“For what are you so sorry, chica? That you have misunderstood my coolness? But that was comprehensible.”
One would hardly term Ramon in any mood as cool, but he really had been chivalrous and kind and forbearing. It was so difficult to spear him deliberately.
“For everything,” she cried. “I wish we’d never met, and you were happily in Cadiz with your Carmela. This is unbearable.”
He came closer, seized and held her hand. “Melanita, you speak like a jigsaw puzzle, and I am not in a condition to fit the pieces together. We are almost alone. Do you not realize that?” His voice went soft and slurred, his eyes glazed. “I love you, my little fair dove, and I want you too much to endure this nearness. Melanie—”
Both had leaped up, but Melanie felt the edge of the stool pressing into her calves and seemed powerless to make the small effort to push it back with her foot. Ramon’s arms went around her, his heart pounded into her, and he kissed her with a passion so unrestrained that terror mounted in her throat, had possession of her limbs. His hands seared, his breath was like fire against her neck.
“Melanita, my beautiful...”
For a further endless minute she was nerveless, staring frantically over his shoulder. Then sanity and strength returned with a rush. She doubled her fists and thrust at him, whirled across the room and out to the hall.
The servant stood impassively with his back to the main door, arms folded and turbaned head erect. Like a eunuch guarding a harem, thought Melanie, with freshly risen hysteria.
“Get out of my way!” she said.
Amazed, the servant instantly shifted, bent to help her with the bolts.
“Stay, Melanie!” Strangely pale, Ramon shouldered the servant away from the door, tried to wrest Melanie’s hand from the lock. “Forgive me. Come back to the lounge and wait while I see my father...”
But she had shaken him off, dragged open the door and fled. A tornado entered the house, beat down a flower pedestal with a crash, slammed doors and lifted the heavy Persian carpet to one side as if it were no more than a linen handkerchief.
Ramon dashed out. His hoarse shouts were blown away and the darkness was so intense that she must have been instantly swallowed. She couldn’t be far away. It was nearly impossible for a man to keep his balance, let alone a slip of a girl. He must call servants, procure many flashlights.
Melanie, meanwhile, was swaying from tree to tree. She had never known such a wind, such dreadful, thundering blackness. Rain added to the nightmare; great gobbets of water smashed against her face and body, and into the frangipani hedge to which she clung as she moved spasmodically along the avenue.
Aching, gulping down air, her clothes saturated, Melanie was yet extraordinarily unafraid. She was free of Ramon, free of her cousin. The fiercest elements could not rob her of this joy of freedom.
Soon the road gurgled like a river in spate. Water streamed around her ankles and slowed her down, but she was moving all the time, descending gradually to the town. She had no notion of the time, no real idea of where she was.
Then, some way off, she saw advancing headlights; someone had been caught out of town. It must be nerve-wearing to drive in this storm-rent night. A few seconds later she was floodlit by those powerful rays, and the car swerved dangerously, with purpose, holding her illumined till it reached her and stopped. A man flung open the nearside door, Melanie was summarily hauled into the car and at once it moved on, up the avenue.
“My God,” said Stephen below his breath. “I might have known it would be you.”
The perilous ascent took all his attention. The car rocked in the wind, skidded through silt, slithered over potholes, and every window coursed with blinding rain.
Melanie turned her head. An Indian servant sat in the back of the car, as unflurried in his posture as if this were a bright afternoon. Melanie became conscious that she was streaming, that her hair hung like lengths of seaweed. She looked sideways at Stephen, saw that his head and shoulders had got drenched when he yanked her into the car, and noticed with misgiving the set, grim lines of his face.
In spite of the evening’s happenings she felt peaceful, nearly happy. What more could she ever want than this, to belong at last to Melanie Paget, and to be with Stephen Brent? Granted, she was not at this moment too attractive a companion, but that could be remedied. And if Stephen would only give her time she would be frank with him.
They twisted onto a smooth driveway and were confronted by the ornamental stucco front of an immense garage.
“Put the car away, Vasseljee,” Stephen flung over his shoulder. Then, “Ready, Melanie?”
Shielding her with his body from the worst onslaughts of the wind, he half carried her into the terrace surrounding the house. His key turned in the lock, a light snapped on, and they were both inside with the door closed against the night.
Melanie noticed nothing at all during those first minutes in Stephen’s house. She followed him down a long corridor that resembled a series of fretworked arcades, and allowed him to push her into a bathroom the size of a lounge.
“There are towels in there,” he said. “I’ll bring you something to wear.”
She stood marveling, then, at the elegance, the blend of pastel colorings, the mural tiling. There were two baths, a great square one in the center of the floor into which one might comfortably dive and another of European style in pink alabaster, which stood against the end wall.
Stephen reappeared, dropped a paisley dressing gown and some masculine underwear onto a stool.
“You can’t have a bath because they weren’t expecting me back and there’s no hot water,” he said.
“Oh,” she said regretfully. “I’d have loved to step down into that vault.”
“So get undressed and have a good toweling,” he added inflexibly.
“But, Stephen...”
“Get busy, or I’ll rub you down myself.”
She laughed a little. “I believe you would.”
