Red Lotus

by Catherine Airlie

  She greeted them with a flood of voluble Spanish, and Philip listened, the frown still heavy on his brow. After what seemed to be a moment of indecision, he turned to Felicity.

  "I'm afraid the news is not good," he said. "The doctor is still with your uncle. He is very ill."

  "I must be able to do something," Felicity cried, peeling off her gloves. "I nursed my mother—"

  "We have plenty of help here," he told her. "The house is full of superfluous women. I think they will be best pleased if you leave the menial tasks to them. Most of them have served your uncle all their lives, and they are born nurses."

  "But surely I may see him?" Her voice hardened a little. "I have come a very long way for just that reason, Mr. Arnold."

  "Of course," he said, "you may see him But we must bow to the doctor's orders at the moment. It will depend upon what he feels is best for his patient, I should say."

  Felicity bit her lip, not wanting to argue with him in the present circumstances, not wanting to feel that he was being dictatorial, even rude, and above all not allowing herself to contrast his brusque behaviour with that of Rafael, Marques de Barrios. It was hardly a fair comparison, she acknowledged. The two men were of different races.

  A servant began to unpack her luggage from the ample boot of the car and Philip turned to direct a word or two to the man. He was small and dark-skinned, with a low forehead and closely-set black eyes, evidence of the strong strain of Guanche blood running through his veins, but his flashing smile was wide and uninhibited and he made her a small, attentive bow as he walked before them into the house.

  "You will show the Senorita Stanmore to her rooms, Sabino," Philip ordered.

  "Si! Si, Don Felipe!" The man crossed the patio, standing aside for Felicity to pass. "This way, Senorita!"

  Felicity hesitated. It seemed incongruous that she should be shown to her rooms by an outside servant, especially when she had just been told that the house was "full of superfluous women," but no doubt most of them were employed in the kitchen at present, preparing the evening meal or whispering together over the fate of their master.

  She began to wonder about her cousins, Robert Hallam's children, whom she had expected to meet straight away. None of them appeared to be within hearing distance of the arriving car, however, and it seemed that Philip Arnold guessed her thought, for he said:

  "Sisa is with her father. She will not leave him. Julio has not come back yet. He is out somewhere on the plantations. We have no regular hours for working here, as in England," he added. "Our toil is governed by the sun."

  He had spoken of her cousins with easy familiarity and still with the note of authority in his voice which had set her wondering about his true position at San Lozaro. Did he live in the house itself, or had he some other place of domicile within the vast garden's encircling walls?

  "I am looking forward to meeting them," she confessed. "Julio is the eldest child, isn't he? I mean—after Maria."

  The name hung, quivering between them. It was as if she had shouted it in the sudden, deathly stillness of the patio. Sabino's smile faded on his lips and Philip Arnold's face took on a curious greyness. The light, which had been all about them in the garden, dimmed with the sudden coming of the sub-tropical night and even the climbing fountain seemed arrested in the windless air. There was no sound from within the house. It was as if death itself had taken over where once there had been abundant life.

  "Yes." The word came, clipped and aggressive, barring the way to further questioning. "Julio is eighteen. Sisa and Conchita are fourteen and seventeen respectively."

  "I ought to have remembered their ages," Felicity said, half nervously, as he stood back, waiting for her to pass. "It's—rather difficult to adjust oneself to a new situation right away."

  Philip Arnold nodded, whether in agreement with her

  sentiments or in dismissal she did not know, and she followed Sabino and her suitcases into the cool interior of the house.

  The lamps had not yet been lit and the inner courtyard was shadowy in consequence, but she could see a vast (tessellated floor stretching into the shadows and a heavily-ornamented staircase leading up from it to a gallery above. The gallery ran round three walls of the inner structure, the fourth being entirely taken up by the head of the branching stair itself.

  Sabino turned, beckoning her with an encouraging smile, the shock-of Maria's name apparently forgotten now that they were no longer in "Don Felipe's" presence.

  "This way," he repeated. "I show you where you will go."

  Felicity mounted the staircase behind him, walking silently in his wake along the gallery, from which doors opened at regular intervals. Behind one of these doors, she supposed, her uncle lay seriously ill, but no sound came from any of the rooms she passed. The doors were thick and heavily carved, old and substantial as the house itself, and the massive pieces of furniture placed against the walls between them only seemed to accentuate the heavy silence which brooded over everything.

  At the end of the gallery Sabino paused, looking back once more as he thrust open a door on the end wall. It led into a little passage, and as she walked ahead of the old servant into her own domain, Felicity had the curious sensation of being completely isolated from the rest of the family.

  The rooms she entered were spacious and well furnished in the sparse, Canarian style. The sitting-room held a table, a desk, a wooden settle dark with age, and two comfortable chairs, both facing the window and the balcony beyond it. She told herself that she must get used to the idea of not having a fireplace in a room, the focal point of all English living, and passed on to the bedroom, where Sabino was already setting down her suitcases.

  He disappeared with a bow and a murmured word of Spanish which she was too preoccupied to catch, and she looked about her at the big, four-poster bed which would surely swamp her and disturb her sleep. It had no canopy, but the corner posts were most ornately carved, and the

  beautiful drawn-thread work of the counterpane made it a fitting centrepiece for the room. It was native craftsmanship and had probably been worked by her aunt, the lovely Spanish woman whom she could not remember.

