Perchance to Marry (17 page)

“Yes,” said Sally in a thread of a voice. “I understand.” She understood so well that the pain was a probe, needling into her heart. She had asked for a little, just enough to make quite certain that Sally Sheppard, as a person, could never harm Dona Inez. But, gently and ruthlessly, she had been given the whole works. Not only was she dispensable, so long as another fiancée were there to take her place, but it was also known—to Dona Inez at least—that Marcus was not in love with her!

She tried to pull her shattered thoughts together. There sat the old Spanish woman, tranquil, with the tiny smile upon her patrician features. What had she felt—that she was giving sound advice to a young woman about to tie herself to the del Moscado Durant family? And what had she imagined—that Sally would be content without love because she would be gaining so many material things?

Sally would rather her thoughts had remained in splinters. The thing didn’t bear thinking about.

Somehow she stayed on till Maria brought the chocolate. But the cloying smell of the stuff was too much for her. She pleaded a slight headache and said she would go down and get rid of it in the garden. As she left the
senora
she avoided meeting those wise old eyes; she had to.

* * *

Dona Isabel came to view the
fiesta
gown that afternoon. She sat in Sally’s bedroom and crooned her delight, came downstairs and had tea, still praising the “mos’
lofly
zing in ze vorld.” In her old chauffeur-driven car she took Sally to the
fiesta
ground, where marquees were already flaunting their striped roofs and scalloped awnings, and islanders worked upon the wooden structure for the lilac bower. The smell from the presses, a quarter of a mile away, was too concentrated to be sickly. In fact, it hardly reminded one of lilac at all.

The donkeys were out to grass again, and several of them wandered cheerfully among the sideshow tents. Ranged close to the road stood cartloads of tarpaulins and other gear, and in groups on the grass women were sewing gay flags and painting straw hats they had made earlier. There was laughter and gossip, an air of anticipation and zest. Someone lit a jumping cracker and was good-humoredly chased. A tenor soulfully tested his low notes and a woman threw him a flower.

Feeling thoroughly out of place, Sally was glad when Dona Isabel suggested it was now time to leave; she always cooked dinner herself and tonight it must not be late because Carlos was coming, as well as Sally. So much for her stupid efforts to keep away from the doctor, thought Sally. As if it mattered.

There were just the four of them that evening, and Dona Isabel was jubilant about the success of her
pastas
and
trasajo,
heavy dishes that Sally tackled as bravely as she was able. But the coffee was excellent, and taking the risk of shocking Dona Isabel, Sally accepted a cigarette from Carlos and let him light it. She lay back in an easy chair, smiled dutifully whenever she met the other woman’s glance, and let the men do the talking. Seeing that this was the custom in this house, she could withdraw in thought while appearing to be present. Not that she wanted to be alone with herself. What she wanted was the impossible; to fade right out and be nothing at all.

Between nine-thirty and ten Carlos said about six times that he must leave, and each time he was smiled at and drawn once more into discussion. Carlos was a gentle man, but Pedro was even gentler; he was entirely without envy or dislike, and very willing to think the best even of people whom Carlos shrugged off. You got the impression that Pedro regarded his brother as headstrong, self-assertive and dogmatic, a man who would mellow with age. It was rather touching.

At last Carlos got up. “The evening has been so pleasant that I would prefer to stay, but I still have to see a patient at the hospital. I will drive Sally home.”

“Unless she would care to stay with us for another hour?” said Don Pedro courteously.

“Thank you, but no,
senor.
I think I must go too. You and Dona Isabel have been most kind, and I’ve enjoyed the evening immensely.”

“
Mucho
sleep for
fiesta,
no?” beamed Dona Isabel.
“Zis vill be our mos’ zuccessful Fiesta of Lilacs!”

In her plump good nature she was overwhelming, but a dear. Sally touched a cheek to the one Dona Isabel offered, said goodnight and accompanied Carlos to his car. They drove away into a faintly lucent darkness.

Carlos said, “My brother and his wife feel honored each time you go to their house. They are both simple people.”

“They’re very sweet. I’ve never been to
your
house. Carlos; you don’t seem to spend much time there yourself.”

“For me the house is sleeping quarters and an office—not much more.” His shoulders lifted. “I eat at the nursing home, with you and Marcus, with Pedro, with a patient here and there. It is a bad habit, you think?”

“Very bad. You should marry one of the nurses in the British section of the hospital.” She saw him look at her quickly. “I was only joking, but is there someone?”

Carlos smiled, but his negative did not sound entirely convincing. “Do I look like a man in love?”

“Not terribly. How long have the British nurses been here?”

“For some time,” he replied, almost offhandedly. And she said no more.

Sally could not prevent his getting out of the car when they reached Las Vinas, but she did place restraining fingers on his arm as he made to mount the steps with her.

“Please don’t bother, Carlos. You still have work to do. It’s been a lovely evening—and thank you for the lift.”