Stephen didn’t smile. He rested upon her a brief glance of cold and ruthless exasperation, then went out and shut the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Melanie came out of the bathroom. Her skin glowed, her hair was still damp but soft and curly, and her eyes were a luminous hazel green. The dressing gown wrapped her to the chin and had to be lifted from the floor before her bare feet could move over the parquet.
She could smell frying food. It was an English smell and satisfying, nothing like the elusive odors of the hotel cooking or of the ultra-sweet and spicy Indian concoctions.
She had to turn and negotiate another corridor before arriving at the open kitchen door. And what a kitchen! It would easily have held a normal-sized bungalow. The walls were lined with white cupboards, there were two long white tables—one of them set for a meal—two refrigerators, two great electric stoves.
Near one of the stoves stood Stephen, his attention upon a panful of frying eggs. He sensed her presence, gave her a chilling nod, then switched off the burner and drew the pan aside.
“Did you get any dinner?” he asked.
“No. I left the hotel around a quarter to seven.”
He consulted his watch, presumably made a calculation, and began to transfer the eggs to a dish. From the oven he extracted a plate heaped with warmed tinned sausages.
“Sit down and help yourself,” he said. “The servants are out in their quarters, and it’s too late for a proper dinner, anyway.”
“What time is it? I must have given my watch a bang; it’s stopped and the glass is broken.”
A keen glance into her face. “It’s after nine.”
“It feels like midnight.”
Stephen seemed to have no objection to eggs and sausages in a border of rich fat, but Melanie longed for a finger of homely bread. She wasn’t hungry, though, only hollow in the chest and becoming anxious.
“Is that coffee on the other stove?” she questioned. “May I have some?”
�
��Go ahead.”
His uncompromising curtness cut away every foothold. She stirred her coffee, tasted it and dropped in more sugar. Across the table Stephen, too, was helping himself from the sugar bowl. He got out the thin gold cigarette case, flipped it open and held it toward her.
They smoked. Melanie sat with a hand on the table, tracing patterns. The silence rasped, though of course there could be no such thing as a silence on a night like this. Within the dense-walled, shuttered mansion the gale was the magnified wailing of a banshee. It was the wordlessness that rasped, and Stephen’s manner.
“At last she said, “How can I dry my clothes? I can’t stay too long.”
“You’ll have to be prepared to put up with this for a few hours, till they sound the ‘danger past.’”
“‘Danger past’?” She was mystified. “Danger of what?”
“A cyclone. There’s a warning on. Didn’t you know?” “No. How could anyone hear a warning in this racket?”
“You couldn’t mistake it—three terrific high-pitched blasts. I was driving and well outside the town when I heard it.”
She knocked some ash from her cigarette, nerving herself. “I must have been at the Perez villa then.”
The silence this time was stretched on electrified wires, but it didn’t last long. With a savage little movement he crushed out his cigarette on a plate.
“I think you’d better do a spot of explaining.”
“I want to, but please don’t start off by being angry, Stephen. I know I must have looked like some mad thing slithering along in the tornado, but there was a perfectly logical reason.”
“Logical! When you might have remained with the Perezes? No one ventures out of doors in these squalls. God only knows how you kept your feet.”
“It wasn’t quite so bad when I left the hotel, but it was getting fierce by the time I reached the villa. I went there to see Ramon and his father—to tell them that I couldn’t marry Ramon.”
With his elbow upon the table Stephen rested his chin in his hand and regarded her coolly and mercilessly. “What’s the matter? Have you come into a fortune from some other quarter?”
“You really can be objectionable,” she sighed, “and there’s no need for it. I never seriously thought of marrying Ramon and if you’re half the judge of human nature you think you are you must have known it.”
“Then why didn’t you refuse it at once?”
“Because I’d given a promise. I can’t go into that, but do believe me, Stephen. It’s no use my telling you otherwise.”
He drew an audible breath and relaxed slightly. “Go on,” he said.
Haltingly, she related how she had found Ramon alone and tried to make him understand; his news about the girl in Cadiz.
“Suddenly it all seemed impossible, and I ran into the garden,” she concluded.
“You ran away because he confessed to having another girl?” he demanded, somewhat testily.
“No, it wasn’t that. I’d had enough.”
“Enough of what?”
How like Stephen to tear away every veil. “Well,” she said, “he tried to make love to me, and I couldn’t bear it.”
“Hadn’t he made love to you before?”
“Not ... violently.”
“Sounds to me as if he’s been remarkably restrained,” commented Stephen caustically. “You’ve escaped lightly, my child.”
She kept her lids lowered. “I suppose you thought he often kissed me,” she said. And didn’t mind, ended her heart.
“One takes certain things for granted.” He picked a new cigarette and held it thoughtfully between her fingers. “There’s a lot about this that’s still foggy. What’s been happening during the time I’ve been at the camp? You could have had your showdown with Ramon before this—not left it till after dark on a hellish night.”
“I ... I haven’t been out for a week.”
He leaned over, met her eyes searchingly, shot a query. “Been sick?”
“No.” A pause. “That part of it doesn’t matter.”
