The Mountains of Spring

by Rosemary Pollock

‘Thank you. So are you,’ she said candidly, some of her confidence returning.

  ‘That is most generous of you, senorita.’ She felt that he was smiling over her head, but it didn’t seem to matter. She didn’t know quite why, but for almost the first time since she arrived in Mexico she was enjoying herself. ‘You are a strange young woman,’ he remarked suddenly. ‘Very strange … but quite enchanting, nevertheless.’ She stiffened and missed a step; for a moment he thought that she was going to break away from him altogether, and he laughed rather oddly. ‘I am sorry, I forgot how English you are. But I don’t see why I should not be permitted to tell you that you’re enchanting. When one sees a beautiful thing it is natural to admire it, and you, senorita, are a very beautiful thing. A crowded night-club—even a Spanish one!—is hardly the right setting for you, but even here—’

  She interrupted him, ‘Senor Rivel—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I really don’t expect you to pay me compliments.’

  He glanced down at her in amused astonishment. ‘If you don’t,’ he remarked, ‘it must be a long time since you looked at yourself in a mirror. Do you never allow men to admire you? Or is it because I am not an Englishman that you think it slightly improper?’

  ‘You are my brother’s employer, and—’

  ‘Ah!’ His voice and expression changed. ‘You still think of me as the brutal tyrant who has ruined your brother’s life. Do you think he looks as if his life has been ruined?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘He looks well … and happy. But—’

  ‘To the best of my belief he is well and happy.’ By this time Diego was completely serious. ‘And if he is sensible he will remain so.’

  ‘If he is sensible?’

  ‘Yes. At the moment he is content with his position, and therefore he is being sensible. I hope, for his own good, that you will not try to influence him … to make him restless.’

  ‘I have no intention of trying to make him restless, senor … if it really is in his interests to stay here.’

  ‘I can assure you that it is in his interests.’ He was looking over her shoulder, in the direction of their table, and it seemed to her that something he saw there made him frown. ‘I am afraid, however, that I made a mistake in introducing him to Senorita Dominguez.’

  Caroline started slightly, and glanced up at him. When they first moved out on to the floor she had expected him to say something about Peter’s behaviour; she had even imagined that he had asked her to dance simply and solely in order to demand that she make some effort to restrain her brother, lest worse befall him. But then it had seemed to her that he was in far too relaxed, even lighthearted a mood to be in the throes of a jealous rage. And when he had started addressing flattering remarks to herself she had decided that for a man who was engaged to be married—a man whose fiancée was watching him from a vantage point not very many feet away—his conduct was rather extraordinary. She had heard that in Latin countries marriages were often arranged purely for the sake of expediency, and that wives and fiancées were sometimes apt to be neglected, but earlier in the day it had struck her that Diego Rivel was almost ridiculously devoted to the slight, attractive cripple with whom he was evidently planning to share his life. Now, apparently, he had suddenly recollected her, and his resentment where Peter was concerned had been revived.

  ‘Peter likes talking to people,’ she said quietly. ‘Is there any reason why he shouldn’t talk to your fiancée?’

  He seemed startled by this question. For a moment, she thought that he was going to stand still in the middle of the floor. Then, after rather a long pause—she had begun to wonder, in fact, whether he intended to answer her at all—he said:

  ‘I should have thought the reason was obvious. Naturally I don’t like to see my … future wife being besieged by another man.’

  She felt angry and impatient. ‘Nobody is being besieged My brother isn’t even trying to flirt With Miss Dominguez. I’ve told you, he likes talking to people.’

  He looked almost amused again. ‘That, senorita, is the most interesting excuse I have ever heard made in such circumstances.’

  ‘I think,’ she announced, ‘you’re being quite unreasonable.’ She had an uneasy consciousness, at the back of her mind, that Peter was behaving rather badly, but nothing in the world would have induced her to admit the fact. ‘If you feel so strongly about that sort of thing,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘why are you dancing with me?’

  For a brief moment he once again appeared to be thunderstruck. Then, quite seriously, he said: ‘Because you are my guest. Because dancing is a social obligation.’

