Pathway of Roses

by Mary Whistler

  “I hope you won’t think me unreasonable if I ask whether this visit is a very important one?” she said slowly, lowering the comb to the dressing-table. She stood with her hands straight down at her sides. “Or a very necessary one at such an hour?”

  “Why?” he asked, as if he was curious. “I mean, why do you wish to know?”

  “Because I don’t encourage visits from members of the opposite sex to my bedroom at any time during the twenty-four hours, and I particularly object when they don’t even knock at the door.”

  His head went up, and then he smiled curiously, “To me it doesn’t greatly matter what your practice is, since you are not Miss Dallas but Miss Brandt.”

  “Then, in the name of Miss Brandt, and not Miss Dallas, and because I feel sure that she, too, occasionally prefers not to be intruded upon—I must ask you to return to the sitting-room and allow me to get dressed.”

  The smile died slowly out of his eyes, and his lips twisted queerly.

  “Meaning that Miss Brandt has no objection to being intruded upon if she is in the mood for it?

  “Possibly.”

  “While you—the pretty little assistant in an antique shop!—have prudish notions, owing to the way in which you were brought up?”

  “You can attribute it to my upbringing if you like.”

  He turned away, and she watched him stride back to the door of the sitting-room. He said curtly:

  “I’ll wait for you in the sitting-room. There are one or two things I want to talk to you about.” She was wearing a corn-silk suit when she joined him, and her hair was a corn-silk cloud about her shoulders. He frowned.

  “Vanessa always wears her hair in that kind of little bun arrangement.”

  “Even Vanessa might adopt new fashions,” she replied. “And an elaborate hair-style is too much to attempt at this hour of the morning.”

  “But it makes you look much too young, worn like that.” Then a curious expression crossed his face, and he shrugged his shoulders. “However, you seem to have made a tremendous impression on our friend Winterton, and the one thing about you that appears to have struck him is your youth ... or your semblance of youth!” He was watching her very closely as he continued: “Vanessa is twenty-six, and she has lived every moment of the last ten of them to the full, with the result that she sometimes looks older than her twenty-six years. However, she is not here, and you are ... and it is to you we have to look for that contract for Vanessa. So you can wear your hair in a pony-tail if you wish!”

  She refused to smile, or appear even mildly amused.

  “Winterton—or rather, one of his secretaries— has already put through a couple of calls to this hotel this morning,” Veldon informed her, “and more flowers are on their way. Winterton also wishes you to lunch with him—that is, if you are fit enough, and we’ve assured him that you are,”—dryly—“and it’s to be a completely tete-a-tete affair in his fiat. No one else is invited.”

  She immediately looked alarmed.

  “Oh, but—”

  He held up one of his slim and shapely hands—that looked extra slim and shapely by contrast with the whiteness of his cuff.

  “There is no need for you to look as if you have been invited into the wolves’ parlour, for Winterton is a very courtly person, and very charming to members of your sex. He will not eat you,” with faint contempt. “But he may make a little light love to you, so don’t be too stand-offish, or repel him with anything in the nature of violence. Remember that it is Vanessa’s interests you have at heart!”

  “And Vanessa would not repel him if he made love to her?”

  For the first time she thought the expression on his face was a little wry.

  “Shall we say she would not go out of her way to damage her own prospects, if those prospects were sufficiently good,” he replied, and lighted himself a cigarette with a good deal of quiet deliberation.

  “I see,” Janie said.

  He looked across the flower-filled room at her, through the thin haze of smoke which had started to float between them.

  “And what if he asks questions? Searching questions?” Janie inquired. “How do I answer them?”

  “To the best of your ability,” Veldon ordered her. “And with discretion. The one thing you must not forget is that you are doing this for Vanessa.”

  “I’m scarcely likely to do that,” Janie remarked with acute dryness.

