by Susan Barrie
“Darling,” he said softly, “adorable Kathie!...”
But she gave a sudden, eel-like twist and escaped the possessive arms, and fled to her room, and while he stood staring at her door with a resentful frown knitting his golden brows together, and a certain amount of blank astonishment in his eyes, he heard her turn the key in the lock. Most decisively.
But he didn’t know that once the key was turned she stood leaning up against the door while the slow tears of disillusionment brimmed over her eyes and coursed their way down her cheeks. If he had learned to love her even a little in the past few weeks he couldn’t have been amused by her reluctance, her natural shrinking. And his eyes wouldn’t have laughed at her like that!
Bridie arrived a little less than a week later, and in a way Kathie was very thankful for her arrival. Since the night she and Sebastiao had dined and danced together at one of the local night-spots there had been a definite constraint between them. Sebastiao knew very well how to assume an air of cold hauteur when everything was not going according to a plan he had formed, or someone ventured to annoy him, and he adopted that air with Kathie. She thought once more of the spoiled boy she had been very certain dwelt in him — and not very far below the surface of his startling masculine charm — and wondered wistfully whether he would ever arrive at a completely serious acceptance of Life as something that must give as well as take.
He had given her a great many material things, but she was no closer to him spiritually, she felt, than she had ever been. She had discovered that she could attract him physically, but Hildegarde’s attraction must have been compounded of something far more worthwhile than the ability to make him want to hold her in his arms — occasionally! Hildegarde must have been able to delve far deeper than the spoiled boy, and that no doubt was why her loss had caused him so much agony.
And even Inez could make him look at her gravely, earnestly, as if he was concerned more with her problems than his own. His attitude to Inez was intensely protective, and there was no detached coolness about it. Even when she deliberately provoked him, he declined to provoke her back.
But to Kathie, after that night when she had locked her door against him, he wasn’t merely detached and cool, he was icily indifferent. She was afraid that Bridie must sense at once that they were anything but a devoted bride and groom of only a few weeks; but she need not have worried, for, with the arrival of his sister-in-law, Sebastiao reverted to his earlier attitude of being quite fond of his wife, and ready to put himself out to ensure her comfort, and the comfort of any of her relatives.
Even so, Bridie wouldn’t be deceived ... Kathie was sure of that. She had never been really deceived, but she must often have wondered a great deal.
She reached the quinta in a car that had been sent specially to the airport to meet her. It was not a very tiring journey from Lisbon, and she looked fresh as a flower when she stepped from the car. Kathie was instantly conscious of an overwhelming sensation of pride, for Bridie was her relative, and if she was not as strikingly beautiful as Inez, at least she had a dark, serene beauty that no one could overlook.
Robert Bolton seemed quite impressed by it that night, when he came to dinner. Sebastiao had invited him ostensibly to make up a fourth, and provide Bridie with someone to partner her during her first evening; but Kathie couldn’t quite see the necessity for the invitation being issued, and under ordinary circumstances would certainly have preferred her sister and her husband and herself to be alone for the first twenty-four hours after Bridie’s arrival. As it was, she had so much to ask Bridie about their father, and the way things had gone on at Little Carrig since his death, that she carried her off to her own little boudoir as soon as possible after Bridie’s first lunch, and forgot that there was a certain amount of reason for her to shrink from her sister’s perceptiveness, and that she in turn might ask questions.
And Bridie did. She satisfied all Kathie’s yearning for details from home, went round the room examining the furnishings and exclaimed over the delicate chinoiserie figures on the panels of the doors, and then returned to her comfortable chair and sank into it. She looked through the slats of the cool green sun-blinds at the sea, stretched herself in graceful ease, and then her curious dark eyes swept to Kathie’s face.
“And how does it feel to be a marquesa?” she asked. “How does it feel to be married?”
Kathie lay back in her own chair and realized that she had got to be careful.
“I don’t feel in the last like a marquesa,” she admitted at last. “And I suppose I’m getting used to being married.”
Bridie smiled a little oddly. There was also an unusual gleam of affection in her eyes for Kathie.
“Most of the girls I’ve known who’ve got married have changed quite noticeably after marriage,” she said. “But you don’t seem to me to have changed one bit. Your setting is perfect, and your clothes are absolutely right — I couldn’t admire them more! — but you are still the same diffident Kathie you always were. You’ve acquired a tan, your eyes are slightly bewildered, you might possibly be a bit fatter ... But I don’t think anyone would ever guess you were married!”
Kathie felt the slow color begin to rise up in her cheeks. She didn’t know quite where to look.
“And as for your husband ... Well, I’ll confess that I envied you bitterly at one time, but I’m not so sure now! Sebastiao is very much the Marques de Barrateira when he’s at home, isn’t he? He’s charming, of course — he always was — but one feels that he’s never quite unaware that he’s a superior being. His looks are superior, his position is superior, his wealth is vast. And now that you’ve the right to share his wealth, I don’t think he treats you very much differently from the way in which he treated you when he came to tea that first time at Little Carrig! Then he insisted that you shouldn’t be overlooked, and now I think he does the same. It isn’t a very husbandly attitude.”