  Impatient now to meet her cousins and enquire about her uncle, she washed in the old-fashioned basin on the mahogany stand in the far corner of the room, pouring crystal-clear water from the huge ewer with its garlanded flower pattern which she saw, with a small sense of shock, represented the red lotus that grew in such profusion all over the valley.

  She stood gazing at it for a moment before she turned and went slowly back along the gallery towards the stairs.

  CHAPTER II

  DON JULIO

  DOWN in the central hall lamps had been hung along the walls, casting little pools of yellow light against the pale cream of the plaster and deepening the shadows outside in the darkened patio. The swift, sub-tropical night had come like the beat of a raven's wing and all sound was stilled. There was no wind left even to stir the feathery heads of the island palms. They stood silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky as if they had been etched in with a dark pencil as the moon came up over the shoulder of the jagged ridge above the valley.

  Already its light had touched the high cone of The Peak, paling its snow cap and deepening the shadows in the barrancos which scarred its sides. They were purple now, scored sharply against the mountain's face, no light touching them even as the moon rose higher and cast a silver wash across the garden's trees.

  The hall was deserted. There was no sound anywhere, no movement. Felicity felt chilled and curiously alone. Had she no part to play in this drama of her uncle's household? Was she completely unwanted, apart from Robert Hallam's natural desire to see his sister's only child?

  And now, perhaps, he was dying,- somewhere up there behind those guarded doors.

  She thrust the suggestion from her mind, but she did not move towards the patio, where she knew that the Spanish family generally gathered before its evening meal. A shadow had stirred out there among
the other shadows and subconsciously she knew that it was Philip Arnold.

  He had not gone there to wait for her. Almost as surely she knew that. He wanted to be alone, and the garden had served his purpose. To go out to him now would be a form

  of trespass, and she had no desire to incur his anger. The servants, too, seemed to be leaving the patio alone. Someone had placed a tray with glasses and a bottle of wine on the stone table beside the fountain, but the occupant of the garden had been left to serve himself.

  She did not know what to do. Then, from somewhere behind her, within the house, came the sound of an opening door, and high-pitched sobbing echoed shrilly from the gallery above.

  Immediately the shadows in the patio dissolved and Philip Arnold passed her. His face was grey and drawn, the blue eyes under the dark brows strangely bleak. There was none of the former arrogance in his face as he said:

  "It is Sisa. Will you come?"

  The appeal—if it was an appeal—had been just what Felicity had been waiting for. She wanted to help. She felt the need for action more than anything else, and the sound of a young girl's anguish had touched her heart. There was a helplessness about the man who mounted the stairs ahead of her, too, which suggested a typical male inability to cope with tears, although the wild sobbing which still reached them could only have been the tears of a child.

  "Someone has told her," Philip said through set teeth. "Her father is dead."

  He had not sought to soften the blow in her own case, and Felicity swallowed hard, trying to blink aside the sudden tears which had welled to her eyes before they reached her cousin's room. When they halted outside the door her heart was beating fast.

  "Sisa!" her companion said in a voice she would never have recognized as his. "It's Philip. Will you let me in?" There was no answer.

  "I have your cousin here. Your cousin from England. She has come to comfort us in our distress."

  There was still no sign from behind the closed door, but the violent sobbing had ceased. They waited.

  "Is her sister with her?" Felicity whispered.

  "Conchita? No." Philip turned to look at her. "Conchita would not take her father's death in this way."

  She felt uncertain and at a loss again. Was he trying to tell her that Conchita would not care?

  There was a small, groping movement within the room

  and the handle of the heavy door began to turn, slowly at first and then with an abruptness which suggested final decision. The door opened and a small, forlorn yet wholly dignified figure stood in the aperture.

  Sisa was fourteen years of age, but already she seemed to be curiously mature. She had a small, oval face which had been touched lightly by the sun, giving her skin a golden-brown cast which accentuated vividly-blue eyes, red-rimmed now from weeping. Her hair was straight and very black, and it was braided severely in two tight plaits which fell over her shoulders almost to her waist. The ribbon which bound one of them was untied, but otherwise Sisa's appearance was fastidiously neat. It was almost impossible to believe, save for the evidence of the reddened eye-lids, that she had been weeping in unhappy abandonment less than a moment ago.

  The strange, incongruous dignity of the child trying to hide her sorrow from a stranger touched Felicity as nothing else could have done, but she knew that she must leave the next step to Philip Arnold. He knew and loved Sisa. Of that she was sure.

  "Please come in." Sisa spoke in stilted English, in spite of the fact that Philip's appeal through the closed door had been made in Spanish. She would not inflict a barely-understood language on a guest, although she could probably have expressed herself better in the tongue she had used since earliest childhood. "We knew you were coming."

  The room they entered was much like Felicity's bedroom, with the addition of a prie-Dieu beside the bed and a desk between the two long windows. There was also a motley collection of dolls set along a low shelf, most of them in the native costumes of the other islands or of Spain itself, presents brought, no doubt, by a returning parent for a waiting child. Some of them were sadly tattered, those, Felicity knew, that were best loved and most often handled. Others had been scarcely touched at all.

