THE THOUGHT went with him, nagging him on every stage of the trip. Impossible to have taken her in the circumstances, of course. But this, perhaps, was the dictate of London, where life was conditioned by the account books in a stodgy office and everything a little out of the ordinary was impossible.
By the time his plane was circling over Santa Teresa, waiting for the signal to come in, the impossible had become the feasible. San Mateo was very far from England, and the Lewis Page who watched the wheeling cyclorama of sea and sky and mountains was even more remote from the man who had laboured for years with Bob Talliver to achieve bankruptcy.
Here was a climate of exhilaration and hope, and this was a flight to freedom. Lewis Page was out of his prison, and, in long perspective, the routine of the city and the humdrum affairs of a suburban home seemed infinitely dreary. Of course, he had endured everything for Anne’s sake, but where had it got him? And where was it getting Anne?
The spirit of the girl was as subdued as his own had been. She might do something as a composer, something that would give her satisfaction, but it was more important that she should become a woman. Perhaps she had a loveliness that needed no adornment, but he wanted to see in her more of her mother’s femininity; at least some little thought of feminine things.
He had, on occasions, given her modest pieces of jewellery, but heaven alone knew what she did with them. Recently he had been quite annoyed because she had mislaid an emerald ring that Julian had had made for her, and only his insistence had kept her searching till it was found.
“Such a fuss about a bit of old glass,” she had complained, repeating Julian’s own description of the stone. But it was something that Julian himself had uncovered in the hills of Rosario, and she should have valued it as his gift, especially as he had gone to a lot of trouble over the setting.
Something had to be done about Anne; something to bring her out of her own peculiar prison. And here, in this New World, was the climate. If it could give him a sense of his own importance, take years off his shoulders, make him feel that he was still alive . . .
He looked at the woman across the gangway.
A very beautiful woman, beautifully groomed.
From the moment she boarded the plane at Cristobal he had been thinking how attractive she was. Again and again he had taken his eyes off her by a conscious effort, self-reproving, only to find his gaze returning a moment or two later. When other passengers were eager for a first glimpse of the Cordilleras, he looked only at that exquisite face with the warm-tinted olive skin and the large dark eyes.
Turning from her, he stared at the air-line leaflet in his hand. He must connect with the Trajano plane at Santa Teresa. He read the pertinent paragraph over and over, but the words made no sense to him. He thought of the life he had led, bounded by his devotion to a memory, but could find no satisfaction in it any longer. It was false. It had been nothing but a defeat.
Hang it all, he was not so old. He was even a year younger than Julian. To deny life at forty was insane. To tell himself that he was finished was just emotional and physical indolence. If he took himself in hand, there was still a prospect of living. Anne was fast growing up. Soon she would look beyond herself, and in the normal course would marry. Then he would be alone; but only in another degree, for he was alone already, with no contact that could take him out of his indolence.
It might be that this woman across the gangway was similarly alone, needing friendship. He had only to reach out to touch her shoulder or take her hand, but she was unaware of him, and they must go on as strangers.
She turned at that moment and he could look into her eyes. It seemed that she gazed directly at him, but he knew that she was still unaware of him, passing him with a casual glance. There was sadness in her face, and something else that he could not exactly define; a nervousness, even fear, but it was probably no more than an apprehensiveness of the little worries at a journey’s end.
In another moment the plane touched down and she descended to the runway just ahead of him. A man met her in the terminal building, but there was no hint of intimacy in the encounter, not even the offer of a gloved hand from the woman.
Lewis watched the two go off together. He was deprived, desolate, halted uncertainly in the middle of the wide hall. Then he shook himself out of the mood. He was being absurd, and he had no time to be absurd. He had to think of Trajano and Julian. He went quickly towards the inquiry counter, only to be told that he had missed the connection for the capital, and there was but one flight daily.
He looked out from the hall upon the sprawling mass of the mountain range that barred access to the central valley. He could take the night train that crawled and squirmed and panted a hard way up and through and across the barrier, but he would save no time by doing so. He decided to wait for the next day’s plane.
Since no reply had come from the Casa Alta to his several messages from London, he had planned to surprise Julian by walking in on him, but, now that he was so close, impatience to see his brother made him send a telegram with the news that he would be on the plane. That would be surprise enough. That would start Julian off at an early hour in the morning on the long drive down from the highlands to Trajano. He could imagine how excited Julian would be at the airport. And Julian’s regret that Anne had been left in London.
It was a regret that Lewis himself began to feel acutely, and later, when he gazed from a balcony of the Hotel Granada at the busy scene presented by the harbour, he was further troubled by the thought. How Anne would have loved all this! Instead, cheated of her holiday, she would be moping at home, quarrelling with the too motherly Mrs. Benson, no doubt.
The imagined picture brought him to an impulsive decision worthy of Julian himself. Anne should have her voyage. For the isles of Greece he would substitute other islands: Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba. Then there would be the ports of the Canal and of the West Coast down to Santa Teresa, where he would meet her, and Julian, of course, would be with him at the dockside.
All this would involve a delay of three or four weeks at least in his return to London, but time no longer seemed important. While waiting for Anne he would be enjoying himself at the Casa Alta. Once a loan was arranged and the money transferred, Talliver could handle things in London.
He paused a moment in the foyer. He had heard whispers of trouble; political trouble, insurrection. But there was always talk of insurrection in San Mateo. It was a popular pastime, congenital; an expression of the intense partisanship that gave an edge to existence and boosted the circulation of the factional newspapers. Sometimes there had been a little shooting, but a stable government now ruled and, even in the remote contingency of violence, there was no risk if you kept off the streets.
Lewis called for cable forms. Later he posted an airmail letter to Anne, explaining everything, and his sense of well-being was brought to perfection. In the dining room that night he looked at the guests, hoping that he might see again the woman who had been a fellow passenger from Cristobal, but disappointment in this could not diminish his cheerfulness. He laughed at himself.
The feeling of pleasurable living remained with him all the evening. His fear that something might be wrong with his brother was forgotten, but it came back to him when he stepped from the plane at Trajano airport next day. Julian was not there to meet him.