Читать книгу Lovers In Paradise - Barbara Cartland - Страница 2

Count Viktor van Haan looked sullenly at the glistening rice fields, the forest-crowned mountain peaks and the feathery coconut palms shimmering in the sunshine.

Everything was green everywhere, the lush green rice fields, the trees, the valleys. Even the frangipani and tjempake blossoms seemed somehow to lose their delicate white beauty in the green that surrounded them.

The Count had thought as he stepped from the Steamship, which seemed to him to have taken an unconscionable time to reach Bali, that exile, however beautiful, was oppressive.

Although it might perhaps be for only a short time including the months of travel for less than a year, it was in fact exile in a way undeniably humiliating to his self-esteem.

When the Queen Dowager of Holland had sent for the Count to come to The Palace in Amsterdam, he had expected it to be the usual request to attend a Court function or to receive on her behalf some distinguished visitor to Holland.

Such requests she had often made to him in the past, knowing that his charm, Diplomacy and knowledge of the world were very useful when there was no King of the Netherlands to perform such functions.

He told himself, however, that the Queen Dowager had utilised quite enough of his time in the last few months and he had no intention of being pressurised into doing anything that was not of particular interest to him.

Too often he had found himself saddled with extremely boring and pompous Statesmen and had found the endless and long-drawn-out banquets and interminable conferences almost unendurable.

It was understandable that the Count, who was spoken of as the most attractive man in Holland and was a distant cousin of the Queen Dowager, should be in great demand.

On the death of William III in 1890 Princess Wilhelmina had become Queen at the age of ten. Her mother had been appointed Queen Regent and now two years later the little Queen Wilhelmina was, of course, still in the schoolroom.

The Count had always been very fond of his cousin and quite prepared to offer her his loyalty and his respect.

Also when it suited him he was willing to wait attendance on her and perform the many duties she required of him so long as they did not come too often into conflict with his own plans.

It was not surprising then that by the time he was thirty he had become selfish and very conscious of his own prestige.

He was not only extremely handsome but he had a vibrant personality which impressed all those who visited the dull and conventional Dutch Court.

This was due perhaps to the fact that the Count was himself only half-Dutch.

His father had been the Head of one of the most respected and honoured families in the whole country.

The history of the van Haans was also the history of the Netherlands and it was difficult to speak of any great event in which the Dutch had taken part without finding that a van Haan was present.

But the Count’s mother had been French, the daughter of the Duc de Briac.

She had not only been beautiful but acclaimed for her intelligence and sparkling gaiety and was persona grata in the intellectual salons, which were patronised in Paris by everyone of consequence.

Everyone predicted that an alliance between Count Hendrik van Haan and Madeleine de Briac was bound to result in their progeny being exceptional.

Their son, Viktor, had measured up to all their expectations and now that his father was dead he found himself the owner of vast possessions that could only be rivalled by the Crown itself.

As he passed through the over-ornamented rooms of The Palace to the Queen Dowager’s apartments he thought, as he had thought so often before, that they needed redecorating and re-arranging.

There were treasures and paintings of inestimable value, but they were badly displayed.

The Count’s good taste was continually irritated by the fact that the Queen Dowager and those who served her were complacently pleased with their surroundings and had no intention of countenancing any change.

A footman in the resplendent Royal livery opened the doors of the Queen Dowager’s private drawing room and the Count then walked in to find, as he had expected, that she was alone.

He bowed conventionally over her hand and was not surprised to see an unmistakable glint of admiration in her eyes.

It was an expression that the Count was accustomed to seeing when any woman, old or young, looked at him and, if it had not been there, he would certainly have questioned why it was missing.

The admiration in the Queen Dowager’s eyes was, however, quickly replaced by one of anxiety.

“I sent for you, Viktor,” she began in her quiet voice, “to inform you that something very serious has happened and I wished you to learn of it from me rather than from anybody else.”

“What can have occurred?” the Count enquired.

He wondered as he spoke if the Queen Dowager had learnt of a rather regrettable party he had given two nights ago.

He thought while it was taking place that his guests’ behaviour would undoubtedly cause a scandal if anybody talked the next day.

But people, even the Dutch themselves, accepted some looseness of behaviour in those who belonged to the theatrical world, especially when they were French.

