Island in the Dawn (8 page)

“I have seen so many women as beautiful as Cassandra
—
and many who were far more beautiful!
—
but I have never wanted to marry one of them! The Cassandras of this world do not interest me, and I would c
erta
inly not wish to share my life with them. But perhaps I should make something quite clear to you before we go any further.” He looked at her half apprehensively, and then decided to plunge. “There was one
woman in my life, and to me she had a beauty that was quite unrepeatable!
...
I planned to marry her, but
the
Fates willed otherwise, and she died!” His voice was so level and sombre that it actually chilled her. “I was in love with her, and I don’t think one ever falls in love in the same way twice
...
That sort of thing is impossible! One gets over it and wounds
heal ...
But in the longest lifetime there are only a limited number of emotions that one can experience, and if you experience them all at the same time
...”

“Then there is nothing left for anyone else?” she heard herself say in the same cracked whisper as before, “I didn’t say that!” He caught her hands again, and he looked down at her intently. “You are so different to anyone I have ever known before
...
If you’d been here when I first came to the island, when I was blind and thought I was going to remain blind for the rest of my life, I’m sure I could have borne it more easily! Your voice is so warm and full of sympathy
...
If a man couldn’t see it would be something to have it always in his ears! A kind of recompense! And now that I can see I know that
—
that I couldn’t bear you to just say good-bye and go back to England. This island, this house, would never be the same again now that you’ve actually lived here for nearly three weeks.”

“There are other places in the world,” she reminded him. “You don’t have to stay here, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” His face twisted in a tormented fashion. “You don’t know what the island has done for me. And Ferguson’s house!
...
I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to keep it. Buy it from him.”

“Will he let you?”

“Yes. The option to purchase was in the agreement when I took it over, and now I’m going to take up the option! I feel that it would be impossible to go back and attempt to take up my old life, and here on this island there is a sort of peace. You must have felt it when you arrived?
...
Everyone does.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “I felt it.”

“Then you will stay here and marry me, and we will share the peace between us?”

She tried to free her hands from his clasp, but he refused to let them go. She asked at last: “Can you tell me of any reason, apart from a desire to share the peace of this island with you, why I should marry you?
—
Why I should
want
to marry you?”

His brilliant blue eyes looked down sear
c
hingly into her face.

“I had thought
—
I had hoped!
—
you
li
ked me a little.”

A little? As she looked up and met that strange blue ga
z
e that was like a blue searchlight finding its way into her heart, wounding it so that she actually felt as if a pain tore through it, she wanted to cry out that she loved
him
and that such a thing as liking him had never even happened to her. It had been love as soon as she looked at
him
—
the sort of thing she had never believed in, and which she would never have believed would happen to herself! Love from the moment he removed his dark glasses and looked straight into her
eyes
...

And perhaps even before that, from the moment she became aware of
him
at all, standing with his dog at his side, watching her
...
Although she hadn’t known then that he had the power to watch anyone or anything!

“Felicity,” he said, gently, gathering her hands into a closer clasp, and looking down at them as if the pale,
sl
im
fingers fascinated him because they were so small and delicate. By contrast with his strong dark ones they were like pale flowers. “Felicity, I can’t say I love you, but I want you
—
I want you so much to be my wife! I don't ask you to tell me that you love me, but please believe that there is something between us, and in time it will grow, strengthen..
.”

She snatched away her hands and walked to the far end of the veranda, and he followed her. Although she kept her face rigidly averted he slid his arms about her and drew her so that instinctively her dark head rested against him, and she felt the lean, virile strength of his body.

“Felicity,” he promised, “I won’t ask anything of you
—
not until you’re ready to give it!
—
if only you’ll say ‘Yes’! That you will marry me! Say it now—-don't ask for time to think it over! And I further promise you that we will be happy together!”

“How do you know?”

She put back her head and looked up at him, and in the strong, white light of the stars, which seemed to have grown very much stronger since they left the lights of his private sitting
room behind them, his face looked strong, dark, and convincing. But it also looked
—
unless it was purely her imagination, or a shadow cast by a wavering palm frond created the impression
—
a little sad.