“My pleasure. Goodnight,
senorita.”

Sally went up the steps into the light of the courtyard, turned, with her head still bent, towards the house. Then suddenly she was halted, and her head lifted sharply. “Marcus!”

He seemed to be smiling, but in the darkness she wasn’t sure. “I got a lift home too,” he said, “with some of the Navy who’d been on leave and were coming back by their own plane. It’s good to know you haven’t been lonely.”

“I’ve been out to dinner at the Suarez house—Don Pedro’s.”

“I imagined that. You’re looking very lovely. How are you?”

“I’m ... all right.” She was walking with him into the house. “We went up to the
fiesta field
this afternoon, and Dona Isabel invited me to their place for dinner.”

“If you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t know Carlos would be there, I believe it already. Come into the study and have a nightcap with me.”

“It’s rather late.”

“Only eleven. You can tell me what you’ve been doing since Monday.”

And would he reciprocate? Not that she’d dare ask him to. She wouldn’t be able to speak to him about it, not yet. She didn’t really want to know the details. She knew too much already.

She entered the study with him, and was glad that he switched on only one light, the lamp on the desk. Lowering herself into one of the armchairs, she asked, in a steady voice, “Did your business go well?”

“So-so.” With a lift of the shoulders he dismissed it. “What will you have—a spot of gin?”

“No drink, thanks, but I’d like a cigarette.”

He gave her one and lighted it, before setting the flame to his own. “Well, how have you been amusing yourself?”

“Quietly. Reading, mostly.”

‘“No visitors?”

She shook her head and saw a change in his face; a dilation of the nostrils, a narrowing of the lids. Offhandedly she said, “I suppose you’ve heard that Josef came here on Monday evening. He had a drink, and left.”

“That’s not true,” he said curtly. “He had dinner here. Katarina told me.”

“Did he?” She flickered a glance across at him. “I wasn’t aware of that. While I was here he had one drink ... no, two. I didn’t want anything to eat. He went out to the veranda and I naturally thought he was leaving Las Vinas. I went straight up to bed.”

“Josef came because he knew I was away, didn’t he?”

“So he said.”

“And what was the other reason?”

Sally wasn’t prepared to answer that. Almost unconsciously she had come to the conclusion that nothing could be done about her own problems till Sunday. She owed that much to Dona Isabel Suarez. With the
fiesta
past she would be free to act in her own interests. Early on Sunday morning she would tell her mother she couldn’t marry Marcus. And then, as soon as she could see him alone, she would tell Marcus himself.

She tapped ash into a tray he had placed nearby. “Josef doesn’t like you, Marcus.”

“I’ve known that for years.”

“Well, that’s why he came while you were away.”

“That was easy to guess.”

His cigarette had gone out and he put another between his lips. She saw the faintly bitter pull at his mouth as he jutted the cigarette to his lighter, die brief, fed-up glance he gave her as he blew smoke through his nostrils and dropped the lighter into his pocket. She sat without speaking, a little taut, with her legs extended and her head back, so that the slender throat looked vulnerable.

He said abruptly, “Josef will be leaving San Palos shortly. I doubt whether he’ll come back again.”

“He didn’t know that on Monday. He looked most prosperous—said someone had offered to finance his ceramics.”

“He’ll have to start his factory elsewhere. I’m giving the house to one of our own workers.” With a vicious flick of his fingers he added, “That little house used to be quite a show place; you should see it now.”

Perhaps it was her very silence that gave Sally away. It was a frantic kind of silence, as though her mind were desperately casting round for something, anything she might mention to get past that moment. But her expression must have revealed that she had seen Josef’s cottage. Marcus looked at her queerly and stood up. He jabbed out the new cigarette and walked to the window. Looking out into the night he said tightly,

“I’m not going to row with you; I’m certainly not in the mood to keep a quarrel within bounds. A plain warning wouldn’t be any good; I can tell that from the way you looked at me when we met out there in the
patio.
So I’m afraid I shall have to be autocratic. I forbid you to leave this house before the
fiesta
on Saturday. I’ll take you up there myself.”

Sally’s lips quivered. She pushed herself up out of the chair. “I doubt whether I shall want to go out. But if I did, Marcus, I wouldn’t ask you first. Goodnight.”

* * *

Once more, during the next couple of days, Sally marvelled a little wearily at the man who was Marcus Durant. He hardly left Las Vinas at all, but there were guests for lunch and dinner, convivial evenings, a quietly entertaining tea party in the small rest-room which had been prepared downstairs for Dona Inez, and a gay
pequena-fiesta
for the children of the lilac farmers and laborers in the grounds of Las Vinas. Every day he was the smiling host, the charming and considerate master of the estate. And every day he saw to it, unobtrusively, that Sally was never alone. She became quite certain that she couldn’t possibly have left Las Vinas without being followed. It was archaic and fantastic. Marcus didn’t want her, but he considered himself stuck with her. He imagined her sloping off for an hour with Josef, tainting the marvellous name of Durant merely by implication. Marcus could go off for days to Barcelona with his lady-love, but Sally must remain a prisoner on the island, and even a prisoner in the house so long as Josef Carvallo remained on San Palos. It was quite incredible, yet it was happening.

