by Jane Arbor
As he levered himself from the support of the door and crossed towards Emma, she saw that he had been drinking, and she wished that Ayesha had found a diplomatic excuse for sending him away. Humouring him, she told him quietly: “No, Señora de Coria is not in, and she said nothing about expecting you back. Nor that she had had a telegram from you. Did you ask Ayesha whether one has been received at the house ? ”
“I sent one,” he said vaguely, but broke off to frown and shake his head. “Or did I? Perhaps I meant to send it and then did not. Me” - he tapped himself in the chest - “before I take a sip of wine I compose a message which will intrigue and excite my lovely Leonore. But there was fiesta last night for my leaving, and today more fiesta among those who gather to see me off —”
And evidently, was Emma’s unspoken comment, quite enough fiesta for you to prevent your remembering whether you had announced your return or not! As an excuse to get Horeb or Ayesha into the room and ultimately to be rid of him, she asked him whether she should inquire about any message Leonore might have left for him.
But he only waved an expansively tolerant hand. “No matter. Leonore will come back and I shall wait for her until she does. Meanwhile, little English Emma, you will not refuse to salute my good fortune with me?”
Though she was determined not to keep him company until Leonore returned, Emma laid hold on enough patience to say: "I'll certainly congratulate you, if you’ll tell me what your good fortune is.”
“Congratulate? But that is not enough. You and I must celebrate! Ah —” his eye roved towards Leonore’s array of wines - “you will drink with me, Emma, in order to salute me? Me, Ramón Luis Calliente Galatas, the poorest cast-off of a great family, who finds himself heir to his richest uncle, inheriting the whole income from a famous wine business in Jerez and a casa within its own acres on the Costa del Sol? This is no little thing to make fiesta about, I think?”
Emma gasped. “Was - was this the news you had for the Señora?”
“What else ? It is not enough, you would say?”
“Of course it is enough! And - and, to me at least, a complete surprise —”
But Ramón appeared set upon pursuing one idea at a time. “If it is not enough to change everything between us,” he challenged, belligerently, “to enable Leonore to marry me without fear of the future, to make it possible for me to give her everything she can desire, then tell me what is enough? Tell me, if you please?”
Emma said faintly: “It - it should be. But she is going to marry Mark Triton, not you, Ramón.”
His face darkened. “Marry the Englishman! When she loves me? When, in her heart, she has always loved me, in spite of Jaime’s savage will which has forced her into this arrangement of convenience with Triton? We are of the same blood and temperament, she and I - passionate and fiery of heart. You cannot believe that she could prefer anything about him, except his wealth, to me?”
“Please - I'd rather not discuss the Señora’s affairs.”
“But I will discuss them. For they are mine, too, by right of my adoration which she will no longer reject, now that El Triton and I can woo her on equal terms. And you do not imagine, do you, that his worship of her comes anywhere near to mine? Come, you cannot believe that, hé?"
“If he didn’t love her, he would hardly be wanting her to marry him.”
“Bah! Your poor English have no sun to warm your blood, and if the men of your country do not marry in their first youth for love, later they marry only for advantage to themselves. And there was advantage enough to Triton’s bachelor table and hearth in gaining such a lovely prize as Leonore. But now it is too late, as he will find. And when I snatch her from under his nose, he must look about him for another woman of glamour and good family and poise to grace his house. So we must drink, Emma —”
“I had some sherry before dinner, Ramón. I’d rather not—”
“- we shall drink,” he pursued stubbornly, peering at the bottle labels, “not only to Leonore and myself, but to the consolation which El Triton must seek elsewhere. Alas, this poor Englishman - he has not the luck of a Galatas after all!”
As he spoke he brandished a bottle of cognac in Emma’s face, and when, seeing she would have to give in to him, she said she would rather stick to sherry, he poured it for her with a flourish and took the brandy himself.
“To the future!” he proclaimed. “Even to the future of little Emma, who sometimes looks sad herself and in need of consolation!”
