Island in the Dawn (10 page)

But so far as Felicity knew, the staff had received no instructions to alter rooms
...
And as for Cassandra’s absurd talk about the bridal chamber
—
well, that of course, was nothing more than silly chatter!

Then she remembered the photograph, and bit her lip so hard that it pained her sharply for a second or so. She was dabbing at her lower lip with her wisp of lace handkerchief that she had been crushing into a tight, hard, moist ball in her other hand, when she heard the footsteps on the path, and started.

A man’s voice said reproachfully: “You shouldn’t be sitting here alone in the dark on
the
eve of your wedding. It isn’t as if there’s any sort of stag-party going on for the bridegroom and his friends, and it isn’t as if the bridegroom is even playing bridge. I don’t know where he is
—
he’s vanished. And you’re the forlorn maiden all alone in a wood!”

“I’m not forlorn.” Felicity tried to speak lightly, but she had been startled for a moment when she heard those footsteps. It was very isolated here in the plantation, and the sense of loneliness and unprotectedness was something that had seemed to press on her. “I’m just here to get cool.”

“Really?” He glanced at her sideways in the gloom, and she thought that he smiled oddly. “Mind if I share this tree trunk with you?”

“Of course not.”

Mervyn Manners seated himself.

“I wonder what brought this chap down like this?” patting the smooth bark, and looking upwards into the dim tops of the trees. “One of those sudden hurricanes that blow up here, I suppose! I believe they’re absolute demons when they get started, and even magnificent giants like this are not proof against being wrenched out of the earth! Can’t say I should care to experience one of them myself!”

Felicity’s eyes grew a little wider, and she looked surprised.

“I didn’t know they had hurricanes here, but I suppose I should have known, considering the latitude we’re in. But there isn’t very much evidence apart from this tree of any very recent disaster, is there?”

“None that I’ve come upon so far.” He offered her his cigarette-case, and when she refused lighted himself a cigarette. “But don’t let my remark cause you any alarm
—
I suppose it was a little tactless considering you’re going to live here
—
and don’t let it put you off the thought of doing so.”

Once again he glanced at her sideways, and although she couldn’t see his face she knew that for once his audacious blue eyes were not twinkling with the amusement that normally dwelt in them.

“How could it put me off,” she asked, “when I am
—
when I am going to live here?”

He shrugged his shoulders slightly. As he was wearing a white sharkskin dinner jacket it was easy to see the movement.

“It’s not too late to change your mind, you know!” Felicity sat very still and silent beside him. She felt as if she had been watching a conjurer producing rabbits out of a hat
—
and the final rabbit hadn’t surprised her in the least.

“Why do you say that?” she managed, really curiously, at last.

“Because I thought you ought to be reminded of it!”

“Cassandra has been
—
talking to you?”

“Cassandra?” He shrugged again. “Would I listen to Cassandra, whatever she said? I’ve come all this way to
her uncle’s island because, like you, I’m determined to do something I’ll almost certainly regret, but I seldom pay very much attention to Cassandra’s views on people and things. She feels that you’ve let her down badly
—
in fact, she’s really disappointed in you
—
and you’ve snaffled her man
from
under her nose, and for that alone I ought
to feel grateful
to you. But
I
don’t feel grateful, because that chap Halloran would see through a dozen Cassandras, and whatever wiles she used on him she would never have got
him
in the end. I
think
she knows that herself now, but that doesn’t make her feel any kinder towards you. I simply can’t understand why you’re rushing into marriage, and I wish you wouldn’t do it, Felicity!”

“Why not?”

“Because
...
Oh, I don’t know!..
.”

“You think Paul can see through a dozen of me, too?”

“I think you’re both a little inscrutable, although I would once have said you were the most transparently honest and unpretentious young woman I know. I would have said that when you married it would be for love, and a home, and children, and all that sort of thing, and that the chap who got you would be jolly lucky. But Halloran isn’t behaving like a man who is aware of his good fortune
—
please
forgive me for saying this, won’t you?
—
and I’ve never seen you look less as I imagined you would look when you got everything satisfactorily tied up, and your future husband nicely ear-marked and in line for the altar. And the very fact that there isn’t going to be any altar is another thing!
...
This hole and
corner
marriage isn’t good enough for you, Felicity!”

“Thank you, Mervyn,” she answered gratefully. “But it’s all I want.”

“Rubbish!” he exclaimed. The whole
thing
is being indecently rushed
—
not that I hold that against Halloran if he’s in love with you
—
but
if
he’s in love with you why doesn’t he make a few concessions where you’re concerned, and take you away from this island for a bit? A short honeymoon
—
a visit to Kingston to get married! There are hotels you could stay in. He’s got plenty of money
...
There’s nothing to prevent the two of you going off for a long honeymoon. After all, he’s been stuck here in this island for two years
...”

