White Rose of Love

by Anita Charles

  He might not consult her about the new sala, but he would want her to do him justice when he married her. And no doubt her mother was busy with marriage settlements, and things like that, and saw to it that he was preoccupied with finance if not actually consumed with impatience for the day when he took his wife home for the first time.

  And, amidst all this, Madelena was apparently meek and submissive . . . saying ‘Yes’ to everything, probably well content, and nursing a secret adoration for her future husband which she would hardly dare to let him guess at because that would be improper in a Portuguese woman of good birth, breeding and upbringing.

  Steve began to feel such a lot of contempt for Portuguese woman of this type, that she decided that under no circumstances would she make a head of one of them; and just in case she should ever be tempted to do so she threw away her modelling clay—which it was unlikely she could get locally—and took to painting water-colours which were not nearly as good as Tim’s, but which provided her with a certain amount of satisfaction because they kept her out in the open.

  She was sitting on a rock and painting the cottage itself from that angle when the car she had been subconsciously listening for for days—actually, it was now a fortnight since she last saw Dom Manoel, drew up outside the cottage, and a couple alighted from it. With ease she made out Dom Manoel’s tall, athletic figure, clothed in immaculate white, and the woman with him could be none other than his fiancee.

  Horrified lest they caught sight of her in her paint-smeared smock, Steve slid down behind the rock and waited until the front door of the cottage had closed behind them. Then, before her brother could start calling for her, she made her way by a devious route up to the house, crept in by a back door, and locked herself in her bedroom and began a frantic change of clothing.

  Long before she was ready to join the others she heard Tim shouting for her:

  “Steve, Steve! . . . Where are you, Steve?” He must have searched the garden, scanned the beach, and returned in perplexity to the visitors in the interval that elapsed between her locking herself in her bedroom and the moment that she emerged, looking a trifle flushed, but suitably attired for such a visitation. For once she congratulated herself that she was wearing the right clothes, a crisp linen dress of pale daffodil yellow, high-heeled white sandals, and an entire absence of anything in the nature of ornamentation.

  She was neat, poised, graceful ... a trifle withdrawn, and very English. And if Dom Manoel took note of that slight, hectic colour in her cheeks—which, after all, was rather rose-leaf, and perfect—his manner failed to betray that he did, except, perhaps, that his eyes twinkled for one instant as they met Steve’s blue ones.

  “Your brother was beginning to wonder what had happened to you,” he told her. “I suggested that an extra large wave had swallowed you up and swept you out to sea.” His face was grave; the twinkle had quite disappeared. “But, of course, it’s quite

  obvious you haven’t been near the beach.”

  He introduced his fiancee, and this was the moment when Steve received her first surprise. Senhorita Madelena Almeida was nothing like the Senhorita Madelena Almeida she had imagined. She was beautiful —quite fantastically so—but it was a different kind of beauty altogether. Instead of the dying-swan air with which Steve had invested her she was small, and petite, and lively. Her great brown eyes sparkled, her mouth was vivid—a very discreet use of lipstick Steve realized instantly—and although her skin was creamy it was a warm creaminess that suggested she sometimes went bathing without a parasol. She had a particularly lovely figure, and her clothes were divine. . . . Steve could think of no other word to describe them.

  Her silk suit was of a pale orchid mauve, her tiny hat was white to match all her accessories. Her heels were perilously high— stiletto was hardly the word—and her brief skirt left a length of delectable leg visible. Through the fine nylon mesh of her gloved left hand Steve could see the great stone of her betrothal ring blazing like fire—a great ruby, almost certainly an heirloom, but matching her lips, and the essential vividness of her.

  She had an enchanting smile, and she seemed eager to make the acquaintance of Miss Wayne. Tim, who seemed slightly knocked off balance by this visitation, had already brought forth refreshments and was plying her with them, and he seemed disappointed because she would accept nothing more than a very weak decoction of orange juice. But she did accept a cigarette— which startled Steve still further—and allowed Tim to light it for her with the flame of his own lighter.