“I don’t need consoling,” she assured him. Seeing he had already drained his glass, she dexterously edged between him and the brandy bottle and added: “If I were you, I wouldn’t wait indefinitely for señora de Coria. She was going on to supper somewhere and she’ll probably be very late.”
He struck an attitude. “And I shall still wait! Or no - I shall go to find her. Where has she gone?”
“To one of the cinemas. The Roxy, Goya - I don’t know. Why don’t you go back to your apartment and telephone later, instead?”
“No, I shall find her—”
As he made towards the door Emma asked in alarm: “Ramón, you’re not driving? A car of your own, I mean?”
“No, I have a taxi which waits.”
“All this time? But if señora de Coria had been at home-?”
“It waits,” he explained, patiently, as to a stupid child, “because I have no money with which to pay it off, and the fellow who drives it refuses to believe, without proof of pesetas, that I am rich. This is deadlock. So the taxi waits.”
“Oh, Ramón -!” Emma protested, half amused, half exasperated by his fuddled air of dignity. They were in the hall now, and through the door which she had opened for him she could see the winking tail light of a taxi beyond the wrought-iron gates. Then, noticing that her own bag lay on the oak chest near by she took a hundred- peseta note from it and crumpled it into his hand.
“Proof of pesetas for the taxi-driver, Ramón! Don’t keep it for yourself, and now go -!”
But she was not rid of him yet. With a benign smile he turned round upon her and put his arms about her. “Now that is a gentle and generous Emma who deserves con-solation, whatever she says, and who certainly must be kissed! So I shall kiss her. So - and so - and —”
Before Emma could resist he had put his lips to her brow and her cheek. And he was drawing her still closer when, beyond his shoulder, she saw that a tall figure stood in the open doorway, backed by the vicious slant of the rain outside.
It was Mark. At sight of him, Emma was too relieved to be greatly embarrassed that he had witnessed Ramón’s absurdly amorous embrace. For though she had managed Ramón well enough so far, it would need a man to deal with him if he turned more awkward still.
Panting slightly as she freed herself, she had time to be glad, for quite another reason, that Mark had come tonight. For now she need not delay in telling him about Guy, that she had seen him, that he had made good. She must not let Mark guess that she loved him, but it would be rewarding merely to express her gratitude for his help and understanding in the most shattering experience of her life.
But that was before he stepped into the full light of the hall and she saw the expression on his face....
He ignored her for the moment and spun Ramón about with an iron grip on the slighter man’s shoulder. “Get out!” he ordered in Spanish. “Out - do you hear?”
Frowning and wincing, Ramón muttered querulously, and Emma feared he might be going to square up to a physical argument which he would certainly lose. But instead, with a jaunty, castanet-wise snap of his fingers, he said: “Ah, but I can afford to be generous to you now!” and, with a “Salud” to Emma, he swayed out into the rain.
Mark slammed the door upon him and Emma selfconsciously smoothed the skirts of her house coat and ran her fingers through her tumbled hair. She could not credit that the continuing ice of Mark’s glance could possibly be for her. He must have realized that Ramón had been “celebrating”! But surely he didn’t ima
gine that they had staged an orgy together in Leonore’s house?
Making a small attack in her self-defence, she said as lightly as she could: “Ramón has unexpectedly come into money and he wants to tell the world, I think. Apparently-he announced the news to the villa, in a telegram which he then forgot to send. And I should think he has been en fête all the way from Spain. But I suppose you could see that for yourself?”
Mark said: “Of course I could. What but the condition he was in would have given me the right to sling him off premises not my own?”
His lifted brows seemed to be inviting her comment on that. So Emma ventured: “He hadn’t been here long, and he hadn’t made a nuisance of himself until the moment you arrived.”
“But was he - even then? Annoying you unduly, I mean?”
Emma spread empty, bewildered hands. “You - you can’t believe I was enjoying myself?”
His eyes, level, inscrutable, met and locked with hers. In a tone that was an insult in itself he said: “In the current phrase, I couldn’t care less what your emotional reactions were.”
