by Susan Barrie
But in the morning everything seemed different, and capable of being viewed in a more rational light, and he took her sight-seeing and shopping, and bought her a wonderful brocade dressing-gown in a gorgeous shade of peacock blue, and some slippers to go with it. When she protested that she couldn’t possibly wear anything so magnificent, he laughed and assured her that she was the only person who could do so — with her hair.
And his eyes rested admiringly on the shining cap that she had permitted to be shorn after the prevailing fashion.
And the sun shone in a way she had never realized sun could shine before, and everything was so gay and full of life that she suddenly felt gay and full of life, too. They lunched on exquisitely prepared sea-food, and drank the wine of the country, and by evening she was no longer nervous, only happy. Even although Sebastiao still didn’t kiss her goodnight, and she felt lonely once she was separated from him, she was happier than she had ever been in her life before.
And she was feeling steadily happier until the moment when he shattered all possibility of happiness by telling her about her father.
CHAPTER NINE
The light was fading over the sea — that brilliant light that was so amazing to a newcomer to Portugal — when Sebastiao knocked at her door.
Kathie was still crouched in her chair, watching the strange prehistoric-monster-shaped rocks that littered the shore becoming a little vague in the changing light, and the gardens below her more dreamily beautiful with every moment that passed, when he entered without receiving any permission. She looked up at him, her face no longer blotched with weeping, but tired-eyed and infinitely sad.
Sebastiao said gently:
“I wouldn’t allow anyone to disturb you, although Rosa wanted to bring you some tea.” Rosa was the Portuguese girl who had been deputed to wait on Kathie. “I thought you’d rather have several hours alone.” He studied her carefully through the attractive green twilight in the room, for the sun-blinds were still partially drawn, and it was through gaps in them that she had been peering at the sea. He said more sharply, “But now I think you’ve been alone long enough! Get changed, Kathie, and come down and join me and have a drink!”
She was about to protest that she didn’t want to change — she didn’t want a drink — she didn’t want anything; but his face caused her to change her mind.
“All right,” she said, in a mere whisper of a voice. “I’ll try not to be too long.”
He smiled faintly, and ran a hand lightly over her hair.
“Good girl! And, Kathie...” His voice was suddenly still and strange. “Your father wouldn’t want you to plunge into mourning. Put on something new and colorful!”
She stared up at him, slightly wonderingly, and then he was gone, leaving her alone in the tranquil room. And it was curiously tranquil, with an ivory carpet and mint green hangings. The curtains were like green waterfalls flowing before the tall windows, and on the kidney-shaped dressing-table there was a crystal bowl of yellow roses. There were also some yellow satin cushions on a yellow satin couch, and a touch of amethyst in a velvet canopy above the bed. Kathie had felt strange sleeping beneath the canopy on the first night, particularly as it was caught up into a kind of gilded apex, but as an exotic touch to an exquisitely simple room it was quite perfect. Her bathroom was just as luxurious, and her little boudoir was all restful green. The doors and the woodwork throughout were painted with delicate chinoiserie figures that she found it absorbing to study.
Rosa stole in and ran her bath for her — Rosa had obviously been despatched by her master — and Kathie was glad she had little or no English, for she was in no mood to receive any sympathy. And Rosa, with her broad, comfortable bosom and melting eyes, looked as if she might be immensely sympathetic if the occasion called for it.
Kathie did hardly anything at all to her face, but she hesitated over the choice of a dress. Why had Sebastiao stipulated that it should be something colorful and new? What did it matter what she wore ... now that she was alone and bereft...?
But she wanted to please Sebastiao. She wasn’t really alone ... And he was very kind! There was a certain streak of level-headed hardness in him, but he wanted to be kind. She was sure of that.
But colorful...? When her father was dead!
In the end her fingers hovered over, and finally selected, a cloudy black chiffon that was so unlike the black chiffon she had worn when she first met Sebastiao that comparison between them was quite pointless. Her mother’s altered dress had caused Sebastiao to notice both her skin and her hair; but this expensively simple creation, selected with great care by Lady Fitz, made her look like a youthful Marquesa de Barrateira. In spite of her pallor — or perhaps because of it — and her lack of make-up, she had an almost poignant dignity in the dress, and she was so slender that all at once she seemed as fragile as blown glass to her husband. He found himself gazing at her, when she entered the great sala where he was waiting for her, and feeling his breath catch with a sudden touch of anxiety because she wasn’t real.
“Kathie!” He went towards her, and the look in his eyes grew more inexplicable as he put out his hands to take both of hers. “You were right, and I was wrong,” he said quietly, after a moment. “The black is entirely suitable.”
Her heavy eyes filled with tears.
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t put on—anything else!”
“Of course not.” He put his arm round her and guided her to a chair. “And now I’m going to give you a glass of sherry. I think you’d prefer that to anything else.”
She watched him as he went to a side table where, on an impressive silver tray, drinks were set out. He brought her a glass of sherry and put it into her hand, but her hold was so unsteady that he had to take it from her again almost immediately. He realized that she was by no means as composed as her entry had indicated, and he sat down beside her on the little damask-covered settee and put his arms round her and drew her close to him. His hand stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, Kathie,” he said. “Cry if you want to, darling.”
