“Nothing is likely to do so, is it?” she asked, feeling her throat very tight as she managed to utter the words fairly calmly.
He glanced at her again. Then he averted his eyes deliberately from the wind-blown golden hair, and the one or two freckles, like the light dusting of a golden powder, that the unaccustomed kiss of strong sunlight had induced, and spoke with a kind of finality.
“No, nothing is likely to do so,” he said with emphasis. “That is one thing about which I can be very definite.”
Then, as she clutched tightly at her gloves and the white strap of her handbag:
“But I’ve enjoyed this afternoon more than I can say, little Janie ... and I’m glad you didn’t administer a very violent rebuff when I kissed you! It would have spoiled a very pleasant memory.”
Janie felt sick. She wondered whether the slight amusement in his voice was linked up with the fact that, far from offering him a violent rebuff, she had fallen into his arms with an eagerness that would cover her in blushes whenever she thought, about it for several months ahead.
Perhaps very much longer.
And she determined that never again should he be presented with an opportunity to make her blush.
When they got back to the Hotel Sacher she found that Abraham Winterton had returned to it ahead of them, and he was so genial and pleased with his own afternoon that he didn’t even notice that the expression of his fiancée was rather strained.
“I met an old friend this afternoon, and she’s going to make your wedding dress for you,” he told Janie, certain that the news would please her. “I can assure you that a wedding dress made by Nicola Petersen will be quite something, for she’s an artist to her fingertips, and will do you justice. She’s coming to see you tomorrow morning, and I suggest you have lunch together and discuss the dress and anything else you’d like made. I’ve told her that it’s carte blanche where you’re concerned, and the sky’s the limit!”
Max Veldon, who had followed Janie into the sitting-room of the suite Winterton had engaged at Sacher’s, stood waiting for Janie to say something —she had the feeling that, standing immediately behind her, he was almost willing her to say while there was a witness that she couldn’t marry Winterton, and preferred to go home to England.
But Janie said nothing at all.
The sitting-room of the suite was a room filled with so much luxury that it was almost oppressive, and as the heat was intense, and the heavy drapes seemed to imprison it in their velvet folds and silken fringes, Winterton strode to one of the windows and strove to open it wider.
“I’ve been feeling the heat badly today,” he confessed, “and I must say Vienna’s a bit of a cauldron on a day like this. I suppose it’s because we’re down on river level If only we were in the mountains we’d be getting a bit of a breeze.”
He turned to Veldon.
“About that Schloss of yours. How soon can I take it over? I don’t want to rush the wedding arrangements unduly, and there are a few bits of business I’d like to conclude before I feel free to enjoy a honeymoon.” He smiled at Janie, and put an arm about her, as if attempting to reassure her about the wedding arrangements, and convince her of her eventual security. “If the Schloss is available immediately, therefore, I can conduct my business from there, and nothing need be hurried.”
Veldon stood studying him with the withdrawn expression on his face that always secretly disturbed Janie; but actually the thought struck him that the American did look tired, and there were lines in his face that indicated he was certainly feeling the heat. He was not a man who indulged himself to any extent, but a certain amount of inevitable soft living had rendered him a little less than one hundred per cent fit, and for a man nearing fifty he had been experiencing perhaps too much emotional excitement lately.
Veldon watched his hand closing possessively over Janie’s shoulder, and for an instant he hesitated before admitting that the Schloss was ready for occupation if the impresario wanted to take it over at once.
“Good!” Winterton exclaimed. “I don’t feel I shall really breathe till I get up in the mountains. We’ll have a small house-party before the wedding, and if your engagements will permit I’d like you to join us, Veldon. Mrs. Petersen will join us, and perhaps that brother of yours might care to do so?”
“I don’t know about Rudi,” Veldon replied “but I can’t possibly take time off to visit the Schloss Veldon. It would give me a lot of pleasure, naturally, for it’s my family home, but I am far too committed to join anyone’s house-party for the next few weeks.”
“I quite understand.” Winterton pressed impatiently at the bell that would bring a waiter and a fresh tray of drinks. “It’s one of the penalties of your position... a servant of the public, and therefore no longer master of your own soul!”
“I don’t know about not being master of my own soul.” Veldon was gazing at Janie, and trying to force her by sheer personal magnetism to meet his look, and the compulsion that was in it. “I hope that I shall always be that, however great my servitude. But there are certain obligations I cannot ignore, and I have to return to London almost immediately. If Miss Dallas,” he concluded, with great distinctness, “finds the heat of Vienna too trying I’m sure I can obtain a seat on the same aircraft for her. It’s not too late to get in touch with the airport and make another reservation.” Winterton swung round and faced him in astonishment.
“Miss Dallas return to London? But what an extraordinary thing to suggest! She’s coming with me up into the mountains!”