“Then if you didn’t get rid of Ramón in order to protect me,” she flung at him, “why did you - interfere?” Studiedly, incensed by his injustice, she had chosen the word with care.
But he drew even with: “Not, certainly, to take over the situation from you. And you are fully at liberty to pick up the threads in your own good time. Galatas was drunk. So, by right of my friendship with Leonore de Coria, I threw him off her property where, in that condition and in her absence, I considered he had no business to be. No more than that, I assure you. But if Leonore had been here, I hope even her toleration of Galatas would have been grateful to me while he was in that state.”
“Before you arrived he was on his way quietly enough, even if he wasn’t quite sober,” said Emma, doggedly.
Mark shrugged. “An understatement which it’s not worth disputing, and I can’t care very much if you found my conduct officious. Anyway, I don’t expect that you would want Galatas, drunk or sober, as a witness to the very short interview which I’d like to beg of you -”
Emma’s brows drew together. “You came to see me?”
“I did. And though I needn’t keep you long -” The gesture of his hand towards Leonore’s salon was almost a command.
Sick with apprehension at his manner, Emma went ahead of him. As he quietly closed the door and faced her she saw that the two empty wine-glasses, hers and Ramón’s, had not escaped his notice. But before she could say anything, he was accusing her: “So you didn’t consider you owed it to me to tell me that Trench had re-turned to Tangier, and that as soon as he beckoned an invitation to you, you couldn’t run fast enough on your way to see him again ? ”
How could he have known? Through Leonore, of course. Only through Leonore - Momentarily aghast before the implication of that Emma could only stammer: “But I - I did mean to tell you!” knowing that her very tone sounded as if she were admitting guilt.
Mark nodded. “I see. You 'meant to tell me’. Perhaps you’ll claim that as I’ve been in Casablanca for a day or two, you couldn’t reach me? Unfortunate, therefore, isn’t it, that a check with my secretary and my houseboy reveals that you haven’t even tried?”
Some of her poise regained, Emma said: “I didn’t try. I knew I had a responsibility to you, after all you did for me at the time Guy left me, to tell you that he had come back and wanted to see me. But it was an even chance as to whether I ought to tell you first or see him first to find out what he wanted of me. I decided to see him -”
“Even though you must have known there was no ‘even chance’ about my opinion of your becoming in-volved with him again? Or have you completely forgotten the circumstances in which he left Tangier?”
“Of course I hadn’t forgotten them. That he’d been guilty, if not charged, with a crime. That he’d jilted me for another girl. That he owed money in the city. That probably only your reluctance to act against him had eased his going at all
“Quite right. You’ve a down-to-earth memory, at least. So I’ve to conclude that it was a sentimentally-coloured forgiveness that took you back at his mere whistle. How long have you known he was here?”
“I knew a few days before he rang me here at the villa, wanting to see me. señora de Coria will have told you that he did that?”
At least Mark did not deny that he had had the story from Leonore. He said: “Yes. She said you were excited over the call, that you insisted you must see Trench, if only once, and that she warned you - with what effect she couldn’t know - that you owed it to me to tell me you were seeing Trench again."
It took a Leonore de Coria3 thought Emma bitterly, to twist “But only once” to “If only once” - and be believed! Aloud, she said to Mark: “I didn’t need warning. I had every intention of telling you. Not,” she added, flatly, “that there was much to tell. Only that Guy has been living in Marseille since he left Tangier; he has managed to pay off his debts, and he is marrying and taking his wife out to a new job in South Africa. Yes, and he acknowledged his indebtedness to you.”
“He shouldn’t flatter himself I did him a personal favour by not pressing the charge. I also had Maritime- Air’s reputation to consider at the time. But was this the poor all that you ran hotfoot to hear?”
“I did not go hotfoot! I could just as easily have come to you first—”
“Yet you didn’t. Do you think I’m so obtuse as not to hazard a shrewd guess why?”
“I’ve told you - there was no important reason!”
