by Jane Arbor
It was only when the car drove up and she heard Leonore speaking to someone that she realized Ramón might be with her. But Leonore must only have been telling Horeb to put the car away, for when she came in to the salon she was alone.
At sight of Emma, she stood still in the middle of the room, drawing off her evening gloves and running the supple length of them through her hands. She said: “It’s very late. I didn’t expect you would still be up. Aren’t you very tired?”
Surprised by the cordial tone but guarded as ever against any new approach from Leonore, Emma said stiffly: “I am not tired, señora. I waited because Pilar rang from Gibraltar and I promised her I would ask you to ring back when you came in.”
Leonore frowned. “Pilar -? Really, you would hardly expect the child need cloy me with attention, now she has achieved an accepted lover who should be glad of it! She cannot want anything important. Besides, she will be in bed by now. My calling her can wait until morning, surely?”
“She begged you would ring tonight,” insisted Emma. “Very well, I will.” But Leonore did not go to the telephone. She flung down her gloves, shrugged out of her wrap and took a cigarette from a box which, surprisingly again, she offered to Emma.
“Tell me,” she said, “you saw Ramón when he came here tonight? It was you who told him where I might be found?”
“Yes. He said he had announced his return from Spain in a telegram. But afterwards he wasn’t sure whether he had sent it or not.”
Leonore smiled tolerantly. “That’s easily understood. He traced me at the Goya and we have had supper together since. But no wonder he doubts a mere telegram! By the time I could persuade him to go back to his apartment and to bed, he had reached the melancholy stage of his wine and was almost ready to doubt the reality of his inheritance. He told you about it, I suppose? That by his uncle’s will he now owns one of the richest estates in Southern Spain?”
“While he was here we spoke of nothing else. Except of you, señora, and of his anxiety to share the news with you. That was why I took the liberty of telling him where he might be able to find your party.”
“You did right, and I’m obliged to you, Emma. You know, one can hardly grasp such a change of fortune all at once, or how it can turn over the whole future —”
“It’s a power,” said Emma dryly, “that the inheritance of money often exerts.”
“Yes, but in this case not only for Ramón. I am wondering, really” - Leonore’s glance narrowed in arch calculation, “how much you realize of where matters stand between him and me?”
“You can hardly have forgotten, señora, that I told you once that his feelings for you are no secret from any- one."
“And mine for him? Tell me, have you never speculated about them?”
“Wouldn’t it be impertinent to suppose you are anything but embarrassed by an ‘abject devotion’ which you can’t return, for loyalty to Mr. Triton?” countered Emma, unable to resist quoting Leonore’s actual words.
Leonore laughed, none too pleasantly. “You give no inch, do you? In fact —” she paused long enough to crush out her half-smoked cigarette and light another - “I could continue to welcome you as an adversary if it were not that, tonight, I happen to need a - confidante rather more.”
Emma drew a sharp breath. “I doubt whether I could successfully fill that role for you, señora.”
“And yet we are both women, aren’t we? You are English and I am Spanish. But can’t we speak the same language about the things which touch women most closely? Love, for instance. Our need of marriage
“I don’t know that we can,” said Emma slowly. “In England we would rather forgo marriage than the love which we believe should go along with it. But, with you, it seems that marriage is the important thing, with or without love.”
Leonore’s lip curled. “And you deduce from that, little Inglesa, that we do not crave love within marriage fully as much as you? How wrong you are! It is simply that we are realists enough to know that a woman’s destiny is best fulfilled, not alone, but at a man’s side.”
“At an unloved man’s side?”
“If it is he, and not the one she loves, who can offer her marriage, yes. Romance may not last. Marriage does.”
“Bearably - for either partner if it’s without love on one side or on both?” pressed Emma.
