Bride in Waiting

by Susan Barrie

  But the figure waiting to receive her spoke stiffly.

  “You are tired, senorita? You have had a long journey from Madrid!”

  “Not really long, as distances go nowadays,” April heard herself answering, with the jerkiness she found it impossible to overcome when she was feeling really nervous, and felt her hand clasped for an instant by a cool, be ringed one. Then the figure, dressed in black, with many underskirts that rustled, stepped backwards into the shadows of the hall to permit her to enter.

  “Ah, Carlos, how very good to see you!”

  It swept forward again to embrace the tall figure of Don Carlos, and although it was only in a vague way that she noticed these things, April saw the thin white arms go round his neck, the severe black head bend backwards a little while the dark eyes peered at him, and Don Carlos answered in a tone of voice that was much softer than anything she herself had yet heard from him:

  “And it is good to see you, Ignatia!”

  She let her hands fall from his neck and smiled at him, withdrawing with that graceful, rustling movement that was like the rustling of leaves in a light wind. They were together in the middle of a square of carpet that was full of rich blues and reds, and the light from the swinging lantern above them bathed them in a flood of amber.

  “All is well with you, cara?’ he asked. “Everything is well here?”

  “Quite well,” she replied, and then turned once more to April. “But you have not yet presented your fiancée to me ... not formally,” she rebuked him gently.

  He did so, taking April by the hand.

  “Miss April Day, and you will, of course, call her April! April, this is my sister, Dona Ignatia. She looks after my home and runs everything for me.”

  Sinister words, if April had been a normal bride he was presenting, with dreams of running her own home without assistance from anyone save the servants. For Dona Ignatia had the look of a woman who could run a home perfectly, was accustomed to every aspect of housekeeping and capable of coping with every difficulty; and in addition there was something about her that suggested she had been born for that one purpose, and proposed to go on doing so for the rest of her life. She had dark eyes that were probably even more inscrutable than her brother’s—full of wisdom, but unlikely to impart it to anyone else—a smooth, pale mask of a face, and the thin figure of a born spinster. She was probably a little older than her brother, without his somewhat startling good looks, and no doubt that was one reason why she was a spinster.

  April sent a wondering, admiring glance around the hall, and—not being a normal bride-to-be—merely envied her her ability to get the very best out of her servants, for every solid piece of black oak furniture shone, every rug was jewel-bright. And although there were few feminine touches—an entire absence of flowers—the hall was beautiful.

  “Your letter was so brief, Carlos, and there was so little time,” her gentle voice protested yet again. “But, even so, we have prepared a room for Miss Day, and a sitting-room adjoining. She should be quite comfortable.”

  “I am sure she will be very comfortable,” Carlos returned soothingly. He started to look about him, glancing upwards at the staircase, and the gallery that ran above it. “But where is Constancia? I fully expected that she would be waiting to greet us!”

  “Constancia is in her room,” Dona Ignatia informed him, looking down at her white hands. “The child has a touch of the headache.”

  “Impossible!” Don Carlos declared, looking amazed. “I have never known Constancia to suffer with a headache in her life!” he frowned. “What is wrong? Why is she keeping to her room?”

  His sister shrugged her shoulders slightly, without looking up.

  “The child is perhaps unhappy. I do not know,” she murmured, and then summoned a servant to take April’s luggage to the rooms prepared for her. “Juan, carry these cases upstairs, and then come back for the trunk.” She looked full into her brother’s eyes. “Your letter, as I have said, was brief ... and it was also sudden. Constancia was not prepared for it.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded coldly.

  Again the shrug.

  “That is all I can tell you. The rest I must leave to your imagination! No doubt in the morning she will be more resigned, and you will see her then. I would not, if I were you, disturb her tonight.”

  But, from the expression on Don Carlos’s face, this was an eventuality he had not expected to have to cope with, and it was plain that he was annoyed ... intensely annoyed. April had seen him frown before, and she had seen his eyes glitter with icy displeasure, but never as they glittered now, as if something that mattered to him very much indeed had recoiled on him, and had to be dealt with. His jaw set grimly, and he made for the stairs.

