Island in the Dawn (3 page)

Paul Ha
l
loran nodded in a satisfied way.

“Now you can consider yourselves acquainted!”

There was the sound of footsteps outside on the veranda
—
the quick tap of very high heels. Cassandra swept through the open french windows and looked very pettishly at Felicity. It was quite plain that her wait on the jetty had not improved her temper. Although she had never looked more beautiful, with her red hair flaming under her straw hat, and the thickly pleated skirt of her white silk suit swinging with every graceful movement she made—even in a state of vexation she was as graceful as a willow-wand—she also looked as if it wanted little more for her patience to disintegrate.

“What’s this I hear about Uncle James?” she demanded, when she caught sight of the man who was once more standing with his hand resting on the neck of the big Alsatian. His dark-glasses, and perhaps more than anything his motionless attitude—instantly impressed upon her the fact that this was a man who could not see.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if she was actually engulfed by horror. She even retreated a little. “Your servant didn’t warn me, but he should have done so! You’re blind, aren't you? Oh, you must forgive me, but I’ve always been terrified of blind people!”

And she looked as if she was about to flee from the room.

Felicity stood up instantly.

“Cassandra!” she protested.

Cassandra looked as if this was the last straw.

“This heat is impossible,” she gasped, “and Uncle James isn’t here, and I don’t
kn
ow that I want to stay!
...
Felicity, we’ll have to get back to the mainland somehow! You’ll have to do something..

Paul Halloran removed his glasses and stepped forward.

“There is no need for Miss Harding to act instantly,” he remarked, with so much dryness in his voice now that it actually grated a little. “I’m not blind, Miss Wood, although as the result of an accident I was deprived of my sight for many months. The habit of wearing these glasses clings
...
but you need not allow it to frighten you away!”

Cassandra stood staring at him as if hypnotized. His eyes were like blue water—the bluest water she had ever seen in her life—and she had the queer feeling that it reached out and engulfed her, so that she was s
wimming
about in it helplessly. All at once she knew that he no longer terrified her
—
that far from terrifying her, he fascinated her!

He was the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. There was a slight scar above his right eyebrow, but otherwise his face was unmarked and the features were curiously perfect. His eyelashes were thick and black, lending a queer intensity to the jewel-like eyes, and his hair was blue-black. In the
dimn
ess of the room it shone. By contrast his skin was a clear, pale bronze. His slim hand rested gracefully on the dog’s neck.

“I’ve seen you before!” she exclaimed suddenly. She didn’t beg his pardon for what she had said—she wanted him to tell her where she had seen
him
before. There had been a lot of people all collected together. He was in an evening dress suit, and all the women in the audience were spell bound by his looks, and by those slim, graceful movements of his hands. One hand upheld a baton
...
There was a great deal of applause
...
“I know!” Her voice was triumphant. “You’re Paul Halloran, aren’t you? The conductor who vanished
...
? Your mother was an Italian opera singer, and your father was Irish—an Irish landowner, I think! Your last concert was in Milan, and I saw you before that in London!
...
The place was packed, and you were as big a success as if you were a film star! No, you had a much more wonderful reception than a film star! And after that you flew to Milan, and then something happened
...”

“A car crash on the way to Rome!” He bowed to her ironically. “I am flattered that you should be able to recall so much about me! I had thought my past was dead and buried!”

“Of course not—and it’s only a year ago, anyway! You can’t expect to be forgotten in so short a time!” All at once the color was flooding her cheeks, drawing attention to the perfection of the skin, and she was
smiling
at him brilliantly. “Everyone said it was the Irish-Italian mixture that made you such a success
—
Irish charm plus Italian musical genius! Obviously you inherited the latter from your mother!”

“Obviously.” But his voice was cool as withered leaves. “But nowadays music doesn’t have very much part in my life.”

“You mean because you lost your sight?”

