Pathway of Roses

by Mary Whistler

  “I—I’m not married to you yet,” she heard herself say in a thin thread of a voice that was rendered less audible by the sudden explosion of a champagne cork. “It isn’t customary for a man to buy even a fiancée everything she needs until—until he is married to her!”

  She realized that his laughter was both amused and humouring.

  “What a girl!” he exclaimed. “What a delightful girl!” Then, almost tenderly: “We shall be married so soon that you won’t have time to get used to being a fiancée, so we don’t need to trouble ourselves with the way in which a fiancée should behave ” He lifted his glass to her. “To us, my darling! To our whole future!”

  At the far end of the restaurant the maitre d’hotel bowed a couple to a table, and the faint stir caused Janie to look round slowly. Immediately she wished that she hadn’t, for the man in faultless evening dress, with very sleek dark hair and an air of being utterly removed from the rest of common humanity, was Max Veldon, and the woman he saw carefully seated was a Viennese beauty with a Viennese flair for the right sort of dress to become a redhead, and a melting smile for the man who was to dine with her.

  Janie heard Winterton say something softly:

  “That man certainly knows how to pick them! I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with a fairly ordinary woman, and never in any circumstances a dowdy one!”

  Janie felt her whole body grow a trifle hot as she recalled the way in which Veldon’s remote dark eyes had once flickered over her disparagingly, and his remark concerning the simple outfit she was wearing:

  “You certainly will have to wear very different clothes!”

  Tonight she was wearing something rather simple, but such a delicate shade of faint rose pink that she looked like the heart of a china rose herself. Her golden hair was twisted into one of Vanessa Brandt’s favourite lightly coiled knots low on the nape of her neck, and in her ears there were pearl studs. Otherwise she was without adornment, whereas the Viennese woman who was with Veldon was a blaze of iridescent stones like diamonds.

  Before allowing himself to be seated Veldon glanced over at the table at which Winterton and his fiancée were seated. He bowed—a formal, rather austere little bow which did no more than acknowledge them—before giving all his attention to the lovely lady who expected it,

  Janie looked round quickly at the table in front of her, heard another champagne cork give a light and exciting “pop,” and Winterton murmur: “Veldon is back on his home ground. I wonder whether he misses Vanessa very much, or whether the charmer he is with will take her place very satisfactorily tonight?”

  Janie said nothing. She picked up her own champagne glass with slightly shaking fingers and gulped at it, while somewhere deep in the heart of the hotel some gypsy violins began to play softly and seductively.

  CHAPTER XI

  It was in a shop sparkling with every sort of gem and full of deferential assistants that she saw Veldon again, and that was about the middle of the following morning.

  The size of her finger had been carefully noted, and trays of rings were on the glass-topped counter beside which she and her fiancé were standing. Winterton was holding her hand with a reverence which could have indicated that it was made of porcelain, and he was murmuring something about pearls and a hope that she wasn’t superstitious because one very large pearl surrounded by diamonds would look perfect on the slender third finger of her left hand, when she glanced up and met the eyes of the conductor.

  It was rather like the night before, only this morning there was a cool look of amusement in the aloof dark eyes. He came over and bowed formally—as also on the night before—and if anything he was rather more impeccable than usual, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a certain casual air of jauntiness that in some way wounded Janie.

  “Ah,” he exclaimed, with dry amusement in his voice, “the ring! The all-important ring! I hope you are savouring to the full the intense significance of this moment. Miss Brandt?”

  His eyes flickered over her, and she realized that the one thing he was doing was enjoying the awkwardness of the situation for her, the acute embarrassment of it. With intense uneasiness at heart, and by this time frightened awareness of the net that was closing round her, she wondered why he took such badly concealed pleasure in watching the uneasiness in her eyes, the lack of interest she displayed while surrounded by so many costly and scintillating trifles that should delight the heart of a normal woman.

  Maybe he thought she was a very normal woman, and was putting on this pose for her benefit.

