“My dear, that’s rather an odd question,” she answered, “and extremely difficult to reply to, because in noble Portuguese families like Dom Julyan’s marriages are so seldom contracted for love.
Love may enter into them later on, but a girl is chosen because of her own family connections, because perhaps she is rich, and her wealth can bolster failing fortunes, or in order to cement a business relationship between the parents. There are all sorts of reasons which we in England would look upon as too materialistic for words, but purely sentimental reasons do not often occur amongst them. However, if you like to come with me to the library—if you feel that it won’t be hurting your ankle to walk that far—I can show you a portrait of Donna Valerira, and perhaps you will be able to judge for yourself the possibilities of a man falling in love with such a face.”
Lois instantly stood up—actually eager to see the portrait—and then she suddenly remembered that she might run into Dom Julyan.
“But, what if we—won’t Dom Julyan think it odd
if he sees us---------?”
“Dom Julyan has gone out to lunch with friends, and he will not be back until quite late in the afternoon,” Miss Mattie informed her. “There is no danger of him seeing us enter the library.”
“Oh!... Oh, then, in that case...” But Lois felt curiously disappointed. It wasn’t that she wanted to run into Dom Julyan, but it wasn’t exactly highly flattering to be deposited—almost literally since he had carried her from the car—in his house, and handed over to the care of Miss Mattie, and then apparently forgotten all about while he calmly took himself off to lunch elsewhere. Although, of course, she had absolutely no right to expect him to do otherwise, and considering the recent treatment meted out to him by Jay it was very good of him to bring her here at all.
But, nevertheless, her feeling of disappointment grew until it assumed the proportions of something more like dismay, and it was not until she caught Mist Mattie looking at her with raised brows that she realized that some of her feelings were showing in her face.
She felt the color rise under her skin, and her eyes grow confused. Miss Mattie smiled in the inscrutable but strangely knowing way of the old and the shrewd.
“So you’ll be quite safe, my dear,” she said. “Do you really want to see the portrait of Jamie’s mother?”
“Yes, of course.” But Lois was no longer so sure. All in a moment she would have been happy to think up an excuse for rigidly avoiding the library of this delightful house.
“Then come along.” Miss Mattie turned, and already they were outside in the corridor. It was very thickly carpeted, and their footsteps on that carpet made absolutely no sound. Lois limped behind the queer little figure in the black dress, wondering all at once how she had lived here so many years and been happy when after all there was a very decided barrier between her and the master of the place.
One day Dom Julyan would be the Marquiz de Valerira, and the barrier would be even higher then, and more insupportable. At least, it would be insupportable to Lois. . .
. Looking out through an open doorway at the exquisite beauty of one solitary vista of the garden she told herself that it would be intolerable to live here and feel that there was a great gulf between her and the man who employed her. That he was only her employer, that he looked upon her as an employee, and that was all there was to it. . . .
And then, remembering that she herself was going home to England in a few days she was no longer so sure.
A beggar at the gates was in a happier position than a beggar far removed from the gates. . . .
And then she shook herself in an alarmed fashion, and asked herself what in the world was she thinking, and was it merely the result of being a little low in health, and feeling a sharp pain in her ankle when she leaned on it too heavily? Of not wanting at all to leave so much color and beauty behind and go back to an unimaginative and slightly frustrating job... ?
Of course that was it! . . .
And then Miss Mattie flung open the door of the library with a kind of flourish. Lois accepted her invitation to step inside first, and found herself in a vast room with a glistening floor of marble, fluted columns that supported the painted ceiling, and cases containing hundreds of beautifully bound books. There were books bound in vellum and crushed morocco, calf and even faded silk, and the rich colors glowed behind the protective glass. Between the cases and over the fireplace there were portraits, and it was the one over the fireplace to which Miss Mattie attracted Lois’s attention.
“Look!” she said. “There it is!”