“Wasn’t there, when you must have realized that I should mince neither my words nor my actions in condemning any move on your part to get yourself mixed up in Trench’s possibly still sordid affairs again? If you had come, you know I should have insisted on seeing him for you. And that, it’s not hard to conjecture, wouldn’t have suited you at all.”
“How dare you suggest that it wouldn’t? I’d have been glad for you to see him. That is, if —”
Before she could add, “If I’d been quite sure he wasn’t in danger, from you or from the police, of imminent arrest,” Mark cut in: “If -! If, I suppose, you could still feel yourself free to finger and sentimentalize over a past which you might not particularly want to relieve, but which your wounded self-conceit couldn’t reject when it seemed to be within recall? And to think that I applauded your courage in resolutely turning your back upon it at the time!”
“But while I didn't know whether Guy was still in trouble, I couldn’t keep my back quite turned. If he had needed help, I wouldn’t have refused to do what I could even for you, or for your opinion that I was being un¬wise.”
It was not true. If a surer wisdom than she had shown had taken her first to Mark she would gladly have listened to and leaned on his counsel. But her anger at his distrust of her motives was an evil thing which was somehow outside her real self. And it was ready to flare again at his disbelieving; “Even for me! You’re right there. As if I should ever have deluded myself that you cared a pin’s worth for my concern for you! No, you’re no different, after all, from any other woman —”
“How - how do you mean - no different?”
“Because you can’t let go of a past romance, whether you discarded it yourself, or whether it was torn from you. It must be women’s pride which craves to believe that the power to revive an old affair rests with them; which needs the reassurance that they have only to touch it here and there with the magic they used to wield. And even when they are already ‘on with the new love’, it must serve their feminine conceit to be able, if only once, to haul the old to its feet and make it dance to their tune!”
“I wanted to revive nothing with Guy - nothing at all!”
“Nor succeeded, if, as you say, you found him still of the same mind about the girl for whom he left you? You must see,” Mark maintained, “that I can’t credit that, if you thought Trench was merely in need of legal or financial aid, you wouldn’t have first brought the problem to
me? But you didn’t, and if you had a lingering hope of reconciliation I could pity your failure - if I didn’t suspect that you may already have - consolations.”
“Then you’ll hardly believe anything else I say. But what ‘consolations’ do you think I may have?”
Mark looked at her for a long time. “I confess I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t know what you want of Galatas. Or what you may have had.”
“But he is in love with Leonore!” cried Emma, using Leonore’s Christian name for the first time to Mark.
“And Leonore is another woman,” he said evenly. “Meaning by that - she, likewise, can’t quite close the door on romance. But the evidence of my own eyes doesn’t indicate that you’ve ever been averse to the spare attentions, shall I call them, of Galatas. I don’t know whether you’re in love with him or not. I only know that, today, from your abortive passage with Trench, you must have come straight to the amorous interlude which I interrupted for you. If you do want Galatas, I’m sorry. If you don’t, there’s an ugly word for what you’ve been about with the two of them. Scalp-hunting, they call it—”
As Emma winced - “Ah, it goes home? Then I don’t apologize. What’s more, for your pride’s satisfaction, here’s another scalp for your pretty belt -!” And his mouth came down hard upon hers, bruising her lips in a pressure which was no caress but an insult beneath which her spirit reeled.
He had left her without a word after that and she had let him go in the same proud silence. Since then, because she had promised Pilar she would, she had sat waiting for Leonore’s return and listening to the rain’s ceaseless beat which matched the unrelenting hammering of her shamed thoughts.
From the turmoil one clear resolve emerged. As soon as Leonore would release her, she must get away from the Villa Mirador. If she stayed until Pilar’s wedding, meeting Mark from time to time would be inevitable and she could not bear to see him even once again.
He could think that of her! The echo of the things he, had said was like a branding iron she had not been able to avoid. But they were not true! So do not think of them. ... Concentrate on something else. On - she was actually glad to snatch at the chance - the coming interview with Leonore. For any contact with Leonore called for forethought and tact, and she had no reason to hope that this one would differ from any which had gone before.