Red Lotus

by Catherine Airlie

  She appeared to have accepted the fact that Felicity and her companion were no more than casual acquaintances of the journey from Spain and looked amused by the situation rather than anything else. Felicity had liked her at first glance, but now she was not so sure. Senorita Elena Cabenza de Navarro suddenly made her think of a very elegant cat about to play with a slightly-uncertain mouse.

  "I have come to stay for a while," she heard herself saying guardedly. "I am going on to Tenerife."

  The dark eyes opened wide. They were almost black.

  "But this is most interesting!" Elena Cabenza exclaimed with a sidelong glance at the frowning man by her side. "Are you taking Miss Stanmore home, Rafael?"

  "Miss Stanmore is going to San Lozaro." His mouth was suddenly grim. "She is the niece of Robert Hallam."

  A flicker of amazement crossed the dark eyes looking into his, and Elena turned back towards Felicity.

  "How strange," she commented, "that you should meet Rafael on your journey to San Lozaro."

  "Not at all," Rafael said dryly. "We merely flew out from Madrid on the same plane."

  "A coincidence, nevertheless!" Elena favoured him with a strangely-mocking smile as she turned away. "Give my tenderest regards to dear Isabella, won't you, as soon as you get home?" she added.

  Felicity felt strangely and inexplicably ill at ease. The encounter in the sunlit doorway had been brief, but in some odd sort of way it had tarnished the brightness of her first contact with the islands. The whole atmosphere of Grand Canary had seemed so happy and free from strife that even an imagined undercurrent of dissension seemed dark by contrast.

  "Perhaps I should enquire about my connection for Tenerife," she suggested hurriedly. "I should not like to miss it, especially as I am being met."

  "We have plenty of time," her companion told her

  leisurely. "The plane from La Laguna is not yet in. You will allow me to find you something to eat?"

  "I feel that I have taken up too much of your time already," Felicity said. "You may have other friends to meet."

  "None that I care greatly about at the moment." The dark eyes were suddenly, intently on hers, willing her not to refuse the invitation. "It would give me great pleasure if you would allow me to help you. We have perhaps an hour to wait. These delays, I'm afraid, happen on the islands, much as they are to be deplored. Time does not mean so much here as it does in Europe."

  She felt that he did not deplore this delay and flushed at the revelation, yet there was no reason why she should not accept his generously-offered hospitality.

  "It's very kind of you," she said as he led the way across the hall to the glass doors of the restaurant.

  "Now, perhaps, I ought to introduce myself," he suggested as they sat down at one of the smaller tables for two, where they would not be disturbed. "Since we are going to be neighbours, almost, that will be quite in order."

  She felt that he was laughing at her now, gently, teasingly, aware of her reticence about speaking to a stranger and a Spaniard to boot. She took the card he offered her with a small smile at her own foolishness. Of course, there was nothing odd or secretive about him!

  The card announced, in small black letters in a formal, businesslike way, that he was the Marques de Barrios and that he had an office on the Avenida Alfonso XIII in the central district of Santa Cruz.

  More than a little surprised by the revelation, she sat looking down at the card, remembering the little man in the brown suit and his frequent references to the "Marquesa," remembering, too, Elena de Navarro's small, amused smile and her parting request to be remembered to "dear Isabella," who was evidently waiting on Tenerife for Rafael de Barrios' return. A sister, or a mother, or even a wife?

  She looked up at the man sitting across the table from her and knew that Rafael de Barrios did not intend to enlighten her about his household at that moment.

  "And now you must let me introduce you to Spanish

  food," he suggested. "You will be eating quite a lot of it when you reach San Lozaro. Unless," he added quickly, "you mean to make drastic changes in the running of your uncle's household?"

  Felicity shook her head.

  "I haven't come with the intention of changing anything," she said. "I don't even know what my uncle expects me to do, apart from looking after the younger members of the family and perhaps teaching them something of the English way of life. I certainly don't mean to sweep everything before me, like the proverbial new broom!" she ended with a smile.

  He smiled in return as he handed her the menu. "Perhaps that is just as well," he agreed, "when there

  are other people, apart from your uncle, to consider." Felicity looked up from the printed sheet with a frank

  question in her eyes.

  "I'm afraid I know disgracefully little about San Lozaro," she confessed. "Who else is there to consider once I get there, Don Rafael?"

  He looked surprised.

  "I should have thought you would have heard of Philip Arnold," he said in a voice which could not quite conceal his dislike of the man.

  "No," Felicity answered. "Should I have known about him? It is an English name."

  "Mr. Arnold is very English. Shall we say almost aggressively so?" His smile was dry and curiously watchful. "I am surprised that you have not heard of him. He has been part of your uncle's establishment for many years."

  "Uncle Robert did mention an agent," Felicity agreed. "Someone who has done a great deal of work on the plantations, but I imagined that he was a Spaniard."

  Her companion's smile was openly cynical now.

  "Who else could there be at San Low() but the Admirable Arnold?" he said. "No Spaniard would ever work as he has done—for so little return."