  Conchita's, she thought, without knowing why. She had noticed the second bed in the far corner of the room. Conchita had never had a great deal of time for dolls.

  "Your cousin has not eaten anything since her arrival, Sisa," Phillip said. "Do you think you could order for her while I have a few words with Doctor Cambreleno? He

  may wish to go away soon because he has a long journey to make."

  "And his task here is finished." Sisa gnawed a quivering lip. "I understand that, Philip. There is a baby coming at El Tanque. It is a happy event for these people."

  Felicity went forward into the room.

  "If you would rather not come downstairs, Sisa," she said, "I shall understand."

  "That would not do." Sisa was re-tying her hair ribbon with a new determination in her eyes. "There is no one else to greet you, so I must come—Felicity."

  The final word was all that Felicity needed. She put her arm about the younger girl's thin shoulders and they went down the stairs together. A priest in a black cassock met them in the hall. He was old and bent and looked vastly troubled as he laid his hand in blessing on Sisa's dark head.

  When he passed Philip Arnold on the stairs he gave him an odd look, half questioning, half perturbed, but Robert Hallam's agent was already escorting the doctor to his car. They were speaking in rapid Spanish with a good deal of native idiom thrown in, so that Felicity could not even .begin to understand what was being said.

  "Tomorrow," Sisa announced at her side, "Señor Perez will come from La Laguna and we will know what is to happen to us. My father has made a will, but no one knows, of course, what he has put in it. We do not know what he wishes us to do. Whether we are to stay here or go away."

  Her voice had faltered on the suggestion of departure and Felicity's arm tightened about her.

  "I don't think your father will wish you to leave the home you love, Sisa," she said, not quite knowing why she should have given her cousin the assurance she had so obviously sought. "He loved San Lozaro, too. He has lived here nearly all his life."

  "Yes," Sisa agreed, but she did not seem wholly convinced. "If it depended upon Julio or Conchita, we would go away."

  The revelation disturbed Felicity, but she was determined not to ask any more questions. Sisa escorted her to the kitchens, where a tearful domestic staff managed to pull themselves together, including, presumably, the person who

  had broken the harsh news of her father's death to her cousin. The preparations for an evening meal were set in motion, although there was still no sign of the other members of Robert Hallam's family.

  Towards ten o'clock, Julio came in from the fields, to be met in the patio by his father's agent. Felicity and Sisa were in the drawing-room, a vast place of many mirrors and much solid old furniture which was rarely used in the ordinary way, and so Felicity saw nothing of that first meeting between Philip and Julio after his father's death.

  When her cousin came into the drawing-room to meet her he looked sullen and angry, his mouth drawn down in a petulant line, his black eyes smouldering. Julio was all Spanish, from the crown of his black, curly head to the soles of his gaily-shod feet, and he did not seem to relish the idea of her presence.

  "You've come too late," he said, "if you wanted to see my father."

  Felicity got to her feet.

  "Yes, Julio, I know," she said. "That is my loss. But I hope I can be of some small help to you now."

  He shrugged indifferently.

  "What can you do?"

  "I'm not sure. I thought, perhaps, that I could ask Mr. Arnold."

  The suggestion had been entirely spontaneous and she could not understand why she had made it. Unless it was because only Philip Arnold and Sisa had shown any real feeling at her uncle's death. Conchita, it would appear, had not yet come in.

 
Julio turned slowly to look at her. He had gone to the window to gaze out over the moonlit garden, but when he came back across the room his face was convulsed.

  "He has no power in this house now!" he cried. "It is broken with my father's death! He must go away." Suddenly he drew himself up to his full height, which was no more than her own. "I shall be in charge at San Lozaro now that my father is dead," he announced. "I shall be the head of the family. I shall give the orders. Philip Arnold must go away."

  The smouldering hatred in his eyes could not be ignored, and Felicity found herself recoiling from it with a hopeless

  sense of her own inadequacy to deal with the situation rising in her heart.

  "I don't think we ought to talk about such things just now, Julio," she warned, glancing in Sisa's direction. "Your sister is tired and we must go early to bed. Tomorrow will be a heavy day for us all, but we will help each other best by—by trying to forget our prejudices. Everyone has little differences of opinion," she added lamely.

  "This is more than just a difference of opinion, Miss Stanmore."

  She wheeled round to find Philip standing in the doorway, and Sisa ran to him immediately.

  "Please, Philip, do not let us quarrel to-night," Sisa pleaded. "Julio will say he is sorry. He did not really mean that you should go away."

  Felicity saw the older man's lips tighten almost cruelly as he looked at Julio.

  "I hardly think it is for Julio to say how and when I should go," he answered thinly. "Your father's will is yet to be read, and then we will know just where we all stand."

  Julio gave him a look of the most utter hatred as he picked up the manta he had discarded on one of the sofas and went out.

  "I'll get what I want to eat in the kitchens," he said harshly. "Perhaps that is really my place."

  The tension he left behind him in the quiet room could almost be felt.