CHAPTER SIX
Lois looked up almost unwillingly at the painted face in the portrait. She had been prepared for a beautiful face, but the wife of Dom Julyan had been much more than merely beautiful. By comparison with her Jay was obvious, and even slightly vulgar, with a tinsel glitter Donna Valerira had never needed to possess. The artist who had reproduced her on canvas had concentrated on capturing the striking effect of a dead-white skin against a shadowy background, and the rather slumbrous look in the glorious dark eyes. There was just a hint of red in the luxuriant hair that was worn parted sleekly in the middle and drawn into a heavy knot on the nape of the slender neck. She was in a white evening dress, with a red rose fastened to the front of it, and a Spanish shawl was falling from her shoulders.
Lois thought she would have made a wonderful wife for a Marquis de Valerira, but unfortunately she had not lived long enough to grace such an exalted position as that.
“Well? ’ Miss Gregg enquired curiously, as Lois remained silent.
“There is something about her eyes,” Lois remarked. “A
certain indolence.”
“Portuguese women are often indolent,” Miss Mattie replied. “Probably the climate has something to do with it. They haven’t the fire of Spanish women, but they are just as beautiful.”
As Lois went on gazing at the portrait she thought that that must be the explanation of the thing that puzzled her. The face lacked animation—fire—because its owner had by nature been an indolent person. Sensuality, perhaps, was in the full redness of the mouth, a touch of the mocking humor Dom Julyan himself displayed sometimes; but true emotion was altogether absent from the face. It was not a mask, but a reflection of the inertia behind it.
And Lois recalled Dom Julyan’s rapier-like alertness when his mask of indifference slipped, the curious vividness and charm of his smile. Behind his aristocratic composure there lay something quite different to inertia.
She turned away from the portrait, and without making any more comments walked towards the library door. The governess followed her, thoughtful eyes on the back of the soft fair head.
They spent the afternoon out of doors in the garden, Lois relaxing comfortably in a long chair with a foot-rest, which Jamie padded with cushions, so that the comfort should be complete. Miss Gregg went on with a piece of her eternal sewing, and while Lois watched her and thought half enviously that she, at least, was secure for the rest of her life, and that even although she might never see her home country again, her adopted land was very kind to her, the faded little English governess talked to her about her present charge’s father, and how much she had always thought of him.
“He was such a handsome boy,” she said proudly. “Much more vital and alive than his son, I’m afraid, will
ever be ------------ ” Taking care to make the observation
when the child was out of ear-shot. “But, then, Dom Julyan was a thoroughly normal child, and he had a very normal mother. She was a delightful person, and I was very happy while she was alive. Julyan was very devoted to her, too.”
“Dom Julyan seems very capable of devotion,” Lois remarked, with apparent casualness. “First his mother, and now his son!”
“But not—so far—a wife!” putting ridiculously tiny stitches into the small sleeve of a shirt. “I wanted you to see Donna Valerira’s portrait because now, perhaps, you will believe me when I tell you that was no love matc
h. Not on either side.”
Lois looked at her in considerable amazement.
“I shall never get used to Portuguese ways,” she admitted. And then she remembered Jay, and her amazement increased. “Even my own cousin—that, too, was to be a kind of marriage of convenience! It is extraordinary.”
“But happily it came to nothing,” Miss Mattie observed complacently. “I don’t mind telling you, my dear, that I was never attracted to your cousin, and I knew very well she was not the right sort of wife for Dom Julyan. Because I know him very well I consider that his first marriage was a mistake, and I didn’t want to see him make another. I’ve always hoped that when he did marry again he would choose someone he could—well, let us say ‘care’ for.” “And you know that he didn’t care for Jay?”
“I knew it, yes.”
“Then perhaps he will—choose someone else before long?”
Miss Mattie put down her sewing and looked rather more seriously at Lois. In fact, she even looked, for an instant, a trifle grave.
“That is what I am inclined to believe,” she confessed. “In fact ----------------------- ”
“Yes?”
