Pathway of Roses

by Mary Whistler

  Janie lowered her eyes before his.

  “For me this—impersonation—is starting to live,” she said.

  Instantly he frowned, and she realized she had destroyed the moment of friendliness ... perhaps for ever. He straightened his shoulders and stood up very stiffly.

  “A good thing you reminded me!” he said. “I was in danger of mistaking you for a young woman with no other aspirations than to get the best out of life!” He bowed very formally as the Princess drew near. “Princess, may I present Miss Vanessa Brandt, whose singing has no doubt delighted you on various occasions...”

  CHAPTER VII

  They went on to a party at the Princess’s house, and Janie felt more and more bewildered. The music of the concerto was still running through her head, she had had a few moments’ conversation with the man who was the lion of the evening, and those moments had surprised her. Then she was abruptly brought down to earth by her own reminder to him that she was something of a fraud, and as a result of the reminder he had been bluntly offensive.

  She had travelled to the Princess’s house in his chauffeur-driven car, but it was left to Rudi to entertain her. And for some reason Rudi was in an awkward mood.

  “These affairs bore me,” he remarked, when they were decanted at last. “Nothing but music, music, music, and adulation and adoration poured out over Max. It’s like wading through a lot of sticky syrup.”

  “But music makes it possible for you to lead a fairly comfortable existence, doesn’t it?” she replied, recollecting that he had once confessed to her that it was Max who provided him with all the frills of existence. “Without him what would you do?”

  “Oh, get a job as a salesman, or something.” He spoke moodily, and she smiled at the thought of him as a salesman, with his expensive tastes, and his disinclination—so far as she had been able to judge— for anything in the nature of real hard work. He was supposed to be employed by his brother, but she had not so far discovered that he did anything to justify the description “employee.”

  He was always beautifully dressed—usually with a flower in his buttonhole, like the maestro himself-—and he was so devastatingly good-looking that members of the fair sex never failed to look twice when he passed by. If circumstances ever rendered it necessary he could become a beautiful gigolo, although his title would always prevent him from being referred to as a gigolo.

  “I don’t think I can see you as a salesman,” she told him, when they were alone in a corner of one of the huge rooms, and she was sipping with caution a glass of champagne he had just put into her hand. “So I wouldn’t quarrel with your brother if I were you.”

  He smiled rather wryly.

  “Let’s break out,” he said suddenly. ‘Let’s get away somewhere on our own, and enjoy ourselves for this one night at least!”

  She regarded him thoughtfully.

  “Do you know,” she said, “that your brother has expressly forbidden me to have anything in the nature of an association with you?”

  “So what?” he said softly, jeeringly. “He will cast you off and forget everything about you the moment we return to England, and that contract for Vanessa is safe, and yet you are careful to do exactly as he says? What have you to lose if Vanessa fails to get her contract? And, between you and me and the gatepost, her singing isn’t what it used to be! If she gets the contract, she may not be able to fulfil it. Have you thought what happens then?” he asked still more softly.

  She stared at him as if there was something about his lustrous dark eyes that fascinated her.

  “You mean—?”

  “That operation might not be a success, or—even if it is a success—it may take weeks before she has recovered sufficiently to sing again. If you sign a contract on Vanessa’s behalf you’ll be defrauding the public ... and you’ll certainly be deceiving Abraham Winterton. He’s the sort of man who has time for the best, and only the best ... never second-best!”

  Janie continued to stare at him.

  “I never thought of that. And I like Mr. Winterton.”

  “Judging by the attentions he has already paid you he also likes you. I doubt very much whether Vanessa would have scored quite such a personal success.”

  “But she’s beautiful—”

  “So are you! Something that’s much nicer than beautiful ... lovely!”

  “And she’s ill,” she said suddenly, anxiously. “I’ve got to do the right thing for her.”

  “And the right thing for her might not be a contract that will tie her up to hours of work, even although it may put money into her banking account! The right thing for Vanessa could be an honest period of rest.”

  He took her by the elbow. Somewhere in the house a trio composed of violin, harp and cello was delighting the company, and the music came softly to Janie’s ears. She had a feeling that she would always remember this night and the music.

  “Let’s disappear,” Rudi urged her, his voice soft and silken with coaxing. “I can tell that I’ve thrown you into a kind of a quandary, and we can talk the whole thing over somewhere where there aren’t so many people milling about. I know a little down-town restaurant ... or we could take a taxi and drive about for a while.”

  But she preferred the restaurant. She knew she was asking for the sternest of rebukes when she once more encountered Max Veldon, but all at once it didn’t seem to matter so much that Max Veldon should rebuke her but that she herself should become really clear in her own mind about what she was doing. Why she was doing it, where it was leading her, and how it might recoil upon Vanessa.

  And the only person she could discuss such an extraordinary situation with was the Baron von Eisler. Miss Calendar might have been willing to discuss it, but she would never do or say anything in opposition to the interests of her employer, Max Veldon. And as his one obsession was for Vanessa to get the Abraham Winterton contract, Miss Calendar was almost certainly a victim of the same sort of obsession.

