Nurse for the Doctor Page 15
When the doctor had gone, Josie retired to her own sitting-room, and asked for her evening meal to be served to her there. When it arrived it was obvious that a good deal of care had been taken over the preparation of her tray. The black-clad housekeeper herself brought it, and inquired anxiously whether everything was as the English nurse desired. Josie felt a little warmed by the evident fact that her hostess had given strict instructions that she was to be treated with a large amount of deference.
But in spite of the temptingly served meal, and in spite of the comfort—the extreme comfort—of her sitting-room, the curious conviction that she had arrived at last in a place where she could be really hurt refused to leave her.
She stood in front of her windows and watched, between the undrawn curtains, the night traffic of Madrid streaming below her balconies, and something about the endless procession of glittering cars disturbed her still further. Each one of those expensive-looking vehicles contained one or more persons—in most cases it would be two!—off for an evening’s entertainment, and beyond the thought of that entertainment nothing mattered very much just then. The men would be sleek, and the women superbly dressed, and quite a few of the latter would look like Dona Maria—but there would be very few who would resemble Sylvia Petersen.
Sylvia Petersen was unique, and American, and if she were driving with a dark-haired man with only one arm it would be with far more than an evening’s entertainment in her golden head. Far more!
Every time the telephone shrilled downstairs in the hall—and it did so several times—Josie thought it was the marquis ringing to inquire about his aunt, having heard of her return from some unlooked-for quarter. But she was not summoned to deal with the instrument, and by the time she went to bed at ten o’clock he had not rung.
The next day Dona Amelie was easily persuaded to remain in bed, but Josie yielded to her insistence and went out to get her first look real at Madrid. She wandered in the shopping center, and was enchanted by some of the display windows, and further intrigued by the smartness of modern Spanish women without their duennas. The men, she discovered, seldom acted as their escorts, but that didn’t prevent admiring glances being sent after slender figures with gleaming hair coiled beneath the latest headgear, and wearing those perilous high heels.
When she returned to the house she had lunch served to her alone, and in the afternoon a couple of elderly friends called to see Dona Amelie. She entertained them to tea in her bedroom, and Josie poured out, and did the various honors. When the friends had departed Dona Amelie expressed herself as concerned in case Josie might be bored, but the girl denied being anything of the kind.
“This is far more exciting than the Costa Brava,” she said. “I find Madrid fascinating, and even watching from the window is a thrill after so many quiet weeks.”
“But we must not let you be dull,” Dona Amelie said.
She seemed to be thinking about something rather deeply, and Josie left her with her book, propped high against her pillows, but still thinking.
The next morning she insisted on putting through several telephone calls, and when these had occupied a full hour of her time she announced that she was getting up for lunch. It was during lunch that she asked Josie if she would do her rather a special kind of favor, and although Josie looked a little surprised, she promised immediately.
“It is nothing that I think you will dislike,” Dona Amelie said, draining the last of the very fine wine that the attentive manservant had poured into her glass. “In fact, I think you should enjoy it. It is simply that friends of mine have promised to take a young girl with them to a party tonight, and the particular young girl they had in mind suddenly finds herself unable to go with them. This has presented them with rather a problem, but I felt sure you would save the situation for them.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, querida!” The old lady directed at her a smiling look. “I shall be quite all right with my good Carlotta, and, besides, the house is full of servants who can look after me. So you can go with a clear conscience, and as it is a rather special affair devote a lot of time this afternoon to making yourself look pretty.”
Josie looked suddenly embarrassed. “But I’m afraid I haven’t a special dress for a special affair.”
“That is all arranged,” Dona Amelie told her. “I took the liberty of abstracting one of your dresses from your wardrobe, or, rather, Carlotta did when you were out—and it has been sent round to my own dressmaker, with instructions to return it this afternoon with something of a similar size that you can wear this evening. I thought you wouldn’t deny me the pleasure of making you a little return for all your extreme kindness to me during the past few weeks.”
Josie hardly knew what to say. Her cheeks flushed—with a mingling of embarrassment, pleasure, gratification, and uncertainty. But in the end the uncertainty vanished before the faint look of pleading in the old lady’s eyes, and by the time she was ready for the friends of her hostess when they called for her that evening she was wearing not only the new dress, but, pretty new evening slippers, a necklace of real pearls that Dona Amelie had insisted on her borrowing, and the mink cape that she had once before worn about her shoulders.
The mink cape was perhaps the most wonderful part of the outfit, for it was practically new, intended for far younger shoulders than those of its owner, and its beauty and costliness proclaimed themselves to the world. The dress, that in future would be her own, was of white lace— white lace over a taffeta underskirt, and when Josie first saw it she thought of cobwebs all mixed up with moonlight, and almost too exquisite to clothe a mere body.