“That—and there is another reason. But I’m sure you would like to be shown to a room that will be yours for so long as you care to remain here—after all, the house is your uncle’s, and I’m sure he would wish me to act host in
his
place!—and as soon as you are ready for it breakfast will be served to you either in your room, or on the veranda here, where it will be very pleasant in another half hour or so, when the sun leaves it.”

“And you are quite sure our arrival isn’t terribly inconvenient?”

“Quite sure.”

But, as Felicity reflected, standing there and feeling as if her whole body was one large blush of embarrassment because Cassandra had not merely said something inexcusable the instant she entered the room, but followed it up with a blithe impertinence that had actually taken Felicity’s breath away a little, he was not the sort of man to admit to inconvenience under the circumstances. There was no hotel on the island, no other house where they could stay, and no boat for a fortnight. Even if he was appalled at the prospect of having to entertain them,
unlik
e Cassandra, he would never let them guess.

Felicity had never before realized that Cassandra could be so crude.

"I’m terrified of blind people!
.
..

It was inexcusable, and yet now she was not merely turning on the charm
...
She looked as if she was preparing to enjoy her stay!

Across the dimness of the lovely room Felicity met their host’s vivid blue eyes, and the expression in them was quite unreadable. His glance was fixed on her, on her small, abashed face. She thought there was an element of humor in it, and something that attempted to reassure her a little. Cassandra’s words had not hurt him
...
Perhaps he was not easily hurt! Perhaps he had been hurt too much in the past, and now he was immune!

Yet he admitted recovering his sight
...
Surely he had everything to look forward to? Within a short while Life, with a capital L, could, and would, open out before him again!

Michael returned with the luggage, and they were shown up to two rooms adjoining one another where it would be pleasant to settle themselves in for a fortnight. Cassandra looked round her with approval, commenting on the fact that the rooms were far more luxuriously furnished than in Uncle James’s day.

“Our musician may not do much entertaining,” she said, “but he is prepared for it! He has obviously spent a lot of money on this place. I wonder why?”

CHAPTER THREE

FELICITY was in the bathroom that separated the two rooms, running a bath for her employer when Cassandra expressed her wonder anew at Paul Halloran’s behavior. Felicity returned to the slightly larger of the two sleeping apartments to find Cassandra
making
a detailed examination of the low French bed, which was draped in a coverlet of thick oatmeal-colored satin. The headboard was painted in a design of cupids and flowers and gilded scrolls. Cassandra declared it was a genuine period piece, and ran her hand lovingly over the headboard.

She also admired the dressing table which stood in a petticoat of primrose damask, and the little Empire couch that was covered in primrose damask also. There was a wonderful Florentine mirror on the wall in which Cassandra could see her complete reflected image, and the rags on the honey-gold floor were pale oatmeal to match the bed coverlet and the curtains.

The curtains were drawn at the moment of their entry, but an ebony-faced maid called Florence, whose wide smile, in the course of an association which was to last a considerable while, Felicity never really saw vanish from her face, had followed them in and drawn them back. While Cassandra had tossed her wide
-
brimmed hat and handbag upon the bed, Florence had arranged the slats of the
cool
green Venetian blinds so that enough light entered to make it possible to see clearly everything in the room, and at the same time prevent the hard glare of the sun finding its way in.

Florence had wanted to do the unpacking and prepare the bath, but Cassandra had dismissed her, saying coolly: “No, my friend will do it. I’ll ring when we’d like to have breakfast. We’ll probably decide to have it up here in our rooms.”

“Very good, missy
—
beg pardon, ma’am!” Florence had said, as Cassandra sent her a cool look. The friendly maid had then backed her large white-aproned person cut of the room.

Cassandra had looked across at Felicity.

“We don’t want anyone fussing round just now, and I wouldn’t care to trust the contents of my suit-cases to those ho
rn
y black hands! You’ll put everything away far more carefully than she’d be likely to do, and besides I’m exhausted, and want to be alone and rest for a while.”

