A Cottage in Spain

by Rosalind Brett

  A smile was audible in his voice. “Perhaps because we drink wine as if it were water!” A pause. “You would like always to live in Montelisa, no?”

  “No,” she said, in the smiling tone he had used. “But I would like to have a long holiday here every year.”

  “Senorita.” He sounded so constrained that she looked at him curiously, but there was nothing to be learned from the blur of his face. “I feel it is time we had ... what you call, an understanding. You are aware that the good Tia Natalia had a plan for us, but you are also, it seems, determined to leave Montelisa at the end of your month’s holiday. Before you leave I wish us to be formally betrothed.”

  “You’re not in love with me, Sebastian.”

  “You are wrong. I am very much in love with you. From the beginning you have seemed to me so...” he sought for a word and fell back on the Spanish ... “so guapa.”

  “What is guapa?”

  “It means you are nice to look at, very sweet. If we were promised to each other I would be very happy, and so would my parents.”

  “What about Carmen Artino?”

  His quick shrug showed he was not entirely surprised at her mention of this name. “She is just a girl who has come to the village three months ago. Her parents are dead, so she comes to the house of the Gonzalez. You know the Gonzalez? Maria and her husband work for the English-man.”

  “Mr. Frensham? Is Carmen related to these Gonzalez?”

  “But no!” He was shocked. “They are peasantry and were once servants of her father. Carmen comes to Maria as one would seek out one’s childhood nurse, but she has no money. Her father was spendthrift, her mother a fool.” His vehemence was illuminating and Linda couldn’t help but be interested. Even though she had been such a short time in the country, she had learned the demands of decorum and expediency among the middle- and upper-class Spaniards. Peasants, so long as they observed well-known rules, might marry where they pleased. The rest, however, were bound to a rigid code. The type of husband a girl might acquire depended on the size of her dowry and her family background, in that sequence. Carmen, without family or a peseta of her own, might, in spite of her charms, remain unmarried for the rest of her life.

  She said quietly, “You’re fond of her, aren’t you, Sebastian?”

  His shoulders went back and he said proudly, “One does not discuss such things with the woman one hopes to marry. Carmen is a nice girl, but she knows her position and does not hope for too much.”

  Linda sighed. “It’s awfully hard—your marriage system.”

  “There is nothing hard about it,” he retorted. “We fall in love with the woman we choose to marry, and we do not have divorce.”

  “Just supposing,” she said, apparently idly, “that you’d fallen in love with Carmen Artino. What would have happened?”

  “What would be the use of wanting Carmen?” he answered at once. Then he weakened and said vexedly, “It is insupportable, this being the youngest son and depending on a father’s generosity. I have not been permitted to train for a profession because all our family are grape growers and wine merchants, but I have no land, no hope of a bodega of my own.” On a note of entreaty he asked, “You do not blame me for considering your house as also mine?”

  “I feel it’s much more yours than mine,” she told him sincerely. “Isn’t there the shadow of a loophole in Aunt Natalie’s will?”

  He shook his head, and by so doing confessed, almost unwittingly, to what she knew already. Sebastian only wanted to marry her in order to acquire what was really his own. And she didn’t hold it against him in the least.

  In his next breath Sebastian changed the subject. He talked about Santa Rosa fiesta which was to be held next Thursday for no better reason than that the countryside abounded in roses, and he reminded her that tomorrow was Saturday, when he had promised to take Maxine to a game of pelota. He left her at the house with his usual charm; a kiss upon her wrist, an ardent glance and a murmured, “Buenas noches, perquena!”

  To which she replied smilingly, “Adios. And muchas gracias for the gipsy dancing!”

  Her mood changed almost before she entered the house. The place seemed silent and blighted, overlaid by a strong sense of things gone wrong. Away from it she could react to the exuberant personality of Spain, but the house, with its elusive perfume of Maxine, its other reminders, here and there, that she, Linda, was somehow in the other woman’s power, made life real and frighteningly complicated.