He thought it most unlikely that the Queen Dowager should have been told of certain regrettable incidents, although one could never be sure who would whisper spitefully in her ear and what tales she would find it expedient to remember.

“What has upset you?” he enquired. “If it concerns me, I can only express my deepest regrets. ma’am, that you should have been troubled.”

He always addressed the Queen Dowager formally and he knew that she liked the way he did not presume on their relationship.

“I am indeed upset,” she replied, “and I am afraid, Viktor, you are involved.”

The Count raised his eyebrows and waited.

He was not really apprehensive as to what might be disclosed. He knew only too well how any titbit of gossip could be mouthed over and exaggerated in Court circles and it was inevitable that he would always be suspected of the worst.

The Queen Dowager drew in a deep breath as if to sustain herself and then she started,

“Luise van Heydberg killed herself last night!”

She spoke without any emotion and yet it seemed as if the monotonous tone of her voice echoed and re-echoed around the room.

The Count stared at her incredulously.

“I ‒ don’t believe ‒ it!” he managed to stammer at last.

“It is true. She took enough laudanum to kill two strong men and, when her maid found her this morning, she must have been dead for eight or ten hours.”

“Good God!”

The Count expostulated the words. Then, forgetting all ceremony, he walked across the room to stand at the window gazing out onto the barren garden under a bleak November sky.

“I will do everything in my power to keep your name out of this,” the Queen Dowager added after a moment, “and to prevent there being a huge scandal.”

“Why should I get involved?” the Count asked her truculently.

“Because Luise had quarrelled with Willem over you.”

“Over me?”

“She had written a letter to you, an extremely indiscreet epistle, I understand, which any husband would resent.”

“How did Willem come to see it?”

“Luise was writing it in her private sitting room. He entered unexpectedly and, because she looked so guilty and tried to cover up the letter, he took it from her by force,”

“It is the kind of thing Willem would do!” the Count commented harshly.

The Queen Dowager sighed.

“You know just as well as I do how insanely jealous he is and, of course, where you are concerned he has had every justification.”

“It was all over two months – no, nearly three months ago.”

“Perhaps it was from your point of view,” the Queen Dowager said, “but Luise was still in love with you and behaved, I must admit, in an exceedingly hysterical manner.”

The Queen Dowager paused for a moment and then she added,

“So she died.”

The Count stared blindly out at the formal gardens. He was wishing, as he had wished so many times before, that he had never become involved with the Baroness van Heydberg, who had been the only attractive woman in attendance upon the Queen Dowager.

The other Ladies-in-Waiting were fat, middle-aged and dumpy and even to look at them made the Count think of suet puddings and dumplings that he had always disliked as a child.

In contrast Luise van Heydberg had been like a breath of spring on a winter’s day.

She had been beautiful, slim and very young for the post she occupied by right because her husband was of such high standing at Court.

The Baron’s second wife, Luise, was young enough to be his daughter and, as the Count quickly discovered, was not in the least in love with the man she had married.

Since she came from a family of no social importance, it had been for her a brilliant marriage accepted ecstatically by her parents who could hardly believe their good fortune.

It had not mattered to them that the Baron was now over fifty years of age or that his obsession for Luise from the moment he had seen her was likely at first to frighten and then revolt a very young girl.

All that mattered was that, as Baroness van Heydberg, she would become a hereditary Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen Dowager and have a position at Court which they had never imagined possible.

To the Count it had been just another of his light and amusing flirtations, which made the path of duty easier than it might have been otherwise.

He had no intention of embarking on anything serious with the wife of another man, nor did he intend, if he could help it, to add to the gossip writers’ store of incidents, which they repeated and re-repeated always to his disadvantage.

He had found Luise’s instantaneous response to his very first overtures intriguing and definitely flattering.

She had made it very clear that he embodied everything that she had dreamt about in her adolescent dreams and was the hero to whom she had been romantically inclined since she was a child.

“I worship you,” she had said to him once. “You are like Apollo. You bring a light to the darkness of my life.”

Satiated as he was with beautiful women and with affaires de coeur, which had occupied a great deal of his time since he was adolescent, the Count had been touched and at times moved by Luise’s passion for him.