  At that moment the music stopped, and possibly it was just as well. They stood still, looking at one another.

  ‘That’s—that’s a very honest answer,’ she admitted. She didn’t think she had any right to feel offended, and she was trying hard not to.

  ‘But it’s not,’ he told her, ‘a complete one.’ He looked at her rather fixedly. ‘I wished to dance with you partly because you were my guest … but mainly because you are a very beautiful young woman. Because, even in this setting—as I was about to tell you a few minutes ago—you make me think of a white rosebud in a moonlit garden.’

  She stared at him, while the colour swept up over her cheeks in a wave. And then he took her briskly by the arm, and marched her back to their table.

  CHAPTER V

  The following morning Caroline awoke early, and after consuming a very light breakfast in her room, dressed quickly and slipped downstairs. She didn’t really imagine that her hostess would be about so early, and she couldn’t leave—as she planned to do later in the day—without saying goodbye; but the strong, vivid sunshine seemed to call to her, and she could at least go outside and wait in the patio.

  The Senora, however, was already up, and waiting for her in the salon. She looked neat and elegant and reposeful, and not in the least put out by the fact that she had obviously made an effort to get up early for the benefit of her visitor. She smiled brilliantly at Caroline, and, exactly as she had done the first time she received the girl in her drawing-room, indicated a chair beside her own.

  ‘Good morning, chiquita. You slept well?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, senora. It was really very good of you to let me stay here again.’

  ‘It “was” very good of me?’ The old lady’s eyebrows ascended. ‘My dear, I haven’t stopped being good yet! You do not imagine you are going back to some dreadful hotel?’

  ‘But I must, senora. It’s awfully kind of you to—to let me stay on here, but you’ve already done far too much for me. I couldn’t go on taking advantage of your hospitality. And, while I’m in Mexico, I would like to be near my brother.’

  ‘Then you might as well stay here, since for the next fortnight this is where your brother is going to be.’

  ‘Here?’ Caroline looked astonished. ‘But I thought he was going back to Toluca. That’s what he told me last night.’

  ‘Well, he is not going back to Toluca. Not yet.’ The Senora looked inordinately pleased with herself. ‘Early this morning, my grandson came to see me. As a matter of fact, he left only five minutes before you came downstairs. He told me that he intended to stay in Mexico City for the next fortnight, and that he wished your brother to remain also. So you see, for you to travel back to the mountains would be quite absurd!’

  Caroline’s cheeks flushed with unmistakable pleasure. ‘Oh, that’s—that’s very nice of him!’

  Her hostess smiled at her suddenly with tremendous warmth. ‘I am so glad you realize that—that you understand why he is keeping your brother here. I told you last night that he was trying to be kind, but I don’t think you believed me.’

  The girl coloured more noticeably than ever. ‘I didn’t believe you, but—’

  ‘But now you are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as you say in England?’ The old lady sounded amused, but she directed rather a penetrating look at her youthful guest. Ca
roline, this morning, looked very English and utterly charming —she couldn’t remember when she had last seen a more attractive girl. And the child also seemed curiously lighthearted, as if some great burden had just been rolled off her shoulders. Senora Rivel had not seen her look lighthearted before.

  ‘You enjoyed yourself last night?’ she enquired. ‘You had a pleasant evening?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was very pleasant!’

  ‘And you found your brother well … not at all downtrodden?’

  Caroline looked serious all at once. ‘It was very wrong of me to—to imagine so many things about Peter,’ she confessed. ‘I see now that Senor Rivel has treated him … very fairly.’

  ‘So you no longer think badly of my grandson.’

  ‘I had no right to think badly of him at any time.’

  ‘But you did, nevertheless.’

  A trace of pink still lingered in Caroline’s cheeks.

  ‘I think he tried to give me the impression that he hadn’t behaved very well. If he had explained things differently …’

  The old lady looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, Diego can be strange, sometimes. He is too—what is the word? whimsical, I think.’ And then, abruptly, she dropped Diego as if he were of no further interest. ‘Tell me about your brother, my dear. He was very happy to see you, I expect.’

