Love is for Ever (2 page)

Jacqueline looked a little surprised.

“Then you must be Dr. Barr?” she said. “My father’s assistant?—Or” she corrected herself hastily, and a little flatly, “you were my father’s assistant?”

“Quite right,” he answered her quietly, “and we always got on excellently together, and I don’t mind telling you his death was a great shock to me. Even although I’m at present in charge of the clinic I’d ten thousand times rather have him back, and I really mean that, Miss Vaizey.”

“Thank you,” she found herself murmuring, feeling suddenly a little forlorn; and at the same time she found herself thinking that it was an ill wind that bore nobody any good.

He helped her into the car, and as he did so she noticed something quite superlative in the way of cars standing a little way farther along the waterfront, with a liveried chauffeur standing beside it. The car was a kind of pearl grey, tremendously long and glittering with chromium, and as far as she could make out it was empty. As the dust-colored car drew level with it Dr. Barr called out something in Spanish to the chauffeur, and the man returned to his driving-seat, and when Jacqueline looked backwards a few minutes later she saw that he appeared to be following them.

The road wound upwards through the interior in the way Jacqueline remembered, and she felt another of those unpleasant pangs which kept on assailing her because this time she was not being driven to the bungalow beside the clinic. Dr. Barr drew her attention to various features of the landscape which he thought might interest her, in particular the pink walls of a church, with cottages clustered round it, as they flashed past; and then he recalled that she had stayed on the island when she was a child, and asked her how she had liked it. As she explained to him that she had never really forgotten it, and that the impression it had made on her youthful mind had been of the pleasantest possible kind, she noticed that he glanced at her occasionally sideways, as if her appearance interested him. His eyes were a little lazy, and his smile was lazy too, but very pleasant, she thought, and she decided that he was quite young to be in charge of her father's clinic—possibly barely thirty.

At last they flashed between a pair of highly ornamental wrought-iron gates that were standing open, and in a very short space of time had negotiated a drive that was bordered by flaming growth. Dr. Barr brought the car to rest on a gravelled sweep before a low white house that seemed to be overhung by wistaria and starry white jasmine flowers. The scent of the jasmine was almost overpowering, and from somewhere far below the murmur of the sea reached them, as well as its unmistakable tang.

Jacqueline drew a breath of sudden acute pleasure, for the situation was superb, and through an open doorway she caught a glimpse of a kind of enclosed patio where roses rioted, and high walls were draped with further torrents of wistaria. Beyond the patio another door admitted to a black and white tiled hall where an exquisitely curving staircase wound upwards to a kind of gallery on to which polished doors opened, and beyond this hall there were green lawns like strips of emerald velvet, overhung by shady trees. And beneath one of these shady trees two people were reclining in deliciously comfortable looking wicker lounging chairs, with a little table supporting refreshments between them.

“This way,” said Neville Bar, and led the way out on to the first lawn.

Jacqueline became conscious that a man had risen and was looking directly at her. He also, after studying her for a few seconds in a kind of surprise, looked directly at the doctor.

Neville explained with a smile.

“I met Miss Vaizey off the steamer. Your man was there with the car, but I told him it was unnecessary to wait.”

Jacqueline thought she understood. So the enormous pearl-colored car, with the liveried chauffeur, had been waiting on the waterfront for her!

“I see,” the man who had risen said quietly, and his voice was the coldest—the most arctically cold—Jacqueline had ever heard, and it was immediately plain that he was extremely annoyed about something. He was so devastatingly handsome that, in spite of the tiredness resulting from her journey, she immediately set him apart as quite unlike any human person she had ever met before— someone finished and perfect, polished and poised in a way she had never thought it possible for any one man to be. Even his anger— and she knew somehow that he was very angry—was so skilfully held in check that apart from affecting the quality of his voice it did nothing to mar the bland perfection of his looks. And they were enough to make any young woman who had travelled all the way from England, and who was conscious of feeling travel-stained and by no means at her best, wonder why it was that he had to appear on her immediate horizon just then.

To begin with he was just the right height, and just the right slenderness of build, to make a suit of white drill look almost exquisite; and although dark, it was not the swarthy darkness of a Spaniard. His hair had an ebony touch where the shadows fell across it, but where the sunlight glinted on it through the branches overhead there were one or two burnished lights. His eyes were blue—dark blue like indigo—and the eyelashes that shadowed them were thick and black. He had a beautiful mouth, a strong chin, a complexion more bronzed than olive, and the way he kept his head erect on square shoulders suggested that under no circumstances would he humble himself to anyone.

“There was no necessity for you to meet Miss Vaizey, Doctor,” he said, as he offered Jacqueline his hand. She had the feeling that his eyes, flickering over her, took in every detail of her appearance, even to the fact that her nose was still lightly dusted with last summer’s freckles, and that as a nose it was not in the least classical, but slightly tip-tilted, and that there was a faint dimple in her chin which corresponded with another at one corner of her mouth. And then he put her into the chair he had just vacated and introduced her to his companion. “This is Miss Martine Howard, Miss Vaizey. Like you she is giving my grandmother and myself great pleasure by consenting to stay with us.”

“How sweet of you to put it like that, darling,” Miss Howard murmured, and she had an attractive American accent which was unmistakable, and which caused Jacqueline to look at her with interest.

The thought struck her at once that if her host—and although no one had actually presented him to her as her host, she realized that he could be none other than Dominic Errol—was an example of masculine elegance, Martine Howard must surely be the embodiment of all the charms a woman ought to possess. For in addition to enormous hazel eyes and red-gold hair, she had a skin like new milk and a provocative scarlet mouth, and her gracefully lounging figure was so exquisitely clothed that Jacqueline all at once felt completely obscure and shabby.

