The Jade Dragon (12 page)

“Have you ever seen a bullfight, Miss Rosslyn?” asked the one named Richard Vincent.

“No. And I don’t think I much want to.”

“Oh, but you’ve got quite the wrong idea. In Portugal the bulls aren’t killed, as in Spain. Everything is terribly civilized, with none of the blood and horror. Do come with us, Miss Rosslyn, and you’ll see for yourself. We’ll do it in style, I promise you—the best seats, on the shady side of the arena.”

I laughed. “You still haven’t convinced me that I would enjoy it. Anyway, I can’t come. Mrs. Forrester is taking me to Belem to see the Jeronimos Monastery.”

I wondered afterward why I had refused, when I could perfectly well have agreed to go with them. I knew the easygoing Mrs. Forrester would have raised no objection. Was it truly a disinclination to see a Portuguese bullfight? Or was it the curious feeling that to enjoy an outing with these two young men would in some inexplicable way be disloyal?

Driving home in the victoria, the night air was deliciously cool after the breathless heat of the day, and the streets and squares were thronged. On a bandstand under some sycamore trees, a military band was playing a lively
galope,
and a crowd was gathered around humming the tune and clapping hands in rhythm. It made a very picturesque scene in the flickering gaslight, with a pale moon hanging above, and as we drove out of the square, the strains of the music followed us until it was no more than a faint drumbeat in the distance.

I sighed deeply, my heart filled with a strange yearning.

* * * *

Next morning I wakened to the sounds of the city, barking dogs, and the clatter of carts. From the trees across the way came a medley of birdsong, and somewhere a cockerel crowed lustily. A cry in the street below drew me to my window. A plump, barefoot
varina
dressed in a colorful blouse and skirt was making her way around the square, calling out that she had fine fresh fish for sale in the flat wicker basket balanced on her head. On the corner, an old man was selling lottery tickets.

I dressed and went downstairs to breakfast—a substantial English breakfast of kidneys and bacon and scrambled eggs. “The major and I are to attend a memorial service at the English chapel this morning,” Mrs. Forrester told me as she poured tea from a silver pot. “It is to honor a member of the Legation staff who retired a couple of years ago. He died last week at his home in Devonshire. Most of the English community will be there, so it’s a chance for you to meet people, Elinor, if you’d care to come along.”

“Thank you, I’d like that.”

The English Chapel was crowded and stuffy, and when the service was over, everyone emerged with relief to the cool shade of the beautiful cemetery garden. I was introduced to so many people that I couldn’t remember all the names, and I received more invitations than I could have accepted in a month. At length we began to move toward the gate where the Forresters’ carriage would be waiting outside. Then a deep booming voice hailed Major Forrester from behind, and we were obliged to pause again.

“Oh dear,” whispered Mrs. Forrester, “it’s Colonel Grainger. You don’t want to meet him, Elinor. He’s a dreadful old bore. Slip along this path, and you’ll come to the grave of Henry Fielding, the novelist, who’s the most notable name here in the cemetery. The major and I will catch up to you in just a moment.”

So I strolled between the Judas trees, laden with their rose pink blossoms, and looked at the headstones. Many were so old and weathered it was almost impossible to decipher the inscriptions. Then I came upon a new grave, and the name there halted me abruptly.

LUZIA MADALENA DARVILLE

A strange chill took hold of my limbs. It was such a shock, suddenly coming across the grave of Stafford’s wife like this. Yet surely, I told myself, it was only natural for the wife of a prominent member of the English colony in Lisbon to be laid to rest here.

I stood with my eyes closed, trying to enter into the mind of this woman who lay buried in the shadow of a Judas tree. Had her death been a tragic accident, because she’d become dizzy, perhaps, and fallen into the water when there was nobody around to save her? Or had it, as was rumored in Lisbon, been a deliberate act by her own hand—and if that, for what reason?

Hearing footsteps on the path, I turned quickly, embarrassed that Major and Mrs. Forrester should find me standing before Luzia Darville’s grave.

But it was not the Forresters. Far worse, it was Stafford, looking impeccably dressed in dark clothes, with a crystal-knobbed walking cane. He was staring at me with astonishment, and I felt the color rush to my cheeks. “Elinor. What are you doing in Lisbon? What are you doing
here?”