  Once again Felicity felt uncomfortable under the direct regard of the dark, smiling eyes which seemed to reveal and yet to conceal so much. Don Rafael, Marques de Barrios, was at no great pains to hide the fact that he found her a most agreeable companion, but in the course of their conversation since he had discovered her identity

  and her destination, she had become increasingly aware of secrecy, of a reserve that went deeper than the natural reticence between two strangers meeting casually, as they had done.

  Yet surely there could be nothing personal about it, she decided, although she could feel it there, as a background, to everything they said and did. Elena Cabenza de Navarro's smile, half veiled, wholly cynical, had been part of it, and Don Rafael's own disinclination to continue the conversation with the little Guanche in the hall had added a furtiveness to it which she neither liked nor could reasonably understand.

  She assured herself that she could have no interest whatsoever in the business pursuits of the Marques de Barrios, even if she had felt drawn by the fascinating Don Rafael almost from the moment of their first meeting. He had been courteous and kind, doing his best to make a stranger feel welcome on the islands where he made his home, and even now he was carefully selecting a meal for her from the long and puzzling menu which he hoped she would enjoy. She had already forgotten his reference to the difficulties with which she might find herself faced at San Lozaro. Difficulties, she considered, were meant to be faced, and her uncle was surely very much the man in authority in his own house.

  The suggestion of a strong, almost a dominating personality, had come through very clearly in his recent letters to her, and she could remember her mother saying that "Robert was always a very determined sort of person who generally got his own way." All of which did not sound as if Philip Arnold could be anything more than an agent or an overseer on the San Lozaro estate.

  Well, she would soon find out for herself. Although not too soon! This pleasant, delightful interval in her long journey to the distant valley where her uncle had settled made everything so much easier. She was freed from the embarrassment of asking directions in her inadequate Spanish, and the meal which was finally set before them could never have been achieved by her own choice. She felt grateful and relaxed as Don Rafael p
oured the native wine he had ordered into her glass and lifted his own to propose a toast to the future.

  "We shall meet again," he said, his darkly-luminous

  eyes holding hers across the blood-red wine. "That is to be expected. But may it be—quite soon!"

  After that Felicity found it easy to be gay in his company. He told her something of the history of the island to which they would travel when their plane eventually arrived, showing no impatience at the fact that it was already an hour late.

  "Something will have happened," he shrugged. "It is frequently so, but you will learn not to care about time when you have settled down at San Lozaro. Time will pass you by there and the care of time, provided there are no complications."

  She did not want to ask him about possible complications now. She was prepared to wait, already accepting in essence the meaning of the Spanish manana. Tomorrow was time enough. Tomorrow, when she would awaken to a new day at San Lozaro and a succession of such days under her uncle's roof.

  When the plane came in her companion looked up regretfully.

  "And now we must go," he said, rising to collect her coat. "Our little interlude is ended. It is no more than a single hop to Tenerife."

  Out in the sunshine again, Felicity wished that they had more time to spare. She would have liked to go down into Las Palmas with Don Rafael as her guide, because already she was aware that he could have shown her the true Spanish scene as no one else could have done. He was completely responsive to the sunshine and the laughter and the blue skies of these fortunate islands in spite of the dignity which he seemed to force upon himself at times.

  He had shown her, too, that he liked her and wished her to know more of the golden islands of this lost Atlantis where he had made his home.

  Suddenly she knew that her own desperate need was to feel welcomed in a strange land, that, ever since her' mother's death, she had felt desolate and alone, without roots or ties in a world where such things were wholly essential. She had wanted her uncle to be at Las Palmas to meet her and he had not come, so that she was doubly grateful to this man who thought that she should have been welcomed.

  Perhaps Don Rafael found difficulty in Understanding the English coldness or matter-of-factness which thought that Santa Cruz was far enough. He had said something of the kind and she had half resented it, but now she knew that it was only because he himself would not have considered time or distance any obstacle to such a meeting. The essence of the man was to live for the moment, but perhaps that had its attractive side, too.

  "I'm rather worried about my uncle having to wait all this time at the airport," she confessed as they walked with the other travellers across the hot landing-strip to where their plane waited. "He hasn't been very well lately, and the sun is very hot."

  "I don't think you need worry," Don Rafael said, the frown reappearing on his brow. "Your uncle will have found something to do in the meantime. He will already know that the plane is late."

  She accepted his assurance as he found her a seat and put his brief-case down on the one adjoining.

  "If you will excuse me," he said, "I will see how long we are going to be before we get away."

  Settled in her seat, Felicity looked out through the porthole at the little ripples of sunlight dancing along the wings and her heart lifted, as if at an omen of happiness. This was a lovely land! If it were only for the sunshine itself, it had been well worth coming. She felt it on her skin like a caress, and thought that nothing she could find at San Lozaro could posibly dim it.

  After all, it would be like coming home in a good many ways. Robert Hallam was her mother's brother and the cousins she had yet to meet were her own flesh and blood.

  When the plane climbed into the cloudless blue above the airport a small stirring of excitement was already rising in her heart. This was journey's end. This was the answer to all her hopes and doubts and fears of the past few months, and this, too, was the future.

  Her eyes strained ahead for the first glimpse of the island that would be her home, and it was Rafael de Barrios who pointed it out to her.