It hadn’t apparently occurred to her that Felicity was also affected by the sudden change of climate
—
it had been a bleak October day when they left England, and now they were in the midst of tropical heat
—
and had not yet had an opportunity to re
c
over from the journey. The younger girl, however, willingly got her out something fresh and cool to put on, and then started to run a bath, while Cassandra went round the room
making
her careful examination.

“All this is a little beyond me,” she told Felicity, when the latter rejoined her. “That room downstairs is full of priceless things. In my uncle’s day it was just a comfortable room, and very masculine at that. Uncle James has lots of money, but he’s one of those people who dislike spending it, except on themselves, and I can’t
think
what sort of an arrangement he has entered into with this man, Paul Halloran, to make the latter decide that it’s worth while filling the place with his own things. Do you think he proposes to stay here some time? I suppose it’s just possible Uncle James is
b
ored with his island, and doesn’t want to come back
—
not for ages, anyway!”

“I suppose that could be the explanation,” Felicity said, while Cassandra examined her nails, and decided to remove the particular shade of nail varnish she was wearing. And suddenly Felicity had to say it: “How could you make that awful remark about his blindness, Sandra? Mr. Halloran’s blindness, I mean! It was
—
well, I thought it was
—
dreadful!”

Cassandra looked .at her with her slim eyebrows raised. And suddenly she laughed, her long, greenish
-
blue eyes gle
aming
strangely, the thick lashes ’fluttering amusedly, but certainly not with any embarrassment.

“My dear girl, I’ve always had a horror of blind people
—
and I just said so! Of course, when I said it I thought that Paul Halloran really was blind. Those dark glasses, and his queer way of standing very still, as if he was a little afraid of making a move which might bring
him
into contact with a piece of furniture,
and
the dog that I took to be a guide-dog standing beside him, were very misleading. And of course I didn’t know at the time that he was Paul Halloran
—
the
Paul Halloran!”

“If you’d discovered that he was Paul Halloran, and he’d still remained blind, would you have experienced the same sort of revulsion?” Felicity heard herself asking, because for some reason she was really curious.

Cassandra shrugged slightly.

“How would I know?” she demanded. “But somehow it’s impossible to imagine those extraordinary vivid eyes of his without any sight in them? They’re so clear
—
a sort of searchlight clarity, have you noticed? He’s got only the tiniest scar above one eyebrow to recall his accident, and his Italian blood shows in that intensely dark hair, and the slight swarthiness of his skin. Eighteen months ago women ran after him as if he was a matin
e
e idol
...
There was one woman, whom he didn’t mention
—
after all, why should he?
—
Who was killed in the same car crash that deprived
him
temporarily of his sight!”

She went on carefully applying fresh varnish to her nails.

Felicity deposited a pile of underwear somewhat
hastily in a drawer,
and
then straightened and said: “Oh!
...
How—how do you know?”

Cassandra smiled at her, the smile which she cultivated, and which was distinguished by a hint of the Mona Lisa’s strangely baffling quality.

“I just do know! You’ll admit I was right about the date of
the
accident
—
and about that last concert of our host’s in Milan! The woman was beautiful, and he was in love with her
—
that much I can tell you also, and my facts are not the sort to fall down under cross
-
examination! They are
the facts
!
...
But naturally I thought it best not to reveal that I had so much knowledge downstairs just now!”

Felicity closed the drawer upon the
filmy
underthings, and then went through into her own room, which was rosy pink and grey, like the haze that had developed the island at dawn.

In spite of Cassandra’s intimation to Florence that they would breakfast in their rooms, they did not after all do so. Once Cassandra had enjoyed a bath and changed into a cool cotton dress with a sun-top that left her shapely shoulders bare, and a little jacket which she carried over her arm that could be donned if the sun’s attentions became too fierce, she felt sufficiently revived to wish to rejoin her host. Felicity had no alternative but to accompany her down to the broad main veranda.