“I ... I am visiting Major and Mrs. Forrester,” I stammered. ‘They invited me to stay with them for a few days.”

His voice was reproachful. “You might have let me know you
were coming.”

“I didn’t know myself until after you had left Cintra.”

“I see.”

My host and hostess were approaching, and I saw Mrs. Forrester’s quick frown at finding me talking to Stafford. The major, however, greeted him with a warm smile and a firm handshake. “Heard you were in town, Darville. Pleased you could attend the service. I’ve seen nothing of you since you arrived back from London. Did you have a good trip?”

“Yes, thank you, Major Forrester. It was very productive.”

“You must come to dinner, my dear fellow. Why not make it while Elinor is
with us? This evening, if you’re free.”

“I should be delighted,” Stafford replied.

I glanced at Mrs. Forrester, wondering how she would react. But she concealed any disapproval she may have felt and said graciously, “At seven-thirty then, Mr. Darville? It will be quite informal, you know—not more than eight or ten of us at table.”

“I shall look forward to it, Mrs. Forrester.” With a lift of his hat, Stafford strode off toward the gate.

‘That chap’s got a good head on his shoulders,” the major remarked sagely. “A fine business brain, by all accounts. It’s a pity about that wife of his. I never met her, but they do say—”

“Arthur dear, Elinor isn’t interested in gossip.” We had reached the tombstone of Henry Fielding, and this gave Mrs. Forrester an opportunity to change the subject.

At dinner that evening, I found myself disturbingly aware of Stafford. He was seated across the table from me, looking by far the most distinguished man in the room, the light from the table candles picking out the hard, clean lines of his face and his gleaming dark hair. Several times our eyes chanced to meet, and I felt a little throb of excitement.

I found myself reassessing my opinion of him. I had started out by disliking Stafford Darville intensely, and most people I’d met since then—excepting Vicencia—had seemed to confirm my judgment of him. But perhaps Vicencia was the person to whom I should pay most attention. She knew Stafford better than anyone, and far from condemning him, she held him in the highest regard and affection.

Did Vicencia know about the
fadista?
I
wondered again. I felt sure that she must. Stafford seemed to take little trouble to conceal his liaison with Inesca. And if Vicencia didn’t hold him blameworthy on this account, then had
I
any right to do so? For what did I really know of men and the desires that drove them?

Later, when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, Stafford came to stand behind my chair.

“How long are you planning to stay in Lisbon, Elinor?” he inquired.

“I am returning to Cintra tomorrow afternoon.”

“So soon?” He sounded quite disappointed.

“I promised Vicencia that I wouldn’t stay away for long,” explained. “She seemed quite upset that I was coming to Lisbon at all, especially as you were away, too.”

He nodded his head thoughtfully. “You must share my carriage, Elinor. It would be foolish for us to travel separately.”

“You, too, are going back to Castanheiros tomorrow, then?”

“Yes indeed.” I had an impression, though, he had only that instant made the decision.

I was by no means sure how I felt about the prospect of making the journey to Cintra in Stafford’s company. My revised feelings about him were too new, too untested. But at least, I told myself as I thanked him, it would save me having to accept the Forresters’ generous offer of their victoria.

Stafford called for me at three o’clock. Although the day was hot, it seemed comfortably cool in his open barouche, spinning along at a brisk trot. In a very short time we had passed the towering arches of the Alcantara viaduct and were well on the road to Cintra. From the very first, I was conscious of a tenseness between us, and very little was said, except when Stafford pointed out something of interest as we went by.

About halfway, we stopped at a roadside inn to rest and water the horses. In the garden an arbor had been made by interweaving the feathery branches of some juniper trees, and Stafford and I sat in its fragrant shade drinking tea and eating little almond cakes.

Presently, looking across at me with a steady gaze,
he said, “I’m sorry, Elinor, that you have found things so difficult at Castanheiros.”

I hesitated. “You did warn me before I came, Stafford. You told me that I would not be made welcome.”

“But even so, you have every right to be there. I was not expecting the atmosphere to be made quite so uncomfortable for you by Affonso and Carlota. I’m afraid they find it hard to accept that someone they didn’t even know existed until recently should be just as entitled to live at the Milaveira family home as they themselves. And as for Dona Amalia, her attitude is curious. She has become fond of you, I am sure, but she still cannot entirely accept you as her granddaughter.”

