“If Winterton is fit enough we’ll make an early start in the morning,” he said more curtly. “But I’ll ring first to find out how he is.”
She watched him move away silently in the direction of the lift.
CHAPTER XV
In the morning the brazen blueness of the sky proclaimed another day of fierce heat ahead of them, but Winterton had had such a good night that he didn’t seem to shrink from the thought of a long car journey.
He was obsessed with a desire to reach the mountains, and as he was assisted out to the car he talked to Janie of the beauty of the snows that lingered on the high peaks even in summer. And the thought of Alpine meadows, although a trifle sun-scorched at that season of the year, seemed to fill him with a surge of new life and cheerfulness. He remained cheerful all the way from Vienna to the hotel where they stopped for lunch, and which was a little less than a third of the way mark After lunch, because he began to flag, they stopped rather frequently for refreshments, and to give him a chance to rest in the shade and long before evening it was decided that an overnight halt would be sensible.
Veldon drove his own car, a long, sleek Jaguar that he had bought in England, and Winterton and his fiancée occupied the back seat. Mrs. Petersen, the Baron von Eisler, and another friend of Winterton followed in another car hired for the occasion.
Mrs. Petersen had made a pleasing impact on Janie. She was a woman with a good deal of quiet charm, whose age it would have been impossible to guess, and she avowed that she and Winterton had known one another for many years.
“And if that makes me old, it doesn’t very much matter, does it?” she said, beaming at Janie. “We all have to grow old one day, and the years pass so quickly it’s impossible to keep track of them, especially if they’re very well-filled years!”
“Which yours have been,” Winterton observed, regarding her affectionately. “You started from scratch, as the saying goes, and now you have your own Paris dress house and design clothes for princesses ... if there are any left to design clothes for! But when you make Janie’s wedding dress you’ll be doing something far more important than dolling up a princess. You’ll be designing a gown fit to be worn by the loveliest woman in the world!”
“There now, isn’t that wonderful?” Nicola Petersen purred, as if she was really impressed. “Abe Winterton in love at last, and not caring who knows it! Wanting the whole world to know it!”
“And why not?” Winterton asked, patting Janie’s hand. “I’ve waited long enough to find a girl I could marry, so it’s not unnatural I should want the world to know. Janie doesn’t sing, or do anything clever, but she’s clever at enslaving the heart of a man. I should know!” he added, and kissed Janie’s small gloved hand with a gallantry that moved her strangely, and made her temporarily glad that she had renounced an ordinary woman’s future in order to live up to his high expectations of her.
But that was when they first started off, and Veldon was very stiff and detached at the wheel of the car. Although she could watch his hands and the way in which his sleek dark hair grew down to meet the immaculate edge of his collar, and occasionally she could see his profile, too, she had the feeling that he was miles removed from her ... and that in the future their ways would lie very separate indeed.
She also had the knowledge that that was the way he wanted it, and any half-formed regrets—she knew she didn’t dare to allow them to be anything other than half-formed, if the future ahead of her was to be bearable, and not utterly unbearable!—were easily smothered every time the thought occurred to her that by contrast with Winterton’s benevolent appearance, Max Veldon’s aloof back was no promise of happiness for any woman.
He was a man who was entirely sufficient unto himself. Or was he? Did music suffice, or was his friendship with Vanessa the great thing in his life?
She was strongly inclined to believe that Vanessa meant very much, but for some reason Vanessa was the evasive quality in his life, and either her career—or some other man!—made the meaning of life for her.
But by the time they stopped for lunch Veldon’s aloofness had thawed to such an extent that its opposite number created a tiny feeling of warmth about Janie’s heart. It was Veldon who helped her out of the car and appeared mildly concerned because she was looking exhausted, and feeling very stiff. She had slept very little all night—facing up to the demands of the future, and worrying about Winterton at the same time—and on top of the heat and the strain of the journey it showed.
He took her by the arm and led her into the hotel, after Mrs. Petersen had preceded them into it with Winterton leaning heavily on her arm, and saw to it that she was provided with a long, cool drink with the minimum of delay. And when he received his own drink he smiled curiously and lifted his glass.
“All’s well that ends well!” he observed.
If only, Janie thought, with sudden wild wistfulness, everything could end well for her ... in the way she herself would choose! And then she found herself wondering why he had made use of such an odd toast.
All’s well that ends well! But they were setting out on a journey, and no one could predict how it would end.
At the hotel where they spent the night—a delightful place, on the lines of a somewhat elaborate hunting-lodge, built in the shadow of the mountains—Veldon still betrayed a tendency to watch over Janie, since Winterton was hardly in a condition to do so, and she was grateful for his watchfulness after dinner that night when Rudi followed her out into the garden behind the hotel, and tried to assume a relationship that had certainly never existed between them.
“I don’t know whether you feel the same, but it seems a long time since that night in New York when we escaped from the others and went dancing together,” he remarked in a voice into which he deliberately infused a great deal of slightly silken warmth as he walked beside her in the velvety dusk. “I wanted to tell you something that night, only you wouldn’t give me the chance.”
“I’m not interested in anything you might have to say to me, Baron,” she replied, her own tones as cool as a refrigerator.