Kathie pushed the box of cigarettes towards her on the little table between them, and asked somewhat hurriedly if she would like some more coffee. They hadn’t waited for coffee downstairs on the terrace.
“I could ring for some if you would ...”
Bridie smiled once more, with distinct strangeness, and then helped herself to a cigarette.
“No, thank you, darling. The lunch was heavenly, and the coffee is nectar, but I don’t want any more. And don’t think I’m trying to poke my nose into your strictly personal concerns just out of sheer curiosity, but I was hoping to find you looking really happy. You’re not, you know! You’re looking lost and bewildered, and Sebastiao wears an extraordinary air of indifference. It wouldn’t do for me if I happened to be married to him!”
Kathie tried to offer some sort of an explanation.
“Sebastiao is Portuguese — I think he’s almost wholly Portuguese, really — and the Portuguese are a very formal people. They don’t like to display emotion, or — or anything of that sort. They have very pronounced notions of what is correct.”
“And a husband of only a few weeks mustn’t let the world see that he’s in love with his wife?” Bridie took a long pull at her cigarette. “I see!” But her voice sounded very dry. “However, you’re not Portuguese — or only by marriage — and you were never very good at concealing what you felt. I remember when Mummy lost her temper with you for no justifiable cause you always looked as if you wanted to cry. And when Lady Fitz made you an unexpected present your face fit up at once. I always thought you were no good at concealment, Kathie.”
“You must remember that Daddy’s death was a — shock,” Kathie said, knowing that this at least must be accepted.
And Bridie leant forward and squeezed her hands.
“All right, my dear, I’ll stop probing! And I want you to know that I’m terribly grateful for all that you’ve done for us through your marriage. I never believed I’d have a really wealthy sister, and for a brother-in-law who could invite me to stay in a place like this, and send Eileen and Mummy off on a prolong
ed cruise ... Well, I still pinch myself sometimes, because I’m not quite certain it’s true. And although I might seem to criticise Sebastiao, believe me I’m terribly grateful to him.”
“He’s exceptionally generous,” Kathie was able to state, because it was no more than the truth. “I feel overwhelmed by all the things he’s given me.”
Bridie glanced at her, and stood up.
“I hope one day he’ll make you exceptionally happy,” she said. And then she stepped out on to the balcony, and was hit by a blaze of sun. “Can’t we go down into the garden?” she asked. “It looks deliciously cool.”
That night she wore lilac gauze that made the most of her pale complexion and slightly mystic dark eyes, and Robert Bolton stared so hard at her when they first met that the mystic look gave place to a tinge of amusement. She was accustomed to being admired, and she was accustomed to members of the opposite sex looking slightly taken aback when she was introduced, but it was a new experience to feel that she was riveting the whole of a man’s attention.
“You’re not in the least like your sister,” he told her, “and you’re quite unlike what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” she asked, as he put a glass of sherry into her hand.
“Someone very unassuming — like Kathie. Someone with Kathie’s shyness.”
“But Kathie became a marquesa!”
“Yes.” His eyes wandered to Kathie, standing with her husband at the far end of the room. They were talking politely to one another, as they might have done if they were strangers who had just been introduced. “Kathie became a marquesa,” he echoed. And then he studied the liquid in his glass. “It would have been better for Kathie to have become a happy wife, and for you” — his eyes returned to her — “to have become a marquesa! You’d look the part!”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “But there is no such exalted future ahead of me.”
“No.” Once more his eyes were fixed on her, and he spoke as if he had the gift of clairvoyance. “You’ll never marry a title, but I do think you’ve an excellent opportunity of becoming a happy wife!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
With Bridie’s arrival Kathie found that she was far less often alone with her husband, but as Sebastiao was never anything more than meticulously polite and considerate to her, this was perhaps as well. If they had been alone together there would have been long periods of strain, and possibly long periods of silence, too. For, although he was charming to Bridie, he seemed to have little to say to Kathie.
She wondered what her sister thought, and was grateful because Bridie offered no further comment on the somewhat singular relationship between husband and wife. And Robert Bolton came so often to the quinta that the relationship was not as noticeable as it might have been. When there were so often four of them, the conversation had to be general, and although Kathie was certain Robert came to see her sister, he made few excuses to be alone with her. He didn’t even invite her to make excursions with him, or dine with him, or go dancing with him — which would have been perfectly natural since he was a fellow countryman (or almost so), and she was an unattached young woman with considerable good looks.
Once they all four visited his cottage, and had tea with him, and saw a large number of his pictures. They were mostly exquisite conceptions of local scenery, and Sebastiao wrote out a very large cheque for one or two of them that Kathie particularly praised, and said they would do for the wing of the Lisbon house that was undergoing such stringent alterations.
Bridie seemed charmed by the cottage that was perched right beside the sea, and very comfortably and artistically furnished. She wanted to know how much longer Robert proposed to go on living there, and he admitted that he might try persuading Sebastiao to sell the cottage to him.
“I don’t feel I want to go home and live in a cold clime now,” he said. He smiled at Kathie. “You won’t either, my dear, once you’ve been here another few months.”
