Читать книгу Marivosa - Baroness Orczy - Страница 19

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After the tango Dom Manoël was obliged to pay his respects to other ladies present. The old Marqueza detained him in conversation, and once more Tim found himself with Teresa, slightly isolated from the rest of the crowd. She was flushed and breathless after the dance; her beautiful eyes shone dark and luminous in the pure oval of her face. Beautiful she was, and from a man’s point of view, infinitely desirable; and though for some unexplainable reason she did not appeal to Timothy in that sense, nevertheless he was conscious of a great feeling of sympathy for her—almost of pity, for she obviously was not happy.

She asked for an iced drink, and Tim got her an orangeade; while she sipped it through the straws she kept her eyes over the glass fixed upon Tim, with a look, so he thought, of anxiety. Presently she put her glass down and asked an abrupt question.

‘It isn’t all true, is it?’

‘What is?’

‘That you go about in all sorts of low haunts in the city and talk to disreputable characters...?’

Tim laughed. ‘I don’t know about “low” or about “disreputable,” but being a student of human nature...’

She gave a quaint little smile. ‘You need not study human nature in the drinking-booths of the old city....’

‘But suppose I say that I find the drinking-booths of the old city more interesting than’—with a glance he indicated the elegant assembly at the thé dansant—’than this sort of thing.’

Teresa remained silent for a moment or two. Apparently she was pondering over what he had just said. Then all of a sudden she seemed to make up her mind.

‘Don’t go about to those places any more, Major O’Clerigh,’ she said, with an earnest glance of her dark expressive eyes. ‘It isn’t safe, you know.’

‘Oh!’

‘I know. I know. Men are all alike. They think women are cowards just because they are prudent. But foolhardiness is not bravery.’

Tim smiled, with the indulgent contempt of the male at the girl’s anxiety.

‘There’s no question of foolhardiness or of bravery,’ he said; ‘only curiosity.’

‘Then promise me...’

She had spoken abruptly, and then, just as abruptly she paused, the eager sympathy died out of her eyes, and an expression came into them all of a sudden which Tim could not define. It looked almost like fear. He was sitting with his back turned to the rest of the crowd while talking to Teresa, so did not see Dom Manoël, who had worked his way back to their table. It was not until the pleasant, cheery voice struck on his ear that he understood why the expression in the girl’s face had changed so suddenly.

‘One more waltz, cara—then I’m afraid I shall have to go. If our dear Major will excuse....’

Dom Manoël, as before, took possession of Teresa and led her to the dancing floor and Tim was left to ponder over the strange little episode.

He did not see the girl again that day, but the next morning a barefooted urchin brought a small parcel for the senhor Inglez to the hotel. He didn’t wait for an answer, but said he had orders to deliver the parcel into the senhor’s own hands. Very much intrigued, Tim opened it. It contained a short dagger, with handle and sheath of exquisite Toledo workmanship, and with it a note written in quaint, rather stilted English in an ornate, foreign hand. It said:

‘A very dear friend gave me this toy once. I have no use for it, but it will serve you well whenever the study of human nature leads you into trouble. Promise me never to go out into the streets of this city without it. It is safer and more feared than a Browning.’

The note was not signed. Tim took up the dagger, drew it out of its sheath, and looked with admiration on the beautiful Toledo blade and the exquisite silver inlay in the finely-tempered steel. He laid it down upon the table and then re-read the note.

‘Funny girl,’ he murmured. ‘Why she should ... “safer than a Browning”? I suppose she means that it makes no noise.’ And then, following a fresh train of thought: ‘I wonder how much she does know.’

But that evening when he went to meet his friend the Dutchman, at the Bom Genio, he had Teresa’s gift safely stowed away in his hip-pocket.