by Ives, Averil
She began on the story of Beauty and the Beast, and no sooner was it finished than he insisted on
another. He sounded drowsy, but as inflexible as ever,
and she retailed the adventures of Simon the Pieman.
"Want dragons," he insisted, as autocratic as his uncle, and wearily she told him about St. George and the Dragon. But apparently he was well versed in details she knew nothing about, and his constant interjection threw her out altogether. It had been a somewhat unusual day, with an emotional strain about it because she had been expecting to say goodbye to her closest relatives within a matter of hours, and then on top of it there had come the demand for her assistance. For several hours she had sat in a cramped position alone in a silent room, and now she was fighting drowsiness herself, and her brain began to feel as if it was made of cotton wool.
Jerry mumbled something indistinctly, and she thought how warm and cuddlesome he was in spite of his sharp little bones. His head was stirring gently with the rise and fall of her slim breasts, and one of his hands was tucked confidingly inside one of her own. Without quite realising what she was doing she drew him closer, rested her cheek against his unmanageable red hair and closed her eyes.
The warm breeze from the window stirred her hair, and the cushions against which she allowed her tired body to relax were very soft and yielding. She opened her eyes and made an effort to insist that that was all for tonight about dragons, but Jerry was asleep, a sudden leaden weight in her arms, and try as she would she couldn't stop her eyelids closing.
When finally a bright light dazzled her, and she opened them dazedly, she couldn't for the life of her think where she was. A tall man was standing looking down at her, wearing a white dinner jacket. There was a crimson flower in his lapel, and a crimson silk handkerchief was tucked negligently just inside one of his immaculate sleeves. He was extremely dark, and his eyes confused her.
With a stunning sensation of shock she realised the crime she had been guilty of.
"I'm sorry. . . . I'm so terribly sorry, I fell asleep!" he stammered.
The Conde de Chaves bent over her.
"You'd better let me take him," he said, in an expressionless voice, and removed Jerry's dead weight from her lap.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE following morning Kathleen breakfasted alone in the window of her pleasant room, and then the maid who seemed to have been deputed to wait on her requested her to follow her. Kathleen both looked and felt extremely uneasy, and a little bewildered. The maid had no idea why uneasiness pressed upon her as if it was something that could be experienced physically as well as mentally, and she led the way along numerous thickly-carpeted corridors until at last they arrived at a series of airy, pastel-tinted nurseries.
Nothing more—nothing more capable of consolidating alarm. Just a big Day Nursery, and an even bigger Night Nursery, with bathrooms and a kitchen for the preparation of childish meals. And in the Day Nursery Jeronimo and Joseph were busily waving cereal spoons, while 'Old Maria,' as they called her, selected a couple of deliciously ripe nectarines from the dish of fruit on the table and prepared one for each of them.
Joseph thrust aside his cereal bowl at sight of Kathleen, and let loose a whoop of delight. Jeronimo smiled at her conspiratorially, as if he understood that they shared a secret and that at all costs it must remain so.
But Kathleen thought wryly that the repercussions would catch up with her before very long. This was just a respite—this glimpse of the children's quarters; and while she waited for the second summons that would sever her brief connection with the quinta she went round helping Maria put away books and toys that had been scattered about carelessly the day before, and between them they restored something like order to a room that had recently been redecorated and furnished at considerable cost.
There were delightful water-colours on the walls, birds and flowers executed with exquisite precision on the door panels, and huge glistening cupboards for the
reception of the twins' possessions. And it said something for the generosity of their uncle that they seemed to have numerous possessions as costly as everything else that surrounded them.
Maria really was old, and she had difficulty in bending her rheumaticky limbs to pick up woolly dogs and stray railway engines from under inconvenient side tables, and the children shrieked with delight every time her joints creaked protestingly and she uttered a little agonised grunt. Kathleen smiled with something of an effort because they were in such high spirits, but she had already recognised that they were a slightly inhuman pair who might require the sternest dealing with in time. She herself was not likely to have to deal with them at all after the night before, but because they had taken a tremendous fancy to her they were moderately amendable to her wishes, and when she told them to stop laughing at Maria they stopped.
Maria shook her fist at them.
"They are the Devil's children," she said, and shook her head at Kathleen. "I wish you joy of them, senhorita!"
Kathleen was convinced that the joy would be short-lived. Last night the Conde—possibly because she had been utterly unable to defend herself, awakened from sleep as she had been—had said little to condemn her for encouraging his nephew to leave his bed at night, but his very silence had spoken volumes to Kathleen. That, and the way he had taken Jerry from her.
She had stumbled to her feet, and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. The glow of light in the room still confused her.
"I am so sorry, senhor! . . ." But her apologies were a trifle inarticulate. "I can't think how it happened. . . ."
"Perhaps if you would be so good as to lead the way," he returned quietly, "we can restore him to his bed without it becoming necessary to wake him."
"Of course, senhor!" Somehow she got the door open, and stood aside for him in the corridor. "But as I don't knew the way won't you, please, go ahead?"
"You don't know the way?" His eyebrows ascended. "You have not yet made acquaintance with the nurseries?"
