Island in the Dawn (4 page)

Cassandra stretched herself sinuously, and stood up.

“Oh, well
...
Perhaps it will be a good plan to have a rest.” She smiled into his face when she stood on her slim feet, but once upstairs in their own quarters she remarked to Felicity: “Our host is a man who likes things his own way. In fact, I should say he likes to dominate! But that’s a change, when most of the men one meets are so pathetically easily dominated!”

There was a look of relish on her face, as if she was a cat who had discovered a bowl of cream and was looking forward to getting down to the business of lapping it up. A whole bowl of cream unlike any other that she had tasted!

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN Felicity wakened and looked out of her window there wasn’t a sound to be heard. The whole island swam in a haze of red, like a haze of blood, and she realized that night was about to clamp down like a velvet mantle. She stood leaning against the low parapet on her balcony, marvelling at the quality of softness in the air, like a thousand silken fingers reaching gently for her face and the exposed portions of her slender neck and shoulders, where her cotton wrapper fell away. She had never known a softness like this before, or a warmth that was so much like a caress. After standing there for several minutes, she thought she heard the sea slapping murmurously on the shore, but it was the only sound that broke the stillness. Otherwise the silence was a little frightening, as if the world of men and striving no longer existed.

Then, just as the first stars pricked through the curtain of gauze that was growing more like a sable cloak every moment, she heard Cassandra moving behind her. Cassandra’s light sprang on, sending a golden beam into the darkness, and Cassandra herself, hugging about her a dressing gown that was not cotton but Chinese blue satin, joined Felicity on her balcony.

“I didn’t expect to sleep, but I must have done so,”
sh
e said, and yawned. “I suppose it was rather a tiresome journey, but I’m used to travelling, and normally a few inconveniences don’t affect me.” The inference was that Felicity, unused to travelling, and unable to put up with a few inconveniences, had succumbed a little unreasonably.
“You
slept like half a dozen dead dogs, darling, and when I looked in on you this afternoon you
“Oh,
no!”
Felicity exclaimed, appalled by the charge. “Surely I don’t really snore?”

“Well, you didn’t disturb me,” Cassandra admitted, “but you were so completely ‘out’ that you weren’t very much company, and there was nothing for me to do but copy your example and go to bed also! And while we both slept that maid Florence has been in and completed my unpacking, and hung everything up in the wardrobes after doing some necessary pressing! I’m afraid our host must have given her to under
s
tand that it was more or less expected!”

Felicity said nothing, but Cassandra’s look made her feel that she was guilty of a major offence, and as Cassandra went on she felt still more guilty.

“We mustn’t make ourselves a nuisance here,” her employer said. “It’s very good of Mr. Halloran to let us turn his house into a kind of hotel—when he woke this morning he couldn’t have been expecting an invasion by a couple of women! But it’s up to us to cause as little trouble as possible, and I hope you won’t expect to be waited on, darling, by this Florence person!” Her voice was smooth and affable, but Felicity knew what she meant. She, Cassandra, was on holiday, but she—the paid companion—had to remember her duties
and
her position!

“I’ll get dressed now,” Cassandra said, when she had enjoyed a few puffs of a cigarette she extracted from a little enamel and gold case in her pocket. “I
think
I’ll wear that black net with the sequins I bought in Paris. How odd that we should stop there for the night, and that I should be tempted to be extravagant and buy the th
in
g! I didn’t really need another evening dress, but now that I’ve got it I might as well
...
Well, first impressions, you know!” And with a meaning little smile she drifted away, and Felicity heard Florence’s voice from the bathroom, and after a minute or so the scent of Cassandra’s pungent bath essence—also bought in Paris—filled the whole of the suite given up to them. It even reached Felicity on the balcony where she still stood.

She was trying to make up her
min
d what to wear herself, and in the end she decided that it really didn’t matter, and that with Cassandra in the black net and sequins no man in his senses would have any eyes for a companion whose rightful place, in any case, was the background. It would annoy Cassandra extremely if Felicity attempted to steal any of the limelight from her, and in any case Felicity knew she couldn’t do it. She was not in the least conceited about herself, and even if a pair of masculine blue eyes that she had discovered with a throb of relief could see reasonably well after all, were there to observe her entrance when she made it, it still wouldn’t make the slightest difference what she wore.