Dona Amelie explained: “I liked you so much in your other white dress, and I thought you should have another one.” She did not add that the two could not stand comparison, but Josie knew it, and was almost bemused by delight when Carlotta slipped it over her head. The sandals that went with it were the only touch of color she wore that night, for they were the pale green of a primrose stalk, and with her honey-gold curls she looked rather like a snowdrop when she was dressed. The pearls added the final touch—the pearls and a single white camellia which arrived from a nearby florist, and which Dona Amelie insisted should be fastened to her hair.
And then the old lady and Carlotta both stood back and practically clapped their hands with delight at the picture the English girl made, and to Josie it was a little incomprehensible that so much obvious pleasure should be taken in bedecking her in order that friends of Dona Amelie should be neither disappointed, nor let down. In fact, after peeping at herself in the glass, Josie had to admit to herself that she was hardly likely to let them down.
“Is she not exactly as one would have a young girl of her age and coloring look?” Dona Amelie demanded almost triumphantly of the maid.
And Carlotta answered fervently: “Si, si, señora! Si, si!”
The friends, when they arrived, proved to be the extremely handsome-looking elderly couple who had had tea at the house the day after Dona Amelie’s return, and with them was a young man who, if he was not precisely handsome, was at least unusually personable. He must have been somewhere in his middle thirties, had the keen clever look of the lawyer which it later transpired, he was and at first sight of Josie his dark eyes expressed approval. So much approval that for a few seconds it confounded her a little, until the elderly man who was his uncle laughed and paid Josie the first outrageous compliment she had ever received in her life: “You are as lovely as a flower, senorita! So lovely that if all English flowers are like you I would like to spend the remainder of my days in England!”
His wife beamed as if she shared his sentiments to the letter, and when they set off it was in an atmosphere of extreme cordiality and expectations of a very pleasant evening.
Josie shared the back seat of the car with the lawyer, while the elder man drove, and his wife sat beside him. Josie’s escort, who also wore a white camellia in his buttonhole, asked her whether she was looking forward to the party.
“It’s a birthday party,” the young man explained, in his grave, precise fashion. “It should be rather amusing.”
But he said nothing further on the subject, contenting himself with stealing side glances at Josie every few seconds, and when they arrived it was obvious that he intended to monopolize her as much as possible throughout the evening.
Josie could tell as soon as they entered the restaurant where the party was being held that it was one of Madrid’s most expensive and exclusive. There was an atmosphere of lushness that was sobered by discreetness, soft lights, many flowers, an orchestra that played away softly but never intruded itself upon the diners, unless they wished to join other diners on the glistening dance floor.
All the tables appeared to be filled when they arrived, but there was one table, much larger than the rest, where four places were still vacant—their places. Candles glowed amongst the flowers that seemed literally to bestrew this table, and an enormous birthday cake was its centrepiece. The birthday-cake was decorated with pink and white sugar icing, and the name SYLVIA was inscribed across it.
Josie glimpsed the name on the cake before she actually glimpsed Sylvia herself, and then it was to find that Miss Petersen was looking at her with slightly elevated, carefully plucked eyebrows. The American girl was wearing a mist of hedge-rose pink, to match her birthday cake, and a spray of creamily-pink orchids was attached by some skilful means to her bare shoulder. As usual, her small ears, and her throat, and her wrists, were ablaze with the jewels she favored most—diamonds. And to Josie, she looked like the fairy on the Christmas tree—or the tinsel ornament that should have adorned the birthday cake.
Josie heard someone say her name: “By all that’s wonderful, it’s Josie!” and she looked up into Michael Duveen’s blue eyes. He was so frankly delighted to see her that he reached across the table and grasped at both of her hands. “But I didn’t even know you were in Madrid! How did this come about?”
Before Josie could reply another voice, quiet, deep, perplexed, fell on her ears: “Yes, how did this come about, Josie?”
Josie lifted her eyes to the marquis’s chin—square and strong as she remembered it—to the beautifully shaped mouth, the straight, slightly arrogant nose, the eyes that were so dark and lustrous that they haunted her nightly in her dreams. She opened her mouth to say something, but found that no words would leave her lips, and the friends who had brought her with them made the explanation for her. The marquis’ eyebrows sank a little, his eyes seemed to narrow slightly, and he looked at Josie, in her dress of drifting white lace, as if he had never seen her before.
“You can be quite certain that we are delighted to have you,” he said. And then he waited for them to be seated before giving an order for the champagne cocktails to be served.
Josie had only a confused impression of how the remainder of that night passed. She knew that there were toasts—Sylvia’s health, and many happy returns of her birthday drunk in champagne—that the food was marvellous (or. would have been if the capacity for tasting anything hadn’t dried up in her mouth), that people were nice to her, and Dona Maria rather more than nice. She asked affectionately after her aunt, and was concerned because the old lady hadn’t let them know anything about her return to Madrid. They had been fondly imagining her still down on the Costa Brava, where the marquis, apparently, had ordered her to remain, and it was something of a shock to discover that she had made a long journey without even notifying them of her intentions.