  As she thought that she saw Winterton frown.

  “There is no need any longer to refer to Janie as Miss Brandt,” he said. “Since her arrival in Vienna she has regained her own personality, and no one should know better than you that here she would never be mistaken for Vanessa.”

  He sounded irritated, as if some of Veldon’s malicious satisfaction had reached him, too, and he resented it. Veldon merely smiled imperturbably.

  “That is so very true,” he agreed, “Here in Vienna no one can impersonate Vanessa.”

  “But you allowed her to be impersonated in New York,” Winterton snapped. “And I must say— although it has all turned out very much to my advantage—I do think you might have picked on someone a little less vulnerable than Janie to carry out the impersonation.”

  Veldon’s eyes grew very cool.

  “I had nothing whatever to do with it,” he assured the impresario. “The whole piece of deception was an arrangement agreed upon by Vanessa and Miss Dallas, and at no time did it have my blessing.”

  “But you were perfectly well aware that it was in Miss Brandt’s interests and not Janie’s when you consented to try and put the thing over on the public,” Winterton snapped again. “To say nothing of a deliberate intention to take me in, also! However,” seeming to regret losing his temper, “as I have already remarked, I have no real cause for complaint, for I’m the lucky one, and but for Vanessa’s throat trouble I would have still been looking for a wife. Now, at last, I’ve found one,” squeezing Janie’s hand, “and I don’t want to appear critical of anything that led up to my finding her!”

  “That, at least, is forbearing of you,” Veldon remarked, with somewhat tight lips, and Winterton administered one of his jovial pokes in the ribs.

  “What are you here for, anyway?” he demanded. “Don’t tell me you want to buy something pretty for that ravishing creature you were with last night? I don’t mind confessing that if I hadn’t already met Janie I’d have got you to introduce me!”

  Veldon turned away, as if the atmosphere of the jeweller’s was either too warm, and he needed some fresh air, or he was suddenly and acutely bored.

  “The lady I was with is an old friend,” he replied stiffly.

  Winterton’s eyes twinkled.

  “I’ve heard that one before,” he remarked. “But it’s sometimes a good thing to run into an old friend!”

  They went on with the selection of Janie’s ring, and Veldon inquired about some cuff-links that were being repaired for him. Once the ring was on Janie’s finger, and Winterton was writing a cheque, the conductor prepared to take his leave. But Winterton looked up and detained him,

  “Have lunch with us,” he invited. “I’ve got a busy afternoon, and I’d be grateful if you’d take Janie off my hands. Can you spare a little time to show her the sights? I’m sure she’d appreciate it if you could.”

  Janie waited breathlessly for Veldon’s answer.

  “I have got a reasonably free afternoon...”

  “Good!” Winterton slapped him on the back “That’s decent of you, and it’s dull hanging about a strange hotel. Not that there’s a man alive who oughtn’t to jump at the chance of showing Janie the sights,” he added gallantly, beaming at the girl who was pulling on her gloves. The enormous bulge created by the over-large ring on her slim finger seemed to have drawn both her eyes and the Austrian’s, and when she dared to look up she wondered whether he could tell from t
he look in her eyes that her heart was beating extraordinarily fast, and that she was conscious of a tremendous sensation of relief ... and pleasure.

  Strange, tingling pleasure that ran along all her veins, and made it difficult for her expression to remain suitably demure.

  Veldon smiled at her ironically.

  “Do you think you can accept me as a substitute for Winterton, Miss Dallas?” he asked. “Only for the afternoon, of course. If you can, I’ll show you the usual tourist attractions ... the Danube, that is so seldom blue, the statue of Strauss, etc. And if you don’t mind we’ll look in at Vanessa’s flat and collect one or two things that she wants sent to her. She’d prefer a woman to go rummaging about in her drawers rather than a man.”

  “Of course,” Janie answered, her heartbeats slowing a little. “Anything I can do for Vanessa I will, of course.”

