"Morvenna isn't all that timid," Leird put in. "She came alone to Brazil, toting a suitcase, a map, and a dream. Would you have that much courage, Poppy, without a man to sail your boat ?"
"I wouldn't have that much folly," she rejoined. "Cautiousness is calculated," Leird shot back at her. "Chasteness is innate."
"No doubt." Poppy gave a silky laugh. "But I bet you don't place it top of the list when you look at a woman. You aren't the type, Leird. You've seen too much of the world and lost too many of your illusions."
"I had them to lose," he said, narrowing his eyes. "I could learn to find them again." He glanced up at Raya as she came over to him with his drink, and for a moment his eyes were naked with what he felt for the girl. Poor Leird ! Morvenna's heart was anxious for him. She hoped he wasn't harbouring illusions about Raya. She was exquisitely pretty, but there was something primitive about her that would demand the heat and spice and danger of the jungle in the man she chose to love. Leird, for all his manliness, was very sophisticated. Raya was as exotic, inside and out, as a jungle flower.
The guitar which Nuno handed to Morvenna was a lovely instrument, with mother-of-pearl inlay, and a tone that sang on its own.
Morvenna was rather shy of people until she held a guitar in her hands. Then, like a shield, it protected her sensitivity. Like a talisman it awoke in her the curious magic which the true folk singer possesses.
Her guitar strings murmured, and half in shadow her eyes were a mysterious purple, and her hair was a medieval cap of silver. The song she sang was old as the
wild hills where the sorceress in her blood had roamed with her lover. She sang in Welsh, to suit her mood, and her awareness of being far from all she knew and was part of.
Never in her life before had she sung in so strange a setting, to people whom a tragedy had thrown together for a few short weeks. They stood or sat about, transfixed like figures in a dream. A girl in a garment of gold silk, reaching to her ankles and leaving the golden pallor of her shoulders quite bare. Her eyes slanted in a secret smile. A single gold ear-pendant hung against the dark sheen of her hair; her small feet arched in slave sandals with tiny beads across the ankle-straps. She sat at Leird's knee like his handmaiden, but whose kisses did her red lips remember as Morvenna sang in her sweet husky voice of love and its strange enchantment?
Strong shoulders stretched the immaculate white tussore that covered them. There was a glint behind the dark lashes, like fire seen way back in a forest clearing. Smoke rose up and veiled the blue flames. He stood only a few paces from Poppy. She had only to stretch out a bejewelled hand to touch the senhor.
Six people, each one wrapped in personal mystery. Each one affected in a different way by the music and its evocations. "Again !" Nuno pleaded, when the song died away. "Sing for us again, carestia. "
Something winged across her vision like a dart of blue. Poppy stirred out of her languor, and Raya turned her head and gave Morvenna a cat-like stare. "So," that look seemed to say, "there is more to you, Little White Mouse, than meets the eye."
"Please sing and play again, Miss Fayr." It was the senhor who spoke, his face as carved as the Aztec mask
beyond his shoulder. "That guitar has not been played so well for years. It belonged to my mother."
She had known because of the faded scarlet ribbons that hung from it. They trailed her arm like a ghostly touch as she sang once more. The jungle pressed in closer around the house as the night deepened; moths clustered around the lamps, and a green mantis prayed on the violet jacaranda.
"No — no more." She brushed past Nuno, and went out on to the veranda to its farthest end. The darkness was warm and breathing, full of the strangest sounds, low as a pulse beat, and the next moment high as a sobbing scream ... or was it a jeering laugh?
Morvenna ran her hand along the smooth railing, and her fingers hastily retreated as they met another's. Nuno had followed her.
"You sing as though your heart is afraid of happiness," he said. "Have you not known much happiness, Morvenna ?"
"The best part of happiness lies in being needed," she murmured, "and I suppose that.is why I came all this way, toting a map and a dream. For the first time I felt as though I might be needed, but the senhor seems to think that my quest has been a hopeless one. He told me the Indian trackers would have found some sign of my father — if he were still alive."