She thought: Oh, if only he could say he loved me!

“How do you know?” she repeated.

“I do know, that is all. And I know that you would not let me hold you like this even for a moment if you did not like me a little!”

“Yes, I like you a little,” she whispered. “I
like
you
—
very much!”

He smiled above her head a little whimsically, but she did not see the smile.

“Then we will get this matter settled before we have to rejoin the others. You will marry me and live here with me on Menzies Island, and I will do my utmost to make you happy, and there will be no need for you to go back to England and look for jobs with strange people who will never appreciate you as much as you should be appreciated. You will remain here where I feel you have already found a form of happiness, and in time that happiness will increase. I will take care of you
—
I don’t feel that you have had enough care taken of you in your lifetime
—
and you will be secure. Doesn’t security mean something to you? Or are you one of these
modern
young women who desire freedom before everything else?”

“No.”

“Then the answer is ‘
Yes’?”

“You are bribing me,” she whispered.

“I am not bribing you, because you are not the type to be bribed. But I want to make you part of my life
—
part of my future life! Say ‘Yes,’ Felicity!” he commanded, with a sudden odd impatience.

And she heard herself weakly saying the word he wanted to hear just as the great gong in the hall summoned them to join the others at dinner.

CHAPTER TEN

“IF there’s one thing I adore more than anything else it’s a wedding!” Aunt Millicent declared, as she removed the faded straw hat from her head and looked about her at the unfamiliar bedroom. The furnishing was not James’s taste, she was sure, but she liked it, and when James’s new house was built and they started to equip it, she
—
who, in future, would act as his housekeeper
—
would see to it that it was as comfortable as this old one.

She looked at Felicity, who was
the
one who had escorted her up to her room, and smiled at her in the bright, friendly fashion that had endeared her to a good many people all her life.

“At first I was a little confused,” she admitted. “When Cassandra met us at the jetty and said Mr. Halloran was going to be married I thought she meant that he was going to marry her!
...
So many men have wanted to marry Cassandra, and she is very attractive, isn’t she? But, so are you, my dear!” patting Felicity’s arm with her plump little be-ringed hand. “You remind me of my youngest sister Agnes at the time when she wished to marry a medical missionary who was going out to India
—
or Africa! I’m not quite sure which! But my father objected very strongly, and Agnes never married her missionary, and until she died a few years ago we two lived together. But now I’m going to look after James!”

She sounded highly delighted by the prospect, although When Felicity first saw her she was looking a little exhausted after her flight from England, and a sea journey to which she hadn’t, apparently, taken kindly. But the beauty of the island had put fresh heart into her, and the only thing that annoyed her brother James was that she persisted in referring to it as a desert island, and hoped there were no cannibals on it.

“I’ve brought several packets of tea with me,” she admitted, “and a teapot
—
so that at least we shall have a cup of tea!”

James Ferguson Menzies had snorted.

“We are civilized on Menzies Island! And we shall be still more civilized when my new house goes up! I’m arranging to have a more frequent steamer service between us and the mainland, and in time we may even have our own air-strip! Eh, Halloran?” Giving him a slight dig in the ribs, and winking one of his shrewd little grey eyes at him, as he stood beside him on the jetty.

“So long as you don’t turn my side of the island into a winter paradise for visitors,” Halloran replied. “That wouldn’t suit me at all.”

“Not even as a married man?” It was Cassandra who had broken the news to them almost immediately they stepped ashore, and she done so with a kind of cold relish, as if half hoping that it would hurt someone, as it had secretly stunned herself. “A man with a wife needs amenities that are not so essential to a bachelor! Isn’t that so, Miss Felicity?”

Felicity had taken to Uncle James on sight, just as she had to his sister. He was short and grizzled, and almost mahogany-colored from tropical sun, and his grey eyes never seemed to stop twinkling. If he, too, felt some surprise that it was not his beautiful niece who had captured this remote dark friend of his whom he had never expected to marry anyone
—
certainly not after his embittering accident
—
he was careful not to betray it. Instead, his eyes reflected a good deal of admiration as he looked at Felicity. He had never married himself, but if he had he might have selected
j
ust such a girl as this.