So long as she looked neat and correct.

Neat and correct!
...
The one dress she possessed that would ensure that the correctness would be all that Cassandra could desire was a blue-grey c
hiffon that was rather like a blu
e-grey mist, and would merge very nicely with the night if by any chance she should walk in it after dinner. The only article of adornment she possessed was a row of seed pearls that drew attention to the girlish roundness of her throat, but were otherwise quite inconspicuous.

She couldn’t prevent her hair from shining as if it were brown silk shot through with a few golden threads when she had brushed it for ten minutes, and then polished in with a silk handkerchief; and the fact that her eyes were like liquid honey
—
or was it cairngorm with a light shining behind them?—under her feathery dark eyelashes that Nature had decided to gild slightly at the tips, was also something she could do nothing about.

When Cassandra came sweeping in from her room with a wave of Paris scent going ahead of her she sent her a glance that flickered over her, and then although she frowned for an instant she observed dismissingly: “You look very nice, sweet, but that blue dress does work overtime, doesn
’t
it? You’ll have to invest in a new one one of these days!”

Then she whirled before Felicity’s mirror, and the black dress hardly seemed to clothe her so much as shroud her in a mantle of darkness pricked by the fiery eyes of the sequins. Felicity knew she had never seen quite such white arms and shoulders before. Cassandra’s
flaming
hair was wound in a coronet of plaits about her regally poised small head, and her face looked just about as perfect as a paper-white rose.

A paper-white rose lit by eyes that were jade-colored tonight!
...

As they went out Florence appeared at Felicity’s elbow. Felicity gathered that she was apologizing for not lending her any assistance during her dressing. She gestured to the littered floor of Cassandra’s room: the cobwebby stockings discarded because they were not just the right shade; the gossamer underwear flung down care
le
ssly; the Chinese blue housecoat draping the foot of the bed. The dressing-table was covered with a
film
of powder and crowded with so many bottles and jars that the task of restoring an immaculate appearance would not be simple.

Florence, whose large round face was so black that the whites of the eyes were positively startling seemed to be concerned not with the task of restoring order, but the fact that she had allowed one of the two
E
nglish
ladies—both, she understood, her master’s guests—to feel perhaps slighted, and in any case overlooked.

Felicity patted her arm and felt a little amused. Florence would learn in time that she was only a companion—a companion-secretary to give her proper designation!—and as such she was not entitled to be waited on.

But Florence looked after her doubtfully, and shook her head.

The two girls descended the flowing staircase to the lounge-hall
where the grandfather
clock ticked solemnly in the
corner
, and as they reached the foot of the stairs that same grandfather clock chimed a melodious half
-
hour. The sound echoed through the house like distilled music. At the same time a young man appeared beneath an arch and looked at
them
both with interest.

He introduced himself.

“I’m Harry Whitelaw. Mr. Halloran asked me to look after you and give you drinks if he wasn’t down in time.” He smiled with a flash of white teeth, and his eyes were gentle and brown, with a depth possessed by the people of these latitudes. Afterwards Felicity reali
zed that he had probably been born
and bred on the island. Later still she discovered that his grandmother was French, which no doubt accounted for his excellent manners. He led them under the arch, and turned eagerly to provide them with what they wanted in the way of refreshment.

Cassandra said at once that she would like a martini
—
v
ery dry—if it was possible, Feli
city asked for an iced lime. Harry Whitelaw concentrated on filling the two glasses, and as Cassandra accepted hers she sent him an upward, flickering glance that was without very much appreciation. Felicity, who knew her well, realized that she was probably a little disappointed, for this young man who looked after the business side of James Ferguson Menzies’s estate seemed very young for the job, and was plainly without very much experience, either of life or elegant women like herself. His eyes seemed to be drawn to her as if by a magnet, and Felicity could see the little flame of something like excitement that leapt and danced in them when her employer stretched herself in a
corner
of a Chesterfield.