“I merely thought that, in London, she might find the atmosphere more familiar ... and in a familiar atmosphere one can often think with greater clarity,” the conductor observed smoothly. “However,” with his eyes still on Janie, “that is entirely up to Miss Dallas, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is not,” Winterton replied with emphasis. “In future it’s I who will do Janie’s thinking for her, and make all her plans.” He went back to the window to gulp in what little air there was. “By Jove, it’s hot!”
Behind his back Veldon kept on looking at Janie. For the first time since they had returned to the hotel she met his eyes fully. And, also under his eyes, she opened her handbag and took out her engagement ring and slipped it back on to her finger. When Winterton turned and saw the action she smiled and moved to his side.
“I was so afraid I might lose it,” she offered as explanation, and his perspiring face broke into a grin of approval. “What a girl! And what a delight to give you things! But you can be sure of one thing, honey. If you lose that ring there’ll soon be another on its way from the jeweller’s to replace it. So wear it ... wear it and let the world know you belong to me, and you’ll never belong to anyone else!”
Veldon picked up his hat and his gloves and made for the door.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said curtly. “I believe we’re attending the same performance at the opera.”
“You’re one of my guests,” Winterton called after him. Then, to Janie: “Rather an odd chap, that. He knows very well I want him to meet a fellow from South America who is one of his liveliest admirers. And, unless he’s forgotten, he’s having dinner with us.”
CHAPTER XIV
But Veldon hadn’t forgotten. He seldom forgot anything connected with music, and the South American was a passionate devotee of it.
They talked opera while dinner lasted, and on the way to the beautiful new State Opera House they discussed in detail the lives of various composers, and Janie—who was concerned about Abraham Winterton because, if anything, he was looking more exhausted than he had done in the heat of the afternoon—might not have existed so far as Veldon was concerned.
He didn’t actually ignore her, but whereas even the South American broke off to say a few polite things occasionally to—and look a certain amount of admiration at—the slight figure in the dress of moonlight net that, with her extremely fair hair and her complexion of pearly pallor, made her seem almost unreal, especiall
y as her only adornment was her engagement ring, he deliberately kept his eyes averted from her, and particularly the white hand burdened by the enormous pearl ring.
The opera was one of the lesser known ones, and Janie didn’t enjoy it as much as she might because the leading singer reminded her very much of Vanessa. She was a little plumper than Vanessa, and her hair was distinctly brassier, but from the way in which his eyes remained more or less consistently glued to her Janie felt certain Max Veldon was seeing the same resemblance, and feeling probably slightly tormented because it was not Vanessa.
She was thankful that Rudi had not accepted an invitation to be one of their party, for she was certain he, too, would have seen the resemblance, and would have looked at her occasionally with that mocking smile in his eyes that told her he could read her like a book, and he knew very well how she felt about the conductor.
And, understanding how she felt about the conductor, he would also understand how she felt about Winterton.
She would never quite understand why she had put back her engagement ring in the sitting-room of the suite at the Sacher, but having done so she was not prepared to take it off again. She had come to a decision ... and it had only partly to do with Veldon.
Winterton was the nicest man she had ever met, and he had done her the honour of falling in love with her and asking her to marry him. He was much older than she was, and she was not even slightly in love with him, but he was a man she could trust, and a man she could lean on. He would, as he had said, plan all her future for her, and there would be literally nothing left for her to think about.
But, in addition to all these things, he was plainly not well, and she felt an extraordinary anxiety about him. She even forgot Veldon, and what had happened during the afternoon, as she watched the impresario closely, and decided that he was putting on a kind of bluff for the benefit of all of them, and that actually he was far less well than his strained appearance indicated.
About midway through the second act he whispered to her that if she didn’t mind he would like to return to the hotel. She withdrew with him immediately, and without disturbing anyone, and outside in the cooler night air he seemed to revive for a moment or so. But barely had they reached the hotel than he collapsed, and by the time Veldon joined them—he couldn’t have had his eyes quite so firmly glued to Vanessa’s double (or was it treble?) as she had imagined, she thought thankfully, when she saw him walk in—a doctor had been summoned and was giving the impresario a thorough examination after having revived him.
He had been taken up in the opulent lift to his own apartments, and as Janie bent over him and undid his collar and removed the diamonds from his shirt-cuffs Winterton whispered to her appreciatively.
“You’re a good girl, Janie. I thought I was going to faint long before I did, and I was afraid I would scare you stiff. But you’re made of the right stuff! You don’t panic easily.”
He caught her hand, and held on to it.
“You won’t leave me, will you?”
“Of course not,” she promised.
“Not under any circumstances?” his tired grey eyes searching her face.
“Not under any circumstances.”
“Good girl,” he repeated, and then, although it was an effort to carry her hand up to his lips, he kissed it.
Janie felt her heart swell with an emotion that was new to it—an intensely feminine, almost a maternal emotion—and she vowed inwardly that, whatever happened, she would not fail Winterton, He might have been unscrupulous in his method of getting her to agree to marry him, but now that she had agreed she would stand by her promise and become his wife the very instant he wished her to do so, if the doctor agreed.