  "However you may come to the islands, it is always El Teide that dominates," he said, pointing downwards to where a great conical peak rose skywards out of a circle of attendant cloud. Its crest was wreathed in snow, flushed

  pinkly in the rays of the westering sun, and about it there was a remoteness which struck chill into Felicity's heart. "It is there from the sea and from the air, always the one thing, above all others, that first strikes the eye."

  Felicity was still looking at The Peak. The great mountain seemed completely separated from all contact with the land beneath, isolated beyond its barrier of cloud, aloof and cold even under the flush of sun on its lofty crest. She could see it, even then, as the spirit of the island, the presence which man looked at and feared.

  "It's volcanic, of course," she said.

  "Its origin was volcanic," Don Rafael agreed, "but there hasn't been a major eruption for many years. Here and there, apart from the great cone itself, there have been minor rumblings, but nothing serious has come of them. No," he smiled, "El Teide is a benign and quiet giant now, and none of his subordinates are worth mentioning."

  Felicity continued to stare at The Peak, fascinated. Its absolute majesty held her speechless, and even when they dropped beneath the level of the clouds which wreathed it, she could still see that remote summit glittering in the sun.

  The plane skimmed in over La Laguna and touched down on the airstrip before she spoke again.

  "How far is San Lozaro from The Peak, Don Rafael?" she asked.

  "Not very far." He looked at her oddly. "But then, El Teide dominates the entire island, as I have said. You must learn to live with him, to accept him in many moods, or he will have his own revenge!"

  She smiled involuntarily.

  "I don't think he can frighten me away," she said. "Already I am fascinated by your remote giant of a mountain, Don Rafael. Already, I suppose, I am his slave!"

  "So!" he murmured. "He will be kind to you. And now," he added more prosaically, "we must look out for your uncle."

  He helped her down the steps and Felicity stood on the tarmac blinking in the bright sunlight. The airport was built on a high stretch of the island and a cool little wind blew down from the surrounding mountains. She found herself in need of her coat, and instantly Don Rafael had laid it across her shoulders.

  "It is always cool up here at this time of year," he said, "but soon we will go down again along the coast."

  He was looking beyond her, scanning the small groups of waiting people at the edge of the runway as they walked away from the plane, and once more she saw him frown.

  It was then that she remembered that she might not recognize her uncle from the description her mother had given her of him. Living for most of his life out here, might not Robert Hallam look very much like any other planter on the island?

  "I ought to have warned Uncle Robert to wear a red carnation!" she smiled. "I haven't seen him since I was three years old."

  Don Rafael was still scanning the bronzed faces of the smiling groups ahead. They were nearly all men. Only one woman, dressed in deepest mourning and clutching a small child by the hand, stood out among them, her black draperies etched sharply against the cream linen suits and light-coloured hats of the men.

  "Your uncle does not seem to be waiting." Don Rafael's eyes had gone beyond the waiting groups to the line of cars parked on the gravelled sweep leading from the main Laguna—Santa Cruz road, and the frown between his dark brows had deepened. "It is unusual for anyone on the island to fail to meet a plane," he added.

  Following his concentrated gaze, Felicity was aware of the first stirrings of anxiety. She had been perfectly sure that her uncle would meet her, had, in fact, been looking forward to just this moment for the past three weeks, and she knew that no trivial thing would have delayed him. Besides, the plane was over an hour late. He should have been at the airport an hour ago, o
r at least lingering in the nearby town.

  Before she could voice her fears, however, a large black car came swiftly along the deserted highway and turned in between the airport gates. She followed its progress eagerly, unaware that the man by her side had stiffened involuntarily at sight of it, the frown black on his face, his lips thinned and cruel-looking as he watched.

  "You are met," he said, "after all. Yonder is the car from San Lozaro, but it is not your uncle who brings it."

  Felicity was conscious of the keenest disappointment which was instantly tinged with anxiety.

  "Can something have happened?" she asked breathlessly. "Can my uncle be ill?"

  Don Rafael did not answer her. He stood very stiffly and very silently by her side as the man who had come to take her to San Lozaro got out from behind the steering wheel and came towards them.

  He seemed to have no hesitation about her identity, and it was minutes before Felicity remembered that she had been the only woman passenger on the plane.

  In these minutes she was aware of a man taller even than her travelling companion, a sparse, almost gaunt-looking man with a lean, brown face and firm jaw, whose piercing blue eyes were the colour of the distant sea. He came purposefully across the hot tarmac, striding towards them in a manner that was unmistakably English and as unmistakably assured. His whole attitude suggested that he had little time to spare for meetings or lingering sociably in the sunshine.

  "You are honoured," Don Rafael murmured at her elbow. "But I wonder what has brought the taciturn Mr. Philip Arnold all this way to meet you?"

  Felicity could not reply. Her questioning gaze had met Philip Arnold's, aware now that the blue eyes held nothing but anger and distrust.

  "Miss Stanmore?" His voice was abrupt, almost impatient, as he put the question. "My name is Arnold," he added. "Philip Arnold. I am the agent on your uncle's estate."