  “This is a matter that cannot wait until morning,” he said, and then glanced up and saw the girl coming slowly down the wide staircase towards him. She was young and dark and sullen, and as beautiful as a damask rose with the dew on it. The simile did not occur to April then, but it occurred to her afterwards. And it also occurred to her that, for one who was so beautiful, and should have been absolutely sure of herself, she almost cringed, and looked apprehensive, although her eyes were filled with resentment.

  “Ah!” Don Carlos exclaimed, with deadly coldness, as he watched her descent. “So you are no longer suffering from the headache, Constancia?”

  The girl’s eyes filled with tears, and her voluptuous scarlet mouth quivered. She looked as if she had spent the entire afternoon weeping stormily, and her eyes were red from her weeping. Her body shrank as she drew near the waiting man, and the childish lines of her figure were plainly revealed through the sober dark material of her dress.

  Then, as if she was a spring released, she hurled herself upon him, beat at him with frenzied fists, and burst into a positive torrent of tears and sobs. Don Carlos caught both of her wrists and fastidiously held her away from the front of his immaculate suit, and as he looked down at her his face was so harsh that April, behind them, felt an upsurge of deepest pity for the girl.

  “Enough!” Don Carlos said, his voice still icy. “Enough, I say, Constancia!” His fingers on her wrists made red marks which were revealed when she snatched one of them free. “What is the meaning of this scene? Why are you behaving like this, when I expected you would be waiting to welcome Senorita Day and myself?”

  “Senorita Day? But she is English!...” Constancia snatched free her other wrist, and then turned to confront April. Through the tears that were still coursing their way down her cheeks and hanging on her lashes like bright jewels her eyes blazed with resentment, and the fiercest dislike. “She is English, and you are going to marry her!” A stream of Spanish that was utterly incomprehensible to the English listener poured from her lips, and she ended with: “Oh, Carlos, mi amado, how can you? I warn you I will hate her always!... always!”

  It might have been the effect of the light, but April thought Don Carlos looked suddenly pale as well as grim.

  “You are talking like a ridiculous child,” he said.

  “I am not, I am not!” she declared. Abruptly she hurled herself upon him again, clutching at him. “And that is another mistake you make, for I am no longer a child. You persist in treating me as if I am, but I am a woman ... not a child!” Tears gushed from her eyes again, and she wept more desolately. “It is bad enough that you marry, but that you treat me like a child ... that is something I can’t endure!” and she buried her face in his neck and proceeded to soak his immaculate flowing tie.

  A good deal of the harshness died out of his face, and he stroked her tumbled mane of hair.

  “Come, amada,” he said, more softly, “you are being absurd. I think of you as Constancia, and it is as Constancia that I wish to present you to Miss Day. Cease ruining my tie, and dry your eyes, and tell her how much you regret this unpleasant scene.”

  “But I don’t,” Constancia said mutinously, without lifting her head.

  From several feet away Do
na Ignatia spoke quietly.

  “Do as my brother requests, Constancia!”

  The girl obeyed, not exactly with alacrity, but she certainly obeyed. For the second time she stepped backwards, drove her knuckles into her eyes, and glared at April.

  “I regret the unpleasant scene, senorita! I also regret my rudeness, for I am sixteen, and should have better manners.”

  “You should, indeed,” Don Carlos agreed, and then laughed suddenly and caught her by her hair and tugged her towards him. “But it is something that you have apologized, and I forgive you, and I’m sure Miss Day forgives you, too. Offer her your hand, and welcome her in a polite Spanish fashion.”

  But before he let her go he stroked her cheek, ruffled her hair, and then watched critically as she offered her hand to April. The latter took it and clasped it, hot and sticky though it was, warmly.

  “You have nothing to apologize to me for,” she said. “I’m afraid you had insufficient warning of my coming.”