“But Kathie’s home is here,” Bridie said with faint emphasis, as if she was surprised. “There’s no question of her leaving Portugal, except, of course, for holidays.”
“No; I suppose not.” But the artist’s eyes dwelt thoughtfully on Kathie. She did not look to him like a happy young woman whose whole future was fixed for her. “No, I suppose not,” as if he was turning the matter over in his mind.
Sebastiao put down his tea-cup with a sharp bang in its saucer, and said decisively.
“Of course Portugal is Kathie’s home! It is her country now, and in time she will grow quite used to thinking of herself as Portuguese.”
“Will you, Kathie?” But Robert’s faint smile was so openly sceptical that Kathie herself began to feel that he was not being very tactful, and Bridie frowned a little, and Sebastiao grew positively black-browed — if a golden-browed man could achieve such a dark cast of countenance. “I shall always think of our new, enchanting Marquesa as belonging to the Emerald Isle,” Bolton said decidedly. “Only time will tell how well she transplants!”
Bridie said somewhat hastily that she would like to visit the beach below the cottage, and take a closer look at the sickle-shaped fishing-boats that had been drawn up there by bullock teams, and when she and the host had vanished, Kathie fumbled awkwardly with the tea-things, putting them all together on a tray — although that was the task for the daily woman who would presently arrive to prepare the artist’s evening meal, and tidy up the cottage.
Sebastiao walked to a window, and stood looking out at the brilliant afternoon light upon the sea.
“We must go to Lisbon fairly soon,” he said, speaking rather shortly. “I want you to see what I am having done to the house, and gather whether or not you approve. You may have some ideas of your own that you would like carried out there.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary for you to carry out ideas of mine,” Kathie returned quietly. “I’m sure I shall like the house.”
He looked at her almost as if he was seeing her for the first time.
“You mean that you are prepared to like it, or pretend that you like it?”
She made a faint shrugging movement with her shoulders.
“You forget that I have led a very simple life, and everything that you have introduced me to is overwhelming. I’ve no doubt I shall be completely overwhelmed by the Quinta de Barrateira, and it won’t be a case — or a question, rather — of whether I approve, but whether I shall fit in!” She looked at him gravely. “It is very important that I shall fit in, isn’t it?”
“The important thing is that you will want to fit in,” he told her, meeting and holding her eyes. “Nothing besides that is really very important.”
As she gazed at him, how she wished she could believe that, and nothing else. That she alone was important!... Not his way of life, not the impression she made on his friends. Nothing!...
But his face was queerly inscrutable, as it could be at times, and only his eyes seemed to be a little bit searching as they studied her. She turned away, and upset a little stream of milk as she added the milk jug to the tray, and he didn’t realize her fingers were fumbling because her heart was knocking, and all her pulses were clamoring for a better understanding between them. Not to look and talk to one another as if they were strangers after such a very short while of marriage!
The next day Inez returned from Lisbon, and she arrived at the quinta within an hour of her return. If she was surprised to find that in her absence Kathie’s sister had joined her, she did not betray it. She made some remark about it being ‘nice’ for Kathie to have a member of her own family near her — as if Sebastiao was not, and never would, become her ‘family’ — and then turned all her attention to the head of the house and ignored everybody else, so that Bridie’s eyes widened a little.
Afterwards she commented that for the first time she had seen the Marques look as if something had actually pleased him. And for the first time he hadn’t merely set himself out to charm, he was all relaxed charm an
d sudden sunny good humor. It was the first time he and Inez had seen one another since the night when she got him away from the rest of the guests to show him some miniatures, and when she first held out her eager white-gloved hands to him her brilliant eyes seemed to be planning with him. Or was she silently asking for some form of forgiveness because she was aware that she had behaved rather outrageously in her own home? Kathie could only wonder, and like Bridie she couldn’t fail to be aware of the fact that, beneath the influence of her smiles, Sebastiao ceased to forget his dignity, and behaved like a young and impressionable man who was suddenly aware that life was good. Life with a capital ‘L’!
“You must stay to lunch,” he insisted. “I’ll ring up Bolton, and get him to join us, and this afternoon we’ll all go for a drive along the coast. Bridie hasn’t seen very much of our scenery yet, and this is a splendid opportunity to show her,” as if there were certain restrictions about showing her the scenery without Inez. “We might even find somewhere for dinner, and come home with the milk!” He was gay, and completely light-hearted, and although they didn’t drive along the coast, but up into the mountains, and finally found a little mountain inn to dine at, his light-heartedness remained, and he really was a perfect and most attentive host.
After dinner they went on somewhere to dance, but between duty dances with his sister-in-law and Inez, Kathie didn’t have much opportunity to test the perfection of the floor with him. And Bolton wasn’t much of a dancer ... He apologized to Kathie, offering to partner her if she didn’t mind having both her slim feet trampled on, and for the most part they sat at their table, watching the others enjoying themselves. There was a young man who ventured to approach Bridie and ask her for the honor of one or two dances, and Kathie and Robert gazed ruefully at one another once or twice.