Then about three months ago he had realised that it was getting out of hand.

She found it impossible, loving him as she did, to disguise her feelings even when they were surrounded by the stern disapproving eyes of those to whom protocol was a religion.

She began to plead with him to see her more than it was possible for him to do.

She wanted to take dangerous risks so that they could be together and for him to make love to her even when her husband was in the same building or only a room away.

The Count began to be afraid.

He felt like a man who had made a small hole in the dyke and now the whole sea was rushing in and threatening to overwhelm him and everyone else.

With an expertise that came from long practice, he began to disentangle himself both metaphorically as well as physically from the clinging arms of Luise, from her lips, hungry for his kisses, and from her insistent demands upon him.

She sensed, as a woman always can, what was happening.

So she bombarded him with letters and messages and, when they were alone, begged him to love her with an abandonment that made him uneasy.

Too late he realised that her nature was hysterical to the point where she could easily become unbalanced.

Too late he realised that he had started an avalanche that was now out of control.

“Listen, Luise, you are a married woman,” he said to her over and over again. “You have a duty to your husband. If you behave like this, he will take you away to the country and we shall never see each other again.”

He thought as he spoke that it would be the best thing that could happen, but his words brought a flood of tears and protestations.

On one occasion Luise even knelt at his feet, pleading with him, begging him with the tears falling down her cheeks not to leave her.

In his dealings with women the Count had always been very much the dominant figure.

In fact his name was apt in that he was indeed the victor, the conqueror, and the women he made love to invariably surrendered themselves completely to everything he demanded of them.

At the same time the majority were sensible and sophisticated enough to safeguard their reputations.

The Count often thought cynically that it was the women who listened, even when they were at their most abandoned, for a footstep on the stairs, a creak of the door or the faintest sound that might mean discovery.

He had made a mistake, he realised, in choosing someone as young as Luise, apart from the fact that her whole temperament was obviously unsuited to intrigue of any sort.

He might have been excused for not realising how she would behave in as much as she had been married for four years, given her husband the heir he craved and could therefore no longer be thought of as being a young and innocent bride.

What he had forgotten was that Luise had never, until she met him, been in love.

She was swept off her feet and like many women before her thought the world well lost as she was awakened for the first time to the ecstasy of passion.

The Count was a very experienced lover and he was also when he made love considerate and tender as he never was at any other time.

Men thought him ruthless and it was only in moments of intimacy that a woman could see the softer side of his nature which at other times he was rather ashamed of.

Never before in all his years of enjoying the favours of the fair sex whenever they were offered to him had he known anyone so wildly, almost insanely, in love as Luise.

Aloud now, without turning round, he asked,

“What, ma’am, does Willem intend to do about it?”

“I have already spoken to him,” the Queen Dowager said. “He is, as might be expected, extremely bitter and would wish, if it was possible, to kill you!”

“I think that would be unlikely,” the Count remarked involuntarily.

“That is not the point,” the Queen Dowager retorted sharply. “You know as well as I do, Viktor, if one word is known about this, it will cause a huge scandal that will reverberate throughout Europe and harm the Queen. That is something I cannot allow.”

“No, of course not.”

“I decided when I became the Regent,” the Queen Dowager then went on, “that, because Wilhelmina was so young, the Court must set an example of purity and propriety.”

The Count wanted to say, ‘very commendable’, but he thought it might sound sarcastic.

The Dutch Court had, he thought, never been anything but an example of dull uninspired Monarchy, which most other Courts had no wish to emulate.

But he knew by the serious manner in which the Queen Dowager was speaking that she felt very strongly about the direction where her duty lay.

“It is,” she was saying, “as you can easily imagine, impossible for you and Willem to meet. That is why I have decided on a solution that I think will solve, for the moment at any rate, his problem and yours.”

The Count turned from the window.

“What are you asking me to do?” he enquired.

“I am telling you,” the Queen Dowager replied, “that you must leave here immediately and take a ship that I have already learnt is sailing from Zetland tonight for the East Indies.”

“The East Indies?”

The Count was so surprised that his voice as he said the words was unexpectedly loud.

“I shall inform the Privy Council that I have received news from the Island of Bali,” the Queen went on, “and have sent you as my Personal Advisor to report what is happening in that part of the world.”