  The little down-town restaurant was small, but it had an excellent floor for dancing, and for the first time Janie found herself dancing with the man who had everything to commend him in the way of attractiveness, and who seemed to be extraordinarily attracted by her.

  He held her very closely while they danced, and told her she was quite unlike anyone he had ever met before. He had met so many beautiful women, but they all bored him, and women who were dull and ordinary couldn’t interest him for a moment. She was unique because she was such an extraordinary good actress, although she had never acted before in her life. She also, he believed, disliked enacting a role, and his brother had told him she was getting nothing for it. He couldn’t believe that.

  “He offered me a thousand pounds,” Janie said dryly, while they danced.

  “He offered you a thousand pounds, or Vanessa offered you a thousand pounds?”

  “Mr. Veldon offered me a thousand pounds.”

  Rudi whistled.

  “Then that proves something I’ve always suspected. Max has steered clear of women most of his life, apart from the odd entanglement, and he isn’t the type of man who will ever marry. A wife and a family would be a nuisance to him ... but he and Vanessa! I know he admires her enormously, and I always suspected he’d do anything he could to promote her career. Now I know that he’d even run the risk of getting himself in a spot of bother for her sake.”

  “What do you mean?” Janie asked, a somewhat distrait note in her voice. “A spot of bother?”

  She was thinking ... so he isn’t the type who would marry! Well, it never even occurred to me that he is. A man who leads a life such as he leads, filled with adulation, oiled by applause, involving almost constant travel, would be most unsuited for married life.

  Yet the thought brought a queer kind of disinclination to believe it in its train. It affected her in the same way that a sudden discord in the very middle of the Emperor Concerto would almost certainly have affected her.

  The lights had gone down, and Rudi was holding her closer.


  “You and I,” he said softly, “we’re the same type of person really, you know. Our beginnings were all right ... I believe your father had quite a reputation as a music critic, hadn’t he? But he doesn’t appear to have left you any money. And my father made a thorough job of emptying the family coffers while he had the opportunity, which was most unfortunate for me, who came after him!”

  He lowered his head, and she had the feeling that he might kiss her—for one instant the downward movement of that sleek dark head provided her with a sudden rising of excitement because he was such an attractive man, and it was the first time she had been brought into such close relationship with a man of his type—but he didn’t do so. He merely allowed his lips to brush her hair lightly, and then led her back to their table on the edge of the floor.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” he recommended. “And, whatever you do, don’t worry about the outcome of this American week. I’ve got a plan for you, little one, and it might solve all your problems ... possibly mine as well!”

  She felt bewildered, and suddenly very weary, for she wasn’t accustomed to keeping such late hours. More plans, she thought ... but she wasn’t particularly interested in plans. They weren’t really for her, and they could lead nowhere.

  Not altogether to her surprise, Veldon was waiting for her when she got back to her hotel. He was pacing up and down the floor of the sitting-room, looking like an immaculately groomed tiger. Miss Calendar had obviously gone to bed and left her to face the music... only this time it wasn’t the Emperor Concerto!

  “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  She told him truthfully that his half-brother had taken her dancing.

  His dark eyes surveyed her with almost sinister dislike.

  “For a short while this evening I thought you were quite a pleasant young woman,’ he told her. “But now I know that you’re quite unreliable, and I was a fool to allow Vanessa to talk me into allowing you to attempt to get away with this dangerous experiment. Not only is it highly likely that you’ll wreck her career, but you’ll wreck mine.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, feeling herself grow cold—although it was a suffocatingly hot night, and all the windows were wide because of it—under the balefulness of his look.

  He moved nearer to her.

  “Haven’t you any sense?” he asked. “Don’t you realize that we’re treading the path of deception, and one false move can spell disaster? I know you’re not Vanessa Brandt—I know that Vanessa Brandt is in London undergoing an operation—yet I’m introducing you to some of the most influential people I know as Vanessa Brandt. What do you suppose their opinion will be of me when they accidentally discover the truth? Accidentally or because of your stupid carelessness!”

  She swallowed. She felt very tired, and the room was inclined to sway round her.

  “I’m not careless,” she defended herself, “In fact, I try very hard to be constantly on the alert. But it isn’t easy.”

  “You don’t make it any easier by courting deliberate risks. You slip away from a formal party to dance in some low dive with my half-brother, and as everyone knows Vanessa wouldn’t be seen dead in that sort of place. She has her eyes always turned towards advancement ... and that’s sensible. And the last person she’d go dancing with is Rudi.”

  “Are you quite certain of that?” she asked, suddenly by no means certain herself.

  “Absolutely certain,” he answered.

  She looked at him with heavy, bewildered eyes.

  “I wish I knew,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. He moved closer still to her and gripped her wrist. “What do you mean?” he repeated.