He shoved away a condiment set, took her hand into his steely grip. “Oh, yes, it does. But before we go any further, tell me something. Did you intend to be frank with me about this, or is it just the accident of my finding you down the road that has made you open up?”
“That’s difficult to answer.” Swiftly, firmly, she withdrew her hand. “You had nothing but contempt for me when you went away, but if you’d come back friendly I might have asked for your help.”
“That’s fair enough.” He set a match to the cigarette, lay back. “So you’ve broken with Ramon ... the whole thing’s off?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t handle him very cleverly, but as far as I’m concerned it’s off.”
“I’ll see him and his father tomorrow and make certain that he has no illusions.”
“Will you really? I’d be so grateful, and they’ll take more notice of you.”
“I wonder. Ramon’s never before had anything he wanted snatched away from him. He’ll put up a fight.”
“You’ll manage him. You can manage anyone.”
This was said with such offhand confidence that Stephen permitted himself a small grin. He stood up.
“Come to my workroom. It’s more comfortable.”
He opened the door and went ahead to click on the lights in another room. Melanie looked around her; at the brilliantly flowered easy chairs, the long Oriental couch with a raised head supported by carved snakes. The desk was black, inlaid with a magnificent peacock in semiprecious stones, and the massive inkstand had been fashioned from a block of gold-streaked quartz. Incongruously, at one side of the desk stood a plain wooden table bearing Stephen’s instruments and his big, leather-backed report book.
Melanie hovered around this table, slowly turned the handle of a scientific-looking mincer in black bakelite and steel.
“What’s this?”
“A hand pulverizer. I’ve had it for years.”
“You put in a piece of rock and it comes out dust?”
He nodded. “Then you analyze the dust and make a report. Get into one of the armchairs and wrap up your toes. It’s always chilly in here because it’s air-conditioned for the tropics and there are no windows.”
“You can’t even hear the wind very much. I should think it’s like this in the middle of the Taj Mahal. Don’t you feel as if you were working in a tomb?”
“I expect I shall now you’ve mentioned it Are you warm enough?”
“Plenty.” She was curled up in one of the well-upholstered chairs but still surveying the room. “You’ll have to install a houri.”
“It’s a bit late for that. My job’s about finished.”
It was as though the wind had stilled and life had gone from the earth. Ice enclosed Melanie’s heart, sent a tremor along her spine.
“Are you leaving the island?” she asked thinly.
“Aren’t we both?” he replied evenly.
“But you won’t be returning to England.”
“Not yet. It’ll take me about a fortnight to complete my analyses, and after that I go back to El Geza, where I left some men working on an oil prospect. I may get back to England about the middle of next summer.”
After a moment she said, “I never did see the diggings.”
“When I invited you, you turned me down. But you haven’t lost the chance. They’re still there, though they contain nothing of much interest or value.”
He crossed the room and lowered himself onto the arm of the chair nearest her.
“You realize that you probably won’t get back to the hotel tonight?”
“Won’t I?” It seemed of infinitesimal importance beside her splintering dreams.
“For one thing, it’s against the law to go out during a warning—and for another, the main street was quite a deep river when I came through a while ago, so heaven knows what it’s become by now. Everywhere was shuttered and in complete darkness. The town electricity has failed,
and so has the telephone system. I tried to get through to the hotel while you were in the bathroom, but the line was dead, and will probably remain so for days. I’m afraid there’s no way of getting a message to Elfrida.”
“It can’t be helped,” she said, not very brightly. “She’ll probably hope I’ve been blown into the sea.”
“Have you two had a row at last?”
“Of sorts.”
“Was that why you stayed in your room last week?”
“Partly.”
“I wouldn’t have believed you could be so childish. Was it over Ramon?”
“Yes.”
“What gets me,” he said tersely, “is how you ever allowed him to become so intimate. I told you weeks ago that you were heading for trouble, but you went blindly and blithely on, encouraging him.”
“Maybe I behaved without sophistication, but ... well, it was pleasant to be liked and wanted, and I became fond of the senor.”
“I told the old chap myself that by English standards you were two or three years too young for marriage.”
She looked at him, fleetingly. “A good many girls do get married between eighteen and twenty.”
His shrug was impatient. “You’re the only young one I know, and you certainly aren’t ready for marriage.”
This time her glance at him was dark and inquiring, “How can you be sure of that?”
“If I answered candidly you’d be hurt. Anyway, twenty-one is sufficiently early for any woman to tie herself up for life. Have you made any plans for the future?”
“I’m not in a position to do that.”
“Would you like to go in for a musical career?”
She shook her head. “I’m well aware of my own limitations. I’ll fix up in a job of some sort.”
Tiredness had crept into her voice. She had slipped sideways in the deep, warm cavern, with her face resting in the cushioned curve between the back and the arm. Stephen got down into the seat of his chair and remained there smoking.
Unhappiness and weariness often bring sleep to their victim. One moment Melanie was intent upon the angular profile a couple of yards away, and the next she was dreamlessly unconscious.
All night the wind raged over the island of Mindoa. It wrenched a freighter from its anchor and hurled it to split in two upon a reel. It tore off roofs and shutters, sent walls crashing and ripped out trees by their roots, flooded the valleys.
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