White Rose of Love

by Anita Charles

  Tim gazed at her face a moment rather moodily, and then went up to her and clasped her shoulders warmly with a strong right arm.

  “Here, here!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? A spot of indignation on my behalf? Or,” peering closely at her, “is it on your own?”

  “Of course it isn’t on my own.” She tossed the cigarette away, and Tim lighted one for her. “I don’t care if the Dom ignores me, but he was beastly rude to you. And you’re so nice! How could anyone—ever—be rude to you?” and to her own utter consternation she burst into tears.

  Tim took her comfortingly into his arms. He pressed her head into his shoulder, and stroked her hair with his sensitive artist’s fingers.

  “Don’t upset yourself, little one,” he advised her. “My shoulders are broad, and I can take a lot ... And the Dom was obviously badly upset. I expect he was worried about Madelena, and it upset his temper a little. It’s the first time I’ve ever known him behave like that.”

  “I hate him!” Steve declared, as if she really meant it, and her brother looked down at her gravely.

  “I wish I could believe that,” he murmured, as if he was communing with himself. “As it is, I . . . wonder how you’d react if I presented you with a return ticket to England? Air fare first class!”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m not going to leave you, Tim. Not until you throw

  me out!”

  Much later that night there came a ring at the bell, and as Tim was out Steve went to the door and opened it.

  Dom Manoel stood there, still looking immaculate, but with a curiously ravaged face and eyes that frankly pleaded. When he saw the tell-tale red marks that still rimmed Steve’s eyes an expression that was almost agonized entered his own lustrous dark eyes.

  “Stephanie, you have been crying!” he exclaimed. And then: “Oh, Stephanie, I had to come back!”

  Steve withdrew into the hall, and spoke politely.

  “There was no need, I assure you, Dom Manoel. My brother and I both understood that you were temporarily annoyed, and I’m afraid it was a little thoughtless of us to invite Senhorita Almeida into the cottage. Of course you must have been greatly concerned about her—”

  “I’m greatly concerned because I was unpardonably rude to you and your brother.”

  “It was nothing,” she assured him, with a kind of hollow brightness in her voice, although the blueness of her eyes had been blurred by much and recent weeping. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in, Dom Manoel,” she added hurriedly, “but Tim is out, and I’m alone in the house.” She knew that his chivalrous instincts would never allow him to force his way in on her when she was alone. For one thing, it would be entirely opposed to his Portuguese principles. “It’s late, too, and I’m going to wash my hair before going to bed. You must forgive me. . .”

  She thought that his devastatingly handsome face whitened a little. He bit his lip.

  “When will I see you again? Will you be coming to the house tomorrow to resume your modelling sessions?”

  “I don’t think so, senhor. Not for a few days, anyway.... Perhaps Senhorita Almeida will let me know when it’s really convenient. With such a short time until the wedding she must have many things to preoccupy her.”

  He nodded, and turned away. In the light of the swinging antique lantern she received the impression that the side of his face that was turned to her had whitened still more, and the features looked painfully sharp. His chin and jaw were rigid.

  “Good-night,” he said.... “Please apologize to your brother for my rudeness!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TWO days later she received a note from him which was brought to the cottage by one of the Quinta Rosa servants. Tim was out at the time, otherwise she felt certain he might have looked a little curious when she slit open the neat but impressive envelope.

  Inside the single sheet of notepaper had a very brief message written on it.

  “Meet me tomorrow morning at ten o ’clock about a hundred yards from your cottage gate. I will be waiting with the car. If you have not joined me by half-past ten 1 will know that you do not intend to do so. ”

  It was signed, Manoel.

  Steve put the letter away in one of her dressing-table drawers, and then took it out again and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. All day she went about feeling it occasionally to make certain it was there, and by the time she went to bed she had no clear idea in her own mind whether or not she intended to obey the somewhat imperious request contained in the severely penned note. Not until a quarter to ten the following day, when she changed hurriedly into one of her pastel coloured linens, did she acknowledge to herself that she was keeping the appointment. Furthermore, she faced the truthful admission that she couldn’t have done anything else.