  His smile grew less pleasant, and they went out into the strong sunshine and took a taxi back to Sacher’s Hotel. After lunch they sat for a while in one of the most restful lounges Janie had ever sat in in her life—so far removed from the bustle of ordinary everyday life that it might have been entirely disconnected from it—and sipped coffee and liqueurs, and then Winterton went off to keep the first of his afternoon appointments, and Janie and Veldon were left alone in the oasis of opulent quiet.

  He looked up from the dregs of his coffee and smiled at her somewhat mockingly,

  “Well?” he said. “Your guide is all eagerness to be of service, if you yourself are ready, Fraulein?”

  Somehow she hated the way he said “Fraulein”. It made her think of the days—only a very brief while ago!—when she had sorted new and secondhand records in the dimness of a dusty shop where practically everything else was second-hand.

  “If you won’t mind waiting, I’d like to change my dress.”

  “Of course.” But. his eyes ran over her very deliberately. “You look, however, very well as you are to me, and I can’t think why you want to change it. You should know that that particular shade of pale blue suits you. It lends you an aura of youth and innocence!”

  She felt herself flushing, and behaving awkwardly.

  “Very well, I’ll—I’ll just fetch a hat, and a pair of dark glasses. After the comparative sunlessness of London I found the sun of New York a bit trying, and I don’t think there’s very much difference in the temperature here.”

  “It will be cooler in the mountains,” he told her. A tiny cool smile played about his lips. “You’ll have to persuade Winterton to hurry on the wedding, and then you can have your honeymoon in the mountains.”

  Suddenly her face blanched, and even her light coating of tan vanished as if it had never been.

  “Please,” she said falteringly, appealing to him, “I was rather looking forward to this afternoon ... I haven’t looked forward to anything since I left London until today! Please don’t spoil it by talking about—weddings!”

  Instantly his face underwent quite a miraculous change. The harsh lines vanished—even as her tan had vanished—and the aloof dark eyes melted like snow on mountain peaks. He slipped a hand inside her arm and led her towards the door.

  “All right, my dear,” he said quietly. “Well play it a different way for this afternoon, shall we? We’ll pretend we’ve always liked one another very much indeed, and that this is an afternoon to remember. Come along!”

  CHAPTER XII

  In the taxi, as they slid away from the front of the hotel, his hand covered hers.

  “I have never really disliked you, you know,” he remarked abruptly. “It was just that I ... well, I didn’t feel able to trust you.”

  She stared straight ahead.

  “And now?”

  “I ... don’t know,” he replied, and looked moodily out of the window on his side.

  But a few seconds later he was attracting her attention to the rebuilt opera house, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and other buildings of note. He told her about the opera house, and the tragic fate of the old one which the new building replaced. She gathered that he thought it far more important for a city to have an opera house than houses and flats and hospitals, but gathered also that everyone in Vienna—not only the essentially musically-minded like himself—thought along similar lines.

  Vienna was devoted to music, and without it it couldn’t live. That was a fairly unanimous opinion at the time when funds were being voted for the restoration of the city after the war, and immediately following the German Occupation; and as she looked about her at the sunlit streets and squares, the modern shops and offices, smart restaurants and hotels, as well as the dreaming Gothic spires and fascinating Gothic architecture, Janie realized that this was indeed a gay and inviting capital.

  It was a capital where a woman could have a thoroughly good time, for not merely could she window-shop for hours on end, but she could have a beauty-treatment every few yards or so. There were streets that recalled the magic of Viennese waltzes, for they were named after their composers, and streets where Brahms and Beethoven might still have walked and looked scarcely out of place. And, close enough to take a constant overflow from the city, were the Vienna Woods, where it was pleasant to walk on a summer night, and drink beer or coffee in a garden beneath the whispering leaves of the trees, and the far-away twinkling stars.