“Wedding’s in the air, eh? That’s fine!” he declared, as soon as the news had really penetrated. “I’m just in time to give you away, my dear!”

And Felicity felt certain that he really meant it He would give her away if she wanted him to.

But a slight awkwardness was occasioned on the jetty by the inclusion in the new arrival’s party of a young man whom nobody had expected. He was a very fair young man, likewise extremely bronzed as if he travelled a good deal, and wearing a light silk suit that bore the hall-mark of a certain London tailor. In fact, everything about this young man breathed of a way of life peculiar to the English
—
and particularly the sons of irreproachable county families. Looking at him Felicity thought of such events as the London season, hunting in t
he Shires in the winter time, shooting in th
e autumn, and
the
Riviera when everything else was becoming a little boring. He had an engaging smile, and his eyes were blue
—
clear, Saxon blue. His name was Mervyn Manners, he was thirty-two, had a flat in Jermyn Street, was a member of all
the
right clubs, heir to a baronetcy, and in love with Cassandra.

In fact, he was t
he
reason why Cassandra had left England.

He was the ‘affair that had got a little out of hand’.

“I’m utterly amazed that you should
inflic
t yourself on my aunt and uncle like this!” Cassandra remarked,
the
drip of ice in her tones, as he stepped ashore after assisting Aunt Millicent to do so without accident. “No one invited you, and I can’t think why you are here!”

“Can’t you?” He smiled, sunnily, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, and then turned to Felicity. “Felicity knows why I’ve come! I couldn’t forget those big eyes of hers
—
they always make me think of wallflowers blooming under
the
south terrace at home
—
and so I came after them to have another good look into them!” He smiled into them audaciously, and it was at that moment that Cassandra chose to inform the assembled company that Felicity and Paul Halloran had decided to marry.

Mervyn Manners pretended to look upset.

“But this is awful! I’ve come all this way!
...”
And then he squeezed Felicity’s hand. “I hope you’ll be happy
—
I really do! In any case, you’ve chosen the right spot in which to live! No fogs here in the winter
—
nothing but sun! Marvellous!”

Paul Halloran accepted his congratulations with a slight air of constraint. His eyes had grown a little narrow when Mervyn bent so familiarly over Felicity’s hand, and the way he had stopped to look into her eyes had caused his lips to tighten. Cassandra, missing neither Paul’s reaction nor her erstwhile suitor’s attempts to put her in her place
—
and of course, she thought, that’s all they were!
—
actually allowed her own expression to lighten a little. She said humorously: “Well, so long as you don’t forget Felicity’s booked, Mervyn, my pet, there isn’t likely to be any trouble! But a girl likes to put her past life behind her when she decides to marry!”

She turned quickly to her uncle, reproaching him for not letting her know his plans. When he explained that they were very ambitious ones, and that the new house he proposed to build was going to be even finer than his old one, he obviously claimed her interest. She wanted to know where he was going to stay while the building was going forward, and he further surprised her by mentioning a small house that already existed on the far side of the island, where the new site was going to be.

“Can I come and stay with you there?” she asked, exerting all the charm and appeal of which she was
capable when she wished, and he patted her shoulder and said: “Of course, of course! And this young lady, too—” including Felicity
—
“until she’s married! Paul’s putting us up for a night or two, to get Millicent over the journey, and then we’re making tracks for the other side of the island. Car’s coming over tomorrow, with some stores and things, and the staff are already expecting us. I’ve kept the house primed during my absence in case I came over all homesick suddenly and had to return here. And, you see, I have returned!”

“Because you were homesick?” Felicity asked largely because Paul seemed to be standing rather stiffly beside her, and on the other side Mervyn was pouring a lot of nonsense into her ear
—
and although she knew it was nonsense, she was not at all sure that Paul even thought it was
amusing.
Particularly after Cassandra’s reference to her past life, which was such an unblemished past that that should have amused him, too.