  She was probably being most unwise, and the memory of Dom Manoel’s high-handed treatment of herself and her brother two evenings before still rankled; but he was Dom Manoel, and no other man had ever had—or, probably, ever would have—the power to command her that he had, or the power to make such a thing as her own will seem no longer to exist.

  And, inside herself, she was consumed with the desire to be with him—if only for a few minutes. She had no right to crave to be with him, but her whole being was one large ache to hear his voice and see his dark eyes resting on her once again. Especially as the last time they rested on her they had been full of a kind of agony, and she knew she had been fairly ruthless with him that night.

  He was sitting at the wheel of his long cream car when she emerged from the cottage. It was five minutes past ten, and the car moved slowly to meet her. Manoel lent across and opened the door that was nearest to her, and which was beside his own seat at the wheel, and he spoke quietly.

  “Get in.” When she was seated beside him he heaved a long sigh of relief. “I couldn’t be sure you would come. I was very much afraid you wouldn’t.”

  His eyes met hers, dark, grateful, full of a warmth and a badly concealed delight that actually made her feel a little dizzy as she met them. His hand came out and rested for a moment above one of her hands, and then he started up the car and they slid away along the white, dusty, tree-lined road.

  ‘Where are you taking me?” Steve asked, as soon as the wild emotional excitement that seemed to rise up in her throat and interfere with her breathing subsided a little, and she could speak. “And why did you want to see me this morning?”

  “I’ll answer the last question first,” Dom Manoel replied. “I’d see you every morning, every afternoon and every evening—and every night!” he added, with a note in his voice that shook her to her foundations—“for the rest of my life, if that was possible. I’d do the same thing throughout several lifetimes, if that was possible! . . . And as to where I’m taking you, well that depends on you! If you’re willing, I propose to devote the whole of to-day to you. . . . But if you can’t spare me the time, then we’ll go for a short

  drive.”

  “What about Senhorita Almeida?” Steve asked, with a dryness in her voice that made it sound harsh and actually to grate a little on her own ears.

  “She and her mother have gone shopping to Lisbon. They will return some time to-morrow.”

  “So. . . . While the cat’s away—?” Steve suggested, still more drily—although she hated herself for the vulgarity of such an inference.

  “The mice will play?” He finished the sentence for her, while all the brilliant beauty of the morning slid past the car windows, and the excitement of the coast road opened out before them. “We are not mice, you and I. We are two people unfortunate enough to love a little too late, and therefore we cannot be happy. But we can be happy to-day, for a short while, if you can forgive me for my behaviour the other night. Can you forgive me, Stephanie?” he asked, his voice all desperate pleading.

  Steve looked down at the skirt of her dress, and pleated it with nervous fingers.

  “What did Tim and I do the other night that made you so angry with
us?” she counter-questioned.

  “Nothing. It was Madelena with whom I was really annoyed . . . and I don’t quite know why I was annoyed with Madelena,” he admitted.

  She glanced at him curiously.

  “I’ve never known you angry with Tim before. I’ve always thought you have a high opinion of him.”

  “So I have.” He nodded at the road ahead. “A very high opinion!”

  “Then ------ ?”

  An odd expression stole to the corners of his mouth. He frowned at the road ahead.

  “Perhaps I was annoyed because Madelena seemed capable of forgetting me under the influence of your brother’s smiles; and I am the man to whom she is betrothed. . . .”

  “Ah!” Steve exclaimed, feeling as if several knives stabbed into her at once. “You were jealous! You were jealous of Tim! . . . And yet—and yet you say—you say that you!. . .”

  Dom Manoel shook his sleek head very decisively.