“One must be prepared to make adjustments and to risk that it may not be easy,” shrugged Leonore. “The danger that it will not be is merely the price the woman pays for security and standing, and the man for whatever he wanted of her. But it is when —” she broke off to slant another deliberate glance at Emma and to add, abruptly: “You have realized, I daresay, that we are speaking, not of women in general, but of one - myself?”
For a moment Emma was silent, reluctant to acknowledge that, beneath the surface of her poise, Leonore might sincerely be appealing for sympathy, wanting help. Then she said gently: “I think I did know it, señora. Wasn’t that what you meant when you said you wanted to confide in me?”
Leonore drew a long sigh. “Yes, of course. I need to speak to someone of the vista which seems to open up for me. When I stopped just now I was going to say that it is when a woman finds love and a safe marriage offering in the person of one man that she need never be afraid any more. And now it is I who am such a woman. Do you understand what I mean?”
“You are telling me that you love Ramón Galatas and that you can marry him, now that he is rich?”
“No less. I never loved Jaime de Coria, but I don’t delude myself that I can flower or expand my personality against any background but that of marriage. Jaime knew as much, and carried his jealousy of me beyond the grave by trying to ensure that I should have to choose between his wealth, marriage or love. But perhaps you know this already from Pilar?”
“Yes. She has always pitied the dilemma it put you in, señora. So do I. But I think I know that I should have to choose - love.”
“You may think so. But you cannot know what it would be like to have commanded a fortune like Jaime’s and suddenly to have nothing at all. So for me, marriage to Mark Triton had to be the answer. Until tonight, that is. Until at last” - Leonore’s voice softened, dreamily - “when, with Ramón, I, too, can choose - love.”
Emma thought, I wanted to feel for her! But she does not change. She is still thinking of herself. Not even greatly of Ramón. And even less of Mark - Aloud, she said: “And Mr. Triton? Can you expect him to accept your decision to break your engagement in order to marry Ramón?”
“But he must accept it. I cannot be forced to marry against my will.” With an air of sunning herself at the prospect, Leonore added: “Mark will care, of course. I should not be flattered if he didn’t. And a good many men in our circle, who have envied him his success with me, are sure to embarrass him with their false sympathy when our affair comes to an end. But equally there will be women only too ready to console him, even to marry him if he can forget me - And, after all, I had promised him nothing yet. We could be said to understand each other. But we haven’t been formally engaged.”
Yet Emma remembered she had once been rebuked for unwarily questioning it! Almost awed by Leonore’s ability to believe her own fictions for as long as suited her purpose, she said nothing in reply.
She was suddenly utterly weary, mentally sick of the whole tangled affair. Though she had meant to give Leonore her notice, she felt too tired to be able to combat any objections to the reasons for her decision which Leonore might choose to make. And perhaps it would be kinder to wait for Pilar’s return and to tell her first.
But the thought of Pilar reminded her that the girl must still be waiting for Leonore’s call, and before bidding Leonore good night she said so again.
With a hand on the receiver, Leonore queried: “What can she possibly want? Did she give you any idea?”
Emma was already at the door on her way out. But thus directly challenged for Pilar’s news, she said: “Lieutenant Nicholas is to be giv
en home leave at the end of the month, señora; Pilar wants your permission for their marriage before then.’
Leonore’s eyes snapped in surprise and anger. “But that’s impossible! They know perfectly well that I —” She broke off there, however, and allowed her whole expression to soften. She murmured: “And yet I don’t know. Perhaps - We must see. It has occurred to me that, of course, I cannot have the child on my hands after I marry Ramón, and for him, in that regard, even tomorrow could not be too soon! Yes, so long as the Englishman understands that it is only circumstances which have changed my mind, it might be rather nice if a double ceremony at the Cathedral were arranged —”
Again Emma made no comment. And as she closed the door behind her, she was thinking with pardonable cynicism that, as long as it suited her sister-in-law’s plans, Pilar was likely to get her heart’s desire.