"No, senhor."
"But, how does it come about that this child . . .?" His black eyebrows knitted for a moment as he looked down at his sleeping nephew, and then he gazed expressionlessly at Kathleen. "No matter. Explanations can wait. Follow me and hold open the door when I request you, and I still think this amazing infant can be placed in his bed undisturbed."
Kathleen obeyed him, and it seemed to her that they passed along endless miles of softly-lit corridor before they finally reached a distant wing of the house where the Night Nursery door was standing open, and Joe was slumbering like an angel in his own little pastel-blue bed.
The lighting was so dim that it was scarcely lighting at all, but it was sufficient to prevent the boys from experiencing alarm if they wakened in nightmarish agitation. Jerry was slid expertly into his bed by his uncle, and Kathleen just as expertly arranged the covers over him, so that he never once stirred. And then the two adults stood for a moment looking down on the small freckled face that was so peaceful and angelic in sleep—possibly more so than that of Joe, who had nothing at all on his conscience—and finally stepped back into the sable shadows beyond the reach of the nightlight.
The Conde didn't speak, as he moved to the door, and Kathleen followed him. Outside it she realised that he was looking down at her.
"The child came to look for you?"
"Yes." She made a little gesture with her hands. "But, it was only because—because he thought he heard my voice! Or Joe thought he heard it. . . . And then he wanted me to tell him a story."
"And you both fell asleep."
"Yes."
It was such a dreadful confession that she could hardly get the word out.
Miguel de Chaves' face remained absolutely expressionless, but he placed the tips of two fingers under her elbow and guided her back along the corridors. Outside her room she turned to him, wishing her brain felt more alert and more capable of framing sentences that would put her contrition into words, but he gave her no opportuni
ty to say anything, and merely asked rather curtly:
"Filippo looked after you well when you went down to dinner?"
"I didn't go down to dinner, senhor. I had a tray sent up to my room."
"You—what?" There was no doubt about the frown that creased his brows this time.
"I had a meal on a tray in my room. It was all, and more, than I wanted."
"But that was entirely opposed to my instructions!" She sensed trouble for somebody—possibly Filippo! —and elaborated swiftly:
"It was a beautiful arranged tray! And I have such a pleasant room that I shall be very happy to have my meals there." She could have added, If you decide against booting me out in the morning!
But the Conde was plainly displeased.
"In this house people do not have meals in their rooms unless an indisposition confines them to them," he told her. "In future you will dine always in the main dining-salon, although your charges are too young to behave properly at table. And now I would advise you to go to bed."
"About tonight, senhor—"
"We will discuss that in the morning," he said brusquely, and turned on his gleaming heel and left her.
And now it was morning, and Kathleen was beginning to feel like a prisoner who was to learn of her
sentence when the judge felt disposed to put her out of her agony.
The children finished their breakfast, and then demanded to be entertained. Jerry had a model aeroplane which he wanted her to assist him to reduce to its component parts, while Joe had a weakness for jig-saw puzzles, and brought out a pile from one of the capacious cupboards. Neither of them were interested in Lessons, and seemed to think it a waste of time to attempt to read any one of the numerous books that were neatly arranged on the white-painted shelves. They were familiar enough with the pictures, and as Joe explained:
"Mama reads to us when her head is all right. Rosa can only read Portuguese."
Jerry celebrated the departure of Rosa by snatching all the Portuguese books off the shelf and scattering them far and wide.
Kathleen recognised that even if she was permitted to stay, her task—if she was to gain any real control over these tumultuous twins—was to be no easy one. And the thought added to her uneasiness as she waited for the second summons of the morning, which when it finally came set her heart beating as if it was carelessly attached to the end of a string that dangled down inside her.
But once again this proved to be an anti-climax, and instead of being conducted downstairs to the library she was taken to a suite of rooms in quite a different part of the quinta. No sooner had she entered them than the almost overpowering feminine luxury came at her like a voluptuous mantle cast over her head, and her first sight of Dona Inez was so much in keeping, and such a surprise, that she could hardly keep her astonishment out of her face.
For some reason she had pictured the twins' mother as a dignified Portuguese matron, borne down with the grief of losing a husband. But Miguel de Chaves' sister looked as if she had only just turned twenty; she was like some lovely, tenuous, waxen blossom as she lay
on a low French bed in the white and gold bedroom. The vitality in her glorious dark eyes had the restless quality of one who was infinitely bored, and the pallor of her complexion would have deceived no one. She possessed the matt white skin of the most favoured amongst her country women, containing the purity of the Night Blowing Cereus, with none of its fragile texture.
She had the slender body of a very young girl—almost a child—and she was clad in a white silken housegown as she lay on the bed. Her hair was a tangle of curls with some Titian lights caught up in the jetty masses, and although it was very early in the day there were pearls in her ears and a diamond bracelet blazed on her wrist. A fine platinum chain encircled one slender ankle.
She uttered an exclamation when the maid ushered Kathleen into the room, and then sat up and indicated a chair beside the bed.
