by Jane Arbor
Her swift glance at Pilar was a startled question which the girl answered shyly with: “Emma, this is Lieutenant John Nicholas.” (She pronounced the Christian name “Juan”.) “We have met when he has been to the English hospital to visit a friend who has had a boating accident. He is English, like you, and he is in your Royal Navy.” To Lieutenant Nicholas, she said: “This is Emma Redfern, of whom I have told you. She is my duenna and I love her very much.”
“I don’t wonder!” the young man grinned as his hand went out to Emma. “To think that I’ve always supposed duennas” - making an English word of it - “were forbidding ladies with hard eyes, dressed in funereal black!”
Emma smiled. “Señorita de Coria means ‘companion’, really. I’m not nearly experienced enough for a proper duenna. May I -?”
She introduced the man who had asked her to dance, and Lieutenant Nicholas explained himself further by saying: “I’m stationed at Gib., you know. Basing a spot of leave on Tangier Yacht Club with a chap from the wardroom who is a member, and then the silly ass slips on the deck of our craft and breaks his arm. Hence the English hospital and me, visiting the sick and contriving, you bet! to be among those present on the Señorita’s days for serving the patients’ tea. By the way,” he twinkled, engagingly, “she has said I could call her Pilar!”
“If I were a real duenna, I expect I should have to forbid it,” laughed Emma, making a mental count of how many times lately Pilar’s tea-duty had been in the private wing, while her own had been on a general ward, and wondering where her duty lay towards a friendship which, unknown to her, had flourished in a very short time.
“When does your friend leave hospital ?” she asked. “Comes out tomorrow, worse luck, and precious little of our leave to go. I debated whether I could get myself hit over the head with the boom, so that I could have his bed. And though it’s not so hot an idea, it’s just not to be contemplated that I shouldn’t see any more of Pilar! But she will keep on saying it would be ‘too difficult', though not how or why. Can you tell me why she shouldn’t take me to see her people, as an English girl would?”
As he spoke, Emma noticed that his fingers had secretly found Pilar’s and had entwined with them at her side.
Emma said gently: “It’s so different for Spanish girls, you know. They are chaperoned until they are engaged, and Pilar is still very young —”
“But if -? Oh, well, perhaps it is a bit early for that,” he broke off. “All the same, Pilar’s sister-in law, Señora de Coria - would she really carve me up and throw away the pieces if I called and wanted to take Pilar out?”
“I don’t know,” returned Emma, playing for time, for indeed she did not know what Leonore’s reaction might be. She had claimed that she wanted Pilar married as soon as possible. But Emma guessed that her plans almost certainly envisaged an eligible suitor from among their own people and of her own choice, not Pilar’s. Emma added to John Nicholas: “Do you mind if I talk to Pilar first? Meanwhile, my partner here has been very patient, waiting to dance. And I suppose you are going to dance with Pilar?”
“Am I ?” He faced to the girl and held out his arms to her. “Little one?” he invited, his voice infinitely tender. And as they glided into the crowd of dancers Emma did not know whether she envied them or ached for them most.
She made adequate conversation with her own partner while they danced. But all the time the undertow of her mind dragged ceaselessly at the realization that if Leonore chose to wreak scorn and spite on Pilar over John Nicholas, she could not - could not! - abandon Pilar to it by giving in her notice and going away.
If Nicholas wanted to woo Pilar seriously - and Emma guessed from his broken-off phrase that he did - she must remain at the villa at least long enough to ascertain Leonore’s reaction and, if necessary, to protect Pilar from the worst of it. That meant no salving of her pride by resigning from her post tomorrow. And she loathed the thought of handing Leonore a tacit victory in the matter of Ramón. But she felt she must stay.
By the end of the dance, her heart was lighter and she felt quite fortified by her resolve. Even, somehow, reprieved. As if a way of life which she had grown to love, yet must abandon, had been blessedly given back to her for a time. . . .
When Ramón himself asked her for the next dance, she accepted, realizing that, as they were in the same party, it would look odd if she did not dance with him at all. And though he seemed able to whisper empty compliments as easily as he breathed, there was safety in realizing that his heart was not at all in the part Leonore had allotted to him in order to deceive Mark. He was watching for Leonore, jealously all the time.
After that dance, Emma sought out Pilar. They found a seat in one of the darker avenues and Emma went into gentle attack at once.
“You knew Lieutenant Nicholas was going to be here, Pilar?”
“Yes, he had promised he would be.”
“And this —” Emma touched the fall of Pilar’s spreading skirts - “was for him?”
Pilar nodded and drew a long breath. “Yes —” “But you left me to guess about him, and you hadn’t told Señora de Coria?”
“No. Oh, Emma, though I was afraid to tell Leonore, I know I should have told you, after the first time at the hospital. But I did not know what I felt about Juan, or what he really wanted of me. I only knew that he looked at me and touched my hand as no man had ever done before, and that when he did, something happened to me which had never happened before. Is that, Emma - love?”
“I think it is first love, Pilar.”
“But it need not die because it is only the first? How can I be sure it will not?”