  He watched her for a moment, provided her with a fleeting impression that he was about to say something else, and then rose. He said, in the businesslike tone of an employer directing his personal assistant’s movements for the day:

  “After lunch you will come back here and rest, and this evening you will attend a concert at which I will conduct the orchestra. It is a charitable affair to raise funds for refugees, and the most important personage likely to be there is the Princess Olga Oranovski. She is a Russian who married an extremely wealthy American, but for occasions like this she makes use of her former title. You know how the Americans love titles, in spite of their democratic pretensions, and her presence alone will ensure a large audience.”

  “So long as I’m not asked to sing,” Janie returned, “I shall enjoy watching you conduct.”

  He replied arrogantly:

  “You should. And you most certainly will not be asked to sing!”

  But before she could look forward to any possibility of relaxing at a concert—and although she had said so demurely, “I shall enjoy watching you conduct,” Janie was actually thrilled by the prospect of once more being permitted to do so, dislike the man behind the conductor though she did very thoroughly by this time—she had yet to survive the ordeal of having a tete-a-tete lunch with Abraham Winterton, and the girl who was impersonating Vanessa Brandt could not look forward to that.

  She knew that it wouldn't be possible for her to be off her guard for one moment, and one single error of speech might precipitate an intolerable situation. So—although she had found Abraham Winterton charming and courtly enough, and she wasn’t very badly frightened by the thought that he might make a little light love to her (After all, what was a little light love, when you were in danger of being exposed as a fraud?)—Janie dressed with a great deal of trepidation and inner foreboding for the lunch, and was only just ready to be escorted out to the car that had been sent for her when it arrived and Miss Calendar started reiterating various warnings, and giving her large quantities of advice.

  “Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to be drawn on the subject of your early days,” Miss Calendar cautioned her. “And remember that you’ve travelled extensively. So I wouldn’t discuss travel, if I were you!”

  On the way down in the lift Rudi managed to insinuate himself into the space behind her, and she heard him murmur ironically into her ear: “Good hunting! Don’t let the side down, and bring back the contract for Vanessa. Then we can start enjoying ourselves!”

  She had no confused notions on the subject of what Rudi von Eisler meant by that.

  Abraham Winterton was even more charming when he received her in the vast entrance hall of his palatial flat. He was full of concern for her ankle, and full of self-reproach because he had wanted to see her again so badly that he couldn’t allow her to rest and recover herself as she should have done.

  “You’ve just completed an exhausting tour, and now you should rest,” he said. “But people like myself will not let you rest! We cannot see and hear enough of you, and that is the truth!”

  He led her out on to a kind of roof-garden, where they sipped aperitifs before lunch actually began. Janie had changed into an enchanting and very smart outfit of lilac silk with white accessories, and amongst the pot plants and the umbrellas and the spraying fountains she looked as delicate as a piece of porcelain. Not perhaps as soignee and sophisticated as Vanessa would have done on such an occasion—and with so much at stake!—but with a cameo perfection about her, and touchingly young. A tribute to the art of make-up, the man could suppo
se, but a very great tribute at that.

  “You are so much more beautiful than I had ever dreamed,” he told her, touching her hand caressingly when he put her glass into it. “Not beautiful in a hard and classical sense, as some of your photographs have suggested, but with a kind of gossamer beauty.” He smiled a little self-consciously, and in spite of the touches of white in his hair, and the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth—lines of experience and knowledge, she realized—there was something boyish about his appearance in the broad daylight. ‘You must forgive me if I try to say things which trip me up, but I haven’t any Latin blood in my veins, and pretty speeches don’t come easily. But I’ve admired you for a very long time—which seems impossible, when I merely look at you!—and now I’ve made the discovery that the reality is infinitely more attractive than the woman I’ve simply dreamed about!”

  Janie swallowed.

  “I’m very flattered, Mr. Winterton, that you have... dreamed about me!”

  He smiled, and this time he made no pretence about capturing her hand.

  “The quality of your voice enchants my ear, and therefore you had to enchant me, too. It was as inevitable as that.”