  “I was not jealous. Before one can be jealous one has to be in love, and you should know that I am not in love with Madelena! If any man made you smile and purr like a kitten as a result of the sheer charm of his personality I wouldn’t be anything so tepid as jealous. . . . I would feel positively murderous!” He turned his dark eyes, with a flash of something unleashed and violent in them, towards her for a moment, and she shivered with a kind of ecstasy because of a glimpse of something primitive. “But by sticking to my side of the bargain and going ahead with my plans to marry Madelena I am sacrificing any hope of personal happiness for myself; and I think it must have struck me all at once that I could be making a somewhat unnecessary sacrifice. Madelena will be happy enough with me, but she could be just as happy with any other man—so long as he spoiled and petted and cossetted her!”

  Steve sat staring straight ahead through the windscreen. Suddenly she asked:

  “Has it ever occurred to you that Madelena might be happier with some other man? I mean—if she is not in love with you, any more than you are in love with her! — mightn’t she fall in love belatedly some day? And what would you do then?”

  She realized she should not have asked the question. His face grew dark, and she had the feeling that something blazed briefly inside him, and although it wasn’t concerned with a purely primitive thing like jealousy, it was concerned with his manhood and the pride he had in his family name. He might be contemplating a loveless marriage himself, but Madelena had to be thankful that she had been selected by him, and that he was prepared to marry her, and be grateful because she was thus favoured.

  Steve’s lips twisted a little wryly, and for nearly a mile they drove on in silence, and then he stopped the car on a

  very quiet stretch of road and turned to her.

  “You could be right . . . Perhaps I am wronging Madelena, but I don’t think so. She is an enchanting creature without depth, and as my wife she will be happy.”

  “She might be happier as someone else’s wife,” Steve said obstinately.

  Suddenly he put back his head and laughed, and it was such genuine, amused laughter that she knew he was incapable of feeling jealousy—or anything approaching it—on Madelena’s account. He no doubt felt himself responsible for her behaviour, but beyond that he was impervious to hurt from her.

  “Someone like your brother, for instance?” he suggested. “Don’t tell me he is suffering as you and I are suffering as a result of having fallen in love? If he is I feel pity for him, but there is nothing I can do about it.” Abruptly he sobered and took her hands, lifting each finger gently and caressing it. “Oh, Stephanie, my beloved, I have tried to think of a way out, but there is none. I am in honour bound to marry Madelena, and nothing can release me from my promise to do so. The affront that would be put upon her family if I attempted to free myself and marry you at this stage would be too great to be borne.”

  Steve stared dully past his shoulder.

  “In that case, was it wise of you to want to see me today? If any member of Madelena’s family saw us together—”

  He shrugged.

  “That is a risk I had to take. I cannot live without some sight of you.”

  “When I am in England you will not see me.”

  “You are not going home to England!” His tone was almost violent. “I forbid it, Stephanie! Stay here where you are needed, and where I can at least be assured that all is well with you—”

  She smiled a little twistedly.

  “How can all be well with me when the man who says he loves me is going to marry another woman? You ask a lot, Dom Manoel, if you expect me to step aside from your life, but remain close to your doorstep just the same! I am only human. . . . There are some things that are too great to be borne, just as in the case of Senhorita Almeida’s family!”

  Moodily he started up the car again, and they drove on. By degrees the beauty of the morning, the knowledge that she was with him, soothed Steve, and she began to see his point of view a little more clearly than she had hitherto done. Of course he couldn’t cast aside Madelena as if she was a thing of no account, but he had his personal feelings, and he, too, was suffering. He would have to live with Madelena. . . . He couldn’t, like Steve, give himself up to his own unhappiness and dwell upon it. He would have to make an effort to conceal it completely!

  And to-day he was temporarily free of Madelena, and it might be one of his last opportunities to be happy . . . if nearness to Steve made him happy. She glanced at him sideways and saw the depressed droop of his mouth, the little hollows in his cheeks that betokened unhappiness, the fixed way he stared ahead through the windscreen. A feeling of almost maternal love for him surged through her, and she put out a hand and touched him lightly.