  “Manoel—my—my fiance”—glancing shyly at him —“has told me how wonderfully clever you are. Miss Wayne,” she said to Steve, “and that you actually model heads. Your brother, of course, is a marvellous artist, and has agreed to paint me when all the excitement of my—my marriage is over,” with another shy look at Dom Manoel. “But I would like very much to have my head modelled by you.”

  She spoke English beautifully, in addition to everything else, but she had an attractive accent which made it sound a little quaint. Steve, who had an odd feeling at the pit of her stomach as if something had caught her a glancing blow when she wasn’t exepcting it, hardly knew how to answer.

  “It’s very kind of you, senhorita,” she managed. “But, as a matter of fact, I seem to have mislaid my materials. . . . That is, I

  don’t think I can have brought them with me.”

  “Oh, yes, you did,” Tim corrected her with a somewhat queer smile at her. “I rescued them the other day from the dustbin. Someone must have been careless—Maria perhaps—and gathered them up for rubbish. Anyway they’re safe now, and where you can put your hands on them when you want them.”

  Steve bit her lip. She had the feeling that Dom Manoel was watching her, and she felt sure that if she had met his look it would have been mildly amused.

  “Well, that’s lucky,” she declared—not at all as if she thought there was anything lucky about it. “But I’m afraid I’m badly out of practice, Senhorita Almeida, and I wouldn’t like to offend you by making you look quite unlike yourself.”

  “Nonsense,” the other returned. “Your brother has been telling me that your heads are exquisite, and that you sell them for quite a lot of money in England. Naturally,” she added, “we should pay you whatever you asked for your work.”

  Tim and Steve exchanged glances. Tim was saying to her: ‘Don’t be a little mutt, Stevie! These people are rich and you need the money! Besides, it will be good advertising for you. . . .’ Steve felt as if she would rather die than accept their money.

  Dom Manoel intervened. He had said very little so far, and it was his fiancee who talked quickly and impulsively, as if she always had a great deal to say and never found quite enough time in which to say it. She was certainly not in the least overawed by the presence of her fiance, and out of the corner of her eye Steve had observed that, whenever he looked at her, his expression softened miraculously, and she was certain he listened to the soft sound of her voice as if it afforded him a great deal of pleasure.

  Now he came up behind her and lightly encircled her shoulders with his arm. With his free hand he tapped gently at the smooth side of her peach-like cheek.

  “You mustn’t offend Miss Wayne’s artistic sensibilities by offering in such blunt terms to recompense her for her work,” he rebuked her suavely. “Naturally she knows she will be recompensed, and that is enough.”

  But his amber-brown eyes, as they rested on Steve, were cold and a trifle mocking.

  “Are you prepared to humour my fiancee, Miss Wayne,” he enquired, “and name your price?”

  For the second time in a matter of minutes Steve bit hard at her

  Up.

  “If Senhorita Almeida is prepared to sit for me without seeing any examples of my work, well, then, I suppose I am,” she answered unwillingly at last. “But we’ll leave the price out of it, if you don’t mind, until the work is finished.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “As you please.”r />
  “Then, in that case, you must let me know when you want me to begin. ... When the senhorita is prepared to commence sittings.”

  She looked up at him enquiringly, and he smiled into her eyes.

  “There isn’t much time before the wedding, little one. It will be as well if you are serious about this to start sitting for Miss Wayne at once.”

  “To-morrow?” Madelena suggested, smiling dazzlingly at Steve.

  “To-morrow will suit me as well as any other day,” Steve replied, without the graciousness she felt the other deserved. “Altogether I shall need about half-a-dozen sittings. Will you come here?”

  But Dom Manoel answered for his fiancee.

  “No, I think it will be better if you bring your materials to the quinta,” he said decisively. “A car will be sent for you, and naturally it will also convey you home when the sitting is ended. Will ten o’clock to-morrow morning be too early for you?”