  Max Veldon was not the type to enjoy an evening in a beer-garden, or even to suggest strolling in the woods in the heat of the afternoon. But he did instruct the driver of the taxi to take them to the palace of Schonbrunn, which has an extensive park surrounding it, now also for the pleasure of the Viennese.

  It was in the palace of Schonbrunn that the last Emperor of Austria ended his days, and Marie Antoinette spent a large portion of her girlhood.

  Janie thought the palace had a wistful air as it stood out against its backcloth of trees, but she enjoyed wandering in the park, and she was sorry when Veldon said that if they were to collect the things from Vanessa’s flat that she needed they must not linger any longer.

  He had talked to her very affably all the afternoon, treating her very much as if she was a cross between a particularly earnest sightseer and someone very young and naive who had to have everything carefully explained to her. He had bought her tea and an ice-cream in a kiosk, watched her shed her short light blue jacket that matched her elegant light blue dress and carry it with her hat in her hand—until he relieved her of both of them, and her white-gloved hands were free—and her hair grow most attractively disordered as the gentle breeze got to work on it. And when at last she removed her dark glasses and he could see her contented grey eyes, and the way the sunlight glinted through the trees and glanced off the golden-brown tips of her eyelashes, he felt forced to make an observation that surprised her.

  “You are very charming, you know. If you marry Winterton he’ll be quite a lucky man!”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Don’t spoil the compliment by talking about my marrying anyone. You’ve given me a heavenly afternoon, and I’m very grateful. I never dreamed you’d waste so much of your valuable time on me.”

  He took her by the arm and led her in the direction of the taxi.

  “It’s odd how one occasionally wastes time deliberately. I’ve enjoyed this afternoon.”

  “Have you?” She looked sideways at him rather earnestly. “Have you really?”

  He saw her into a corner of the handsome, glistening cab. Then he took his place beside her.

  “Yes.” He looked out of the window, and she had the feeling that he was deliberately keeping his eyes averted from her. “Yes, I’ve enjoyed it very much indeed.”

  “You sound surprised,” she remarked. “Were you expecting to be bored?”

  At that he looked round at her quickly. She saw his lips twist in the cool and definitely cynical smile that he often gave her.

  “You and I,” he observed, “have had fiery encounters, and even hostile encounters, but we have seldom enjoyed one another’s society. From the little we know o
f one another I’m not at all inclined to the belief that we would ever bore one another. What do you think?”

  She heard herself stammering, while his eyes watched her mercilessly:

  “I—I don’t really know ... but I’m sorry I told you in New York that you’re a disappointment to me. You’re not, of course. You’re you ... Someone very wonderful, who can give happiness to thousands, and it was I who was presumptuous when I imagined I was important enough to merit a little consideration. I placed you in an impossible position—between us, Vanessa and I have both done that!—and you were right to feel resentful. To resent me, at any rate. But it’s over now—”

  “So you feel you can be generous, and say ‘Let us be friends?’ ” he murmured dryly.

  She gazed at him rather sombrely.

  “I’d like to feel you were my friend. There are moments,” she confessed, “when I feel badly in need of a friend. Especially since—all this happened to me!”

  “You mean getting engaged to Winterton?” She shook her head.

  “Not only that. All of it. Impersonating Vanessa, and having a taste of an entirely different kind of life.”

  He picked up her hand, and examined her ring. “You can give this back to Winterton,” he told her quietly, “unless you seriously and very badly want to marry him. He’s a rich man, and he can give you a lot ... but it won’t make you happy unless you want Winterton, the man, and not his money. Do you want Winterton?”

  She gazed at him in astonishment.

  “You know I don’t!”

  He gazed back at her with a curious quirk to the corners of his lips.

  "Why should I be permitted to see into the mind of a. young woman like yourself? Why do you credit me with the power of knowing what you want, and do not want, from life, Miss Jane Dallas? By comparison with my advancing years you're a mere child, and as we’re not even on the same mental or telepathic wave-length—”