And as a background to it all there was the
fiesta
spirit, the dropping in of friends, talk of the increased price this year for the lilac concentrate, and conjectures about the grape harvest. Only Viola showed any despondency, and that just once in private. Sally had taken a fresh box of tissues to her mother’s room, and Viola, emerging from the bathroom, had thanked her, and then sighed.

“It’s a pretty idea—celebrating a good haul of lilac—but it does seem ridiculous that it should displace everything else. I hope you’re not terribly disappointed.”

“About what?”

“Darling, really! Our party, of course. I think you should have stood out against Marcus in this instance. I’ve a right to give a party for you, and if I happen to choose the
fiesta
weekend it’s no one’s business but my own. My friends are nearly all English, and I don’t see that the beastly carnival should be allowed to interfere with my plans. Tomorrow I have to tell everyone that it’s off.”

“You mean there’ll be no party here on Saturday?” Viola looked puzzled. “Didn’t you know Marcus had vetoed it?”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“He told me this afternoon, and I naturally thought you’d decided it between you. He said there’ll be enough going on here this weekend, and asked me to postpone my little effort for a while. As this happens to be his house I’ve no option but to give in. He said something about wanting to give the servants the evening off so that they could enjoy the dancing, but I felt there was more to it than that.” Viola sat down in front of the dressing-table mirror, gave herself a troubled look and added, “I know I’m not much of a mother, darling, but I do feel I should warn you that life isn’t going to be easy with Marcus; it was all too good to be true. Under that urbane charm of his there lurks a devil, and if I were you...”

Sally didn’t wait to hear the advice. She patted her mother’s shoulder and said, “We’ll have a long talk after the
fiesta
—perhaps on Sunday morning while you’re relaxing in bed. Cheer up now and make yourself ravishing—you’ll have both the swains here for dinner tonight!”

In her own room, as she changed, Sally hardly thought about the cancelled party. It was only another indication of Marcus’s attitude since the telegram had arrived from Nadine Carmody. Such a party, given by Viola, would set another external seal upon the engagement, and that was something Marcus was in no frame of mind to tolerate. He was marking time, as Sally was. But she felt he didn’t intend to act so soon as she did. He was waiting for something—perhaps some word from Nadine.

Saturday came, the morning threaded with excitement, the afternoon quiet at Las Vinas but lively with anticipation at the
fiesta
ground. No guests today, and Viola had a little huffily accepted an invitation to spend the whole day with the Navy crowd, so that the quiet was all-pervading and slightly ominous.

In the late afternoon a huge box of lilac blooms was delivered, and unexpectedly, it was Katarina who offered her services to Sally as a dresser. The Spanish woman took tremendous care and lamented several times that the pins would ruin the material. But when Katarina had finished, even Sally had to admit the effect was dazzling.

The white gown, with its fitted strapless bodice and floor-length flowing skirt, was a magnificent ground for the long rich sprays of pastel-tinted lilac. A single spray crossed the bodice, and several had been secured to the skirt slantwise, so that in artificial light, at a distance, it would look as though the material were magnificently embossed. With the flowers had come a tiara made of florets from the tips of many sprays. Clipped close to the crown of her head, with the pale hair softly waving, it was the prettiest headdress Sally had ever seen.

Katarina stood back, her hands clasped. “It is nearly time that you go. Please ... stay just there, like that. I will call Don Marcus.”

Sally moved quickly. “No, don’t! You’ve made a marvellous job of it, Katarina. Are you going to the
fiesta
?”

The woman’s usual rather blank expression came back to her face, and her lids lowered. “I have nothing to celebrate,
senorita.
No lilacs ... no engagement. For you, I wish much happiness—you must believe that.”

“Of course I believe it. Please don’t look so sad.”

“I feel sad,” said the woman simply.

But she had turned with her usual sangfroid towards the door when there came a light tap on the panel. Katarina turned the handle, and stood back as Marcus entered the room. Sally stiffened and took care to avert her glance.

Katarina said quietly, “The
senorita
is
bellissima, no, senor?
Like a bride.”

Marcus nodded, his smile set. “
Bellissima
is the only word, Katarina.” And to Sally: “You don’t need the necklace, but the crowd likes to see some jewels. Give it to me and I’ll fasten it for you.”

She felt Marcus’s hands touch her bare shoulders lightly, a faint warm breath across her cheek as his lips brushed her hair. He was playing to Katarina, so that she would have a good bedtime story for Dona Inez.

Feeling too choked even to fabricate a smile, Sally accepted the mink stole which had accompanied the second batch of frocks from Barcelona and preceded Marcus from the room.