  “No, it won’t be a bit too early.”

  “Good,” he said, casually, and turned away to admire one of Tim’s latest paintings.

  Madelena continued to gaze smilingly at Steve, and the two girls carried on a conversation for about ten minutes. Steve learned that the Portuguese girl had been educated partly in France, and partly in Switzerland, and she had only said goodbye to her Swiss finishing-school a little less than a year ago. This no doubt accounted for her air of emancipation, and it also accounted for the delicate air of youth that clung about her. She couldn’t be more than nineteen, Steve thought, and surely no young woman at nineteen could ever be more gloriously sure of herself, or more happily aware that her shapely feet were well set on the road which leads to a wonderful fulfilment of happiness.

  Steve felt a slight tightness at her throat, perhaps because her one love affair at the age of nineteen had been blown to bits by the cold wind of disillusion. Since then she hadn’t wanted to fix her affections, and she certainly didn’t intend that they should be fixed for her when a little exercise of will power could avert what might turn out to be another case of disillusion.

  But Madelena, she thought, taking a sort of delight in spite of herself in the beauty of the girl, was surely a little young to be contemplating marriage with a man of thirty-five or thereabouts? A polished, sophisticated, experienced man of the world . . . even if his world was coloured by Portuguese conventions! And, from his point of view, she could be a little too naive. That confiding smile, that soft little hand tucked inside his arm, no doubt provided him with the right sort of thrill at the moment. But, later on . . . ?

  Don’t be beastly, Steve chided herself. They’re probably both madly in love.

  But when they had taken their departure the one thing she remembered about Dom Manoel was his highhanded attitude over her modelling, and his cold inference that she was being not merely ungracious but a little unfeeling when she refused to humour his fiancee at once, and say that she would be charmed to make a model of her head without being pressed to do so.

  A young woman in her position—hardly in the same social circle as a man of his eminence—ought to have jumped at the opportunity to give pleasure to his future wife, and been grateful because she had been thus singled out.

  She was about to comment somewhat caustically on the Dom’s arrogance after they had driven away when she realized her brother appeared to be in a state of trance. He was standing in front of the picture the Dom had admired, and although he was staring at it hard she felt oddly certain he was not even seeing it.

  He wheeled round and faced her, and his eyes were bemused.

  “Did you ever see anyone like her?” he demanded. “Did you ever see anything so—so absolutely exquisite and perfect!”

  Steve considered this while she regarded him with mild consternation.

  “She’s lovely, of course,” she admitted, realizing he was referring to Senhorita Almeida. “But so are hundreds and thousands of other girls in the world. Millions, I expect, if you could complete a census.”

  “I don’t want to complete a census,” Tim replied, a trifle shortly. “But I do know that, amongst your millions, there wouldn’t be one as rare as she is.”

  “Oh, dear!” Steve exclaimed, feeling a little taken aback. Then she thought she saw the light and suggested: “You’re thinking of her in terms of a model, of course? Someone you can paint?”

  Tim helped himself to a cigarette from a cedarwood box, lighted it, crushed it out in an ash-tray, and selected another.

  “No,” he answered, at last, “I wasn’t even thinking about painting her. For one thing I could never do her justice.”

  “Oh, dear,” Steve said again, and this time she felt slightly appalled. She had never known Tim enthuse about anything feminine before, and now he wasn’t merely doing so in a hushed voice, but his eyes continued to stare straight before him as if he was still seeing the thing that had inspired him with awe, and it might be a considerable while before he stopped seeing it.

  Maria came in from the kitchen and asked them, with her broad, expansive smile, whether they were ready for lunch, and said she would begin serving it in a few minutes.

  “Yes; all right, Maria,” Steve answered. Then she bent and picked up a handkerchief that was lying on the carpet. It was a mere wisp of white lawn edged with lace, and embroidered in one corner with a set of initials, and it smelled delicately of a slightly evasive perfume like lilies-of the-valley. “I think the senhorita must have dropped this,” she remarked.