"You are alive," the words brushed her ear. "Your life is ahead of you, and there will be someone else who will give you the best part of happiness by needing you ... by cherishing you."
She caught her breath, for to every woman the word cherish is probably the loveliest, the most promising in all the world. To be adored put you on a pedestal,
where you were out of reach, but to be cherished made you companion, lover, and beloved child.
"Are all Brazilians as full of charm as you, Nuno ?" She spoke lightly because the music she had played, the strange glamour of the night, and the sympathy of a handsome boy made her vulnerable and more afraid of herself than of him. To be cherished . . . how she longed for just that.
"The patrao is a Brazilian," Nuno's warm hand crept over hers again. "Don't you think him charming ?"
"He seems as fierce and unpredictable as the jungle itself." The words had been in her from the moment she had glanced up from Leird's unconscious face into the dark, fearlessly moulded face out of another century, another time, meeting eyes that seemed to burn like cold blue flames.
"Sometimes when he looks at me, he makes me cold to my spine." Her words were a whisper in the night, mocked by that jungle laugh that echoed across the dark compound from among the giant trees.
"Do you think him a tyrant?" Nuno could laugh because he was male and would never feel the same kind of fears as a girl. "Tyranny means cruelty, and the people of Janaleza are too loyal to the patrao to be victims of his autocracy."
"I — I don't mean that he goes around the island with a whip in his hand. It's more complex than that, Nuno. For instance, I can't be relaxed with him as I am with you. He's so armoured, so unconquered, so infuriatingly sure of himself. You could never imagine him tripping on a vine and falling on his face — and as for falling in love— !" She gave a nervous laugh. "Can you imagine the Senhor Roque de Braz Ferro ever humbling
himself to a mere woman? He will merely snap his fingers and she will run to his knee like his latest jungle pet."
"When he marries," Nuno said quietly, "there is a good chance that he will choose Raya. He is a man who may have his choice, but the woman he marries must be content to live here on the island. Raya, like myself is part of Janaleza. A woman from the world across the water would not settle down easily to island jungle life — not a woman like your friend Poppy."
As he spoke, he turned Morvenna's hand within his and crushed it gently, urgently. "Why did you not wear my coral ?" His hand stole up her arm to her shoulder, to the silver shells. "Why ?"
She felt his touch and heard his question, but was lost in thoughts about his sister — the Latin girl the patrao had ransomed, lovely as a jungle flower, made for marriage with a dominant man who shared her affinity with the untamed jungle.
"Morvenna, answer me." Suddenly Nuno's warm hand was pressing into the small of her back, gripping so that her dress was drawn up above the backs of her knees. His tough young body was against hers, compelling her awareness of him, and she dragged her gaze from the green fireflies that hung in the sultry air as still as gems in a jewel-shop, and met the gleam of his eyes. "Were you afraid to wear my coral?"
"No--"
"Perhaps you did not think it good enough? A piece of coral on a chain is hardly comparable to a necklet of silver."
"Nuno, let me go !"
"No." The exultation of having her at his mercy was
in his voice. "Here in this part of the world the men are the masters; when we are angry we give way to it, we don't stifle it like your Englishmen. That is how women learn contempt, when they are given in to all th
e time."
"Englishmen don't expect women to behave like doormats," she stormed. "Now grow up, Nuno, and stop behaving like – like a spoiled little boy—"
"Little boy ?" he growled. "I will show you just how grown up I am . . . " In an instant his lean, boyish body was full of adult intention, and her backbone nearly cracked as he arched her over his arm and brought his face close to hers. "Oh !" she gasped, partly from pain, and partly with dismay as the doors of the living-room were swept open and light streamed out on to the veranda.
"My dear," Poppy carolled, "whatever are you doing up there in the corner ?"
"Let me go !" Morvenna said in a low, fierce voice. The hard young arms released her, and as she brushed past Nuno in a storm of embarrassment she met the senhor's gaze above Poppy's tawny head. Poppy was smiling with malicious enjoyment.
"This island of yours, senhor," she purred over her shoulder, "is having the most primitive effect on all of us."