And Kathie burst into floods of weeping and clung to him.
It was a much more satisfying outburst than the stifled weeping in her room, and after a time she began to feel so much better that she could apologize to him, between gasping sobs.
“Sebastiao, you’re so kind! ... And I’m being a frightful nuisance! It’s unfair that you should have to put up with —with this — when you’ve done so much!”
“Forget what I’ve done,” he advised quietly, “and try to remember that I’m your husband.”
When a sombre manservant in immaculate black came in to announce dinner he sent him away.
“We are not ready,” he said. “When we want dinner I will ring.”
The manservant melted away, and Kathie sat up, concerned.
“I’m upsetting everything!” she exclaimed. “It’s so difficult to keep food hot, and not allow it to be spoiled. The servants will think I’m very inconsiderate.”
Sebastiao smiled in a faintly whimsical fashion and touched her damp cheek with his finger.
“My dear girl,” he replied, with the casualness of one who had lived with small regiments of servants all his life, “it doesn’t honestly matter whether they do or not, but the present occasion does rather excuse you, doesn’t it?” He picked up her glass and held it to her lips. “Have a little of this, and I’m sure you’ll feel better.”
She sipped obediently, and a lovely color stole into her face as she looked up at him with shy eyes. She had only one desire in the world just then, and that was that he would stay near her. His closeness affected her with an exquisite feeling of comfort, and in addition there was a peculiar sensation like bliss because he still had one arm round her. In spite of her tragedy she knew that if she dared rest her head on his shoulder, and nestle it in under his firm dark chin and keep it there, she would feel utterly content, and she might go off quietly to sleep ... She felt suddenly exhausted.
But Sebastiao began to insist that she must have something to eat, reminding her that she had had nothing since lunch; and at last she was persuaded to enter the dining-room, and she accepted small helpings of the rich dishes, and Sebastiao made her drink a full glass of wine without leaving any of it. Then they had coffee brought to them in the sala, and he made her put her feet up on one of the formal settees, and she lay looking at him from amidst a nest of cushions and thought how wonderfully good-looking he was, and that in spite of a lifetime of spoiling and everything coming more or less to his hand, his was a strong face. A strong, and rather beautiful face, like the faces of knights in stained-glass windows. And his hair was so wonderfully golden ... Quite unsuited to a Portuguese marques!
Yet he fitted in perfectly with their surroundings, and his elegance was the elegance of the great room, so lavishly equipped with period pieces and priceless ornaments and the bric-a-brac collected by connoisseurs. Not the sort of bric-a-brac they had at home at Little Carrig, which was largely fake, and a nuisance to dust ... Here everything had the right patina, the sheen that only genuine porcelain and genuine crystal had, the shimmer of the richest brocades, the glowing colors of handwoven rugs that had been dipped in the waters of the River Tigris.
And there were endless servants to take care of everything.
Kathie closed her eyes, and then opened them again and looked almost yearningly at her husband. If only he had never had all that unhappiness over Hildegarde! ... If only there had never been any Austrian baroness who had ruined his chances of contentment in the future, of tenderness and gaiety and love and passionate need...
Kathie felt herself tremble as she lay on the settee. What was she thinking? Why did this sudden wave of feeling sweep over her — this craving to be back in his arms, and not just to have her tears dried? She felt an almost sullen resentment because there had been a Hildegarde, and because of her she must go hungry all the days of her life! ... Oh no, no! she thought, and then decided she was a little light-headed.
Sebastiao looked up from the book he was reading, and he thought she had fallen asleep. The mellow light was falling over her, caressing the soft red feathers of hair on her white brow, and there were all the marks of complete mental exhaustion in her face.
He went across and lifted her and once more carried her up the stairs to her room, and once there he rang the bell for her maid, and then returned to look at her when he was assured that she was safely in bed. This time Kathie was really asleep, and she looked young and helpless and forlorn. There were purple shadows under her eyes, a childish droop to her mouth.
Sebastiao sat down beside the bed and took her hand and held it very gently. Her fingers curled automatically but quite unconsciously around his, and he stayed with her for fully an hour. Then he drew the silken sheet up over her bare white shoulder that escaped from one of the filmy nightdresses Lady Fitz had bought her.
When he went away to his own room at last, he was looking more thoughtful than he had looked for a long time, and Kathie had a tiny smile on her lips. In her dreams he was still holding her hand.
CHAPTER TEN
For the next few days Kathie found it hard to rouse herself, and to recover from the numbing shock she had received. There were moments when the numbness lifted a little, and she wanted to rush back to Eire to be with her mother and sisters and Lady Fitz, and feel that she was once more surrounded by familiar things, and sit in her father’s study and try to pretend that he was there with her. But Sebastiao, when she half pleaded with him to let her go, was quite firm about her remaining where she was.
“It would do you no good,” he said, “and there is no reason for you to go back to Eire — not at the present time, anyway. If there was, I would go with you.”