  Caroline looked wry. ‘Yes, I think so—I hope so. He feels a little uncomfortable, though. He hadn’t written to me for a long time, you see; that’s why I came to look for him.’ She didn’t mind in the least discussing Peter with Senora Rivel. Somehow it seemed perfectly natural.

  ‘Young men are often inconsiderate,’ the Senora observed tranquilly. ‘Especially where their relatives are concerned. I had a brother once … He was to have been a diplomat, but he thought he would like very much better to be an explorer, so he went away and travelled around the world for years, exploring tropical jungles. He never wrote to any of us. And then one day he came back … with a long beard, very bad malaria and an Indian wife.’

  The English girl smiled. ‘That must have been a shock to you.’

  ‘Yes, it was; the beard most of all, I think. The malaria he only had from time to time, and the wife …’ Her brown eyes twinkled. ‘She was a very elegant young lady. She had been brought up under the British Raj, and she thought that we in Mexico were quite primitive. She lives in Paris now—my brother is dead—and buys all her clothes from Givenchy. She is younger than I am, you understand.’ And the Senora laughed as if the thought of her sister-in-law were a never-failing source of amusement to her. ‘I do not know whether your brother has a beard, my child, but I think he cannot suffer from malaria, and I know he has not yet found himself a wife.’

  Caroline laughed, ‘No.’ And then she remembered the one thing about Peter that still worried her—in actual fact it was a brand new worry—and she felt an immediate urge to talk the whole thing over with this aged and extraordinarily sympathetic Spanish lady. She needed advice, and Senora Rivel was really the only person she could turn to.

  ‘I was rather relieved to find that Peter hadn’t married,’ she confessed. ‘Getting to know a sister-in-law who was a complete stranger might have been rather an ordeal.’

  ‘A great ordeal,’ the Senora agreed with feeling.

  ‘I remember what it was like to get to know Shamira!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caroline went on, ‘whether there is anyone in whom he’s—well, interested. But,’ coming to the point with a rush, ‘he paid a great deal of attention to someone he met last night!’

  ‘Ah, he did! Who was that?’

  ‘Senorita Dominguez.’

  The old lady drew a deep breath, and exhaled very slowly. Then she leant back in her chair.

  ‘That one! You mean that you think he was attracted to her?’

  Caroline considered the matter. ‘I think she made an impression on him. He doesn’t usually—well, he used not to flirt a great deal. And she’s … she’s a cripple.’

  ‘You mean that he would not be likely to “trifle” with her, as they say in the old novels?’

  She supposed that was what she did mean. ‘But I don’t understand it,’ she went on. ‘And I’m rather worried. Peter must know that—that Miss Dominguez is engaged to your grandson.’

  Instantly the Senora’s eyebrows shot upwards. She had very expressive eyebrows. ‘Is Miss Dominguez engaged to my grandson?’

  Caroline stared at her. ‘I thought you must know all about it,’ she said. She sounded a little bleak—rather less lighthearted than she had done a few minutes earlier.

  ‘I know nothing about it,’ the old lady assured her. ‘Who told you such a thing?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Why, your grandson. … He told me himself.’ And then, even as she spoke, she realized for the first time that Diego had never actually said he was going to marry Isabel Dominguez. At least … Her thoughts flew back to the previous evening. Last night he had referred to her as his ‘future wife’—but only, as far as she could remember now, after she, Caroline, had already spoken of her as his fiancée—but the fact remained that there had been no hesitation on his part. She regretted having jumped so quickly to conclusions … she should, of course, have waited until she was absolutely certain about the relationship between them before assuming so much. But one only had to see them together to realize that the Mexican girl adored Diego, and that he took at least a very strong interest in her. And he had told Caroline that she was ‘of the greatest importance’ to him. There couldn’t be much doubt.

  ‘I’m afraid I assumed rather a lot,’ she admitted. ‘It—well, it just seemed obvious, somehow. I thought they must be engaged. And then last night, when I was talking to your grandson, I spoke of Miss Dominguez as his fiancée, and he—he didn’t seem at all surprised. He talked about her in the same way.’