Josie was in no mood to care very much just then whether Dona Amelie had notified them or not, and Dona Maria found her a little reserved in her answers. Michael seized every opportunity to talk to her, telling her she was quite lovely in Dona Maria’s hearing, and the young lawyer who was in actual fact her partner for the evening grew noticeably restive when it seemed she was likely to be monopolized elsewhere, and asked her as soon as he could to dance with him.
It was a perfect floor, and she enjoyed the dance, but she didn’t even look to see whether the marquis, in spite of the slight awkwardness that the possession of only one arm might occasion, led Sylvia out on to the floor. She only knew that there were several other young men who all, in turn, danced with Sylvia—the star of the evening—and one or two of them also danced with Josie. Michael danced with her twice—the first time holding her so closely that she thought it must be noticeable.
When they returned to the table the marquis was sitting there alone with one of his guests, talking to him as if absorbed, but when Michael disappeared, and the other guest jumped up to claim a young woman who had distinguished herself throughout the evening by having eyes for him alone, the host and the one guest he hadn’t expected to swell the party found themselves temporarily isolated together.
Josie didn’t wait for him to address her, but said in a cool, bright voice: “It’s a wonderful party! I had no idea it was going to be a birthday party.”
“Hadn’t you?” His eyes rested on her, and it struck her that they were intensely grave. “And you are enjoying it?”
“I’ve just said it’s a wonderful party!”
Her voice this time had a faint tinkling of ice in it.
He continued to look at her with that strange gravity. “Josie, it was very wrong of my aunt to attempt that journey. And without letting me know. Why didn’t you let me know?”
She looked at him as if mildly surprised.
“Dona Amelie is my employer,” she reminded him. “If she didn’t wish to let you know, then naturally I could hardly go behind her back.”
“But there was no one to meet you ... You should have been met. Arrangements should have been made. And it shouldn’t have been necessary for you to be brought to a party of this sort because one of the other guests fell out.”
“Shouldn’t it?” Her eyebrows ascended a little. “But it was lucky for me that the other guest fell out, wasn’t it? Unless, of course, you feel that my inclusion is a little bit of an intrusion? After all, I suppose I hardly rank as a friend of your family, but Dona Amelie is so kind that that aspect of it probably didn’t occur to her.”
He looked at her so hard for a few moments that she had to look away.
“Do you really think that that is what I meant when I said you should not have been brought to a party of this sort in the way you were?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“It doesn’t matter, does it, so long as you are not annoyed? Or Miss Petersen is not annoyed...” She looked away across the room, and the thrumming of a guitar seemed to be beating into her brain. “I shall remember how fond you are of guitars in this country when I get back to England. Its melancholy music, but exciting, somehow ... And that reminds me. Dona Amelie is so very much better that I should like to be able to leave her very soon now. I don’t mean that I haven’t been happy with her, but I must go home to England, so perhaps you could arrange something? Although really Carlotta is extremely capable, and looks after her very well.”
He was just about to reply when Sylvia came whirling back to the table, her recent dance partner beside her, and Michael made his reappearance.
“They’re about to play a tango, Josie!” he said. “Come on!” And literally drew her up out of her chair.
When they were well away from the table, and the others, he spoke seriously.
“You do realize what this party means, don’t you, Josie?”
“Means?” She looked up at him a trifle blankly.
“Yes. I was watching you just now, and—I don’t want you to be upset! But as a kind of tailpiece there’s almost certain to be an announcement. Do you think you can stand it?”
“Stand it?” Her eyes were wide, and then all at once she fully comprehended what he meant. A lavish birthday party given for a lovely girl, the giver of the party a man who had been paying her att
ention for many weeks ... an announcement of an engagement. A betrothal, as the Spaniards would call it.
Suddenly she recalled that night when the marquis had kissed her—and she wondered rather dazedly whether he made a practice of kissing young women like herself like that! Young women who were alone, and out of their element in a foreign land. But, no—surely not. Surely he was not like that. She remembered what he had said about the rewards of virtue—about being sweeter for waiting, and suddenly she knew that she had been living with those words for the past few weeks. That they were words that had buoyed her up, and kept her hoping in spite of common sense...
But, now ... Any minute now perhaps she would hear something she couldn’t bear to hear. She felt almost panic-stricken. Michael saw the panic in her face.
“You could slip away,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
“No—that would be too obvious! And Dona Maria would wonder! No, I—but I must go!”
Then she remembered her young lawyer. He had regarded her reproachfully across the room several times while she was dancing with Michael, and as soon as she could persuade the latter to let her go she smiled at him. He came to her side at once.
“Senor Cavalho,” she said, a little pathetically, “I have a headache—the sort of head one gets sometimes after dancing too much. Or I do. I—I don’t really feel like remaining much longer. Do you think...?” And she looked at him almost beseechingly.
“But of course, senorita,” he answered at once, and she could see that there was genuine sympathy in his face. “I’m a little inclined to suffer from migraine myself, so I can fully sympathize with you. If you like to slip away and fetch your wrap I’ll be waiting for you in the main entrance.”
“Oh, that is kind of you!” There were tears not very far away from her eyes.