  Constancia’s expression grew only a little less hostile, and Don Carlos seized the opportunity to explain to his bride-to-be:

  “This is my adopted daughter, Constancia. She is not usually so difficult to handle, and today we will hope is an exception.”

  But a perfectly understandable exception. April thought, as she saw the sudden tremble of Constancia’s lower lip, and the quiver of her chin. The girl—and, being Spanish, she certainly was not any longer a child!—was in love with her adoptive parent, and, whether he realized it or not, it was a wild and stormy and possessive love that could hardly be expected to diminish just because he had elected to take a wife.

  As if the scene had affected Dona Ignatia’s sense of the fitness of things more acutely than it had done that of anyone else, she once more spoke from the foot of the stairs, and her lips were tight.

  “If you will be so good as to come this way, Miss Day, I will show you to your rooms.”

  The rest of that evening passed in a distinctly unreal fashion for April. After feeling slightly depressed by her two adjoining rooms and bathroom—which were magnificent without being strictly comfortable or the sort of rooms in which one could relax—she dressed in something white and plain for dinner, and then went down to find Dona Ignatia looking perfectly splendid in black satin and diamonds, and Constancia more simply but exquisitely attired in black lace, with a white flower in her hair.

  That hair had undergone a beautifying process that was quite startling, and it shone like satin—blackish-bronze satin—under the lights in the immensely formal dining sala. It was very obvious that both of the female members of Don Carlos’s household had gone to great pains to appear at their best in honour of the arrival of Don Carlos’s fiancée, and although April looked charming—and very English—in her simple white, she wished she had selected something just a little more in keeping with the elaborate appearance of the other two.

  After dinner they all sat in the big main sala and sipped coffee which was dispensed by Dona Ignatia, who looked a very fitting chatelaine of such a house presiding over the fragile cups and the handsome silver tray and coffee-pot, etc. And then Don Carlos was called away to interview an unexpected caller, the ladies produced needlework—or rather, Dona Ignatia did; Constancia sat with her hands tightly locked together in her lap, her eyes, black, brooding and beautiful, fixed on April’s face as if it had for her an irresistible attraction. The white flower in her hair was of the same creamy whiteness as her skin, and although she was only sixteen her brilliant mouth had the sultry seductiveness of the mouth of a far older woman.

  At last Dona Ignatia suggested to her that she play the piano, and she performed expertly on a very fine instrument. The music was formal and carefully chosen, and as it drifted out through the open windows into the warmth of the Spanish night April thought it must have a slightly alien sound. But it convinced her—as was no doubt intended—that Constancia had been well brought up, and had received the usual number of advantages of young girls of her class, in spite of the bad impression she might have created as a result of her stormy outburst earlier in the evening.

  It was only when she grew tired of playing the piano and lifted a guitar off the wall and started to play it that April was able to feel she was listening to the real Constancia. Her eyes were dreamy, and her mouth curved upwards excitingly with her dreams, and she forgot the presence of the other two.

  She was in a world of her own, lost, contemplative, happy. But it was not an entirely satisfying happiness, for her eyes still brooded. April, who had seen them bright with tears and blazing with a kind of temporary hate, wondered how they would look when the girl was in love. When, that was, she was able to reveal her love.

  Dona Ignatia frowned over her needlework, and when the soft strumming had gone on for little more than ten minutes she ordered the girl, curtly, to put the instrument away and go to bed.

  But, upstairs in her room, April continued to hear it for a long while, and she thought it was far more, in keeping with the purple magic of the night than Chopin. Chopin in an English drawing-room was one thing, but here in the heart of Andalusia it was another. And Constancia’s fingers awakened a wild, unexplainable longing that was probably the secret longing in her own heart.

  April sat beside her window, not feeling any urge to get undressed and go to bed, and she recalled the look of Don Carlos when his anger had passed and he was anxious only to soothe his ward. To win her back to good humour.