“Today he is visiting a family we know very well—a family almost as old as the Valeriras. The eldest daughter married a couple of years ago, but her husband was killed in an air crash about a year after the marriage, and she has just returned a widow from the United States, where she has been living with his parents. Fortunately she has been left very comfortably off, but she will undoubtedly wish to take another husband, and there was a time when everyone supposed that she and Julyan—well, many people believed that he would pick upon her instead of the wife he did pick upon, and there is no doubt, I think, that they have a great admiration for one another. They have what I think can be best described as a kind of mental attunement.”
“Meaning that they think alike on—on important subjects?”
“On most subjects, I would say. They have similar temperaments.”
“I—see.” Lois was glad of the temporary diversion caused by Miss Mattie’s sewing falling from her lap, and as she bent and retrieved it and the color became heightened in her cheeks it was simple for anyone to decide that it was merely the result of bending her head forward swiftly. “And is she—is she as beautiful as Donna Valerira was?”
“She is not in the least beautiful,” Miss Mattie replied calmly. “But she is attractive—very attractive.”
“I—I see,” Lois said again, and was almost passionately thankful for the sight of Maria advancing towards them across the lawn with the tea things.
She didn’t know why, but the rest of the afternoon was not nearly as pleasant as the early part, but Miss Mattie—studying her when she was unaware that she was being studied—could have told her if she had chosen to do so why it was that the flowers seemed less brilliant, the sunshine less golden, and the butterflies less gay and abandoned. And inwardly the old lady sighed, and wondered whether she ought to issue a stronger warning.
But she had no opportunity to do so, for hardly had they started tea than Dom Julyan himself returned, and seated beside him in the blue car as it sped up the drive was Donna Gloria Colares.
Lois found herself plunged into a kind of confusion, for having only just finished discussing the very person she now found herself presented to she was certain that a kind of selfconsciousness showed in her face. Donna Colares, on the other hand, having been fully prepared for meeting her, and perhaps just a little curious to know what she looked like, gave her a rather more than casual glance, followed y a smile and a brief handshake, and then to Lois’s surprise actually embraced Miss Mattie, and kissed her as if she was genuinely pleased to see her again.
“You are the one thing about Alvora that doesn’t change, Miss Mattie,” she told her. “You remain as I always seem to have known you, calm and content and with your hands always occupied with something useful,” indicating the garment that was intended for Jamie. “That child,” smiling at Jamie, “must have a wardrobe vaster than any small boy really needs.”
“When Mattie sits with her hands in her lap, then she will no longer be Mattie,” Dom Julyan remarked, but although his glance rested affectionately on his old governess, it travelled almost immediately to Lois, and he enquired with rather flattering concern: “Your ankle is no longer troubling you very much, I hope, Miss Lois? You have been obeying instructions and resting it?”
Lois answered with a flush she felt was infinitely revealing rising in her cheeks:
“I have been having a deliciously lazy afternoon, thank you, Senhor, and Miss Gregg has been more than kind to me.” Donna Colares stretched herself gracefully in a chair, and looked across the tea table at her.
“A sprained ankle is a great handicap,” she said, “especially if you happen to be on holiday. I understand that you are on holiday here, Miss Fairchild?” “I am going home the day after tomorrow,” Lois replied, and she thought the Portuguese girl’s eyebrows ascended a little.
Although she must have been somewhere in her middle thirties, to be a contemporary of Dom Julyan, she really looked little more than a girl. She was as slender as a willow wand, and every movement she made was one of infinite grace. There was no true beauty in her face, but it had something much more than beauty, for it was alive and alight with all sorts of constantly changing moods and expressions, and the tawny eyes were so clear that they were disconcerting. She had black, sleek hair that reminded Lois of a wet seal on a rock, and she was so beautifully made-up that irregularities in the contours of her face didn’t seem to matter. Her mouth was wide and generous, the lips curving swiftly into a smile, and her upward glance—even when it was directed at no one of greater importance in her scheme of things than Miss Mattie— had something tenderly caressing about it.
Lois felt, with a strange sinking of the heart, that she was a woman with so much warmth in her personality that, to a man who was starved of warmth, even to sit near her was like basking in the friendliness of a room filled with sunshine. A room that would tempt him to relax and be himself.