“Bali!” the Count repeated as if he had never heard of the Island.

“Provided you leave today,” the Queen Dowager continued. “Willem will not announce the death of his wife until tomorrow, when you will have left the country.”

“How can it be possible for him to postpone the announcement?” the Count enquired automatically.

“Fortunately the doctor who attended Luise is one of my private physicians,” the Queen Dowager replied, “and he, Willem, you and I are at the moment the only persons who know that Luise is dead apart, of course, from her lady’s maid, who had been with her since she was a child and can be trusted.”

The Count said nothing and after a moment the Queen Dowager went on,

“You should be very grateful to Willem that, when he found that Luise was dead, he came at once to ask me what he should do. As an old servant of the Crown he was aware that knowledge of his wife’s action would be detrimental to the Monarchy.”

“You wish me to leave today?”

“If you are to catch the ship that I intend you to travel in,” the Queen Dowager said, “you will have only a few hours to pack your things.”

She paused as if she expected the Count to speak. When he did not do so, she continued,

“Before you leave you will receive your credentials and all the secret papers that you will carry on my behalf. And, of course, the names of those Officials whom you will interview on arrival in Bali.”

The Count still did not say anything and the Queen Dowager thought for the first time since she had known her cousin that he seemed for the moment unsure of himself.

Looking at his handsome face, her eyes softened and there was definitely a kindlier note in her voice as she said,

“I am so sorry that this has occurred, Viktor, but you have no one to blame but yourself.”

“No one,” the Count agreed.

*

It was a sentence that he was to repeat to himself over and over again on the voyage.

The ship he travelled in was a comfortable one and in deference to his rank and prestige he was treated in almost a Royal manner from the moment he had stepped aboard.

It was only when, during the long days and even longer nights at sea, he had time for introspection that he acknowledged that his sins had caught up with him and the punishment was indeed well deserved.

The Count was, as it happened, a highly intelligent man and, while he was prepared to take the blame for Luise’s death, he also was aware that the same thing might have happened to any man who aroused her emotions.

Most women were unpredictable, but there were those who, taken out of the rut that they had lived in all their lives, could easily become completely out of control or to put it in one word – unhinged.

This, however, did not console him for having to leave his estates and his houses, which he had arranged to his own satisfaction and the admiration of everyone else, as well as his many personal activities.

What he resented more than anything else was the boredom of the sea voyage.

He had been more concerned about what books to bring with him than his other personal effects which he had left to his valet.

Even so it was hard to know how to pass the time and he found the limited intelligence of the other passengers and the Captain unendurable long before they reached the Red Sea.

He had plenty of time, however, to learn something about Bali, which he knew very little about and he discovered with some surprise that only the North part of the Island had been acquired by the Dutch.

He had imagined that, as in Java, the Dutch reigned supreme, but instead most of Bali was still under the jurisdiction of the Radjas.

To the Count it was natural that the Dutch should make every effort to consolidate their Empire in the East, but from what he read he realised that the days of open aggression were frowned on and to justify a conquest the conquerors had to embrace a cause.

Motives, however, to satisfy both conscience and natural aggrandisement were not hard to find.

The invasion of North Bali, he understood reading between the lines, had required only a flimsy pretext obviously magnified for the occasion. When the invasion was successful it was followed by the conquest of the neighbouring Island of Lombok.

The Count might well be ruthless in many ways, but he was human enough to dislike an unequal contest whether it was between man and man or nation and nation.

He could very readily understand for his peace of mind that the Radjas and their retainers were brave men, but they had been no match for repeating rifles and modern cannon.

He also had a suspicion that the Dutchmen, as conquerors, had been unnecessarily cruel and insensitive and he decided that, if he saw anything that he disapproved of, he would not hesitate to make certain that measures were taken when he returned to Holland.

In the meantime, however, that seemed to him a long way off.

He had been so totally bored on the outward journey that he could not for the moment contemplate embarking on what he was certain would be an identically boring return.

Whatever Bali was like, he now told himself, he would have to put up with it for a time, which was what the Queen Dowager wanted him to do.

He knew that, his mission in Bali accomplished, there were a great many other places that he would find of interest and not only in the immediate vicinity.