  “You—you believe in inevitability, Mr. Winterton?” she asked, for something to say.

  “Of course,” he replied. “And the odd thing is I’m not just putting myself out to make flattering speeches to you, because I hope to persuade you to accept a part that I believe was created for you in a musical show I am putting on, but as a woman you interest me ... far, far more than as a singer.” Did this, she wonder, come into the category of light love-making, or was the earnestness she sensed behind his words an indication that his mood was not a light one? At that particular moment, anyway!

  She felt vaguely, queerly alarmed.

  “Miss Brandt ... or may I call you Vanessa?” he pleaded.

  “Of course,” she answered.

  “Then, Vanessa—enchanting Vanessa!—I’m a lonely man at heart, a confirmed bachelor—or so most people believe!—who gets occasionally bored by women, because he sees too much of them. But you are so utterly unlike anyone I’ve ever met before, that I—”

  He took a hurried gulp at his own drink, and then offered to refill hers. She shook her head. “No, thank you. I hardly drink at all.”

  “You are amazing,” he said. “Unless, of course, you are on some sort of a diet...? Medical advice, perhaps?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just don’t like it.”

  “Amazing,” he repeated. “And when I think of all the champagne suppers given in your honour, the wearisome lunches you are forced to attend—”

  He waited, and she did what Vanessa would have done in the circumstances, smiled at him under her long and curving eyelashes and assured him that she had looked forward very much to this lunch today. She had even counted the hours before she left London—and she hoped that the flagrant untruth would be forgiven her!—because the thought of meeting him, the great Abraham Winterton, was as exciting as anything she had ever looked forward to.

  Winterton beamed at her, and seemed quite delighted by her confession.

  “Dear lady!” he exclaimed, and captured her hand again and kissed it several times. “Dear, delightful young woman! And if you only knew how I have looked forward to having you as my guest!”

  The lunch was a delicious one for such a hot day, and Janie was excused taking more than a sip of champagne—and it was highly important, she realized, that she should keep all her wits about her—because it didn’t appeal to her. Winterton asked her quite a number of questions about her past life and background, and because she had been provided with most of the answers she was able to deal with them. There were one or two, however, that very nearly defeated her, and but for a wrongful interpretation which her host placed on her disinclination to talk about certain aspects and phases of her life, she might have given herself away at that very first lunch she had alone with the great man.

  As it was, her hesitation brought a smile, and he said as if he was actually rather pleased:

  “I can tell you do not care to dwell upon all your many triumphs, and that is a form of modesty I can appreciate. Many far less successful young women than you can never stop talking about their triumphs. So you are unique in every way!”

  About midway through the lunch he announced that she had provided him with an idea, and he would tell her all about it as soon as it was an established fact. If the idea worked out as he hoped it would they could discuss all the plans he had for her in comfort and leisure.

  Janie seized upon the mention of plans for her, and tried discreetly to ascertain whether the contract for Vanessa was something that could be counted on. She was assured, with many not quite fatherly pats on the hand, that it was.

  “My dear Vanessa,” Winterton said, “how can you have the slightest doubt that you are not the very person I have been looking for for years?”

  Janie felt relief well over her like the rising of a spring tide. Whatever happened now—even if she gave herself away!—she had his word. Although it would be better to have his signature on the all-important document, and that was an achievement that had yet to be worked for.

  That night she watched Max Veldon conduct a beautifully balanced orchestra and forgot for the time being that she was not who she appeared to be, and could not even be herself. He was so superb, such a restrained showman as well as a musician, as he mounted the rostrum, and surely no man could look as he did in white tie and tails? A magnet which drew every pair of feminine eyes in the room!

  The concert was being given in a setting that was elegant without being restrained. The lushness, in fact was almost overpowering, and practically every member of the audience reflected it. The women were lavishly besprinkled with diamonds and other precious stones, and the men all looked as if they devoted a generous share of their incomes to keeping their tailors in business.

