Red Lotus (9 page)

"And you?" Conchita challenged.

"I, also, will be there," he agreed.

He followed her out of the room, but not, Felicity decided, to exact any further promise from her. He expected obedience.

Julio made a quick, angry movement towards the patio. "As you see," he observed fiercely, "no Hallam has any real authority in this place!"

Felicity followed him out into the night where the fountain splashed into its deep stone basin and the cicadas chirped stridently beneath the leaves. There was a smell of stephanotis in the air, thick and cloying, almost unbearably sweet, and a green lizard darted erratically across the tiles.

"Julio," she began, "I'm sorry you are so upset, but can't we forget our differences with Philip until we learn what your father really wants us to do at San Lozaro?"

He swung round, staring at her incredulously.

"Forget about them?" he echoed. "What you say is impossible! How can I forget what Philip is? What he has always been. He killed my sister."

Felicity recoiled from the words as if they had been a blow.

"No," she whispered, "surely that isn't true? Your father wrote to us in England saying there had been an accident—"

"That is what was said at the time. That was how it seemed to be. An accident!" Julio's face was pale and strained and full of hatred. "It was the verdict which we all heard in the Court at La Laguna, but we all know that it is untrue. We know that Philip was clever enough to avoid the consequence of the mistake he had made, and we know he was no longer in love with Maria when she died."

"But—to believe that he killed her!" She shivered, suddenly cold in the warm night. "You can't go on believing that, Julio! You must not. If you do, it will spoil your whole life."

"I know it to be true," he said doggedly. "There were lies told about the car, and I know he quarrelled with Maria soon before."

"But a quarrel is such a little thing, Julio," she protested, although already the seriousness of his knowledge had taken her by the throat. "All lovers quarrel at one time or another."

"Not in the way that Philip and Maria quarrelled. She did not cry and storm, as Conchita would have done. They were both cold and distant, but Philip was very, very angry. I heard him say that she deserved to be dead."

Felicity turned sharply away.

"People say these things in a moment of anger, Julio,"

she reminded him, "but they do not always mean them." "Philip has never said anything he does not mean." That was the final argument, she supposed.

"It is in the past," she tried to say with decision. "Your father could not have believed that Philip was responsible for Maria's—accident, otherwise he would never have allowed him to stay here."

"My father had strange ideas," Julio muttered. "And Philip is very clever."

They stood for a moment in silence.

"What do you do on the plantations, Julio?" Felicity asked, at last.

"Whatever Philip wishes me to do."

They could not get away from Philip Arnold or his peculiar domination. The entire life of San Lozaro seemed to revolve around him, the life of the hacienda and the plantations and the terraced vineyards, and the strange, hidden life of the upper valley close to the surrounding mountain rim.

"Tell me about Lozaro Alto, Julio," she said. "What is grown up there?"

"Very little." He did not seem inclined to talk about the other valley. "It is Philip's place."

"Do you mean that it was where he used to live?" He nodded.

"Before he came here," he agreed. "But it is my father's

land now, although it is no use for bananas. It is too high.

It is only of use for vines and growing a little wheat." "And Philip cultivates these things up there?"

He shook his head.

"He will not let anyone go there except himself " "I see."

Their voices drifted out into the night and there seemed to be nothing but the scent of stephanotis between them and the heavier perfume of lilies. She saw a group of them standing, ghostly white on the far side of the fountain, before a movement behind her made her turn.

It was Philip. He came across the patio and stood looking down at the falling water as Julio left them with a murmured "goodnight" to Felicity.

"Has Julio told you all his troubles?" he enquired lightly.

"We were speaking about Lozaro Alto," Felicity confessed, half against her will. "The upper valley."

He did not answer her for a moment, and when she turned to look at him more fully he seemed frozen into immobility.

"What did he tell you?" he asked, at last.

"That the valley once belonged to you. That it was your home."

"That is so," he said without any feeling in his voice. "But it does not matter now."

"Surely one never really feels that?" she protested spontaneously. "There's always the thought of belonging."

"Which is largely sentiment," he assured her dryly. "Lozaro Alto no longer 'belongs' to me. My mother sold it before she died. Six months before. It was only by your

uncle's continuing kindness that we remained there. In other words, we were his tenants, responsible to him for the cultivation of the land." –

There had not been any bitterness in his voice. Not even the lethargic calm of a stoical acceptance. He was stating a sequence of facts, and he did not expect her to attempt to refute them, even for his comfort or to show her sympathy.

She did not think that he wanted sympathy. This man was a law unto himself. He would not allow the past to interfere with the present or the future.

"I had come to ask you if you think Sisa should be present tomorrow morning," he said briefly. "There may be a considerable amount of argument, and, in spite of her precocity in some things, I consider her still a child."

She was surprised that he should have asked her advice in this way, but she did not say so.

"You know the Spanish custom better than I do, Mr. Arnold," she said.

"I should still like to hear your opinion, all the same," he persisted.

"Would it be—kinder to spare Sisa any unpleasantness?" she suggested.

"Undoubtedly," he agreed. "But she is, of course, one of the family."

"I could take her out all morning," she offered tentatively. "Perhaps we could even go somewhere in the car, since you won't be using it?"

"I'm afraid Señor Perez wants you to be here," he said. "Carlota can look after Sisa. She has a music lesson due, I believe, at Orotava. It is practically a whole morning's drive."

The note of finality in his voice was not to be ignored. Her presence was necessary at tomorrow's meeting with the solicitor. If she had wanted to protest she could not, because already the atmosphere was full of dissension and she could not add to it.