Every movement she made must have struck him as calculated and exquisite. He had probably never seen such a dress in his life as the one she was wearing. He himself was dressed only in a white silk shirt and freshly-
l
aundered white drill trousers. The fact that his bronze column of a throat was bare probably offended Cassandra’s aesthetic senses; she liked her men to be dinner-jacketed in the evenings, and if possible to be completely sure of themselves.

Her eyes roved round the room where the drinks were served. It was much more like a conventional lounge, with some deliciously deep chairs, and a cocktail cabinet in the
corner
. There was a grand piano in another
corner
. Cassandra’s eyes rested on it appreciatively. Here was something that she could admire, and she instantly associated it with Paul Halloran. It had not been there in her uncle’s time, and it was plainly a very expensive piano, the type at which a man of Halloran’s one-time standing in the musical world might occasionally sit and relive the past while his fingers drifted over the keys.

“What a magnificent piano!” Cassandra remarked aloud. “Does anyone play it? Mr. Halloran sometimes?”

Harry Whitelaw looked at the piano regretfully.

“Not often enough,” he said. “But he does sometimes.”

“And you, Mr. Whitelaw?”
Cassandra enquired, with coolly curving lips. “Are you musical?”

“I play the guitar,” he admitted. He looked at her eagerly. “Perhaps one evening I might entertain you? If it would be entertainment? The nights are a little long
sometimes, and
...”
He gravitated near to her, and sat down a little awkwardly on a chair that was rather too spindly-legged for comfort, a plain gin in his hand. “Tonight it is likely to be a little noisy, because a small celebration is to take place in the village. There will be much singing and laughter, and perhaps also a little dancing. I hope it won’t annoy you!”

“Oh!” Cassandra exclaimed, her eyes widening slightly. “What sort of a celebration?”

“Simply a matter of a small increase of salary.” Whitelaw smiled gently. “These people are rather like children. They have worked hard for many months, and the increase is well deserved. They know it, and they are happy. Tonight they will light bonfires and be gay!” Cassandra looked towards the windows that were standing open to the night-enshrouded veranda, and she could see the stars pricking—or rather piercing—the purple of the night sky. The scent of flowers growing out there in the intoxicating warmth of the Caribbean darkness was overpowering, and her jewel-like eyes grew a little heavy with an almost sensual appreciation as she netted her flaming head amongst the silk of the cushions behind her, and went on staring out through the windows.

“In that case,” she said, languidly, “we might see something of it” She turned her head, and for
the
first time she actually smiled a little at Harry Whitelaw. “I always did like bonfires, and when people are celebrating one is apt to catch the infection.”

He agreed eagerly, leaning a little towards her.

“If it would amuse you I could escort
you
as far as the village. The people would be delighted! And you could see the dancing at close quarters! There may even be fireworks..
.”

But her smile this time told him that he mustn't
imagine
too much encouragement when she relaxed for
a few moments, and that all in good time she might permit him to escort
her somewhere.
But not yet!

Abashed, with a faint tinge of red creeping under his healthy bronze skin, he
sat
back, and Felicity felt a certain sympathy with him because he was young and ardent and unused to feminine creatures like Cassandra. Although he had so far paid very little attention to herself she wasn’t conscious of feeling slighted. She was too used to watching impressionable males using every means in their power to win some crumb of encouragement from Cassandra, and
here,
obviously, was another one who was going
to fight hard
...

Then their host
appeared
beneath the arch. Perhaps because he knew full
well that
hi
s young estate manager would be simply attired
he had
made no real concession to
t
he visitors’ arrival,
although
he was wearing
a
beautifully tailored white silk suit that made
the
dark elegance appear not
hi
ng
short
of arresting. He had discarded his dark-glasses tonight, and his eyes went at once to Felicity.

“I hope you rested well?” he asked. “You’re just a tiny bit blurred in
this light—
” the room was filled with a mellow golden radiance from silk-shaded lamps, including a tall standard lamp
that
stood behind Cassandra’s chair, but he did not look in her direction—“and my eyes being still
a
little weak when exposed to too much brilliance I can’t
take
in everything at once. But they will improve with time.”

“Of course they will,” Felicity assured him, with a warmth that seemed to rush right up from her heart, and he smiled a little. “And thank you,
I
am completely
r
ested,” she added.