”
Leonore’s tawny eyes snapped. “Are you defying my choice of partner for you?”
Emma said quietly: “I hope you won’t read it as defiance. It is simply that I don’t care to be thrust on a man whose affections are obviously not for me.”
Silence. Then: “Very well,” Leonore said, her lips tight. “I acknowledge the obvious - Ramón does love me. But can’t you see how this abject devotion embarrasses me with Mark? I’d have thought that was obvious too!”
“It became so - when Pilar explained it to me,” murmured Emma.
“You have discussed my affairs with Pilar?”
“Only in so far as they touched me. Pilar guessed that I did not care for being linked with Ramón and she asked my indulgence for the situation as she saw it.”
If Leonore took any warning from an emphasis Emma had not been able to resist, she gave no sign. “Yet when I ask the same,” she countered swiftly, “you turn stubborn and unco-operative! Why should it hurt you to act in concert with me when Ramón’s adoration threatens to stir up an ugly scene, embarrassing to everyone?”
“Because it’s a ruse,” returned Emma evenly, “in which I don’t care to be involved.”
“Bah! The English can always fit a moral code to their every reluctance! Surely it is a very little thing to expect you to smile and to appear to acquiesce graciously when I am forced to draw off some of Ramón’s heat from myself to you? I do it for the sake of peace, and I have never involved you in any but a playful way.”
“But if —” this time Emma allowed her pause to make its own emphasis - “if Ramón’s attentions embarrass you unduly, would it not equally make for peace and be kinder to him in the end, if you sent him away, señora?” “And took the responsibility if he should put a bullet through his brain ?”
“Need even the unhappiest of love affairs end so?” queried Emma dryly.
“All the same, with a man of Ramón’s passion, I cannot take the risk. He has loved me single-heartedly for a very long time, and though he knows he must take his dismissal when I marry, I can reward him a little and break his fall, as it were, by allowing him to see me sometimes. Though, of course, only here at the villa and strictly en famille.”
The sharp calculation of the glance which accompanied the last phrase did not escape Emma. But when she said nothing, Leonore went on: “And so, now that I have established the innocence of my motives, I am afraid that I must insist that you go along with me when I arrange my personal affairs without real hurt to you or harm to your reputation.”
“ ‘Insist’ is a very strong word, señora.”
“I used it advisedly, I assure you. For instance, if you decide you cannot meet me anywhere in this charity towards Ramón, what is to prevent my giving Pilar a very different version of last evening from the one I have accepted from you?”
Emma stared, taking the full impact of Leonore’s hostility before she took her meaning. And Leonore continued: “Pilar has grown fond of you in a very short time, and I do not really want to disillusion her. But supposing I told her that, last night, you made the most of the opportunity offered by our absence and by Mark’s disappointment at finding me out when he called? That you invited yourself out with him. That, in the course of the evening, you threw yourself at his head, and that he has begged me ruefully to see that no chance thrusts him tête-à-tête with you again ? ”
“You would not dare!” Emma almost choked on the words. “And - and if you did, Pilar would never believe you!”
“Would she not?” Leonore’s delicate brows arched. “I admit it is a fantastic story, crudely put, and I certainly have not decided to tell it. But if I did, I could make it sound infinitely less bald. And then whom do you think Pilar would believe?”
“She would have to believe the truth!”
“And yet I think she would believe me, whom she has loved for far longer than she has liked you. It can hardly have escaped you that, for Pilar, I have no feet of clay. But you could still reveal some. So if you would rather she did not hear that you have tried to poach my fiancé, perhaps you would like to think again about accommodating me over Ramón?”
Leonore had the advantage and was riding it easily, leaving to Emma three choices, all equally distasteful. She could acquiesce in the matter of Ramón. She could dare Leonore to do her worst and to risk Pilar’s loss of faith in herself. Or - “You make it very difficult, señora, not to ask you to accept my resignation from my post,” she said.