  Of course, all she had to do was to pack up and go back to England; then, the various muddles would have to sort themselves out without her aid. It was hard luck about Sebastian, but one couldn’t marry a foreigner for the mere purpose of giving him a house and furniture to go with it. For a moment she toyed with the notion of marrying Sebastian in name only; but it passed, as most fantastic things will pass.

  About Maxine she still could not think clearly. Looked at finely, it was really a tremendous relief that such a woman would not marry John, and one ought to be grateful for his having found out in time. The marriage, followed by a swift divorce, would have shattered him completely.

  The fact that Maxine refused to be dislodged from the cottage was something better contemplated in tomorrow’s daylight. For tonight, she would simply have to ignore the gramophone music from the bedroom. But smoulderingly Linda thought, who gave her permission to trundle the gramophone upstairs!

  At a small sound she turned hastily. The main door had opened and a figure stood outlined there; the figure of a girl of about twenty-three, with drawn-back curls, dark eyes in an olive-skinned face, and wearing a full-skirted scarlet frock. Carmen Artino.

  For fully thirty seconds Linda stared across the top of the table lamp at the tragic pride in the other’s bearing. Then she relaxed slightly and managed a small smile.

  “Do you speak some English?” she asked gently.

  The full red mouth tightened. “Do you take me for a campesina? I went to the best school in Seville! I know your name, senorita; I know all about you. And I hate you!”

  Linda was startled, but not afraid. The other girl was obviously desperately unhappy, and because she had no close friend to whom she could unburden she had had to explode in this direction.

  “Come in and sit down,” she said. The other made no move, and she added, “I know your name, too. Sebastian told me.”

  “And that is not all which Sebastian has told you! He has looked into your eyes and called them sapphires, he has taught you the flamenco and laughed because you stumble and lose your breath!” She was speaking rapidly now, darting hot little fires with eyes and tongue. “I see how it is with him. You inflame him because you are different! You are quiet and mysterious, yon do not entice with words nor with tricks, but to him you are the unknown, whereas already he knows too much about Spanish women!” She stopped suddenly, then added bitterly, “It was wrong of me to come here. You will tell Sebastian and he will be so angry that he will never speak to me again. But I shall not lose much; he does not speak to me now ... since you come!”

  Linda said softly, “Are you sure that my coming has made so much difference? Had he made you any promises before he met me?”

  “No. Yes!” The black head tossed. “It is a promise when a man kisses a woman, when he says that some way he will find someone who will receive me into their house and treat me as a daughter. Sebastian loves me! You hear, senorita? He loves me!”

  “Yes, I believe he does.”

  This considered reply cast Carmen into a bewildered silence. She had obviously been prepared for opposition, possibly because she could not imagine any woman whom Sebastian might honor with his attentions turning him down. She moistened her red lips, opened them as though to speak and closed them again.

  “It’s all very unfortunate,” Linda went on. “You have no money and he has few prospects. What would happen if he married you without his parents’ consent?”

  The girl stared as if Linda were mad. “One does not do su
ch things!” she exclaimed. “We would have to leave Montelisa. Even the small money he will have at his father’s death would be shared between the other two brothers. We would have to live in Barcelona, very poor, because he has no profession. He would cease to love me.”

  Linda accepted this as somewhere near the truth. Sebastian was not built for a hard life. In any case, the conventions among which he had grown up had been so rigid that he would never be happy away from them. And in outlook Carmen was exactly like Mm. Really, they were very well matched.

  The young woman came a step further into the room and spoke again. “Senorita, I met that Tia Natalia who had so much affection for him, and for you. I had been in Montelisa only a week or two before she died, but I brought some hooks for her from the post. They were magazines from London and she talked to me about them and was pleased I could speak English. I think she liked me, but there was no time...” she broke off, despairingly added, “What is the good of this! There is nothing one can do. I follow you and Sebastian from the bodega, I see you under the tree and am eaten with misery because I am sure you will make love. But you do not make love and there is a small light of hope, so I come into your garden and hide till he has gone. And now I know I should have stayed away!”