It would be amusing to visit India and compare the role the British played as conquerors with that of his own countrymen. There was also Siam, which would be well worth a visit and perhaps, nearer to home, Persia and Constantinople.

Those places sounded considerably more alluring than Bali and the Count cheered up at the thought of them.

He told himself, however, first things first and, as he looked around critically, he decided that the sooner he had his first report ready for the Queen Dowager the better.

He had been met at the Port by the Governor with what seemed to be a most efficient conveyance drawn by horses that the Count would have thought beneath his dignity to own had he seen them in Holland.

The Governor himself was a large overweight man in his late thirties with a complexion that made the Count suspect that he imbibed too frequently and too copiously.

He spoke in the sharp staccato way of a man who was used to giving orders to inferiors and the Count suspected that it was with somewhat of an effort that he made himself polite and conciliatory to his guest.

“We have been greatly looking forward to your visit, mijnheer,” he began.

The Count was quite certain that it was untrue, but he acknowledged the politeness with a faint smile and, as they drove away from the Port, looked about him in what he hoped the Governor would think was an interested manner.

He had expected, because he had read about it, that the women would be graceful and he saw now that he had not been mistaken.

The custom of carrying everything that needed to be conveyed on their heads had given them the carriage of a Goddess and the slimness of a long-stemmed flower.

The Count was also intrigued by the fact that they were naked to the waist and the only coverings on their golden skin were bead necklaces that swung and shimmered.

Both men and women wore flowers in their hair and now, as if the Governor felt that he should excite the Count’s interest, he went into a rather lewd exaltation of the attractions of the females.

“You must see the dancing while you are here,” he suggested. “That is something worth watching and I am certain, mijnheer, that you will enjoy the cock fighting.”

The Count did not reply.

This was the one sport which he found particularly unpleasant, but he knew from what he had read that it had an almost obsessional interest for the Balinese and doubtless for their conquerors as well.

“We will do our best to entertain you,” the Governor went on, “although I am afraid that you will find life here dull and comparatively uneventful. There is no fighting here in the North. We see to that!”

He grinned and continued,

“I believe the Radjas in the South are always sparring with each other so sooner or later they will give us an excuse to step in and bring peace to the people.”

“Is that really what you expect to do?” the Count asked with a twist of his lips.

The Governor smiled.

“For the peasant one Ruler is very like another.”

“I doubt if that is true,” the Count commented, but he did not wish to make an issue of it.

They reached the Governor’s Palace, which was built in the style that could have been found in any part of the East. The large high rooms had punkahs swinging on every ceiling, but even so the heavy moist air seemed overpowering.

It had been a long drive from the Harbour but, although the Governor suggested that the Count might wish to retire to his own rooms, he refused.

Instead he sat down in the large and comfortable sitting room and, while the Governor ordered drinks, said with a note of authority in his voice,

“I am anxious while I am here to see the whole workings of your administration. The Queen Dowager has asked me to make a special report on North Bali.”

“I gathered that was why you had come here,” the Governor answered. “I only hope that the report you make will make it easy for us to obtain more guns and cannon so that we can conquer the rest of the Island.”

“That is not what I intend,” the Count replied, “but I will certainly put your request in my report if that is what you wish.”

“It must certainly be the obvious conclusion to our occupation,” the Governor replied.

He was about to say more when a servant came to his side.

“What is it?” he asked testily.

“The Juffrouw Barclay, who you asked to visit you yesterday is here, Your Excellency.”

“I said yesterday!” the Governor replied sharply.

“I think that the Juffrouw will make her apologies, Your Excellency, but she could not come.”

The Governor rose to his feet.

“If you will forgive me,” he said to the Count, “there is someone who wishes to see me.”

“Barclay does not sound like a Dutch name.”

“The young lady is in fact English.”

“English? Here in Bali?”

As if he was reluctant to give out any further information, the Governor said,

“She came out here with her uncle who was Dutch and a Missionary.”

“A Missionary!”

There was no doubt that the Count was surprised.

He had read in the books he had studied on the voyage over that in 1877 a law had been passed forbidding any Missionary to settle in Bali.