The conversation at tea was light and pleasant, and Jamie divided his attention between the two female visitors. But when Lois, during a lull in the talk, said rather awkwardly that she thought she had intruded long enough, and if Dom Julyan would be good enough to either drive or send or send her home—and as she knew he employed a chauffeur, and had more than one car, that, she decided was a good enough ‘let out’ if he needed it, and excuse not to desert the attractive widow—she would be most grateful, the small boy did not look so pleased.
“But, it is early!” he protested, catching at her arm. “Miss Mattie promised that you would stay, perhaps, for dinner!”
Lois smiled into the child’s eyes.
"But you will be in bed long before dinner time, and I have had a wonderful time as it is. I must go now.”
Dom Julyan leaned forward.
“Why?” he enquired, politely. "Is there some reason why you should be back early?”
“I—why, no, but. . . .” She didn’t quite know what to say, aware of tawny eyes watching her—of something bright and, perhaps, faintly amused, in those eyes—of Miss Mattie looking a little uncertain, and her determination strengthened itself. “But it was extremely good of you to bring me here for lunch, I have had, as I said, a delicious afternoon, and it would be unreasonable to expect anything more. Besides, I—”
“Yes?” insistently.
“I feel that I should go. . . .”
“You are perhaps tired?” he suggested.
“Y—yes!” She seized upon the suggestion quickly. “I haven’t slept very well for the last three nights, and—and I think I am a bit tired! I shall go to bed very early tonight.” “Very well,” he said, quietly, and rose. “I will bring the car round to the side of the house, and in the meantime sit still and rest your ankle.”
When he had gone, striding away across the lawn, Lois felt as if emotion that wanted to spill over int
o actual tears was rising up inside her like a well, and when she caught Miss Mattie looking at her with something that was undoubtedly sympathetic in her old but still very shrewd grey eyes, that emotion threatened for a moment to get out of hand. Miss Mattie leaned across to her and patted her on the knee, and:
“If I don’t see you again,” she said, “I do hope you have a good journey home to England—and that everything goes well with you, my dear! Perhaps some time you might write to me.”
“Yes,” Lois answered eagerly, “I will.”
Donna Colares said:
“If I don’t see you again, I hope your ankle will soon cease to give you any trouble, Miss Fairchild. But
somehow I think I will see you again!”
Lois stared at her, and her inexplicable smile, and Jamie said regretfully:
“I did so want you to stay. ...”
Dom Julyan, when he left the car on the gravel sweep and came back across the lawn, said nothing, and under the eyes of his attractive fellow countrywoman he did not lift Lois into his arms and carry her to the car, but formally offered her his arm.
Low was very silent as they drove slowly back to Alvora.
The big car was capable of a good deal of speed, but she realized that they were taking it slowly, and that Dom Julyan seemed to be frowning over the wheel. All at once he said to her:
“You are very quiet, Miss Lois. Is it your ankle that is hurting you?”
“Oh, no, no,” she denied instantly, “it doesn’t hurt at all now!”
“Then you are not quite happy about something?”
“I am—perfectly happy,” she assured him, and felt once again that rising of an emotional well inside her, for he and Miss Mattie had been very kind, they represented a way of life she was never likely to know again, and the prospect of going back to a lonely one-room London flat was not a very bright one just then. Once again she was terrified lest the well should reveal some evidence of itself.
He increased his speed a little, and the flower-bounded cottages flashed by on either hand, the sea appeared at intervals, and the wonderful arc of blue sky, paling a little because the sun was slowly westering, provided a triumphant canopy overload. Lois was saying to herself that she wouldn’t bother about dinner that night, she would go straight to bed, and the next day she would get up early, finish her packing, and perhaps catch an afternoon plane instead of waiting for the following day, when Dom Julyan said suddenly, above the rush of wind that stirred up a deliciously cool air on either side of them as he put on a burst of speed, and instead of making for Alvora she realized that they were actually turning inland:
Flower for a Bride Page 6