They found comfortable rattan chairs, and a table had been laid for breakfast in a
corner
where the lemon light of the sun no longer found its way. In addition an electric fan churned up a pleasing apology for coolness.

The table was bright with attractive china and an enormous bowl
o
f fruit spilling over with the island’s produce. There were grape fruit that looked like balls of pale fire, bananas, figs, and oranges, as well as bunches of purple grapes such as Felicity had never seen before
—
save in a hot house maintained at considerable expense. A delicious melon
frappi
was served before the exquisitely aromaed coffee was brought to table. Newly-baked rolls and preserve and golden curls of butter made Felicity realize that, in spite of the heat, she had an appetite.

Cassandra refused the more solid parts of the breakfast
—
her figure was always her main preoccupation
—
but praised the melon unstintingly. She also dilated upon the bowl of fruit. Their host admitted that although he was not interested in marketing the overflow, much of it still found its way overseas, and for that purpose he maintained a manager whom they would meet later in the day. Cassandra didn’t look exactly interested at the mention of the manager, but Felicity, who knew her very well indeed, could feel the slight prickling of interest below her skin. To Cassandra any member of the masculine world was not without some sort of appeal, and at the moment the man who had temporarily caused her a sensation of panic was obviously claiming a full share of her curiosity.

She wanted to know how long he proposed to remain on the island, and whether there was any likelihood at all of her uncle returning to take over again. It was not that she was so much interested in her uncle’s activities, but this graceful man with the looks that titivated her connoisseur’s palate in a way that it hadn’t known for some time was a bit of a mystery. He was a romantic mystery too, knowing, as she did, so much about the actual details of his accident
—
and all her instincts urged her to probe as far as possible. She asked blatant questions, such as when he would resume his career again. Felicity, who had not yet recovered from the shock of hearing Cassandra mike a statement that had struck her at the time as uncivilized, as well as unfeeling, was amazed that her employer could converse in that calm and interested manner, when only such a short while before she had wanted to run away from something that repulsed her.

Paul Halloran’s answers to direct questions were entirely noncommittal and although Cassandra, in her primrose sun-suit and with her glorious Titian hair and magnolia skin, must have had a kind of shock effect upon his weakened sight
—
perhaps the most pleasing shock he had had for a long time!
—
he did not even take advantage of the opportunity to gaze at her. In fact, halfway through the breakfast he restored his dark glasses and looked through them over the veranda rail at what was, for the time being at any rate, his property, as if neither of the two women were actually there.

Felicity could quite understand this attitude, for he was accustomed to solitariness, and possibly he found the interruption annoying. She thought it would be difficult to find anything more delightful, and more restful to gaze at than those superbly tended lawns that were as green as emeralds in the light that was growing brighter every minute as the sun climbed into the heavens. Even more restful was the plantation that stretched beyond the lawns, and lay, as she knew, between them and the harshly glittering sea. James Menzies had chosen a very satisfying site for his house, ringed as it was by those protective trees; and at least she, Felicity, could appreciate the beauty they enclosed.

She was not so sure about Cassandra, for Cassandra boasted that it was human contacts that she enjoyed, and not so much the beauties of the earth
—
although the right surroundings were always necessary if one was to enjoy the human contacts! By which Felicity knew she meant moonlight when she was taking an after
-
dinner stroll with an escort who was sufficiently personable, and if possible an attractive prospect that the moonlight would make more attractive! Cassandra took a cat-like pleasure in luxurious back-grounds and could appreciate the finer points of art and flawless craftsmanship. Hence her admiration for the low French bed in her room and the Florentine mirror on the wall; and her assessment of the value of the contents of the only one of the public rooms they had so far seen in the house. Beauty and value went hand in hand in Cassandra’s estimate of things. She would never be entirely satisfied with beauty without value.

Felicity had felt as if her whole being was stimulated by the beauty of the island from the moment she first caught sight of it, and she knew that in the next few days she would do her utmost to explore it. This delightful house was only on the fringe of it, as it were. There must be other enchanting secrets that it held.