“As you cannot be aware,” the Governor explained seeing the expression on the Count’s face, “temporary terms were accorded last year to both Catholic and Protestant Missionaries, who wished to make a further attempt to carry on their work.”

“I did not know that,” the Count responded.

“It was, I do believe, entirely on the instigation of the Churches at home who felt that we were lacking in duty if we denied these heathens the benefits and comfort of Christianity.”

“I understood that the Balinese have a definite religion of their own,” the Count queried.

“That is true.”

“I also learnt that the plight of the first Christian convert has become legendary,” the Count said.

It was a story which the Count had found in every book he had perused about the Island. The man’s name had been Nicodemus and he had been both a pupil and a servant of the first Missionary who had set foot in Bali.

When the community he belonged to learnt that he had become a Christian they expelled him from his village, banned him from contact with his people and proclaimed him morally ‘dead’.

The unfortunate man tried to recruit other followers, but the villagers, terrorised by the threats to their Priests, ignored him.

Repulsed on all sides, poor Nicodemus had led an intolerable existence until driven to despair he had finally killed his Master and given himself up to be executed.

It was not surprising, the Count thought, that a law forbidding Missionaries had come into force. He found it hard to believe that only fourteen years later that things would be so changed that Christian Missionaries would again be accepted.

He then looked at the Governor and had a feeling that he was uncomfortable and was concealing something.

Making up his mind on the impulse of the moment, the Count suggested,

“I would like to meet this woman who has come here to see you. It would give me a chance to find out how her Mission is working.”

“It is not her mission,” the Governor stated in a surly manner. “It was her uncle’s.”

“But she works with him?”

“He is dead!”

“Dead?” the Count questioned.

“He died two months ago.”

“Naturally – or was he killed?”

“Naturally.”

“Then I presume his niece is carrying on his good work. Let me talk to her.”

The Count thought that the Governor was going to defy him and refuse to allow him to see the woman who was waiting outside.

It was only an impression and yet the Count was certain that he was not mistaken.

For some reason that he could not understand the Governor was very reluctant for him to come into contact with this Miss Barclay, which was the way, being English, he knew that she would be addressed.

For a moment the eyes of the two men met and it was as if there were a silent combat between them.

Then the Governor capitulated.

“Show the Juffrouw in,” he said to the servant and sat down again.

The Count was intrigued.

Had he so soon after setting foot in Bali discovered something perhaps reprehensible that the Governor had no wish for him to know about or investigate?

For the first time his boredom lightened a little and he felt a spark of interest that had not been there before.

He was amused that he had been able to assert his will over an older man, whom he had realised at their first meeting, enjoyed and took advantage of every privilege he was accorded as Governor.

Neither of the men spoke until the servant announced from the doorway,

“The Juffrouw Roxana Barclay, Your Excellency.”

He mispronounced both English words, but the Count understood what he was trying to say.

Then into the room came a slim young woman, who moved with a grace that was almost that of a Balinese woman.

She seemed to float over the wooden floor towards where the Governor and the Count were sitting.

She was wearing a plain white gown with a tight bodice that revealed the soft curves of her breasts and showed off the slimness of her waist.

It swept back into a small bustle and the folds made her look like a Grecian Goddess, an image that was magnified by the way that she held her head and by the beauty of her hair.

What completely astonished the Count was that she wore no hat, which was extremely unconventional, but she carried a sunshade, which must certainly have kept the sun’s burning rays from the exquisite perfection of her white skin.

Her hair was not the ordinary gold likened by poets to a cornfield or to the rays of the sun, but was the colour of the first autumn leaves with a touch of russet in them.

It was piled high into a bun at the back of her head, but seemed somehow eager to escape from the confines its owner had intended, to fall in tiny tendrils round her neck and her oval forehead.

Her large eyes were green with touches of gold in them that seemed to have come from the sunshine.

She had a haunting and very unusual face, not classically beautiful, but with something far more individual and far more arresting, as if it was a face that came from a man’s dreams and was not wholly human.

When Roxana Barclay came within a few feet of the Governor, she curtseyed.

It was a very graceful and very lovely gesture.

“Good day, Your Excellency,” she said, “and may I offer my apologies for not calling here yesterday as you requested me to do.”

“I am used to my orders being obeyed,” the Governor replied coldly.