  Tim awoke from his trance, and literally pounced on the handkerchief. He tucked it reverently in an inside pocket of his coat.

  “I’ll return it to her when I see her,” he said quietly.

  As they went in to lunch together Steve touched his arm.

  “Tim,” she said, warningly, “whatever you do don’t forget that—that Senhorita Almeida is engaged to be married! . . . That she’s the next-best-thing to being married already!”

  Tim’s sideways glance at her was cold and even resentful. It disturbed her, because he had never looked at her like that before. “Do you think I’m likely to forget it?” he asked her, hostilely.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE car came for Steve promptly at ten o’clock the following morning. She was to make the discovery later that the large amount of garage space at the Quinta Rosa contained several cars, and this one was black and opulent and chauffeur-driven. The face of the chauffeur was utterly inscrutable, but his manners were impeccable. If Steve had been an honoured guest he was driving she could not have received greater deference and courtesy from him.

  The drive to the quinta seemed far too short on such a lovely morning, with the sea crooning away at the foot of the cliffs, the sky already as blue as it would be at midday, and the entire atmosphere drenched with flower scents. Steve would have liked to say to the chauffeur, “Go on and on, please—let me see as much as I can of this wonderful coast!” but she knew that she mustn’t do so. She was a young Englishwoman who had been commissioned to do something for an important connection of the de Romeiro family — one of the oldest in Portugal—and it was up to her to remember her position. She would be received civilly—with friendliness by Senhorita Almeida—but beyond and above all that she would be aware of the condescension.

  Dom Manoel’s condescension.

  Actually, she was received by a smiling maidservant and shown into a room off the gracious and elegant hall. She had never seen a hall that impressed her so much before, splendidly proportioned, cool with the coolness of marble floors and a graceful, curving staircase that was also of marble. There were some wonderful pieces of furniture set against the walls, fine period pieces of rich Portuguese oak stained and polished to the hue of ebony, and wherever there were doors satin-damask curtains flowed before them. In one or two cases there were no doors, and the curtains were merely held aside.

  The little room in which she waited was obviously a kind of ante-room. It, too, was exquisitely furnished, only in this case the floor was ca
rpeted, and there was a great bowl of flowers on a centre table.

  Through the window she could see a small, enclosed garden— one of many enclosed gardens, after the Portuguese pattern, making up a delectable world in which to wander. There were green, clipped hedges, and a fountain. The fountain played in a basin that was surrounded by tiles, colourful and glowing as the morning. From where she sat Steve could see a white garden seat, a white dove parading up and down a square of emerald lawn, and a bush of scarlet flowers that she knew exuded a particularly heady perfume.

  But the flower with the headiest perfume that she had discovered so far in Portugal was the celebrated Queen of the Night flower. It opened pale, waxen petals to the night, and closed them up again in the daytime, and the whole atmosphere became saturated with its sweetness.

  The door opened at last, and Senhorita Almeida made her appearance. She was wearing a simple little dress of plain white silk, and she looked even lovelier than on the day before. Steve thought, with a slight, uneasy sinking of the heart, that if Tim saw her as she was looking now! ...

  She apologized charmingly for the fact that Steve had been kept waiting, and led her through handsome, flower-filled rooms to a corner of the quinta that she apparently called her own. It comprised a complete suite, situated on the first floor—and to reach it they had to ascend the impressive staircase that had the effect of taking Steve’s breath away, it was so much more like part of a baroque stage-set than a means of reaching a young woman’s apartments.

  But although she had only just arrived at the quinta there was a great air of confidence in the way Madelena moved. Servants they encountered smiled at her, and she beamed appreciatively back at them. In a lofty- ceilinged gallery hung with portraits she pointed out one that was a masterpiece, an exquisite representation of a girl as young and as enchanting as she was herself, in a dark and rather more sober Portuguese fashion.