by Mariska
Virginia nodded, thankful her father had passed on the information she herself had given him. It looked better that way. "I'm sorry, but these things happen, you know."
"Has she had aspirin?"
To her credit, Virginia got no pleasure at all from lying to Fernando in this particular instance. "Aspirin doesn't always work," she said. "She just has to relax and get over it. She wouldn't want to spoil the evening for others."
"But it is certainly spoiling the evening for Lesley! Our doctor is here. At a word from me he will go in and see her. He is bound to have something that will help."
"No, please!" She glossed the panicky sharpness of the exclamation with a hurried smile. "You mustn't worry about her, Fernando. She'd rather we forgot all about her."
"She would," he agreed, "but her wishes make no difference. It is a great pity she should be missing the food and fun, and if a little tablet from the doctor's pocket will put her right, I will see that she gets it. In any case, the poor child cannot have much rest with this noise in the house. Come. Let us find Dr. Ransome."
He stood up, and she stood with him precipitately. Her hand went urgently
to his sleeve. "Fernando, please leave her alone. She'd be frightfully unhappy if you sent in the doctor. As you say, it's bad enough that she has to miss the party, but she'd feel a thousand times worse if everyone knew you called the doctor to her for a bad head. Do think of it from her viewpoint!"
"I am doing that exactly," he told her soothingly, charmingly. "We will tell no one but the doctor, and you can, of course, trust him. She has already suffered too long!"
He was moving away, and her pulses were beating the swift rhythm of fright. She saw a hue and cry after Lesley, who had no doubt fallen asleep somewhere; the party ruined; herself made to look a cheat. It was infuriating that Lesley should have plunged her into such a situation. "Wait," she said desperately. "I haven't told you everything."
He stopped and looked down at her, saw her eyes pleading with him in the darkness. Quite gently he said, "You are distressed, Virginia." Then incisively, "What is it? Has some accident befallen your sister? This headache is a cover for something more serious?"
"Not anything physical, I assure you." Her hand slipped naturally into his. "Sit down again and I'll tell you about it."
He dropped back on to the bench at her side. "What is this mystery?" he demanded impatiently. "What is it that has so disturbed Lesley she will not face her friends? I would have said she had the courage to do nearly everything."
"There are some things that leave one entirely defenceless," said Virginia in low tones. "Love, for instance."
"Love?" he echoed sharply. "Explain."
Virginia did it well. Her voice was steady and without expression until the last sentence, when it shook slightly with a hint of hopelessness. "This afternoon Lesley had a visitor. You've met him—Martin Boland. He came to tell her that he intended travelling south this evening and that he's going back to England as soon as he can. I don't know how long they were together or just what passed between them, but apparently she couldn't dissuade him. She told me about it when I got back from Buenda. She was terribly upset, poor darling."
"I see." He sounded crisp and cool. "You think she has feelings for that young man?"
"It would appear so."
There was a silence. Virginia stared down at her red-tipped fingers and waited. A burst of merriment came from the house, and Fernando said, very coldly, "One would have said that if she loves him she should have gone, with him."
"I rather gathered that he didn't ask her to go with him," Virginia commented clearly and slowly.
The second silence was shorter than the first. Fernando ended it abruptly by decisively getting once more to his feet. "So it is a shaken heart from which she suffers—not a bad head. I am afraid our good doctor has no remedy for love-sickness. She will have to fight her own way out of it."
He bestowed upon Virginia a tight smile. "Let us go in and join the dancers. You are so beautiful that I am sure you dance like an angel."
Demurely Virginia took his arm. By the time they reached the lighted veranda all trace of triumph had been banished from her eyes; she had made them soft and sorrowful. All she had to do now was to keep a look-out for Lesley's return, and that wouldn't be difficult.
THE party broke up at midnight, and Fernando and Neville drove away together. Nothing was spoken between them till they neared the white
house at the Falls, when Fernando turned to his cousin "I think you are playing too much and too late, my friend. I suggest you sleep tonight at my house."