“My grandmother believes that it was I who took the Jade Dragon, just to cause her pain. As revenge for her treatment of my mother.”

“What utter nonsense. She can’t be serious.”

Quickly, before I had time to lose my courage, I said,
“Somebody
took the Jade Dragon, though. How can you be so certain it wasn’t me, I wonder?”

I watched his dark eyes, trying to gauge his reaction, but he betrayed nothing. He said, “Because it’s unthinkable that you, Elinor, could act from any motive of cruelty.”

“It’s kind of you to say so, Stafford. However, I should be interested to hear who you think is the culprit.”

“I don’t know. And frankly I can’t pretend that I care. The Jade Dragon is gone, and good riddance to it as far as I’m concerned.” In a different tone, he went on, “I shan’t ever forget the day I found my wife in the Chinese salon, lying prostrate and weeping hysterically because she had tried to destroy the Jade Dragon and could not. It was just a few days after little Eduardo’s death, and Luzia believed that the Jade Dragon had failed her. Like the rest of her family, she had a superstitious faith in the wretched thing’s ability to protect the Milaveiras from harm. In her grief and despair she toppled the pedestal over, which must have needed a super-human effort from her. But although the alabaster of the base was chipped, the Jade Dragon itself was unmarked, in spite of Luzia picking it up and banging it again and again on the tiled floor—the scars are still there. Jade is very hard, you see—virtually indestructible. After that incident, I would cheerfully have thrown the monstrosity out of the house there and then.”

I looked at him with pity, overwhelmed by a flood of emotion. My impulse to reach out and touch his hand in a gesture of sympathy was so strong that I rose quickly to my feet and turned away to the low stone wall overhanging a little stream. Stafford got up, too, and together we stood gazing down in silence at the water flowing serenely through the reeds.

‘Tell me about your wife,” I said at last. “She was very beautiful, wasn’t she? I’ve seen that portrait of her hanging in the gallery.”

“Yes, Luzia was quite lovely, with a delicate, fragile sort of beauty. The portrait was painted the year before our betrothal, but it doesn’t really do her justice. It’s no wonder that as a young man I fell madly in love with her, but I’m afraid I was not the right husband for someone like Luzia.”

“Would it not be fairer to say,” I ventured, thinking of what Vicencia had told me, “that Luzia was not the right wife for you?”

Stafford shook his head. “I blame myself entirely. I should have realized that we were unsuited to each other by temperament.”

“So yours wasn’t an arranged marriage, in the usual Milaveira way?”

He ignored the note of scorn in my voice. “Strangely enough, no, although both sides of the family were delighted about it. If ours
had
been an arranged marriage, I’d have somebody other than myself to blame. But as it is, the fault is all mine. It’s not every love match that turns out blissfully happy, as romantics like you, Elinor, would have us believe.”

My sleeve brushed against a spray of juniper, and the warm air was suddenly laden with its sweet, tangy fragrance, “When ... when did things begin to go wrong, Stafford?”

He made a small, helpless movement with his hands. “Paradoxically, it was the very time when we should have been drawn more closely together—when little Eduardo was born. Luzia idolized the boy. She doted on him to such an extent, I’m afraid, that she wanted no other children. Perhaps I should have been firmer, but she made her wishes very clear.”

Stafford was at pains to avoid unduly criticizing his wife, yet what he said confirmed all that I had heard from Vicencia about his marriage to Luzia. Could it be wondered at that he’d been driven to an illicit relationship elsewhere? Knowing what I knew, I felt my cheeks grow hot, but to my relief, Stafford seemed not to notice.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “it had become known in Lisbon circles that our marriage was not happy—these things always have a way of getting about. And now it’s being whispered that Luzia took her own life, out of despair. But that is not true, Elinor, I know it’s not true. And somehow I’ve got to prove it.”

I swallowed nervously. “Stafford, please don’t misunderstand, but... how can you be so sure? You told me yourself that your son’s death seemed to unhinge your wife, and doting on him the way she did, it’s no wonder. So could she really be blamed if under such dreadful stress she succumbed to a sudden impulse to ... to end it all? I am not suggesting that’s what actually happened, but can you rule out the possibility?”