A young moon was climbing into the sky above a larch wood, and the air was sweet with the scent of resinous trees. Not far away flowed the blue waters of the Inn, and there was the roar of water tumbling down from the heights to form a miniature cascade below the hotel garden. Away above the larch trees and the gabled roofs of the hotel were the solid peaks that ringed them in, and already the faint moonshine was glistening the peaks on the farther side of the valley, and stars were floating in the waters of the Inn.
Janie, who had escaped from the hotel to enjoy a breath of the deliciously cool air after the enervating warmth of the day, felt acutely annoyed because the Baron had followed her, and the very last thing she wanted to be reminded of was the night when she had gone dancing with him.
It was that night, after she returned to her hotel suite, that Max Veldon had accused her of endangering his reputation, and she had sworn that at all costs his reputation should be safe with her.
“Janie,” the Baron spoke softly, “why do you have so much to do with farces? Why do you continually get mixed up in the most extraordinary sets of circumstances? This engagement to Winterton—”
“I refuse to discuss my engagement with you,” Janie said firmly.
“But you will admit that, even in the interests of self-advancement, it’s going a bit far to consent to marry a man who is not merely old enough to be your father, but on the brink of becoming a kind of semi-invalid as well? For I know his type ... they live softly, and they crack easily. It’s the fault of having too much money.”
Janie ignored him, and turned on to a path that led back to the hotel. He kept pace with her.
“Of course,” the silken voice went on, “I suppose it has occurred to you that there are advantages in marrying an old man? You might soon become his widow! And as the widow of a man like Abraham Winterton even Max might feel forced to notice you! Especially if you could pull strings for
his Vanessa...”
“Please!” Janie stood quite still in the middle of the path, “Do you mind if I don’t go on with you? I find you—conversationally, and in every other way—unpleasant!”
“That,” he assured her, without sounding in the least abashed, “is because I’m not Max. If I happened to be Max I could be as rude as I please—as abominably rude as only Max can be when he feels like it! —and yet you wouldn’t refuse to allow him to walk at your side! That is the extraordinary effect he has on a good many women ... but not all. There are those who actually have the audacity to snub him, and then he comes running!”
Janie looked about her desperately, as if looking for a way of escape.
“I’m referring to Vanessa, of course. So long as she remains Vanessa, Max will never look at another woman—certainly not seriously!—so if you’ve got engaged to Winterton in order to try and make him jealous you might as well break it off here and now. Max has had many lady friends—what do you expect, when he looks so attractive, wielding that baton?—but a girl like you couldn’t hold him for a few weeks, let alone a lifetime. You may be attractive—we all know that Winterton has fallen for you badly—but never Max. Never, never Max,” he added with soft, incisive emphasis.
Instead of trying to escape him, Janie looked at him with curiosity. “Why do you tell me this?” she asked. “What business is it of yours, anyway?”
At that he smiled as if she had provided him with his cue.
“The reason why I may have sounded unnecessarily brutal is the simple reason that I think it would be a good idea if you realized that there are other men in the world—quite apart from Winterton!—who can appreciate a lovely, unspoilt girl like you. And you are very lovely,” lowering his voice so that it was almost a caress. “So lovely that I must kiss you!”
And before she could prevent it he had swept her calmly but purposefully into his arms and kissed her in a very practised manner. Surprise, however, evaporated swiftly, and she struggled free and dealt him a stinging slap across the face just as his half-brother arrived at the spot where they were standing.
Nursing his affronted cheek with a slim brown hand, the Baron glanced with a curious expression in his eyes at Veldon.
“Your substitute for Vanessa has a nasty temper,” he remarked. Then, in the same tone, to Janie: “I won’t forget that, Liebling! You have a very hard little hand.”
Then he disappeared in the direction of the lights that streamed from the hotel.
Janie stood very still, gazing at her brocaded evening sandals in preference to meeting the conductor’s eyes. She felt in that moment that she would have been far better off in old Hermann’s shop, and well away from beautifully turned out, suave individuals like the brothers Max and Rudi, for at least old Hermann had never made her feel cheap and unimportant.
Even Winterton didn’t strike her as such a safe refuge as Hermann Brandt in those moments.
“I’m sorry about that, Janie,” Max said quietly.
She made a little gesture with her hands.
“It doesn’t matter. Your half-brother looks upon young women like myself as legitimate game. We haven’t any background ... you yourself once mentioned that! And you yourself...”
She lifted humiliated grey eyes to his face.
“Are you reminding me that I, too, kissed you?” he asked, with the same quietness. “But I didn’t receive a slap across the face!”
She shook her head drearily.
“You didn’t expect one, did you? You were aware that I wanted you to kiss me—you said as much!—and so you kissed me. I’m sure you felt you were being quite generous when you did so, and the only difference between you and your brother is that you kiss for different reasons. You out of the kindness of your heart, shall we say?—Rudi because he makes a habit of kissing girls like me, and doesn’t expect them to take him seriously. You don’t, either, if it comes to that, but I can’t imagine anyone ever giving you a smack across the face.”
He saw the unnatural brightness of her eyes, and the way her lips quivered, and he held out his hands to her.