Neville shrugged. "If you like. You don't look quite so disgustingly chipper as usual yourself. Have you been working every night?"
"No, but I have had enough of Kalindi."
"You!" Neville was surprised. "I thought you never saw anything on any of your jobs beyond the great powerhouse taming the waters. What's wrong with Kalindi?"
Fernando's gesture, as he swung the car round to the front of his house was economical and alien. "I was a fool to experiment with the rocks. It would have been better for everyone if I had not brought you here to confirm that there is beryl on the Amanzi land."
Neville gave a low, long whistle. "There must be something mighty wrong when you get round to calling yourself a fool, Fernando. And it certainly wouldn't have been better for me if you hadn't suspected the outcrops contained beryl. Do you know what I think?" His grin made him look more his old self. "Miss Norton is dangerous, and you can feel your independence slipping. That's bad in a man like you."
Fernando braked with unnecessary force. "You are wrong this time, Neville." He opened the door of the car. "I will leave the car here; there is not much fear of rain tonight."
They went into the lounge and mixed nightcaps. Neville sprawled in a chair and regarded his cousin from under lowered lids. Fernando did everything as though it were vitally important; each power project was the peak of his career, each holiday a break to be packed with all the joys of civilisation in that island of his. He would probably fall in love with the same thoroughness—if he ever did fall in love. Somehow, Neville could not picture his clever and vibrant cousin experiencing the sort of emotional pangs that slide a man into domesticity; still, there was considerable heat under that arrogant exterior, and Virginia could be depended on to put in some intensive charming. At the thought of Virginia his mouth twisted wryly. Had her heart been pure gold instead of plated brass he could have taken a hard tumble for her himself.
Fernando came away from the window through which he had been
gazing, and went to the bookshelves. "Will you need a bedside book?" he asked.
"No, thanks." Neville got up out of the chair. "Is it the usual room?"
Before Fernando could answer there came an agitated knocking at the main door. He straightened, paused a moment, then went into the adjoining hall, shot back the bolt and pulled wide the door. For some reason Neville had followed him, and both men eyed the trembling man who stood in the porch with curiosity and concern.
"Bwana," he said, "there is a people in trouble on the river. Can see no one, but there is a voice which calls." He showed a flashlamp. "With my brother I go to the bank for fish which rest at night. We are just there when the voice comes . . ."
"What sort of voice?" queried Fernando.
"I do not know, bwana. It is like that of a child or a woman."
Fernando drew his car keys from his pocket. "I'll go and investigate. Go to bed, Neville."
"I'm not as tired as that. I'll go with you—you may need help "
"Very well. But stay in the car. You're too played out to be of much use."
The boy got into the back seat, and as they moved away over the grass he gave a jumbled description of the episode he had shared with his brother on the river bank. He indicated the footpath through the trees, and he and Fernando took it now, the boy loping ahead till he reached the river's edge.
"It was here, bwana. All we
do is flash the lamp—so."
Immediately came a weak shout. "Hallo ! Hallo!" It echoed thinly across the water, and Fernando stood stockstill for a second, unbelieving. Then he cupped his hands and called. "Who is it?"
"Hallo!" came the faint response.
The next moment Fernando had shed his jacket and kicked off his shoes.· He flung an order at the gaping boy. "Tell the bwana in the car he must bring blankets and whisky."
Then he was wading fast into the river and striking out for the opposite bank. His strength was superhuman, his fury a match even for that of the lethal current; he fought it till his knees touched mud and he was able to walk. Sharply, imperatively, he shouted, "Where are you?"
"Here! To your left!"
He saw her then, a small, light figure clinging to the great, exposed roots of a tree and feebly waving an arm, and he splashed towards her. He said something under his breath, and lifted her against him. For endless moments Lesley was rigid, her face hot against his cold, wet shirt; then suddenly she crumpled and quivered, murmured a cracked "Fernando!" and began to shake like an aspen.