  ‘Indeed! How very romantic!’ But the Senora looked and sounded as if she thought it anything but romantic. ‘He has said nothing to me of this. Of course, it is true that they have known one another all their lives, and they are absurdly fond of each other—Isabel is the daughter of a very old friend of Diego’s father—but I would not have thought … I would never have believed that they were likely to marry.’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything,’ Caroline murmured uncomfortably, and rather flatly.

  ‘Why, my dear child, if Diego has made up his mind he is unlikely to object to my knowing!’ the old lady informed her with more than a touch of dryness. ‘He and Isabel are both completely independent. There is nobody with the smallest right to tell either of them that they cannot do what they like, and if there were I am afraid Diego would pay little attention! Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, if this is true, I have not been told.’ She paused. ‘I have nothing against Isabel—except for the fact that I object to her living the life of an invalid when she has no need to do so— but I would not like to see her married to Diego. They would not suit one another.’

  Caroline’s attention had been caught. ‘You say that Miss Dominguez has no need to live the life of an invalid? But surely—’

  ‘Well, she’s not a cripple, my dear! There is a paralysis in one of her legs, but they say that it is—I can never think of these words! —a psychological trouble. She does not wish to recover the use of the leg.’ The old lady looked disapproving. ‘At least she does not have to sit in a chair all day—she doesn’t have to be carried about. If she employed a stick, she could walk very well by herself. But her mother spoils her, and Diego spoils her, and now she thinks it her right to be looked after.’

  Caroline began to grow a little weary of the conversation. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘your grandson enjoys spoiling Miss Dominguez.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps he does. But I still refuse to believe that he is in love with her.’

  ‘Well … of course, you know Senor Rivel better than I do.’ Caroline felt that she had already said more than she should have done. ‘The thing that worries
me,’ she went on more briskly, ‘is that if there is anything between them Peter obviously doesn’t know about it. And your grandson very much disliked his taking such an interest in Miss Dominguez last night. He—he told me so.’

  ‘Who told you? Your brother or my grandson?’

  ‘Senor Rivel… He said he was afraid he had made a mistake in introducing them.’ As she spoke, certain other remarks which the Mexican had seen fit to make on the previous evening came into her mind, and once again she flushed slightly.

  ‘Did he make himself unpleasant about it?’

  ‘No. No, actually he didn’t.’ For the first time it occurred to her that he had really been remarkably restrained. ‘It was a very—very pleasant evening.’ It had been; after the first awkward half hour or so—after—in fact, his dance with Caroline—Diego’s temper had improved noticeably, and he had gradually turned into a positively genial host … or at least, he had been as genial as it was possible for him to be when everything he did was always unfailingly correct. Whether or not his description of herself as being reminiscent of a white rosebud in a moonlit garden had been absolutely correct in the circumstances was a point she didn’t go into, but although the thought of the compliment had embarrassed her for some time afterwards she felt that he had been putting himself out to be charming to her in order to make up for his earlier behaviour, and she had to admit to herself that her attitude towards him had undergone a complete change. Not that she had been swayed by being likened to a white rosebud—that, she considered, was simply the sort of extravagant remark that any South American, however formal and reserved, might occasionally resort to when putting himself out to be pleasant to a woman—but in the course of the previous evening he had somehow seemed to emerge as somebody quite different from the person she had imagined he was. He had been perfectly affable to Peter, and as the conversation around their table became more general the latter’s embarrassing attempts to monopolize Isabel Dominguez had ceased to be noticeable. She didn’t think that Peter had lost interest in the Mexican girl, and she very much wanted to have a talk with him about it—to warn him. But by the time their party had broken up the night before there had seemed so little tension in the air that she hadn’t thought it desperately urgent, and she had decided that it could safely be left until the next time she saw her brother. When they left the Casa d’Espana it had been far too late for her to have a serious talk with Peter, and she had simply assumed that it wouldn’t be long before she saw him again. And now, thanks to what could only be taken as a kindly gesture on the part of his employer, Peter would be remaining in Mexico City for a fortnight, and she wouldn’t even have to follow him back to Toluca. Everything was simplified.