“He’s only just recovered his sight,” she pointed out.

“True, but having recovered it he’s got nothing to gloom about, and any normal man would be happy to get away for a bit with a new wife! You’re pretty, Felicity
—
so pretty that if I wasn’t in love with Cassandra I’d fall in love with you myself
—
and you deserve to be shown off, bought pretty things
—
expensive things. You’ve never had much fun, have you?”

“You mean I’ve never been able to buy expensive things for myself?”

“Yes
—
and Cassandra tells me you’re being married in one of her old dresses!”

“She shouldn’t have told you that!”

“All the same, she did. And, Felicity..
.”

“Yes?”

“There’s something
—
something
...
”

The gloom of the trees wrapped them about, the pale fingers of moonlight touched their hair, and one of them
—
a very cold finger of moonlight
—
touched Felicity’s heart.

“It’s about
—
the photograph, isn’t it?” she asked, quite gently. “You feel that I ought to know about it?”

“But you already do know about it! Don’t tell me
Cassandra
—
?”

“She told me; but perhaps she, too, thought I ought to know! I don’t think she was merely trying to hurt me,” not altogether truthfully, for she knew that Cassandra had been glad to hurt her. “And, after all, a photograph is
—
only a photograph, isn’t it?”

Mervyn shook his head as if he was genuinely puzzled.

“I saw it
—
I saw it myself! But it wasn’t there this morning when he called me, into his room to show me a book we had been discussing a few nights ago. But the very fact that he called me into his room again did strike me as odd
—
I think he meant me to see that the photograph was no longer there!”

Felicity sighed suddenly, but it was so soft a sigh that he hardly heard it

“I wouldn’t worry, Mervyn,” she said. “Things are not always what they seem, you know
—
and, anyway, I’m being married tomorrow. You, presumably, will marry Cassandra as soon as you can persuade her to name a day?”

He nodded
—
and then he, too, sighed.

“What fools we are
—
asking for trouble by the bucketful! But at least I
know
what to expect
—
I’m wondering whether you do. And if you don’t Felicity
—
then be sensible, while you still have the chance, and change your mind.”

“You’re sweet, Mervyn,” sh
e said, “but I won’t change my mind!”

He laid his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze, “Not a hope?”

“Not a—hope!”

And then a shadow fell across the tree trunk, and she discovered that Paul was standing looking down at them. His eyes were cold as the slits in a mask.

“This is not a sensible place in which to sit at this hour of the night,” he said. “Felicity, if you don’t want to risk getting a chill, come inside!”

But he completely ignored Mervyn.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

TWENTY-FOUR hours later they had all gone and the house, as Felicity had known it would be, was as silent as a pool hidden away in the depths of a shadowy wood.

She herself had just lived through an evening that had shaken her as nothing in her life had ever shaken her before. Now she stood fumbling with the clasp of her necklace and trying to remove it in front of her dressing table mirror. Her bed was turned down
—
the familiar bed she had occupied for three weeks
—
and Florence had put out a nightdress that was the most cobwebby confection she could find amongst Felicity’s things. It had actually been a present from Cassandra when Cassandra had been feeling particularly generous, and looked like the pale lining of a shell as it lay on the white sheet.

Beneath Felicity’s feet her soft grey carpet felt like a bed of moss. It was the sort of carpet that helped to deaden all sound in this white house filled with costly treasures. Her curtains of rose-colored
moiré
silk swayed gently in the night air, and all around her a circle of rosy light spread until it reached the shadows that lay just inside the white-painted door. The door itself was locked, and it was her own fingers that had turned the key
—
whether as a sort of gesture or not she didn’t know.

If anyone tried it they wo
uld find it didn’t yield. But sh
e was quite certain no one would try it.

Downstairs her husband of a few hours was smoking
a
cigarette on the veranda. He hadn’t said whether it would be a last cigarette, but she strongly suspected
he would smoke a good many more before he went to bed himself. He had looked grim when he recommended her to call it a day, being aware of her, apparently, out of the
corner
of his eye, although he had been staring into the darkness while he spoke.

“You must feel that it’s been a little exhausting
—
to say the least!
—
and I expect you’d like to go to bed! There’s no reason why you should get up early tomorrow, either. You could have what your Miss Wood would call a ‘comfortable lie in’,” with a cold curl to his lips, “and Florence will bring you breakfast, and even lunch, on a tray, if you’d like her to do so!”

“I don’t normally breakfast in bed,” Felicity protested, as if the words were wrung out of her. “And I certainly wouldn’t want lunch in my room, unless I was ill.”

“I was thinking you might like a little quiet for
a
change.”