He stood it for about thirty seconds, then he took a grip on her shoulders. "Enough!" he said harshly. "We have to get to the other bank. You are warm?"
"Fairly. But if I could have swum it . . . I .. . I'd have tried it before."
"You' do not have to swim. I will take you, and do not try to help, even when we are in the current. You understand?"
"Yes. Fernando, I I. ."
"No more. This is no time for explanations, and I think already I know all. You are ready?"
The swim back to the other side of the river was nightmarish. The fight with the current lasted much longer with Lesley about his neck, but that incredible physique of his won the battle, and in due course he lifted her into his arms and trudged up into the trees, where Neville waited with the blankets and whisky.
Neville took one look at her white face and streaming hair, muttered, "For the love of Mike!" and rolled a blanket round her. Fernando put the flask to her lips and compelled her to drink, bundled her into the back of the car and, wet as he was, got behind the wheel. Within a few minutes they were in his bedroom, and he was calmly and swiftly taking off her sandals and unfastening the back of her frock.
"Don't," she whispered. "I want to go home."
Through his teeth he said, "You are going to bed, little one, and the doctor is coming. Neville has gone to fetch him now."
"I'm . . . all right." Almost piteously she pleaded, "Do let me go home."
"You are staying here!" he said, not looking at her.
She raised her hands as if to press her face into them, and it was then that he saw the palms, red and swollen, with purple lacerations where the thorns had torn the flesh. He took one of them into his own hands, and at last looked into her colourless, ravaged face. His nostrils dilated, his eyes blazed, and his mouth became a thin, hard line. Without a word he ripped her frock right down the back and thrust it over her shoulders and on to the floor. A bath-towel enveloped her, a suit of pyjamas was taken from a drawer and tossed on to the bed. "I'll give you two minutes," he said curtly, and went out of the room.
Even in her state of stress Lesley knew that he meant it. Fumblingly she got out of the wet undergarments and into blue silk pyjamas which were so big that her feet could not find the floor. Stiffly she crawled between the sheets, but she couldn't attempt to dry her hair with such painful hands. In any case, Fernando was back in dry shorts and shirt, his own wet hair raked flat with his fingers. He took up the towel and sat beside her on the bed, and he seemed to put all the anger he couldn't speak into the savage rubbing of her hair and scalp. By the time he had finished the doctor had arrived. He gave her a couple of precautionary injections, and stated that she was young and tough enough to come through without harm. Those hands were bad, though, and it would be a miracle if she hadn't severed a tendon somewhere. Yes, it might be as well
for her to remain here. Two days in bed, and dressings twice daily on those palms.
When the doctor had gone, Fernando brought her warm milk and some biscuits, and Neville lolled in the doorway, shaking his head in fraternal reproof. "Nothing can be worth all that, my child," he said. "Didn't anyone ever tell you the other bank is anything but friendly?"
Fernando said brusquely, "You had better go up and let her father and sister know she is safe, Neville."
"Why disturb them? The morning will do:'
"They may be worrying."
"I don't think so. They think she is snug in her own little bed."
"It would be as well to leave a note there. After all, this is not a conventional situation, and it is best that Virginia should know we have no alternative to keeping Lesley here."
"It wouldn't do, of course, if Virginia misunderstood," Neville said with a half-wink at Lesley. "All right. I'll scribble a note and take it along."
He disappeared, and Fernando moved away from the bed towards the window. His hands were tight at his sides, and his jaw was set and without expression. He looked at Lesley's pale, despondent face against the pillows, at the bandaged hands lying loosely on the blanket. "How long were you there, across the river?" he demanded abruptly.
"It seemed like a .. . a whole night. I set out at first in a canoe." "Why did you do it—run away from the party?"