CHAPTER NINE
The next day there was a letter from Mrs. Marguan, who wrote that she and Commander Marguan had now returned to Gibraltar from England, and that they would welcome Emma for a visit whenever she wished and for as long as she cared to stay.
To this she replied gratefully, though without giving a firm date. She would need somewhere definite to go when she left the villa finally, but had not wanted to go to a pension or an hotel for her last few days in Tangier. Now, as soon as she was free, she could take advantage of Mrs. Marguan’s kindness and make Gibraltar her stepping-off point for her return to England.
Meanwhile, her decision that she must leave at once was not strengthened by Leonore’s announcement that she was giving Pilar permission to marry John Nicholas within the month.
She could not possibly tell Pilar the truth about Mark. Yet, without confiding in Pilar, she could not reasonably expect the girl to understand why she could not stay at the villa for three weeks or so more. On the other hand, she shrank from facing Mark on any future occasion - a prospect she believed was inescapable, as long as she remained at the villa, or even in Tangier. For she did not share Leonore’s complacent optimism that he would meekly accept the switch of her favour from him to Ramón. He had never tried to hide his contempt and dislike for the other man, and as that could be only on Leonore’s account, he was not likely to give her up without a word. And if the villa was to continue as the scene of the tensions and jealousies Emma had already witnessed and been drawn into, she felt she might quickly reach a nervous breaking-point.
It was not until Pilar came back from Gibraltar that she saw the impossibility of pursuing her intention to leave at once. For Pilar was radiant with happiness and with plans, all of which included Emma up to and including her wedding day. Just as, more than once before, she had not been able to abandon Pilar to bewildered unhappiness, equally now she could not shadow such rapture with her own troubles. Grimly, she told herself that she had already weathered, for Pilar’s sake, injustice at Mark’s hands and humiliation at Leonore’s. So she ought to be fortified against anything which could possibly happen in three short weeks. And at least she would have stood by Pilar to the end of the girl’s appealing need of her.
Like most men, John Nicholas would have preferred a quiet wedding. But he was of the same religion as Pilar and would not cheat her of the lovely ceremonial of a full Nuptial Mass in Tangier’s Cathedral, while Leonore saw to it that she should lack none of the social trappings either. The wedding of the little sister-in-law of the Señora de Coria should be the Wedding of the Year. Until Leonore’s own, of course. There would be no superlative beyond that. . .
For Leonore, to Pilar’s disappointment, had quickly decided against her own first idea that they should share the same wedding day. Pilar was consoled by the assurance that Leonore wanted her to hold the sole centre of the stage. But Emma could not help wondering whether Leonore guessed that Pilar’s young bridehood would do this in any case, and was reluctant to act as a mere foil to the younger girl.
Meanwhile, Pilar accepted Leonore’s change of loyalties with an incredible lack of surprise. In fact, Emma suspected that she might have known all along that the affair with Ramón was not so one-sided as, in Leonore’s defence, she had claimed it to be. But though, by now, she had gained character enough to be able to differ from Leonore, she still would not openly judge anything she did. And as her trust was a rare and precious thing which Emma dared not spoil, she managed to avoid any discussion which might have revealed what Pilar really thought.
As the days passed in a whirl of preparations for the wedding, Emma found, ironically enough, that a time she had dreaded proved less difficult and cross-currented than any which had gone before.
Perhaps it was Pilar’s open happiness. Perhaps it was her own quiet acceptance that there could be no reprieve now to the measure of her time in Tangier. Perhaps, now that matters were going wholly her way, even Leonore’s caprice had mellowed. But whatever the cause, the Villa Mirador was an infinitely happier place. And, contrary to Emma’s fears, Mark did not visit it again. Wherever he and Leonore had made their partings, it was not there.