“Did you have a good crossing, Miss Vaizey?” Martine enquired of her, and although she made no attempt to bestir herself in her chair she smiled with a kind of sleepy charm. “Personally, I loathe crossings of any sort—I always
feel
sick, even if the water’s as calm as a mill pond!”

“Miss Vaizey was looking entirely composed when she came ashore,” Dr. Barr put in, also smiling at Jacqueline, “so I’m quite sure she thoroughly enjoyed her trip.”

“Oh, I did!” Jacqueline assured him.

“All the same, I can’t quite understand why you considered it necessary to meet the clipper,” Dominic interposed, and the cool preciseness of his tone gave away the fact that he had not yet forgotten his annoyance. “Roderigo had his instructions, and the car was waiting for Miss Vaizey. There was no question of any delay, or of no one being there to receive her when she arrived.”

"Nevertheless, I always think that when you’ve had rather a long and tedious journey, and you’re arriving in a strange place, it’s a good thing to find someone waiting for you who, at least, has known someone belonging to you—and as Dr. Vaizey’s assistant for so long I felt that I had a kind of prior right to welcome his daughter,” Neville explained, calmly accepting a cigarette while a servant brought fresh tea across the lawn, and Jacqueline looked at him with open appreciation.

“That was kind of you,” she told him, in her warm and slightly impulsive voice. "In fact, I think it was very kind!”

His blue eyes softened as he looked at her, although out of the corner of her eye she observed that Martine was watching him with rather an odd little smile curving her lips.

“You would like some tea, wouldn't you?” Dominic asked the newly arrived guest formally, moving to a seat beside her. She had the feeling that he wanted to apologize for not being at the harbor to meet her, but she decided not to give him the opportunity. She had slipped out of the jacket of her suit and was looking rather like a schoolgirl in her thin white blouse with the little round collar, and as she felt his eyes studying her she let hers rove over the garden and exclaimed admiringly because it all looked so enchanting, and was even more delightful than she remembered, and at the same time she made up her mind that his decision not to meet her was not altogether incomprehensible.

In addition to the fact that he had Martine to entertain, there was no real reason why he should have put himself out. For she was only the daughter of someone who had worked on the island for years, and whom his grandmother had taken pity on and invited to stay for a few weeks. There was no reason at all why she should have been received as if she was someone with the smallest pretensions to importance, and the fact that a car had been sent for her—a car far more luxurious than any she had ever travelled in! — in the charge of a responsible chauffeur, was surely more than enough?

All the same, as she looked across at Dr. Barr fresh appreciation surged up in her because he
had
met her, and he looked so casual and pleasantly ordinary, and so much more like the kind of person she was accustomed to coming in contact with, as he lay there in the sunshine with his cigarette between his lips. And once again their eyes met, and once again she smiled at him.

Dominic Errol offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head.

“No, thank you, I don’t smoke.”

She watched him lighting his own cigarette in a way that drew attention to the beautiful shape of his hands, with their long flexible fingers and virile wrists, and she remembered his handwriting that had so aroused the enthusiasm of Mr. Maplethorpe.

“You are very young, Miss Vaizey,” he told her, as he drew thoughtfully on his cigarette and continued to study her.

His eyes, at close quarters, were almost disturbingly blue, particularly as his thick black eyelashes served in some way to emphasize the blueness. “Much younger than I had imagined you would be.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “But your grandmother must have known my age.”

He shrugged slightly, elegantly.

“My grandmother’s memory is not what it was, and all

she could recall was a child who visited our island years ago.” A smile crept into his eyes—a cool, amused smile. “I wonder where I was when you visited Sansegovia before,

Miss Vaizey? I’m quite certain I was not on Sansegovia.”

“You were in England,” she told him. “But even if you’d been here, you would not have remembered me.”

“You think not?” he enquired. His English, although as effortless as her own, had a touch of stiltedness about it at times, which betrayed the fact that he was much more truly Spanish than English, in spite of his rather more English than Spanish looks. “But somehow I cannot agree with you. Somehow I feel that I would have been a little more prepared for you as you are, and known a little more what to expect when you arrived.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “I was very small and insignificant when I was twelve, and I don’t imagine I have altered a great deal.”

“You are still very small,” he said, and left it at that.

She had a queer feeling of being unable to relax in his company, and those openly interested eyes of his made her uncomfortable. She looked across at Martine and Neville, who were carrying on a desultory conversation, and Neville instantly caught her eyes and leaned towards her.

“You must come and see the clinic some time, Miss Vaizey,” he invited. “I expect you’d like to look over it again, and the bungalow as well. And if you’re staying for some time I hope you'll let me show you a few of the local sights?”

“As someone who worked in close co-operation with your father, Dr. Barr naturally feels that he has a prior right to show you the local sights,” Dominic Errol remarked, and his tone was very dry indeed.

“Naturally,” Martine echoed him, and her flickering glance at him seemed to be touched with malice. “Miss Vaizey and Dr. Barr have probably already got so much in common that you’ll find it difficult to keep them apart. After all, Miss Vaizey was expecting to
live
in the bungalow where Dr. Barr lives now!”

The host stood up rather abruptly.

“I expect you’d like to be taken to your room, wouldn’t you, Miss Vaizey?” he suggested. “My grandmother always rests in the afternoon, and she’s so frail nowadays that we don’t always see her in the evenings. But you’ll meet her companion, an aunt of mine, at dinner, and if there’s anything you desire before that, Juanita, who

will see you to your room, will obtain it for you.”

Juanita appeared, plump and smiling and very Spanish, with only a very few English phrases at her command, and Jacqueline followed her into the house. As she walked towards it she felt that the others were watching her, and she wondered whether she had expressed sufficient thanks to her host for this invitation that had been extended to her. But somehow her reception had not been as she expected, and her thanks had dried up in her throat.