Leonore shrugged. “That is open to you, of course. But if you leave without notice I shall sue you for breach of contract. And even if you work out your period of obligation to me, I shall still feel free to tell Pilar what I please. It could be a very uncomfortable month for you - However, I refuse to accept your resignation for twenty- four hours. That will give you time to decide whether you are not making a great deal too much of a mere bagatelle.” “And, in the meanwhile, I shall not be singled out by Señor Galatas?” asked Emma formally.
Again Leonore shrugged. “To meet you, I shall try to keep tonight’s party general. And if I hear no more from you tomorrow I shall leave it to you to explain away last evening in any way you like to Pilar. Now please go, as it is time Ayesha drew my bath. ”
Emma went gladly enough and with only one thought in her mind. As soon as possible she must fortify Pilar with the truth about her last night’s chance outing with Mark. If she decided she must desert the girl by resigning tomorrow, the truth might not be proof against Leonore’s scurrility, she knew. But at least she should hear Emma’s own version first.
As Emma had expected, Pilar’s unclouded faith accepted the story without demur except a small worry to what Leonore might say. But when Emma, without enlargement, told her that Leonore already knew, she was content to believe that it had all happened as simply as Emma said. Besides, her physical fever gone, she was already plunged into a mental one of excitement over the Ball. And Emma was glad enough to shelve the future for a few hours in order to enjoy with her the last occasion which they might be going to share as real friends.
Ramón drove the two girls up to The Mountain in Leonore’s car while Mark took Leonore in his own. Lady Bysshe’s villa stood high, a near-mansion in the Spanish style surrounded by formal gardens and walled grounds richly wooded with cork, cedar, hibiscus and palm. Tonight, the blaze of light and colour was concentrated on the three dance-floors laid out over the wide lawns and, by contrast, the more softly-lighted avenues were mysterious and inviting.
The posy bower itself - the important centre-piece of the evening - had been cunningly arranged so that every facet of its colour was reflected in the waters of an ornamental pool, itself ceaselessly fretted by the play of its fountain. The bower was based on the mounting tiers of a rockery which offered natural “shelves” for the posies
kept fresh in well-concealed boxes of damp moss. Here there were candles, a hundred or more. But they would not be lighted until the ladies came for their posies and made their choice of partners for the Posy Dance.
The girls’ first task, on arrival, was to find their own flowers, labelled according to numbers allotted to them on their invitation-cards. As their tickets had been bought together these ran consecutively, so that Emma’s posy was next to Pilar’s and Leonore’s was near by. And as they turned to thread their way back through a queue of laughing girls, all on the same errand, Pilar breathed in ecstasy: “Oh, Emma, is it not exciting and lovely and and a little frightening, too?” Which made Emma wonder again about the “not quite a stranger” for whom Pilar was looking so ethereal tonight.
On the dance floor, Emma was claimed almost at once by a young acquaintance from the English Club. But she knew him well enough to suggest that they should not dance until Pilar was partnered too, so the three of them stood together, watching the first couples take the floor.
After a few minutes, Pilar protested that she did not mind being left alone. But at that moment Emma was oddly aware that the purpose and direction of an approaching stranger was aimed at Pilar, and sensed that Pilar knew it, too. And knew it, moreover - as one glance at her happy face showed - for a brief fear removed, a sweet expectancy fulfilled. Though Emma had never seen this clean-limbed young man with the turbulently curly hair before, it was quite clear that he and Pilar were no strangers to each other. Yet where could they possibly have met?
The boy’s hand went out in eager greeting. But when Pilar gave him hers something about the hesitancy with which he brushed her fingertips with his lips told Emma that he was unused to that form of gallantry. He would have preferred to close his strong brown fist in a pump- handling grip on Pilar’s hand. ... Why, thought Emma in a flash of intuition at sight of his open, freckled face, he is not a Spaniard. Nor Tangier-bred. He is English or American - one of us! But that only served to deepen the mystery of an acquaintance of which she was sure Leonore knew as little as she did herself.