  The Russian princess, with a faint aura of remoteness and hauteur clinging to her, was perhaps the best dressed of all the women, and she wore little jewellery, yet was so unmistakably “someone” that Janie didn’t have to ask to have her pointed out to her. Miss Calendar, who sat next to her, did however point her out in a rather loud whisper before the atmosphere was electrified by the appearance of the Austrian conductor, after which it was Impossible for the attention to be diverted.

  The evening was devoted to the music of Beethoven, in particular the Emperor Concerto, and Janie felt as if she was caught up in a world of purest magic and quite unalloyed bliss as she listened. Beethoven ... the genius so revered by old Hermann Brandt, and whose story her own father had told in his book, The Great Ones. But Beethoven wasn’t merely great, he was beyond all worldly criticism or approval. By simply sitting in her seat and listening to the rise and fall of the music, and watching those hands—every slightest movement of which meant something to the orchestra—holding every other pair of eyes spellbound, she felt that she was looking into the heart and mind of the composer who had lived with tragedy, and shared his moments of melancholy and his ecstatic flights to the stars.

  On her other side, in the row of plush-covered chairs, with many conflicting but expensive perfumes floating in the atmosphere, yet scarcely a rustle amongst the silks and satins and taffeta underskirts that clothed the graceful nether limbs of the female members of the audience, Rudi sat and wore an utterly unreadable expression on his face until the tension relaxed and the hand-clapping became so violent that it shook the building.

  Then he turned and glanced at Janie, whose eyes were like stars. He said softly:

  “So you enjoyed it? You really enjoyed it!”

  “But of course.” She gazed back at him in astonishment. “I’ve never enjoyed anything so much in my life! It was ... wonderful!”

  “Even though it was Max who conducted? And you can’t have any reason to approve of Max, when he holds you in such obvious contempt?”

  “I—” Then she fell silent, feeli
ng as if he had plunged her into a sea of bewilderment. It didn’t matter whether she approved of Max Veldon or not, he would still hold her in contempt, and he would still be a wonderful musician. A distiller of magic and a king among men ... because of his powers.

  She felt that she wanted to crawl to him and thank him for the wonder of her evening, and for the pleasure that almost everyone else had experienced, as she decided that there was nothing at all she could say to Rudi von Eider in explanation of her attitude, and the thunderous applause went on and on. And when at last the impeccable figure in white tie and tails came down from his exalted pinnacle and mingled in the artists’ room with the selected ones amongst the audience who either knew him well, or had been promised an introduction, she was there on the fringe of them and her eyes were bemused, but still glowing a little with admiration and wholehearted appreciation, when he abruptly noticed her.

  To her astonishment she found that he was beside her, and looking at her rather keenly.

  “You enjoyed it, yes?” he said, his accent more noticeable than usual because he himself was still treading a higher plane than the one ordinary mortals tread.

  She tried to tell him how much she had enjoyed it.

  He looked down at her more alertly still, as if something in her face had actually arrested his attention.

  “The Emperor is one of your favourites, is that it?” he said. “As,” rather softly, “I remember it was of your father’s. I told you I enjoyed his book, didn’t I? And that I have it in my library?”

  “I expect you have a wonderful library,” she said, a little wistfully. “And no doubt a wonderful house, too?”

  He smiled with a hint of amusement.

  “As a matter of fact, I have, two houses, and a flat—in Paris. Have you ever been to Paris?”

  She shook her head.

  “No.”

  “Then you must go there one day.” He appeared to have forgotten that she was Vanessa Brandt, who had sung at the Opera House in Paris, and not Jane Dallas. “It has everything a capital should have, including atmosphere. If you have never walked down the Champs-Elysees on a day in spring you have never lived.” He smiled at her, and it was an entirely new smile, softly brilliant like the smile he directed at the Princess Oranovski when he bent over, her hand, and with something in it that had not been there for the Princess Oranovski. A hint of indulgence, of almost gentle humour. “And a young woman like you must start to live sooner or later, mustn’t she?”