"I didn't, really." She looked his way, then averted her glance because there was something about him that unnerved her. Her reluctant brain tried to encompass the sort of evening he must have had. Seemingly Virginia had said nothing about Lesley's absence from the house, so that it was more than likely, in view of Neville's remark, that her father thought her snug in her own bed, that the guests had been led to think her indisposed. It was the commonsense way to deal with her disappearance. Maybe Fernando thought she had been unwell, that she had not gone out till the party was well under way. It was better to say nothing than to incriminate Virginia.
"You went out because you were unhappy?"
"I was a bit down, yes."
"Why did you take out a canoe in the dark?"
She paused. "I . . . I wasn't thinking very clearly, and I didn't intend to stay out long. The canoe drifted, and the current caught it. My only hope was to hang on to a branch. I couldn't bother whether it was thorny or not."
"You were very silly in the first place. No one goes out in canoes after dark. I can only suppose you were in a mood not to care whether you lived or died. I am sorry for you."
His coolness plucked at her nerves. She got the impression that he didn't really care what might have happened to her, that he had only saved her because a human being couldn't be left to suffer from exposure, or drown.
She was so weary from the hours over there in the teeming darkness, so full of the throbbing pain in her hands, that she would have wept unres-trainedly. Weeping probably would touch that masculine heart of his, but she didn't want to touch it in that way. The very last thing she wished for from Fernando was the cold kindness which comes from pity. This complete withdrawal, much though it hurt, was better than that.
He came beside her, took away the under pillow and switched off the main light. "You must sleep," he said. "Good night."
He was at the door when she whispered, "Fernando, I'll never be able to thank you for bringing me across the river. If you hadn't, I'd have had to spend the rest of the night there."
"Do not dwell on it. You are secure now." And he went out.
NEXT morning it was not much better. Neville came in to wish her a brief goodbye. "I saw Virginia when I went back there last night," he
said, and added cryptically, "You had a bad head, and cleared out around ten for a breath of air. Virginia thought you were still in bed, and didn't like to waken you when the party was over. Got it?"
"No," she said dazedly.
"That's your sister's story, and she's sticking to it. When I challenged her with knowing you weren't there at night, she said she thought you'd somehow got a lift to the P
embertons' and would stay with them for a while. If you deny anything, she'll smile pityingly and say you've lost your memory, poor thing. I'm asking no questions, Lesley. I just thought I'd warn you." He blew her a kiss. "So long. See you at the weekend."
While she was struggling to eat toast and a boiled egg, Fernando came in, heralded by the merest tap of fingernails on the door panel. Desolately she thought that there was nothing about her to embarrass Fernando. To him she was a child.
He came to sit on the cane chair beside the bed. "You must eat all the toast," he said. "You had no dinner last night."
"I'm still not hungry."
"The emotions leave no room for hunger—is that it?"
"If you like. Have you seen my father?"
"No. He went late to bed and could not sleep. Virginia has given him sleeping tablets, so he is now quiet for a few hours."
"You saw Virginia?"
He nodded. "She has been terribly anxious about you, and will be coming here later this morning. I think, Lesley—" his inflection was metallic—"that your action last night was entirely inconsiderate. For Virginia, and perhaps for others, you spoilt an evening which was meant to be full of fun." He gave her no time to speak before continuing, "I understand how it was with you, but I would have believed you capable, even in an extremity, of placing the pleasure of your father and sister, and the guests, above your own feelings."
"Believe me," she said quietly, "I had no intention of upsetting anyone."
As if she had not spoken he went on, "To complete the ghastly picture, we find you at one of the most perilous parts of the river, near collapse and with your hands so torn that you may have scars for life. What might have happened had that boy not heard your cries I dare not think!"
"I'd have hung on somehow till dawn. The worst part of it all, to me, is the fact that it had to be you who rescued me. I know that sounds ungrateful, but it'll serve to remind you that I'm not just an appendage of Virginia's to be protected for her sake but treated like a tiresome adolescent. I told you last night I wanted to go home. This morning I want it a thousand times more. There's nothing wrong with me."