  Her scene of this afternoon with Maxine and the noisy evening at the bodega had tired Linda, and she was quite incapable of reasoned thinking. It was all very well for these Spaniards who went unconscious for two or three hours in the middle of the day, and to whom nothing was really very complicated; at this hour of the night they were just nicely awake. But she, Linda, simply had to wait for a new day.

  With an effort, she said, “No, I’m glad you came, because I feel something ought to be done for you and Sebastian. Don’t say anything to anyone till we’ve had another talk. I’ll think it all over and come and see you. Where is the Gonzalez’ cottage?”

  Carmen’s dark eyes flashed their astonishment. “But you must know! They live with the Englishman.”

  The nape of Linda’s neck was tingled faintly. “Do you live there with them?”

  The other nodded. “We have the summer house at the end of the garden. It is two good rooms, and they have put a bed for me in the living-room. One should not speak against them—they are very good—but it is a way of living to which I am not accustomed. I am afraid you cannot come there, senorita.”

  “Well, you must come here. I’ll send you a note by Anna tomorrow or Sunday.”

  Carmen drew an audible breath, and for the first time this evening she smiled. “I trust you,” she said, “and I must apologize for my rudeness when I came to your house. It is like new fire in the heart to know you do not wish to marry Sebastian. I have been so angry and afraid.”

  “Of course you have. I can’t promise to find a miraculous solution, but perhaps we’ll think of something together.” Linda moved nearer to the Spanish girl and held out a hand. “We’re friends, Carmen. Come next time without your dagger.”

  “Oh, but, senorita... The protest ended in a brief, lively laugh as Carmen saw the jest. She took Linda’s hand wonderingly into her own and for a minute they were quite close, these two who were so unlike. Carmen, very dark, slightly taller and more mature, looked more than the couple of years older, yet she seemed to be aware of the serious strain in Linda and to respect it.

  They said good night, and Linda was left alone. She locked the door, put out the light and made her way up to her bedroom. Maxine’s room was quiet now, but a light still shone under the door. Linda wondered whether Carmen’s entrance and exit had been witnessed from an upper window, and decided she didn’t care if they had.

  With morning’s sane light life appeared rather less difficult to handle. Maxine breakfasted in her room and later drifted down in a yellow bathing wrap over a swimsuit. She gathered an air cushion, a newspaper and sunglasses, gave Linda an enigmatic smile and went down to the beach.

  Linda lay back in her chair, thinking. Oddly, the problem of having Maxine under the same roof had assumed secondary importance; in the last resort there was a way out of that. But the arrangement of a marriage between Carmen Artino and Sebastian de Meriaga looked an utter impossibility, and there was no one impartial with whom she might discuss it. To the whole of Montelisa this cottage was Sebastian’s by virtue of his having been Aunt Natalie’s favorite nephew; the fact that the old senora had been an English eccentric was just too bad; he would have to marry this English niece in order to achieve his rightful inheritance. With their sense of property, that seemed to them the only way of regarding the matter.

  Only Maxine and Philip Frensham would be capable of giving dispassionate advice, and naturally any consultation with Maxine was out. And Philip? Weren’t she and Maxine supposed to be dining at his house tonight?

  For a long while Linda was irresistibly drawn to the idea of confiding in the big man who was calm and ruthless in all his dealings. If there was a way out of the muddle bequeathed by Aunt Natalie he would certainly find it. He wouldn’t want to be bothered with it, because he no doubt felt that he had already wasted enough of his time on Linda, but he would give the subject balanced consideration, and possibly find an outlet where she saw only a blank wall.

  Still, she didn’t feel very much inclined to ask a favor of Philip. Even if he could see a way out for Sebastian he was capable of telling her to let the Spaniard discover it for himself, or go under; she knew, instinctively, that Philip had no time for a man who couldn’t run his own life. In his arrogance and self-assurance there was more than a hint of contempt for weakness.