“It hasn’t been as noisy as all that!” She stared at her hands, at the strange, unfamiliar ring that glittered in the light that streamed from the room behind them. Even now she didn’t know how, or by what means, he had obtained that ring, but it was obviously new, and miraculously it fitted her. It was of pale, smooth gold, and it felt like a badge on her finger. “And everyone was most kind. Miss Menzies is
—
is very kind! I shall miss her!”

“And Mr. Manners?”

“Mr. Manners is a fellow countryman I like.
I’
m hoping Cassandra will like him enough to marry him one day.”

“You have just become a married woman yourself, and I should get used to the idea of that before marrying anyone else off,” Paul remarked, so curtly, and as if he was speaking through slightly clenched teeth, that she stared at him with a kind of pain in her eyes
as he strode to the veranda rail.

That bad been his attitude ever since the night before, when he had come upon her and Mervyn Manners in the plantation. Whether he had seen Manners laying his hand over hers she couldn’t tell, but even if he had there had been absolutely nothing in it, and she was inclined to believe that ids attitude had nothing to do with Mervyn at all. Possibly all at once the realization that he was doing something extremely unwise had poured over him just as it had poured over her, and he was unable to fight against that sudden cold shock of awareness. No doubt he felt appalled, concerned because of his dead love and what he was doing to her memory. He was banishing it out of his life
—
or he was banishing the right to keep her photograph in a prominent position beside his bed, and putting someone else into the place that would have been hers. He was m
aking
a more or less unknown girl his wife, and that was an affront, surely, to the memory of a woman he had loved?

Felicity felt a little sick when she thought of Mervyn trying to make her understand the implications of the photograph—as if Cassandra hadn't already made them clear enough!
—
and a hot flurry of resentment rose up in her every time she tried to feel gratitude for an outsider’s concern. There was nothing quite so true as the saying that what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve over. And if she hadn’t heard anything at all about the photograph
...

She knew enough
—
Paul himself had told her that he hadn’t any love to offer her
—
so she might have been spared the photograph
...

She would never know how she had got through that day. Miss Menzies insisting on behaving as if she was about to attend a white wedding
...
She took Florence aside the night before, whispered into her ear about the bride’s right to have breakfast in bed
—
how many other people thought she wanted to have breakfast in bed?
—
and offered to help with her dressing. As if a pink linen suit needed very much adjusting, or a round white hat that was just a round of white straw with a fuchsia-pink velvet ribbon its only adornment! But
_s
nevertheless, Felicity had wanted to hug Miss Menzies before she had left her room, for the elderly maiden lady had coaxed a spray of white gardenias out of the head gardener
—
they were special gardenias that he cherished, and usually only a chit from the master of the place resulted in any of them being included in the flowers for the house
—
and carried them up to Felicity herself.

“Whoever heard of a bride without any flowers?” Miss Menzies had wanted to know, as she fastened the spray to the front of Felicity’s suit with her be-ringed fingers
—
they were literally encrusted with rings because a wedding was to take place. She wore a mauve silk dress, and a hat with many swathings of mauve chiffon and an outside bunch of deeply purple grapes. When she went downstairs into the hall, with Felicity following behind, her brother blinked at her a little and said he wasn’t sure which was the bride, and he didn’t want to give away the wrong woman.

Then, as Felicity stood, looking slender and self
-
conscious, at the foot of the lovely carved oak staircase, James Menzies went up to her and took her hand and patted it
—
she wondered whether he noticed that it was cold as ice although it was such a beautifully warm Caribbean morning
—
and smiled at her. It was a warm smile, a heartening smile, and she wondered how much he suspected, and whether in his heart he was pitying her. Anyone who lis
t
ened to Cassandra would no doubt want to pity her.

“When this is all over I get the usual reward of the fellow who gives the bride away, don’t I?” he asked.
He touched her smooth cheek, gently, with his fingers. “You look enchanting, my dear,” he whispered, “and if I were only twenty years younger I’d
snatch that kiss here and now!...”

Then he took her hand and drew it through his arm, and led her into the big main lounge, where Florence and Moses had wrought a transformation with masses of flowers that they, too, had got out of the gardener.

Usually the room looked lovely, but today it looked like a bower. There were waxen blooms that gave forth a heavy, almost an overpowering perfume, slender sprays of exquisite pink and yellow and some roses that appeared to be dripping blood
—
or fire
—
on to the satiny surface of a side table. A more solid table had a bowl of white roses on it, and behind this the little grey
-
clad missionary already sat. He leapt up and warmly grasped the hand of the girl he was to turn into a wife.

Her fuchsia-pink velvet ribbons streamed behind her on to her slim shoulders, and her dark curls bobbed beneath the little white hat. Her eyes looked rather more tawny than dark
—
a little like the sherry that waited in crystal decanters on an enormous silver tray
—
and only her hands remained cold as ice as her bridegroom came to stand beside her.