  His fingers had been very gentle as they stroked her hair, his voice almost wooingly kind.. And for a very fastidious man he had not complained overmuch about his ruined tie.

  He was almost certainly very fond of Constancia, startled by her unexpected attitude. And, after being called away, he had not returned to say good night to his fiancée. April had sat on and on in the sala, listening for his footsteps, and it was only when Dona Ignatia indicated that she was about to retire that the realization swept over her that she was faced with no other alternative but to retire, too.

  Without saying good night to Don Carlos.

  As she went up the heavily carved staircase to her room she felt as if she had been deprived of something.

  CHAPTER VII

  IN the morning she awakened to wonder where she was, and when she saw the golden bars of sunlight finding their way in through her closed shutters she sprang out of bed to open them.

  Outside her windows lay all the loveliness of an Andalusian morning. Already a brilliant arc of blue sky swept without a sign of cloud overhead, and in the distance she could see the sea, blue—or even bluer—than the sky. Immediately underneath the window, which had a green-painted balcony outside it, and on which she stood to enjoy all the freshness of the morning, there was a green lawn that sparkled wetly from the recent hosing it had received by gardeners, and a long line of rose pergolas was also bright with diamond drops that had not yet evaporated in the heat of the sun.

  As far as she could see the country round about was flat, extending in a somewhat barren fashion to the sea. Inland it was probably mountainous. The diaphanous quality of the light was something that fascinated her, and she found it hard to recall the heavy purple dusk that had pressed upon everything the evening before. Don Carlos’s house, in the daylight, was a revelation too, for it went spreading in all directions, although most of it was built round the central courtyard, and it was white and gracious, with pantiled roofs that were rosy as apricots.

  April dressed herself quickly in powder blue and went down into the garden to see whether there was anyone about apart from herself. It was quite early yet, but she had an idea this was not a sluggish household, and in Spain most people are early risers, even if they go to bed at extraordinary hours, for the heat of the day makes it impossible for anyone to do very much work, and the only real coolness while summer lasts is to be found in the early mornings.

  And, while she was on her balcony, April thought she caught a glimpse of someone astride a horse flash past like a figment o
f imagination. If it was actually an early morning rider he was gone in an instant, but April would have been prepared to swear that he had a pillion rider, and that pillion rider was wearing something gay and scarlet. And she had laughed ... Her laughter had come floating along on the wind until it reached April’s balcony.

  That was one reason why she had hurried with her dressing. If it was Don Carlos who was indulging in his favourite form of early morning exercise, then she might catch yet another glimpse of him when he returned to hand over his mount.

  The stables were at the back of the house, forming four sides of yet another courtyard, but there was no sign of any life when April drew near. Human life, that is, for one or two of the half-doors were open, and she could see some splendid examples of horseflesh noisily enjoying their breakfasts as she stood watching them for several minutes. And there was a sound of washing down, and a tuneless whistling which, apparently is indulged in by stable lads in other corners of the world as well as England. Or that was the thought which passed through April’s mind.

  And then, as she was preparing to turn away, she heard the unmistakable clatter of hooves, and round an angle of the buildings came the same horse that she had only momentarily glimpsed before—and she knew now that she was right; it was a bright chestnut, With a flowing, undocked tail—and on its back was Don Carlos, and perched in a pillion behind Don Carlos was the girl he looked upon as an adopted daughter, the lovely Constancia, who was so infinitely more than just lovely this morning that April stood quite still and stared up at her.

  Hair once more loose, and streaming out behind her, she had a colour like a rose, and was clinging with honey-coloured, slim bare arms to her guardian’s waist. She was wearing a short, vivid skirt of scarlet, and about her neck was a scarlet bandanna, tied in a careless knot. As soon as they came to a standstill she jumped clear of her perch without any assistance from anyone, and by the time Don Carlos alighted she was greeting April with a brilliant smile and sparkling eyes, and chattering away to her in moderately good English without any inhibitions of any kind, and absolutely no sign of hostility.