Emma considered her answer. “I think,” she said, conviction steadying her tone, “you can be sure when you know that, even if you never met again, you would not feel differently. When being happy doesn’t only depend on looks or words or kisses or love letters. When you can believe that illness, or being poor, or even a lot more ordinary nuisance-values couldn’t change your feelings. When you know, quite certainly, that you want the other person’s happiness more than you want your own —”
Pilar breathed, her eyes starry in the darkness: “But all this I am quite sure of now! You have said it all for me, Emma. Especially that when we are together we can talk and laugh and share, and often do not even need to - to kiss!”
“How frequently have you seen John?” Emma asked.
“Three - no, four times at the hospital. And once when I went with Ayesha into the city to have my hair shampooed. I - sent Ayesha away and did not go to the hairdressers’ at all.”
“But you see, don’t you, that it can’t go on so? That you must introduce John to Señora de Coria?”
“And supposing she forbids -?” Pilar’s lip quivered.
“If she does, you must trust John to see that her reasons are good ones. If they are not, we must think again what you ought to do. But it is the best possible sign for your future that John is honourable enough not to want to keep your affair clandestine. So will you find him, and take him to Señora de Coria now?”
“Oh, Emma - not before the Posy Dance! Supposing she was so angry that she would not let me give Juan my flowers?”
“She couldn’t stop you. It would make a scene, and it’s only a game which we are all playing for fun. Besides, she could be much more annoyed - and with your poor duenna, too! - if she saw you dancing often with a man she does not know.”
That argument convinced Pilar and she went obediently in search of John Nicholas after making Emma promise that she would go with them to Leonore. A rendezvous was made where the avenue gave on to the lighted dance floor and Emma strolled there to watch the dancers while she waited for the other two to join her.
The band had just struck up when suddenly, to her consternation, she saw Mark Triton threading a purposeful way towards her. She had not seen him since they arrived and she knew, as instinctively as she had known when John Nicholas had been coming for Pilar, that Mark meant to ask her to dance.
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But she couldn’t! Not this time. Not without failing Pilar. She knew only too well how easily Pilar’s courage could evaporate where Leonore was concerned. So, on the hope that she could escape before Mark could suspect she was deliberately avoiding him, she turned her back upon the dance floor and walked quickly away through the crowds.
From the shelter of a spreading cedar, she looked carefully back to see him check, appear to stare after her, then turn and stride away at a wide tangent. She waited until she saw him bowing over the hand of a woman she did not know before she ventured to return to the spot where Pilar would expect to find her. So much for the second time of having to put Pilar’s interests first! And though, if Mark had not known she had deliberately escaped him, he would probably seek her out again, she wished she were not so instinctively sure that he must have known.
When they went in search of Leonore they found her the centre of a gay, mixed group, and she made gratifyingly light of the introduction which Pilar had dreaded so much.
With an affectionate arm about the girl’s shoulders she teased her a little and was charming to the Lieutenant. Pilar, Emma saw, was rapt with gratitude. But for her own part, she could not decide whether Leonore had not grasped the situation or whether she was merely holding her fire. There was certainly a shrewd calculation in her eyes as the two young people moved away, fingers confidingly linked.
They all danced again several times as the evening mounted towards the climax of the Posy Dance. But Emma saw Mark only in the distance and he did not approach her again. Oddly enough, she had not seen him dancing with Leonore either, though, of course, he must have done.
At last the moment arrived. The candles had been lighted among the banked flowers and were flickering and gently guttering in the still air. The ladies were warned to collect their posies according to number; the men were directed to stand in line.
The band began to play, dreamily, seductively and, amid laughter, the first of the offerings were diffidently or confidently made. Of the party from the Villa Mirador, Ramón was the first to be challenged - by a girl in scarlet who not only gave him her posy but snatched a flower from it to tuck into his buttonhole. Then it was Leonore’s turn, and with strain plucking at her throat Emma watched her as she made a cool, independent study of the line of men.
She was bringing, Emma thought, her poised sense of the dramatic to the appraisal, as if she were really undecided whom to choose, though, of course, she would single out Mark. She was nearing him now ... and smiling -
But the next moment it had happened. Laughing provocatively up at him from behind the half-circle of her gold fan, Leonore flicked her posy sharply across his cheek and mouth and presented it, with an elaborate curtsey, to his neighbour.
The man hesitated, said something which Mark did not answer; then, with a gratified shrug at his good fortune, he kissed Leonore’s hand and whirled her away.
At Emma’s side, Pilar gasped. “You let me believe she was not annoyed about last night!” she accused. “But she must have been, or she would never have insulted him so!”
Emma said, with truth: “You asked me if she knew that I had been out with Mr. Triton and I told you she did. And quite soon, if you remember, we went on to discuss the Ball.”
