Читать книгу Marivosa - Baroness Orczy - Страница 18

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But there was yet another important personality in this drama of mystery and adventure—and a more than intriguing one at that. This was Teresa da Pinto, the doctor’s daughter, whose engagement to Dom Manoël da Lisbao was said to be pending, but had not yet been officially announced.

It was generally understood that the marriage would take place some time before the New Year. Dom Manoël, when twitted on the subject, neither denied nor admitted the impeachment. Teresa was reticence personified. On the other hand, the doctor, when he was sober, talked often and freely about his daughter’s forthcoming marriage. ‘Such a comfort it will be to me,’ he would say, ‘to see her happily settled. It was her mother’s dying wish that she should marry her old playmate ... she and Manoël were children together....’ Which everyone knew to be a lie, but no one took the trouble to contradict. Timothy could not understand why Dom Manoël hung back, for Teresa was very beautiful; she was the only child of a very rich man, who was Manoël’s friend—his partner in felony—and, very obviously, she was deeply in love with him. No one could mistake the meaning of her glance when it rested on Manoël da Lisbao; those lovely dark eyes of hers would soften in an exquisite look of tenderness. But equally unmistakable was the indifference—sometimes the good-humoured mockery—with which he responded; and whenever she saw that smile of his—so pleasant and so cool—the look of tenderness vanished, engulfed at times in a spasm of intense pain, at others in passionate resentment which was almost hate. And Timothy would then wonder just how much she knew.

She was very sweet and kind to Tim; prattled away in excellent English, danced a great deal with him, and accepted his obvious admiration as a homage due to her beauty. She had never been in Europe, and liked apparently to hear him talk of Paris, or Rome, or London. She was interested in many things: pictures, theatres, cinemas, or frocks, the gambling at Monte Carlo or the racing at Ascot. Tim even caught himself one day telling her about his beautiful home in Ireland: the old battlemented towers which had seen eight centuries flit by; he told her about the silvery lake and the mist-laden horizon above which peeped the green-sunbathed Irish hills; and about the age-old trees, and the woods that were carpeted with anemones in the spring, or ablaze in the autumn with a glory of russet and gold.

‘How you must love it!’ she said.

It was at thé dansant at the Americano. Dom Manoël was expected but had not yet arrived; so they danced together a good deal, Tim and she, and then sat down at a small table away from the rest of the crowd and were served with tea.

She had listened to him with her great dark eyes fixed upon him while he talked—eyes, whose expression he tried in vain to fathom. And again he wondered how much she knew. And then Dom Manoël arrived. He strode up to their table, good-humoured, pleasant, full of apologies to Teresa for being late. ‘But you have been in such excellent company,’ he said graciously. Then, with a polite: ‘May I join you?’ he sat down at the table and ordered tea.

‘I am sure,’ he said, in the interval of munching a chocolate éclair, ‘that our dear Major has been entertaining you with tales of his lost friend, Dudley Stone. I never saw a man so obsessed with a fixed idea, and as I tell him...’ He helped himself to another éclair and continued to prattle on in his pleasant, jovial way, chaffing Tim about his persistent inquiries after Dudley Stone. ‘Our dear Major,’ he said, ‘must be contemplating writing the biography of my late lamented friend. I have told him all there was to know, as I knew Stone intimately. But still he is not satisfied—he must needs go into every disreputable tavern in the old city and enter into conversation with every bad character he comes across. And for what object, I ask you...?’

Tim took up the challenge with equal good humour.

‘Perhaps, as you say, I may want to write a life of Stone. He was an extraordinary character, you know....’

Teresa had become unaccountably silent. She appeared chiefly interested in watching Manoël polishing off his third éclair.

Said Dom Manoël: ‘You are right there—Stone was an extraordinary character. A trifle toqué is, I believe, the correct expression to describe the borderland between sanity and madness. He must, during his lifetime, have often spoken about me to his friends in England, because when a few years ago his widow wished to prove his death, I was approached, along with Teresa’s father and the priest, who were with him when he died, with a view to certain affidavits which were required by the law of your country.... Naturally we all complied—it was a simple request.... You may have heard something of the whole affair?’

‘I did,’ Tim replied curtly; ‘Mrs. Stone subsequently married my uncle.’

‘But how interesting! ... Do you hear that, Teresa? ... You remember Mr. Stone? ... But, of course, you were just a child when he died ... I thought the lady had married an English nobleman ... Lord ... Lord ... I forget....’

‘Lord Traskmoore was my uncle—he was Irish, not English.’

‘Irish ... Irish, of course ... how stupid of me.... We are all so stupid about that, we poor foreigners, not? ... And it is so difficult, too, with your peerage ... the title, and then the family name.... And so Mrs. Stone became your aunt? ... But how interesting!’

‘My aunt.... Great God!’ Tim had very nearly uttered this exclamation aloud.

The band struck up the opening bars of a tango. Manoël hastily gulped down his tea and, without saying ‘by your leave,’ carried Teresa off to dance. Timothy watched them with delight. Never had he seen more perfect, more rhythmical dancing. The sensuous movements of the tango suited Teresa’s lissom figure to perfection. Manoël held her tightly to him and she looked as if she were gliding along in his arms, her beautiful body seeming at one with his. At times Tim caught sight of her face: her eyes were half-closed, the long lashes throwing a softening shadow over her cheeks. But Manoël was just the male, holding that which was his by right of conquest. He held her so close that her spine was nearly doubled back over his arm; from time to time he touched her hair with his lips. The touch was as subtle, as delicate as that of a butterfly’s wing on the petal of a flower, but it reached her consciousness nevertheless: a tremor would go through her body, the blue-veined lids fell over the eyes, veiling them completely, while the moist red lips were parted in an ecstasy of delight.

‘What a fool that man is,’ Timothy thought; ‘and how she loves him!’

This started a new train of thought, and for the first time since the outset of his great adventure, he asked himself if it was all worth while. Was he grasping at a shadow while losing hold of the beautiful realities of life? With the money which his father had left him he might have settled down in the old country to farm his own bit of land. He might have had a simple home, a wife ... children. Life would have been easy....

‘It would not, Tim, my lad,’ he said to himself. ‘Easy? Rather not! ... You would have burst your guts with rage every time Hold-Hands Juliana passed you by in her Rolls-Royce, or you read of the marvellous gown she wore at Ascot.... No, my son! as you’ve made your bed, so must you lie on it.... But I wish that lovely Teresa had not fallen in love with one of the greatest rascals unhung....’