“Janie, you know perfectly well that I kissed you yesterday afternoon because I had to! It was inevitable.”
“As inevitable as Rudi’s kiss tonight,” she replied, and turned away. She started to walk back along the path, but this time it was he who caught her and held her fast. He turned her round, so that she faced him, and he said in a voice which throbbed, and which certainly should have convinced her;
“Janie, I think I could fall in love with you, but I could never love you enough. That’s the whole truth! In any case, I’m not free to love. But you’re such an absurd, impossible—improbable is perhaps the better word!—young woman that you had me intrigued from the start, although I wanted to beat you at the same time. You aroused my worst instincts, and my curiosity. Now I’m no longer curious, but my impressions are much more definite. You are as unlike Vanessa as anyone could be, yet you tried to impersonate her...”
“And Vanessa is ... a very special person?” as quietly as she had spoken before. “I don’t mean as a singer, but as a woman?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Very special.”
She nodded her head as if she understood perfectly, and then she managed without loss of dignity to escape from his hold.
“I came out for some air,” she explained. “But I must go in now. Abe will be wondering where I am.”
“And you won’t let Rudi’s incurably amorous instincts upset you?”
She looked round at him as they reached the house, with the golden light streaming out from it, and soft dark shapes like bats fluttering from under the eaves and winging past their ears.
“Not any more than yours upset me, Mr. Veldon,” she told him. “'There isn’t really a great deal of difference between you, you know ... but in Rudi’s life there doesn’t appear to be anyone special. You should remember that in yours there is!”
CHAPTER XVI
The Schloss Veldon was perched on the edge of a dizzy drop, below which opened an enormous fissure in the mountains, like an angry gash; and at the bottom of the fissure a foaming cauldron bubbled and shot diamond spray high into the air.
The cauldron was overhung by a bridge which struck Janie as extremely fragile when she saw it for the first time, and she knew she would never dare to cross it, or feel the coolness of that spray on her face. She even had to avert her eyes from it after she had gazed at it as if it fascinated her for several seconds, and she was glad that, far below the cauldron, there were dark woods patterning the valley like needlework, and a succession of blue lakes opening out of the blue river beside which they had travelled on their way to Innsbruck, on which she could allow her eyes to rest, without experiencing any uneasy sensations.
She had discovered that her head for heights was not, at that stage of her existence, very good, but the mountains themselves were so beautiful that they acted as a kind of sedative on her whole nervous system.
She wanted to be out amongst them all the time, and not enclosed in the rather Grimm’s Fairytale-like castle that was Max Veldon’s family home. As a survival of medievalism it was most impressive, but the corridors echoed to her footsteps, and although the main rooms were luxuriously furnished, there were many rooms that, she felt sure, had remained shut up like prisons for many years.
When she lost her way for the second time trying to find a bathroom, and Rudi came to her rescue, she felt annoyed with herself. Rudi, however, directed her without anything more disturbing than a faintly amused smile on his face, and offered to show her the surrounding countryside if she had any curiosity concerning it.
“I don’t suppose Winterton will be very active while you’re here, and Max usually shuts himself up in the library and catches up on his reading when he comes to Veldon,” he told her. “In any case, he’s not a climber—and I am!” with a slightly superior smile. “The mountains fascinate me, and I’ve never been lost in them yet.”
Jan
ie gazed at him. She was wondering suddenly how she was going to pass her time in this lonely Schloss, and whether Winterton would object if she did any exploring. She was eager to explore, eager to be outside in the sunlight on the mountains, but her first duty was to her fiancé, and she must not forget that she had a fiancé.
She kept repeating that to herself as if it were a lesson.
Her first visit after breakfast on her first morning in the Schloss was to Winterton’s room, and she found him very much improved in health, and also in spirits. The journey had tired him scarcely at all and, like Janie, he was full of enthusiasm for the beauty of the mountains.
“Open that window wide and step out on to the balcony,” he directed her, as he lay in his vast canopied bed. “It won’t give way, and the view will take your breath away.”
It certainly did, and when Janie turned round her eyes were shining.
“You won’t mind if I do some exploring while we’re here?” she asked, returning to the side of the bed. “I’ve never been right up in the mountains before, and I’d like to climb and climb”—she lifted her eyes to a ridge of firs below the light powdering of snow that lay on a splendid giant across the valley—“until I reached the summit of that one over there.”
Winterton smiled almost paternally, and patted her hand.
“I don’t mind you taking a few country walks, but you’re not to climb,” he instructed her. “Not unless Veldon feels like a spot of exercise, too, and is willing to take you with him. I’d trust him,” he added, laying a rather odd sort of emphasis on the words while he looked at Janie. “I’d trust you with him, but not with anyone else.”
But Veldon, when Janie ran into him in one o£ the upper corridors, was not thinking of taking any particular exercise. He looked at Janie with dark, inscrutable eyes that gave away nothing at all this morning, and were even a trifle forbidding. He addressed her as if she was nothing more nor less than a fairly unknown visitor, and he a reasonably polite host—who had never made the admission that he could fall in love with her if he wasn’t in love with someone else!—and inquired how she had slept.
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