"The intangible threat of the jungle is in our air, and sometimes it goes to the head like strong wine. Small doses of it are advised, especially at night." He gave Morvenna a dismissive bow. "Born noite, Senhorita Fayr."
It was the first time he had addressed her in that way. Always before he had used the term senhorinha, which was more old-fashioned; more appropriate, he
had probably thought, until tonight. "Good night, everyone." She hurried away from the small group to the refuge of her room, so annoyed with Nuno that she decided not to go fishing with him in the morning.
She had been looking forward to the outing, but if he was going to be silly and demanding then she would be wise to keep out of his way until he came to his senses. He had known her only a week, and was a trifle infatuated with her pale colouring and the fact that she was British.
At some time, not unreasonably perhaps, the rumour had got around that British girls were cool-looking and warm-hearted. Morvenna's awareness of her own warm heart was one of the reasons she protected it so fiercely. It would be too easy to fall in love while she was far from home and stranded like a waif on an island that was both savage and beautiful.
She unfastened the senhor' s necklet of silver shells and studied them by the lamp on her dressing table. Pretty but dangerous. Nuno would not have pounced like a young panther if she had not been wearing them. She let them slide in a shining chain from her hand, and as she glanced up she met hey eyes in the dressing mirror. In that moment they were as intense as violets, sheltering within her lashes as that secretive flower shelters within the coolness of a wood, or in the shade beneath a wall.
"You might well look perplexed, Morvenna Fayr," she thought. "Life is a puzzle, isn't it? We do things we don't really reason out, and cross bridges recklessly in the dark and wonder why we fall and get hurt. You crossed the biggest of your life, my girl, when you
bought a ticket for Brazil and boarded that jet plane in England ..."
England, so far away, so out of reach, where she had not felt threatened by the intangible dangers that hung in the lush air of Janaleza.
Island of secrets, remote from all the world, the fragrance of its Virgin's Pagoda filling her room as she prepared for bed. Arrayed in one of the ankle-length night dresses supplied by the store—ruffled at the throat and quaint — she went over to remove the flowers from beside her bed. She cupped the brass bowl in her hands, and the scent from the shy, hanging heads of the blossoms was intoxicating as she carried the bowl to a bamboo table near the veranda doors.
The fragile flower which grew and flourished in the barbaric soil that also gave life to strange wild orchids, heavy masses of flowering vine, and the oleander with its painted petals and poisonous sap.
She put out a hand to the petals of one of the flowers, then drew back hastily with a low gasp of horror. Crawling over the side of the bowl was a slim mottled shape; it slithered out inch by inch from among the white pagodas, and Morvenna stood transfixed as the snake undulated across the bamboo table and would, in another second or two, be within striking distance of her bare left arm. The snake quivered and made a queer little sound, which echoed in her dry throat as she unfroze and fled out blindly on to the veranda.
Hands caught her. She glanced up wildly and in the light slanting from her room saw the rugged outlines of a familiar face, and above the questioning eyes a shock of ruffled hair.
"What is it, honey?" Leird's eyes raked her pale, up-
raised face. "You look frightened out of your wits. Is there a spider or something in your room ?"
"A s-snake," she stammered. "It crawled out of the f-flower bowl and it might be venomous."
"My dear girl !" He let go of her, took a quick step to the doors of her room and slammed them shut. Then he swung round and before she could protest that she wasn't going to faint, he swept her up in his arms and carried her along to his own room. He put her on his bed, and now she saw that he was clad in pyjamas and a robe.
"Stay here," he ordered. "I'll rouse up the senhor, who will know best how to deal with the snake — say, you've gone paler than ever ! Are you going to pass out, Venna ?"
"Of course not." She was shaky, that was all, and anxious for him to attend to the business of getting that horrible thing out of her room.
"Relax," Leird ruffled her hair as though she were a child. "These things are sent to try us."