“Yes, I know,” agreed Pilar, miserably. “But I wish it had not happened, all the same. For if Leonore is angry enough to flout Señor Mark in public like that, in order to pay him out, she must be even more angry with you. And that I cannot bear for you, Emma, dear! ”
“But I told you, Pilar - Señora de Coria knows just how last night happened, where Mr. Triton took me and that I wasn’t late back at the villa. If she is annoyed, it must be over something else. But,” Emma added, though without believing it herself, “may she not have done it just to tease him and not seriously at all? People who are in love, you know, can sometimes afford to pretend they aren’t, just because they are so very sure that they are.” She smiled at Pilar. “Why, sometime or other, you might do just the same sort of thing to John in play!”
Pilar shook her head. “Never like that,” she whispered. “I may not yet know much about love, but I do know that lovers and wives and husbands must never humiliate each other in their self-pride or in their heart in front of other people. No, Leonore must have been very angry indeed —”
But it was Pilar’s own turn then and, of course, there was no doubt at all as to where her posy would be offered. In fact, all the nearby onlookers smiled at the naive eagerness with which she almost ran into the arms of John Nicholas, and Emma was able to make a business of absorbedly watching them dance away before she faced the problem of choosing a partner for herself.
It could not matter less where she offered her flowers, since she dared not offer them to Mark. But of all the male faces ahead of him she did not recognize one, and she was reluctant to approach a complete stranger. A few paces behind Mark, however, stood a young Spaniard, a merry teenager to whom she had been introduced earlier, and though it meant passing Mark on the way, she decided to make for the boy.
It must have been because, avoiding glancing at Mark, she was studiously looking straight ahead, that a trick of light and shadow on the lawn took her unawares. As she drew level with Mark, she checked suddenly at an imaginary obstruction across her path, momentarily lost her balance and, regaining it, found, to her infinite chagrin, that he was retrieving the posy which had accidentally tossed directly to his feet.
He could not mean to keep it. He would return it to her of course - But he made no effort to do so, and turned to the man next to him instead.
“What’s the local ruling on that?” he asked.
The other man laughed. “Oh - verdict for you, definitely. ‘Nine points of the law' in fact. Always supposing, though, that the lady is disposed to be kind-!”
“That’s what I thought,” Mark returned coolly. “Kind or no, the lady has sacrificed her further freedom of choice —” And retaining his hold upon the posy, he swept his arm about Emma’s waist.
There was nothing she could do, nor for the moment wanted to, even though his flouted male pride, no doubt, was once more using her as proxy for Leonore. She was impelled by the same reckless need as she had known last night - to savour, by whatever false pretences, the joy of being with him, close to him, in his arms....
They danced in silence until he challenged her: “Did I cheat you of a more attractive assignation, I wonder? But you really had to expect to pay forfeit for running away deliberately an hour or so ago!”
So he had known! As she could not deny it, she said, instead: “I hadn’t a more attractive assignation in mind.” His eyes mocked her. “Is the lady unexpectedly kind? Or is it that the range of choice is progressively narrowing all the time?”
As she could not answer that by telling him that of all men in the world he would always be her one choice, she said nothing, willing him not to make it more difficult for her than he need.
They danced on. Presently his light touch upon her fingers tightened. “You are trembling,” he said. “Why?” She could not truthfully deny that, either. But she was about to make light of it, when he went on: “Cold? Or apprehensive? Afraid I might take advantage of your acquiescence by trying to kiss you again? If so, I assure you you needn’t be—”
Her chin went up and the quivering of her wrist steadied. “I’m not in the least afraid you might,” she said. There was almost enjoyment in indulging an irony which she could not expect him to understand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SURPRISINGLY, there was no reaction from Leonore about Mark having partnered Emma in the Posy Dance.
It was possible that she had not seen them dancing together. But Emma thought it more probable that, having spurned him herself, Leonore realized she had no case for complaint. And when he dined at the villa, a few nights later, she was as gracious and charming as ever; a fact which comforted and reassured Pilar that she had not been deeply annoyed, even though it did little for Emma’s pea
ce of mind.
Emma’s resignation was another question which, when Emma did not press it, Leonore allowed to drop. And to Emma’s relief, the issue between them was temporarily eased when Ramón Galatas was recalled to Spain by his family on the death of an uncle of his. True, Leonore still resorted, when Mark was present, to such oblique hints as - “One wonders why Emma is not looking quite herself these days?” and “The postman has a special importance for La Inglesa just now.” But Mark gave no sign that he even heard them. And by this time Emma’s resolve to stand by Pilar as long as possible had hardened to the point where she, too, forced herself to ignore them.
For Leonore’s gracious acceptance of John Nicholas had been, as Emma feared, an act which she had put on to impress the audience of her friends at the time. As soon as possible she was accusing Emma: “How is it that you kept from me any knowledge of Pilar’s association with this young man?”
“I learned of it only very shortly before you did, señora.”
“But she met him at the English hospital, and you go there with her, don’t you ? ”
“Of course. But when we are not allotted to the same wards, we don’t meet until we come away. And though Pilar was expecting him to be at the Flower Ball, I knew nothing about Lieutenant Nicholas until he came to claim her for the first dance. And when he did, he said almost at once that, from the first, he had wanted Pilar to introduce him to you.”
“And you believed that?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s what I should expect of a man as straightforward as he appears to be.”