  She made a helpless shrugging movement with her shoulders.

  “... Everything is a little beyond me. I don’t understand why your half-brother, the Baron, wastes any time at all on me, and I don’t understand why I ever agreed to do this—this despicable thing.”

  “Then you think it’s despicable, deceiving people?”

  “Of course.”

  Her eyes were so large and clear and truthful that he flung away from her. Then he came back.

  “Listen to me,” he said curtly. “Don’t bother your head about the whys and the wherefores of all this. It’s done now, and we’re all in it together ... myself, Rudi, Miss Calendar and you. And, of course, Vanessa. And you’re the one who can give us all away ... ruin everything for Vanessa. And if you ruin things for her I’ll never forgive you!”

  His fingers gripped her wrist so hard that she winced.

  “I telephoned the nursing home in London tonight, and Vanessa was operated on this morning. Her convalescence is likely to take longer than we prepared ourselves for, and that means you’ve got to act the part you’re acting now until she’s fit. And you’ve got to work hard for her contract.”

  Janie said faintly:

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt about the contract.”

  “Why?” He looked at her quickly. “What makes you think that?”

  “At lunch today ... Mr. Winterton said there isn’t any doubt. He says he has plans—rather special plans—for Vanessa.”

  “H’m.” He looked at her so closely, and so curiously, that she wondered what it was she had done now. In what particular way she had transgressed. But all at once his voice was quite calm and just a little puzzled as he said: “You’re quite an efficient worker when you get down to it, aren’t you? But all the same, I don’t quite understand this prompt success...”

  He went on looking at her so curiously that she wrenched away her wrist and turned her back on him. She rubbed mechanically at the spot on her wrist where a bruise was already forming.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, rather falteringly, “I’d like to go to bed...”

  “Did I hurt you just now?” he asked, in the quietest and most controlled voice she had yet heard from him, and she turned round slowly and looked at him with one large bead of moisture clinging to her lashes.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He picked up her wrist and saw the bruise, and all the redness surrounding it ... undeniably the marks of his fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m afraid I can be rather a brute when I ... well, when I lose my temper—as I did just now.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated. She lifted her eyes and looked into the black, inscrutable eyes above her ... only they weren’t really inscrutable any longer, and they weren’t angry. There was a definite gleam of apology in them, and something else that she didn’t quite understand. She wondered—and then dismissed the thought—was it a hint of self-reproach?

  “Mr. Veldon,” she said breathlessly, “you can be sure of one thing. I’ve started to play this part, and I’ll carry on playing it ... and I promise you I’ll do nothing to endanger Vanessa—or you—again. However much it costs me, and if I mortgage my whole future happiness, I’ll see that this thing works out—for you and Vanessa!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The next morning it was Abraham Winterton who was her early caller. He came into her sitting-room with a personal tribute of very dark red roses, and when Miss Calendar burst into the bathroom in an agitated manner to hurry Janie up, the exquisite scent of the roses followed her through the door.

  “You’ll have to get dressed quickly,” Miss Calendar told her. “Mr. Winterton is here himself, and although he says I’m not to rush you he’s simply bursting to see you. He says he must have a talk with you as soon as possible.”

  Janie scrambled out of the bath and dried herself on a rough bath-towel, and then darted through into her bedroom to complete a hurried toilet Miss Calendar selected a dress for her—a simple flowered cotton, for once, in which she could hardly have looked more attractive—and chose her shoes, and clasped a neat row of pearls about her neck. Then she urged her agitatedly towards the sitting-room door.

  “Don’t keep him waiting,” she begged. “This is really someth
ing, that he should come here at this hour to see you, and not just make an arrangement to meet you for lunch. Whatever you do, play up to him!”

  Janie hardly heard her. She had a strange, sinking feeling at the base of her stomach, and she knew that this would prove a memorable morning for her. She didn’t know quite why, but she did know it.

  Winterton sprang up from his chair at sight of her. He could hardly have looked more debonair than he did in his light grey suit that was irreproachably tailored, and his jauntily flowing tie. For a man who didn’t normally keep extremely early hours—save on important occasions—he looked remarkably fresh and alert, and almost boyishly good-looking.

  “Vanessa!” He took her hand and kissed it, and then refused to release it. He drew her down on to a settee, and sat beside her, and her hand was retained between his well-cared-for, rather feminine hands. The brightness of his eyes as he took in every detail of her appearance confused her. “As usual, you are altogether charming,” he told her. “In fact, this morning, although I have been inconsiderate enough to rush you, you are looking even more charming than usual...” He touched the cotton dress. “Simplicity becomes you, my dear!”

  Janie resisted the urge to tug her hand away from his—he smelled strongly of lavender toilet soap, and made her think of bath-tubs, and even nursery cleanliness—and tried to appear as if she was flattered by his compliments. But actually, at this beginning of another hot New York day, with so much dependent on her, she would not have felt flattered by anything.