"Very well," she agreed, "I shall stay."

He stood aside to let her pass. The decision had been made as he had wanted it. He was, as Conchita had said, quite ruthless in some things.

Julio's impassioned revelation about Philip and Maria

haunted her far into the night, and even when she did sleep, her restless dreams were disturbed by it.

In the morning Sisa was frankly torn between her wish to go to Orotava for the music lesson which she apparently enjoyed and the desire to be at the hacienda when Señor Perez arrived.

"I wish you could come to La Orotava with me," she said to Felicity when Sabino had brought the car round to the terrace steps. "You would love it, and we could pay a visit to Zamora on the way home. Andrea also goes for her music lessons to Señora Herrandez, and sometimes we are there together, because Andrea stays to talk with the old señor. He is quite bedridden," she added seriously, "and he therefore likes people to go to see him." She looked up at her cousin with a sudden smile. "Andrea de Barrios is my friend," she added proudly.

The name seemed to hit Felicity between the eyes, and there was a strange constriction in her throat as she asked: "Is—your friend, Andrea, as old as you are?"

"She is older," Sisa said. "But that makes little difference."

Surely, Felicity thought, this could not be Rafael de Barrios' daughter. A child—a girl older than Sisa—sixteen or seventeen, perhaps.

"She is Rafael's sister," Sisa informed her, as if she had sensed her curiosity about the de Barrios. "He has four sisters altogether, but they do not all live at Zamora. One of them lives at Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria, and another one is married and lives in Barcelona."

the waiting car. It was evident that she enjoyed the dignity

Sabino blew the horn and Sisa turned eagerly towards of going alone to Orotava, even with Carlota and Sabino in attendance. She sat demurely in the back seat, pulling on her cotton gloves and waving to Felicity as she drove away.

There was no sign of Julio nor Conchita anywhere in or around the hacienda, and Felicity wondered nervously if they intended to defy Philip and stay away from the meeting with the family lawyer.

Defiance, however, would gain them nothing. She felt quite sure of that. It would only postpone the knowledge of their father's provision for them in the future and cause unnecessary delay in the settling of their affairs.

She stood uncertainly on the terrace, wondering if she

should wait out there or in the patio, deciding eventually on the patio because it might seem too much as if she were waiting to receive the lawyer when he came if she remained where she was.

It was Philip who finally brought him into the house. He was an old man, yet his bearing was upright and proud, like so many of the Spaniards she had seen even on her short journey from Las Palmas to the airport at La Laguna. Like Rafael de Barrios, for instance. . . .

But she did not want to think about the Marques de Barrios, not with Philip Arnold's far-seeing blue eyes upon her and the memory of his angry contempt in her heart.

"This is Señor Perez, your uncle's lawyer," he introduced them. "Miss Stanmore still has a little difficulty with her Spanish," he explained, "so perhaps we could conduct our business in English?"

"Certainly. Most certainly!" Señor Perez agreed as they shook hands. "It is a great delight to me to be able to speak your language, Miss Stanmore," he added. "I studied in England for some years when I was a young man and I find it renews my youth to converse in a tongue I grew to understand almost as well as my own."

"I am hoping to be able to speak Spanish fluently before I return to England," Felicity told him "It will help me in my search for work there."

Señor Perez gave her a short, quizzical look before he glanced across the room at Philip, and when Felicity turned in the younger man's direction he was frowning. He pulled the ancient bell-rope hanging on the wall and presently the fat, elderly Marta waddled in with a tray of glasses and a flagon of the fine local wine. She returned in a minute or two with a platter of little sweet cakes and some of the coarse biscuits which Felicity had seen her baking the day before. Marta did everything with the unhurried movements of the person to whom time means nothing at all, and indeed time was often discounted altogether in this enchanted valley. Felicity could not believe, for instance, that she had only been here a week. It seemed already that most of her life had run its course at San Lozaro; that this was where she might belong.

Less than twenty-four hours ago Philip Arnold had discounted such a thought as foolish sentiment. He did not agree with belonging. Only with conquest.

Twice he glanced at his watch, comparing it impatiently with the clock in the corner.

"I have to apologize for Conchita and Julio," he said, turning to the lawyer. "Perhaps Miss Stanmore would pour you out some wine and I shall go and see if they are anywhere to be found."

His courtesy left nothing to be desired,' Felicity realized, but his anger with her cousins was obvious. He had been forced to act host in Julio's absence, but she knew that he was not trying to impress the lawyer in any way. She could not imagine him acting a part, she mused as she poured the old man a glass of wine, and when he came back to the patio with Conchita and Julio at his heels she saw that he was far from being satisfied with the excuses they had offered for their childish behaviour. It had been a definite slight to the old man, and he would have none of it. Señor Perez was a family friend as well as being the family lawyer.

When they had drunk their wine he led the way into Robert Hallam's study, offering the lawyer the chair behind the desk so that he could spread out his papers on it in comfort. His brief-case was not bulky. It seemed that he had little to tell them.

He read the will in detail, in Spanish, and then he turned to Felicity to explain:

"Your uncle suggests that you should stay here, Miss Stanmore, at least until Sisa is eighteen. Then, if she wishes it, she could return to England with you, to finish her education there. Your uncle has left you a small bequest, and you will be kept here as one of the family. It was his earnest hope that you will stay and help to further the English way of life at San Lozaro. He was very anxious about that," he added simply.