All the same, when Veldon walked in, and she realized he had come to be of assistance, she turned to him with an instinctive gesture of relief. Her face was pale and upset, and there was a tear like a diamond-drop clinging to one of her lashes, and it bounced off and rolled down her cheek as Veldon took her hands and gave them a squeeze. He looked hard at her.
“He’ll be all right, won’t he? I’ve had a word with the doctor and he says it was the heat that upset him. His heart’s a little groggy, but there’s nothing seriously wrong, and a good rest in a somewhat cooler atmosphere is what he needs.”
Janie nodded. She went on clinging to his hands, although lying back in his chair Winterton watched her with a somewhat odd expression in his eyes. And when Veldon approached him he smiled wryly.
“I’m not done for yet, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” he observed. “The medico says I’ll live to be a ripe old age—and my wife,” his eyes swinging to Janie, “will have the pleasure of getting to know my grandchildren!—if I obey a few simple rules, and remember that I’m not quite as young as I was. Not as young as you are, for instance,” rather broodingly, his look resting once more on Veldon.
The conductor’s smile at him was also inscrutable.
“You can give me a few years, but they don’t count if you’re fit,” he remarked. “And for Janie’s sake you’ve got to get fit again very soon!” He looked down at his hands, that were beautifully cared-for, and always struck Janie as an exceptionally attractive pair of hands, emerging from the pristine whiteness of his shirt-cuffs. “We’ll get you up into the mountains as soon as possible, and I don’t mind altering my arrangements to see you safely installed in the Schloss. The place is not on the telephone, but the inn is. I’ll telephone the landlord, and get him to deliver a message to my housekeeper, who will get the place ready for your occupation.”
Winterton looked mildly surprised.
“That’s good of you,” he observed. “Very good! I know the Schloss Veldon isn’t in the least primitive, but it will be something to have the master of the place on hand for a few days in case we run into any snags. How soon will the doctor allow me to leave here, do you think? And how soon can you place yourself at our disposal?”
“Tomorrow?” Veldon answered. “The sooner you get away from here the better, and I can telephone en route to make the necessary arrangements. Frau Karlsbach never needs more than a few hours’ warning when I plan to visit the Schloss.”
“Fine,” Winterton murmured. He reached out once more for Janie’s hand, and looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry we’ve got to cut short your first visit to Vienna, honey, but there’ll be plenty of other visits. And I’ll take you to see so many places once we’re married that you’ll get tired of travelling.” He smiled at her with a faint hint of wistfulness in the smile. “It’s odd, when I’m really happy for the first time in my life, that I have to go and crack up like this. Happiness can’t be good for me!”
Outside, in the lushly carpeted corridor that ran between lines of dignified doors, Janie thanked Max Veldon for returning from the Opera House to be of assistance. She had seized the opportunity, when he said good night to Winterton, to follow him.
“It was good of you,” she said. “Good of you to spoil your own evening in order to come back here.”
He frowned.
“I was Winterton’s guest,” he observed. “I couldn’t very well do anything else.”
“I know. All the same...” Her eyes were big and dark with a certain amount of shock and strain as she lifted them to his face. “You do think he’ll be all right, don’t you?” she asked uneasily.
He stared down in a strangely concentrated fashion into her face.
“Would it upset you very much indeed if anything happened to him?”
At that her face flushed with a mixture of resentment and surprise.
“I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you mean,” she returned with a brittle note in her voice. “But I can honestly say that, by this time, I’ve become rather fond of him, and it would upset me very much if he didn’t recover from this evening’s attack as quickly as you and the doctor have tried to lead him to believe that he will!”
Veldon caught both her hands, and retained them in a warm clasp.
�
��I believe you,” he said. “And I also believe that he will recover quite quickly if he’s not allowed to do anything foolish. And at least he’s lucky to have you for a nurse as well as a fiancée! ”
“I’ll be happy to nurse him if it’s necessary,” she declared, looking up steadily into his face. “He’s been extraordinarily good to me, and I’ll do everything I can for him in return.”
It was more like a solemn vow.
Veldon uttered a sound that was more like a half-sigh than anything else.
“Yes, I suppose he has behaved rather well towards you,” he remarked, as if he was turning the matter over in his mind. “That is to say, he has treated you with considerably more consideration than one or two of the people you’ve met recently have done. And for that reason alone you couldn’t give him back his ring—not now that he’s a sick man!”
He lifted her hand so that the great pearl on her finger attracted the rays of light in the corridor, and gleamed with a wonderful lustre.
“From now on it’s to be a serious engagement, is that it?” he asked quietly.
She nodded.
“Yes. A perfectly serious engagement!”
He lowered her hand slowly. His dark eyes were strangely regretful as they continued to hold hers.
“At least we had this afternoon,” he reminded her, in an odd voice. “It’s a pity that when we started out we didn’t either of us realize it was to be a memorable afternoon!”
He let her hand go finally and turned away, after bowing his sleek dark head in front of her.
Pathway of Roses Page 10