  She went out and walked down the garden. Through the hedge-climbers and trees she caught a glimpse of the summerhouse in which Carmen Artino lived with the former servants of her father, who now served Philip Frensham. Did Carmen ever go into the villa, she wondered. It was more than likely that sometimes she took Philip’s tray, that she lingered a moment to ask if she had brought everything he might need. He would look up abstractedly to tell her that the tray was fine, and perhaps be kindled, ever so slightly, by the ripe lips, the brown eyes which could be gentle when she was not angry.

  Linda shook herself. Let him kindle, she told herself fiercely. In Maxine and Carmen he had two absolute opposites; if one of them didn’t move him no woman ever would!

  It was after one when Maxine came from the beach, and she had scarcely made herself beautiful when Sebastian drove up in his father’s car. He explained that three ear loads were going to Barcelona and that they would all be having lunch at the hotel owned by a family friend.

  “You are sure you will not come to the pelota, Linda?” he demanded charmingly. And when she had smilingly shaken her head: “Maxine will tell you about it and perhaps you will come next week. Hasta la vista!”

  It was a relief to know herself alone in the house for a few hours, even though Anna did take the opportunity to express her disapproval of Maxine’s accompanying Sebastian to Barcelona; Linda should have gone.

  “In England we please ourselves,” said Linda. “Maxine particularly wished to see a game, and I didn’t.”

  “Petola is exciting, but one does not have to watch,” Anna replied with a philosophical shrug. “It is the fact of being there, with one’s novio.”

  “Sebastian is not my novia,” Linda answered firmly. “Don’t forget that when you’re gossiping in the village.” Anna looked offended and withdrew. Linda ate some salad with white crumbly cheese and drank coffee, after which she went upstairs and changed into the white nylon. She knew that Montelisa was to a minor degree fiesta-minded every Saturday, and had vaguely decided to walk down to the village and drink a syrup while she watched events in the plaza.

  It was queer to come down to the sitting-room and find Philip Frensham there; decidedly queer. In fact, his sudden presence seemed to touch a raw and anxious nerve. But he was smiling urbanely, and leaning his tall, angular frame against the wall at one side of the empty fireplace.

  “Hallo,” he said charmingly. “The door wa
s open so I walked in. Do you mind?”

  She looked at him guardedly. Did satire lurk beneath the charm? But what had he to be satirical about? “Not at all. I’m glad to see you—so long as your mood is less overbearing than it was yesterday.”

  “Overbearing?” He appeared to think it over. “It all depends on one’s attitude. I’d have described my mood yesterday as kind.”

  “Towards me, or towards Maxine?” The mention of Maxine seemed to be a mistake, for his eyes narrowed slightly. She added, “I thought you’d be working hard till this evening.”

  “I got stuck into it and carried on through the night.” She gazed at him. “You worked through the night?”

  “Don’t you believe it?”

  “I’d believe anything of you. But it does seem rather extreme.”

  “No, it’s wonderfully easy. It’s very quiet and cool and there are no distractions beyond the window.”

  “Distractions?” She listened intently for his reply.

  “Birds,” he said carelessly, “and those floppy black butterflies that emerge in their thousands every morning; some of the insects are weird, too.”

  “I can’t imagine you watching birds and butterflies.”

  “No?” The satire in his tone was now very faintly edged. “You can’t imagine me doing anything normal, can you? Never mind, you’re rather too young to understand the mature male.” He straightened, and a shaft of light struck suddenly across the dark copper hair. “This afternoon I have to go to a small town a little way inland, and I thought I might as well have company.”

  Her heart stirred painfully, but she ignored it. “Maxine is out,” she said.

  “I know.” He sounded hard. “It was you I intended to invite.”

  Her heart moved again, pleasurably this time. “That’s nice of you. I’d love to come.”

  She must have imbued the words with sincerity because, after giving her a clear, penetrating stare, he smiled, albeit sardonically. “The car is right at the gate. Do you have to lock up?”

  “Just the front door as we go out. Do I need a hat?”