His words remained with her after he had loped off to arouse the senhor, and she gave a shudder as in her mind's eye that long, mottled shape crawled out once again from among the Virgin's Pagoda. Like the serpent in Eden, she thought, and glanced up big-eyed as someone appeared in the doorway of Leird's room. It was Poppy, her hair in a wheat-ripe cloak about the shoulders of her negligee, her eyes avid with curiosity as they took in Morvenna's night-clad figure on Leird's bed.
"I've just seen Roque and a couple of his servants going into your room," she said. "What are they doing in there ?"
"Hunting a snake," Morvenna said tensely.
"You don't say ?" Poppy strolled to the foot of the bed, a glamorous contrast to Morvenna in the Quakerish nightdress, into whose long skirt her feet were tucked. "I wonder how a snake got into your room ? I understand that snake repellent is used in the polish they use on the furniture and floors here at the
fazenda. "
"It didn't repel this one." Morvenna felt cold and bleak, the usual after-effects of a scare. "It was curled up in the flower bowl that stands on the table beside my bed. If I hadn't moved the bowl it might have crawled out in the night and slithered beneath my bed-netting—"
"It won't do that now, Miss Fayr." The senhor entered, clad in a dark robe over his pyjamas. A frown joined his brows in a black bar above his eyes. "I am sorry you have had a fright, but the snake has now been removed and your room has been searched to ensure that it was not accompanied by its mate."
"Was it venomous, senhor?" she asked in a low, shaky voice.
He shook his head, his hands deep in the pockets of his robe.
"Well," Poppy drawled, "don't tell me we've all been dragged out of our beds by a harmless little grass-snake ?"
"Not a grass-snake," he said, "but fortunately harmless."
"I – I'm sorry," Morvenna slid off the bed and flitted past Poppy and the senhor like a small white ghost, "for waking everybody up. I don't know anything about snakes, you see—"
"One moment," the senhor made a captive of her just as she would have escaped out of the doors. "When in doubt, Miss Fayr, never be brave — or polite. I have told you before ! This is a jungle house and our precautions don't always keep out the things of the forest. Those things are not always harmless."
She couldn't look at him. She, who had talked bravely about searching the jungle for her father, had fluttered and fled from a snake without a sting. He, who had said that the jungle was no place for an inexperienced girl, had been infuriatingly correct in his judgment of her.
"I should like to go to bed now," she said, like a tired little girl.
"No one is
stopping you." His hands released her and she had to force herself not to turn and run from him, from Poppy's smile of condescension, and her own vulnerable youth.
"Shall I come and tuck you up ?" It was Leird who spoke laughingly, and a small imp of torment made her say:
"That would be nice, Leird."
But he didn't go as far as tucking her up. He came just inside her room with her and when she cast a quick glance at the flowers she would never trust again, he said gently: "Don't be nervous, honey. I can vouch for the fact that the snake was carried off among the trees by one of the senhor's men, then we made sure its slinky girl-friend wasn't around. You won't be nervous of sleeping here ?"
"No." She gazed up at him, a quaint, bare-footed figure in her long nightdress. "You're a nice person, Leird. Thank you for being kind to me."
"I can be kind because there's no nonsense of any sort between us." He heaved a sigh and drew a hand down over the attractive crags of his face. "Why is it that we're comfortable with the people we like, and on the defensive with those we love? Have you the answer, little witch ?"
"Perhaps it's because our hearts hold a strange fear of happiness," she said quietly. "We all know that the people we love are the ones who can snatch it from us."
He gazed down at her, sombrely. "I'm in love with Raya," he said. "You guessed, didn't you ?"
She nodded.
"Loving Raya frightens me for the first time in my life," he said harshly. "I could never settle down on an island, I'm too much of a wanderer, and if she tore her roots out of this hot, lush soil I know it would do something terrible to her. Morvenna, don't fall in love — it hurts too much !"
With those words he turned and left her standing alone, her bare feet sunk in the tawny pelt that stretched across the floor of her room. Out in the jungly darkness the cicadas chirred. In here the scent of the pagoda flowers was a tormentingly sweet reminder that beauty — especially the beauty of love — held a strain of sadness and bitterness.
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