"Sit down," she said, speaking English with the same effortlessness as her brother, but with a little less of his formality. "I am relieved to find that you really are young, and not one of those stiff-necked English duennas such as I myself had when I was a child." She smiled faintly. "No doubt it was your youth that caused my brother to look with little favour on you in the first place."
Kathleen didn't answer, but she sat down as requested. Dona Inez called the maid back as she was on the point of departing, and ordered her to bring coffee.
"It is the hour for elevenses, as you would say," she said to Kathleen, "and Maria can be safely entrusted with the children for a time. They make fun of her because she is old, but she will keep them amused while we talk."
Kathleen wanted to suggest that it was not a very kind thing to make fun of the old, but she had an idea that the widow would have arched her pencil-slim eyebrows and looked at her with amusement in her
own eyes. There was no false sentiment about Dona Inez de Chaves Curtis!
The coffee arrived, and Dona Inez—who seemed to suffer from a perpetual languour—stretched herself gracefully on her pillows, and asked Kathleen to pour out. She kept her eyes fixed on the girl while she did so, and when her own cup was offered to her indicated with a beautiful white hand that it was to be set down near to her. Then she said:
"You are pretty! In fact, you are very pretty!"
"Thank you." But Kathleen's surprise showed in her face. "I'm sure you are more concerned with my ability to take charge of your little boys."
The Portuguese woman laughed softly.
"On the contrary, I have seen so many young women attempt to take charge of my little boys that I should be infinitely surprised if in a very short while they weren't taking charge of you! It always happens, and you can blame it on my husband, who ruined them." She spoke so carelessly of her husband that Kathleen was conscious of shock. "American men dote on children, and Joe was no exception. You know, I expect, that he died as the result of an accident?"
"I—I didn't know. I'm sorry!"
Dona Inez reached for a cigarette, and lighted it. "It was a car accident. Joe always drove much too fast."
"I'm sorry," Kathleen said again, rather feebly. The other shrugged.
"Life is full of sorrow, and one has to accept it." Her voice, however, held none of the undercurrents of tragedy. "I was not very happy in America, and I'm glad to be home again."
Once again Kathleen said nothing, and Dona Inez regarded her through a feathery plume of smoke as it curled upward to the ceiling. Suddenly her voice sounded definitely amused, and a smile curled her vivid lips.
"My brother clings to the old order of things, and he believes that woman should fit into a niche. When he marries his wife will have to obey him, and she will
never have the freedom that I had as an American wife. Whether or not unlimited freedom is good for a woman I don't know, but you will appreciate that I find it a little difficult to settle back into the old routine. However, before very long I shall perhaps have my own establishment once more."
She flicked ash from her cigarette, delicately, into an ash-tray. And Kathleen waited for something that she felt was coming.
"One reason why I was so relieved to discover that you are young—and distinctly human!—is that I feel very much the odd-man-out in an establishment of this sort, and it will be nice to know that we can have a little talk occasionally, and no doubt become friends." Her eyes were alert as they studied Kathleen's face. "I feel that I need a friend, and most of my old ones have forgotten me. There is, however, one who will be coming here today . . . this morning."
Kathleen still waited.
"You have already come up against the difficult side of my brother. You will understand, therefore, if I ask you to turn a blind eye should you meet this particular friend—and he is a particular friend!—on the stairs? You will not let Miguel know about it?"
Kathleen stood up.
"I'm afraid you don't quite understand that there is a strong possibility that I may not be staying he
re, Dona Inez. ..."
But the other was not listening to her, she was giving all her attention to a very slight commotion that was going on in the sitting-room on the far side of the door. Her pale cheeks were warmed by the rush of colour that swept into them, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. She fairly leapt off the bed and started to peel off her housegown.
"I must dress," she said, reverting to Portuguese in her excitement. Then, in English: "Go now, Miss O'Farrel," she commanded. "Return and look after the children. I will have a little talk with you another day."
Kathleen accepted her dismissal with a slight feeling of bewilderment, and as she left the bedroom Dona Inez was ripping open the doors of her wardrobe and running her hands over the long line of lovely frocks and expensive suits that hung there. She selected something in a deep peacock-blue colour, with the shimmer of brocade, and flung it on the bed while she made up her face.
Kathleen walked across the floor of the sitting-room without noticing at first that a man was standing before the window, looking out into the sun-filled gardens of the quinta. The maid had just left him alone, and he was gazing thoughtfully into space with a slight smile on his lips.
As Kathleen passed close to him he turned and glanced at her in surprise. One of his eyebrows shot upwards. She had an impression of velvety brown eyes that registered admiration as she lifted her own blue ones, an olive skin and a handsome, if rather weak, mouth. And his teeth were very white as he smiled quickly.
He said something in Portuguese, but she was not familiar enough with the language to know what it was. As she reached the opposite door the one behind her opened, and Inez put in her lovely head.
"I will not keep you, Fernando," she said, with a silken softness. Then, as Kathleen made her hurried escape, "It is only the new governess!"
Kathleen stood outside the door and felt herself frowning. Not because she had been dismissed as `only the new governess,' but because Inez was doing something, she was certain, against the wishes of her brother. And since he was for the moment, at least, supporting her and her two children it didn't seem quite right, somehow.