  “Manoel. . . . You were right about to-day! It’s good to have something to think about when—when we will both need something to help us through times that won’t be awfully easy! And we’re not hurting anyone. . . . Not—not just going for a drive like this—”

  He turned dark eyes that blazed with gratitude towards her. His own hand went out and almost cruelly gripped one of hers.

  “You are my best beloved! . . . My only beloved! All my life my thoughts will turn to you in gratitude because I knew you, and the precious loveliness of you! Now let us forget that we have anything to make us unhappy, and enjoy our day!”

  They drove by far lonelier ways than the tracks Tim had followed only a couple of days before, and the little mountain inn where they lunched was far more isolated and tucked away. Even so, the lunch was good and the service excellent, and as they sat in the sunshine and sipped their coffee afterwards Steve was so content, and so almost blissfully happy, that she was to wonder at herself afterwards.

  Dom Manoel talked to her about all sorts of things. . . . His boyhood, the mother he had adored, and who had died when he was quite young, his liking for England. It had always been his intention to take a house in England one day, perhaps a flat in London. . . . He was a little appalled by Steve’s description of the kind of flat in which she lived when she was at home in England, and the endless money troubles she was up against. It seemed to him appalling that she had only her brother to make some provision for her. “But, what if you were ill. . . .? What if Tim marries?” She laughed lightly.

  “Of course Tim will marry some day—he must! And in England we have health services, and things like that. I shall never starve. Besides, I have my work, and I shall concentrate on that. One of these days I’ll probably be famous—” she laughed almost gaily. “Wait until you hear the name of Stephanie Wayne spoken of with awe in artistic circles! Wait until I have exhibitions that are attended by people from all over the world!”

  “So long as you never marry,” he said, with intensity.

  She looked at him for a long moment, and then picked up an orange and started to peel it.

  “I can’t promise that I’ll never marry, of course—after all, people get lonely! But I think I can promise you I’ll never fall in love again.”

  H
e bent towards her and seized her wrist across the table. The plump, amiable woman who had waited on them, and who was about to carry coffee to the table her husband was occupying under the trees, glanced round and across at them in some astonishment.

  “Stephanie!” Dom Manoel exclaimed, his voice thick and choked. “You must promise me you won’t ever marry! ... I couldn’t stand that, I—” A thick tide of colour swept up under his dark skin, and for a moment even his eyes looked bloodshot. “The thought of you one day giving yourself to some man I could only loathe is too much for me! It’s unendurable agony! Stephanie! . . .”

  Her eyes were like haunted, dark blue pools as they gazed back at him across the table, with its checked cloth and its bright centrepiece of flowers.

  “And how do you think I feel, Manoel, when I think of you and Madelena . . . having children, perhaps!” Colour as hot and as painful as his own rushed into her cheeks. “When I think of you—on that honeymoon trip you’ve planned to Paris. . . !”

  “Don’t,” he said, and stood up abruptly. “Let’s go.” He summoned the proprietress and asked for the bill, declined to wait until it was produced and thrust a number of notes into her hand. He took Steve by the elbow and guided her back to the car, placed her in the seat beside him at the wheel, and then they started off.

  It was so hot that it would have been wiser to seek a shady place and rest, but de Romeiro seemed obsessed by the desire to keep going, and going, always with the sea on their right hand, and the wildness of the mountains rearing up on their left. When Steve ventured to ask him where they were going, and how soon he proposed to turn for home, he merely shrugged his shoulders and spoke curtly.

  “This day will end all too soon. Sit quiet and say nothing, and in due course we will arrive somewhere. I have no idea where, but there must be somewhere you and I have never seen, where we can know a few brief moments of happiness.”

  They dipped down into a little seaside town, and then out of it and up into the hills once more. The cream car was immensely powerful, and Manoel drove almost as if possessed. Steve was completely fascinated by the sight of his slim, brown, purposeful hands on the wheel, and the knowledge that he was beside her once more became the only important thing in the world to her.