He spoke in a voice that the Count knew was put on for his benefit, but his eyes, when he looked at the woman facing him, said something very different.

“I did not receive your message,” Roxana Barclay explained. “I was away from home.”

“In the forest I suppose?” the Governor said harshly. “I have warned you before that it is dangerous to go wandering about on your own.”

“No one will hurt me,” was the reply, “and I only went to look for wood.”

“For wood?”

The Count could not help interposing the exclamation. He could not imagine why this elegant young girl should require wood unless it was needed for cooking, in which case why could a servant not have fetched it for her?

As if she noticed his presence for the first time, Roxana Barclay looked at the man who had spoken.

With obvious reluctance the Governor said to the Count,

“May I present to you Miss Roxana Barclay? As I have already told you she is here on sufferance. Her uncle had a permit to remain for two years, which is now terminated.”

Roxana curtseyed as she was introduced and for some reason that he could not explain to himself the Count rose to his feet and held out his hand.

“I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Barclay,” he said in English.

He saw the delight in her eyes, which seemed to make them larger than they were before.

“You speak English?”

“I hope well enough for you to understand me.”

“You are being modest, mijnheer, you speak perfect English. I am surprised!”

“Why?”

“I am sorry if it sounds rude. But the servant told me that I had called at an inconvenient time as a very important Dutch Official was with the Governor and all the other Officials I have met can speak only their own language.”

“What you have heard or not heard in the past cannot be of interest,” the Governor said coldly.

“I am – sorry,” Roxana murmured.

“On the contrary,” the Count contradicted her. “I am interested and I would like to know, Miss Barclay, about your work here.”

She looked puzzled.

“My – work?”

Then she smiled in understanding.

“Oh, you mean my uncle’s work. It is not mine.”

“You are not a Missionary?”

“No – and I have no interest in trying to convert an already happy people into accepting a creed that is quite alien to their natures.”

“That is not the sort of thing you should say,” the Governor said sharply. “You know as well as I do, Roxana, that it is the policy of the Dutch authorities to further Christianity if it is at all possible.”

Again the Count knew that the Governor was talking to impress. At the same time he had not missed the familiar way that he addressed the English girl.

Roxana ignored him and instead she said to the Count,

“I must explain that, now my uncle is dead, I am interested only in my own work.”

“And what is that?”

“I am a sculptor in wood.”

“You mean you are a carver?”

“That sounds a rather crude name for something that is an art, especially on this Island.”

“I read that carving is one of the national occupations. They make the decorations for the Temples and the masks that are used for their Festivals.”

The Count was rather pleased that he could show himself so knowledgeable and thought that the Governor was surprised especially as he said,

“I see you know a great deal about the native customs, mijnheer.”

“I always make it my business to know as much as possible about any place I visit,” the Count replied reprovingly. “Will you not sit down, Miss Barclay? There are quite a number of things I would like to talk to you about and that I suspect the Balinese would not wish to tell me and the Dutch would not want me to know!”

Roxana sat down on the chair he indicated. Then with a glance at the Governor she said,

“If I say too much, it will get me into trouble.”

“Why?”

“Because I am only here on sufferance. I believe a number of the Dutch residents have already said that, now my uncle is dead, I should leave the Island.”

“You are living alone?”

There was an incredulous note in the Count’s voice.

“Not exactly,” she replied. “I have with me someone who I consider to be quite sufficient as a chaperone, an elderly woman who was with my aunt for many years.”

“A servant!” the Governor said sharply.

“My aunt looked upon Geertruida as a companion, which is what she now is to me.”

The Governor sighed as if in exasperation.

“I have suggested, mijnheer,” he said, addressing the Count, “that Miss Barclay, if she wishes to stay in Bali, should live with some respectable Dutch family. I could easily find her a place in one of their Villas, but she will not agree.”

“I prefer to be on my own,” Roxana said. “I work very hard and sometimes late at night. That would certainly prove an inconvenience to most people.”

“You should accept the situation I have offered to you,” the Governor almost growled.

The Count was aware that Roxana stiffened.

Then she said in a cold voice that she had not used before,

“What you have suggested, Your Excellency, is quite unacceptable! I would not consider it under any circumstances.”