She believed him. He would have accompanied her if he could have seen any point at all in her returning to her own people just then, but he didn’t, and he tried other means to get her to shake off the distressing aftereffects of sudden loss. He tried to get her interested in her new surroundings, and to recapture her early enthusiasm for the Portuguese scene. And with that object in view he took her for long drives in his high-powered pure white car — one of several cars in the capacious garage space at the quinta — and let her see for the first time the cork forests, the chestnut forests, and the miles and miles of cultivated fields and vineyards that helped to make up that smiling corner of Portugal.
He was able to wave a casual arm and indicate terraced slopes where the swollen purple grapes would eventually be gathered and pressed for wine, although as yet they were merely young and tender plants hungrily soaking up the strong sunshine, and admit that as far as the eye could see those terraces were his. The men and women who toiled on the hillside, some in gay bandannas and others with black wool stocking caps on their heads, were employed by him, the ox-carts whining and creaking along the roads were whining and creaking about his business, and much of the property they flashed past was his. Even whole villages.
He owned vast peach orchards, and a factory that manufactured local pottery. He admitted that the pottery was hideous, but it was one means of keeping the Barrateira coffers filled. And on the sea side there were vast stretches of beach that belonged to him, delectable little coves where the sand was as white as bleached bones, and jutting promontories with forests of umbrella pines clinging to them.
Kathie was not particularly impressed by the knowledge that her husband was a powerful landowner — she had gathered that from the beginning — but she was alternately soothed and delighted by the picturesqueness of this land where she would have to do her utmost to settle down. The fragrant pine-woods through which the May breeze sighed so that, if one paused to walk amongst them, they seemed like musical pine-woods, and the carpet of flowers that was like a carpet of embroidery spreading through every shallow valley that had a rippling stream. The pastel-washed villas and the humbler cottages scattered like birthday cakes along the coast, the gracious quintas in spreading grounds, the crumbling forts and forgotten monasteries that appeared against the skyline.
And—again on the sea side—that incredible width of sky that flamed with the fires of sunset, that deep blue sparkling surge of ocean.
Kathie enjoyed the drives — or she enjoyed them as much as she was capable of enjoying anything at that particular time. And she took pleasure in watching Sebastiao’s slim brown hands gripping the wheel of the car, while he sat relaxed behind it as if that was his natural element. He was certainly a most competent driver, with a weakness for travelling at high speeds that would have alarmed Kathie under strictly normal conditions, especially on roads that frequently struck her as more than a little perilous. But now it didn’t seem to matter to her, somehow — or she was beginning to have an extraordinary kind of dependence and reliance on Sebastiao, although her earliest impression of him had been that he was slightly effeminate, and that he preferred to have a dependence on other people.
Now she didn’t believe that Sebastiao was at all effeminate, and in his own home he certainly showed up to advantage. He was master, and everyone recognized that he was master, although he was accustomed to being waited on hand and foot, and he expected the maximum of attention from everyone. He would never have dreamed of doing anything at all for himself while a servant was at hand to place it within his reach, or to pick it up for him, or to close a door after him. His lordly air of arrogance would have set him apart in Eire, but in Portugal it was entirely in the picture, and the subservience of those he paid to do his bidding was not subservience in such a setting. The peasantry bowed and bobbled to him, and looked at him with humble, grateful eyes; the lower-class servants raced to execute his lightest command, and the tried retainers followed his movements with affection. Kathie saw it often in their eyes, particularly those of the elderly major-domo and the fussy little black-clad housekeeper who seemed to rule the roost.
They seemed delighted that their master had re-married so unexpectedly, and did everything that was hu
manly possible for Kathie’s comfort. She was watched over, she felt, from morning till night, and it seemed utterly strange to her to be the centre of so much attention. Never allowed to lift a finger to run even a bath tap, she began to wonder how she would occupy herself once the novelty had passed off. It was quite plain that the running of the Marques’s homes was the concern of experienced domestics, and she understood that the same staff proceeded with them wherever they went, or were likely to go, in Portugal.
At the Quinta de Barrateira it would be reinforced, for the house was vast, and at other houses that were not looked upon as simple holiday villas. Although to Kathie there was nothing simple about the lovely pale pink quinta beside the sea. It was fairytale-like in its beauty and as elegant as Sebastiao himself. The portraits of his ancestors hung everywhere in massive frames, and their collections of priceless china and glass were displayed in elegant cabinets. And to wander in the Elysian gardens, with a glimpse of distant mountains as well as the peacock sea, was something to induce a dreamlike feeling of unreality. Kathie discovered this very soon after her arrival, and for her the gardens became a kind of refuge in those early, difficult, extraordinary, unreal days of her marriage.
Sebastiao explained that local families would not be likely to call, as they were supposed to be on honeymoon — at any rate, not for a time. And there would be no question of her having to entertain anyone until she had had time to absorb a little more than she had absorbed of the Portuguese way of life. But he overlooked the fact that two people, for entirely different reasons, felt it their duty to offer some sort of a welcome to the newly-weds before the quality of the district began to pour en masse up to the large double doors of the quinta.