Sometimes, in a starkly honest moment, Emma questioned how much she had really feared it, or whether she had hoped to see him at least just once more. When it seemed that she would not, oughtn’t she to feel nothing but relief? And yet when, with the new air of decision which Pilar now brought to her own affairs, the girl said: “I shall invite Señor Mark to my wedding, you know. I have no quarrel with him, and he has always been kind —” Emma’s heart lurched with something which might not be hope, yet was not quite fear. It was knowing that there could be a bittersweet reward in being able to take silent leave of him in her own way. For on Pilar’s days of days they need not meet each other. And a matter of hours later, she would be gone.
Now, for both Pilar and herself there were the lesser but very real regrets of the various “last times” they would share.
For, after his home leave, John Nicholas would be based on Portsmouth for at least a year and Pilar would stay on in England as a “naval wife”. So there was their last time of serving teas in the English hospital; their last tour of duty in the Spanish hospital’s library; their last visit to the English Club. And it was in the powder- room of the Club that Emma reluctantly eavesdropped upon a phrase or two of gossip about Leonore and Mark.
She was washing her hands when she became aware of the talk on the far side of the mirror-fixture which divided the room in half. A woman’s voice was saying: “It looks as if the de Coria didn’t play her cards too well - letting Triton slip through her fingers as she has.”
A second voice mocked: “My dear, where on earth were you when the publicity handouts were last distributed? As if she’d have let him get away, if she didn’t believe a casa on the Costa del Sol was a better proposition even than the El Triton luxury place on our own Mountain!”
And a third: “Not that he is gnawed by regret over her, either. I hear he has been driving over to Xauen lately. Nice and remote. In the mountains. Far from our inquisitive eyes
The first voice queried: “Another woman already, do you mean?”
At which the other woman laughed: “Well, your guess is as good as mine, dear. But I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t also the very same guess —”
Feeling as revulsed as by an evil nightmare, Emma waited to hear no more.
One of her own “last times” which did not include Pilar would be her final drive with Ayesha out to the girl’s home village, a task she had fulfilled regularly since she had first put the idea to Leonore. But Ayesha had never enjoyed the privilege of a set “day out”, and, in the last week before Pilar’s wedding, Leonore adroitly ignored her maid’s rights altogether, oh the score that she could not possibly be spared.
“She must ask me for time off afterwards, and I’ll see what can be arranged,” Leonore ruled when at last Emma ventured to plead the girl’s case.
“Unfortunately, though, her mother isn’t well, señora. She’d be very grateful if you could spare her, if not for a whole day, then for a few h
ours.”
“And once she goes off into the mountains in these conditions,” Leonore indicated the incessantly teeming rain, “how do I know when or if she’ll decide to come back?” “I’ll see that she comes back, señora. Could you spare her tomorrow, for instance?”
“Not in the morning, certainly. She has to do the ironing of all the things Pilar wants to pack. If she finishes, and you like to give up your siesta, she may go then, provided she is back before night.”
“It won’t give her very long at home, señora.”
“Then if she isn’t satisfied, she needn’t go at all, need she?” retorted Leonore.
It was an argument which defied a tolerant reply, so Emma said no more. And of course, Ayesha was well satisfied with the small grace and touchingly grateful to Emma for her help.
After the weather had broken, it had hardly stopped raining for a fortnight on end, and it was still teeming when they were ready to set out after luncheon the next day. But Emma, with only her experience of moderate English rains to guide her, had no conception of the effects of such torrents upon the mountain terrain they had to travel, and it was Pilar who voiced a warning.
“I do not care for your going at all, Emma,” she worried. “Two years ago, in rains less violent than these some of the country mountain roads were flooded and even swept away altogether here and there.”
“But if there were any danger on the Tetuan road, wouldn’t there be a warning given - on the radio, or in España?” asked Emma, mentioning the daily newspaper which Leonore took.
“There might be. But if, when the danger threatened, you were not listening to the radio or reading España, how would that help?” argued Pilar, with simple logic. “Now, I should like you to promise me, Emma, that when you have left Ayesha in Gechla, you will drive straight back, so that at least you are not travelling after dark.”