All at once, as the shimmer on the lawns grew brighter, a slight inertia, induced by the kind of breakfast it would be impossible not to enjoy and the knowledge that she could now relax, took a kind of hold of her. She felt that it would be delightful to sample the resistant properties of the attractive-looking bed in her own room. The little berth in the steamer had been both hot and uncomfortable, and she didn’t suppose she had slept a wink all night. Before that there had been all the excitement of leaving London and getting in to Kingston. Cassandra hadn’t wanted to waste any time on the journey, and there had been no chance to relax between catching trains and planes and steamers, and so forth. It had been Felicity’s task to ensure that the baggage was safe, and that none of it was left behind during the various halts. And all the details of the journey had been her particular nightmare. When Cassandra paid out a salary she expected people to work for it, and it was a nightmare arranging a journey during which Cassandra would insist on certain seats during the various methods of transport, and decline to be inconvenienced in any way.

If Felicity had tripped up in her reservations there would have been a petulant outburst to cope with, and she was only just beginning to realize that Cassandra could be very petulant indeed. Felicity’s early gratitude for being given a job was beginning to evaporate a little in the cold knowledge that much was expected of her now that she had accepted that job.

Still, she thought sleepily
—
and she was rather horrified to find herself on the very verge of yawning openly
—
she was lucky to be where she was. But for Cassandra she would never have tasted such ambrosial melon as that which she had just enjoyed. Neither would she have quaffed such nectar in the way of coffee the as yet unmet cook
—
probably as ebony-faced as Florence since apparently he was Florence’s husband, and went by the pleasing name of Moses
—
had prepared in an unseen kitchen, and sent to the bright oasis the table on the veranda represented. Under her heavy lids Felicity admired the china afresh
—
surely it was English Minton? The silver had a sparkle that made her want to blink, and the cloth itself was so white that
—
that
...

She caught her host’s blue eyes fixed on her
—
and the little shock of realizing that he had once more removed his glasses brought her awake again. She felt the color flood her face and neck, and sat painfully upright as those blue eyes smiled, understandingly, and with a certain engaging humor.

“I think,” he said, “you would do well to return to your room, Miss Harding, and have a little rest. In fact, there is no reason why you should appear outside it again until this evening, when it will be cooler. Florence will bring you anything you want to your room, you know, and you must be very tired after your journey!”

“Nonsense!” Cassandra exclaimed, quite sharply. She was lying back in her own chair and enjoying one of her host’s cigarettes with a feeling of utter relaxation, and no desire at all to forgo his company, and the fascination his profile was beginning to exercise over her. She was used to men who succumbed to her charms immediately, but one who was polite but placidly indifferent and didn’t appear to be putting
hims
elf out at all, was new in her experience. “Why should Felicity be tired? She had a berth on the steamer.” That wasn’t what Cassandra had called it when she had examined it, and her own, for the first time. She had described the small cabin as nothing better than an airless ‘bug
-
hutch’, and even the softer of the two berths had made
i
t necessary for her to get up far in advance of her usual hour in order to avoid being further tortured by the mattress. “This is such a haven, now that we have arrived, and you are so kind, Mr. Halloran! And, in any case, I shall want you to go through my things, Felicity,” she added, “and press some of them that are badly crushed.”

“Florence will do that,” the man said quietly. “Just hand anything you wish pressed over to her!”

“Oh, but that is hardly fair!” Cassandra protested, looking at
him
under her heavy white eyelids—not heavy from sleep, but carefully cultivated
languor
. “We mustn’t take advantage of our stay here, and overwork your servants!”

“There is no question of your overworking them,” Halloran returned. There was something decisive in his voice as he stood up and pointedly addressed Felicity. “Have a good rest, Miss Harding; and when we meet again I hope you will feel much refreshed! I know what long journeys can be like, even in these days of air travel!”