He was wearing a white silk suit, and the tie of a well-known English public school. She had not known before that he had attended an English school
—
but, then, s
he knew hardly anything at all about him. Her lack of knowledge of him appalled her as she stood there at his side, and she could feel rather than see his eyes resting on her.

At least they would be deep blue, like the gentians that grew, she understood, near the summit of a mountain and never at its feet. This morning they might be a little darker than usual, because he would probably be
thinking
all sorts of secret thoughts that would affect their color, but she hadn’t
the
courage to find out. She simply dared not lift her own eyes and look into them, and it was not until he took her hand, that instinctively her feathery eyelashes fluttered upwards, and her eyes met his.

Something fluttered in her throat, and she held her breath. Paul’s eyes were smiling into hers in a way she had never imagined, although when she looked again it had gone. It was just as if the sunlight had gone in over the sea and left it dark, and
w
hile the darkness remained Paul slipped the ring that fitted so beautifully on to her finger. Then the missionary congratulated them, because they were man and wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Halloran!

Miss Menzies simply swooped on Felicity and kissed her on both cheeks, and James Ferguson Menzies seized the opportunity to salute her just as thoroughly. Cassandra seemed to hold back for a moment, and then pressed the coolest of lips to Felicity's, by this time, slightly flushed cheek. Mervyn Manners grasped her hand and held it so strongly for a moment that he actually hurt. His eyes said things to her that she understood perfectly, although the others would not have done so. He was trying to impress upon her the need to forget what he had said to her the night before, and to go forward now as if a new page had been turned, and to see to it that the writing on that page was legible only to herself. The sort of writing she would enjoy reading one day.

But Felicity thought wistfully that only Fate covered the pages of each individual’s existence. There was little she could do about even a fresh, new page.

Harry Whitelaw also gripped her hand, and wished her all the happiness in the world. It was his own suggestion that she should move into a bungalow on the estate for the next few weeks, and although Felicity had not expected Paul to agree to this
—
she could hardly see the necessity for it herself
—
he had done so.

Harry had a glass of champagne, and then departed to get on with his usual daily tasks. The others had a kind of light buffet meal, and then took their departure also. Paul and Felicity watched them go, standing side by side on the veranda while they piled into Mr. Menzies’s new car, and a few items of luggage that hadn’t already been sent round to the other side of the island were stowed away in the boot.

Michael and Moses saw to the disposition of the luggage, and Miss Menzies sat beside her brother at the wheel. Cassandra reclined languidly on the back seat with Mervyn.

Cassandra was wearing a new suit of Devonshire
-
cream colored silk, and a wide, shady hat. She looked more like a bride about to set off on a honeymoon than Felicity, with her small white hat discarded, and the gardenias pinned to the lapel of her linen jacket beginning to wilt a little in the heat.

Cassandra for some reason had helped herself to the scarlet roses in the big bowl in the lounge, and they were lying in her lap as they drove off. She sent a most peculiar smile upwards at Felicity as the car began to move, and the same smile swivelled round to Paul’s face, accompanied by a slight wave of the hand.

Miss Menzies’s purple grapes dipped and plunged dizzily on the side of her hat as she waved her hand more vigorously.

“Don’t forget, child,” she had called out to Felicity when she was settled in her seat, “we won’t be very far away if you need us! You mustn’t hesitate to let us know if anything goes wrong.”

“Are you expecting something to go wrong?” Paul asked quietly, as he watched the car glide away from the front of his house. “And do you anticipate requiring
some assistance from Miss Menzies before very long?”

“Of course not,” Felicity answered, but her voice was a mere thread of sound, as if the events of the morning had used up all her strength. She was conscious of a panic-stricken desire to run down the steps of the veranda and plunge rather desperately after the departing car that contained at least two real friends, and one well-wisher
—
as she knew Mervyn Manners was. Even Cassandra was a link with a safe and sure past that she would have liked to clutch hold of just then.

The panic rose in a wave and threatened to envelop her. She was conscious of a kind of cold horror because she had done something that couldn’t be undone, and she was left here with a stranger who had become her husband. He was a handsome, blue-eyed stranger with set lips, and there was no longer any of that strange magnetism flowing between them that had caused her to rush to help him in the first few minutes of their meeting. Although he was her husband he hadn’t kissed her yet, not even for appearances on the side of her cheek after they w
e
re
pronoun
c
ed
man and wife.

Then she remembered that she had said she didn’t wish him to kiss her.

“If I here you, I’d go up to my room and have a rest,” he said, as soon as there was no longer even any sound of the car.

“Yes, I—I
think
I will,” she answered, stumbling a little as she turned to move back into the house.

Her husband’s house
...
Her own home now! Her o
nly home.
..