But Paul behaved like the sombre, thoughtful, reserved man she had first met, and he put Aunt Millicent into his big
cream
car with the maximum of correctness. There was no airy-fairy handing her into the car such as would have characterized the way Mervyn would have done it. Mervyn himself was requested to wait for the return of the vehicle.

“Unless you care to walk through the plantation,” Paul added curtly. He indicated, with a nod of his sleek dark head, the way through the plantation. “Felicity’s done it before today, and it’ll be cooler than the jetty.”

“If Felicity’s done it, I’m sure I can do it with ease,” Mervyn co
mme
nted. And at the same time one
corner
of his mouth twitched a little. What had gone wrong with Cassandra’s charm that this man with the blue eyes and the rather stilted foreign manner, who should have been right up her street, had decided to overlook her in favor of a pretty little thing whom he already resented being singled out for attention by any other man?

Poor Felicity, he thought, rather whimsically! And because he was not easily deceived he knew that for once in her life Cassandra had been badly hurt. “Poor Cassandra!”

Aunt Millicent spent the remainder of the day in her room, resting after her journey. In the evening Florence helped her to dress, and she appeared downstairs wearing the only evening gown she had bought for years, with the evidences of her private fortune sparkling on her fingers and about her
w
rinkle
d
neck. Cassandra was not impressed by this display
—
although she felt fairly certain that the lot would come to her one day
—
and she had eyes only for the old-fashioned settings, which she could not approve. Felicity could recognize valuable stones when she saw them, and her naturally kindly disposition would not permit her to appear disinterested when Miss Menzies chatted to her about this and that ring belonging to her mother, and this and that brooch, or ornament, being handed down to her by a godmother, or some aunt or member of the family who had had it bestowed on them under unusual circumstances.

Nearly all Miss Menzies’s relatives, it appeared, had received rewards from such persons as eastern potentates, and even sovereigns, for services they had performed. Miss Menzies was very proud of them, and liked to recall the circumstances. Felicity listened to her, and the maiden lady
—
who hadn’t had a single romantic episode in her life so far
—
was greatly attracted to her and referred constantly to her wedding, which she had been given to understand would take place very soon.

“If there’s anything I can lend you for the occasion you must let me know,” she said. “I’d be very happy to lend you my pearls
—
my mother’s pearls!
—
and if you haven’t a veil I’ve a lovely length of genuine Brussels lace that I brought with me for no particular reason, that would look enchanting on your dark hair!”

Felicity thanked her, and felt more and more uncomfortable. Miss Menzies had mentioned her wedding so many times, and as yet she wasn’t even accustomed to the idea that she was going to get married at all. In fact, she didn’t really believe it, save when someone mentioned it. And as for wearing a white dress, and a Brussels lace veil
...

She caught Cassandra’s eyes fixed on her across the room, and saw they were mocking her. She would never forget the way in which her erstwhile employer had received the news of her engagement. She had laughed when Paul had made the announcement at the dinner table shortly after he had asked Felicity to be his wife, and then all the color had drained from her face and
s
he had looked as if something had actually stunned her. She had reached for the glass of wine at her elbow and taken a few sips, and then as if it suddenly struck her that this announcement was perfectly serious she had lifted the glass high.

“In that case we must toast you both!” she cried, on a high, artificial note of gaiety. “Harry, we must toast your employer and my employee. Felicity won’t be going home to England after all!”

Only Harry Whitelaw, although he had been just as amazed, had looked and sounded as he echoed the toast as if he was genuinely delighted.

Now Cassandra strolled across the room and joined her aunt and Felicity in the
corner
where they sat, and as she perched on the end of a Chesterfield beneath the tall standard lamp, she said with the brightly malicious look on her face: “But it isn’t going to be that kind of a wedding. Aunt Millicent! Felicity isn’t likely to wear white because the whole thing is being fixed up
in an extraordinary hurry, and as the ceremony is taking
place here on the island they won’t even be married in a church. There’s a sort of retired missionary who lives
in a village on the other side of the island, and he’s being roped in to say the necessary words
!
After that
—
no going away, no honeymoon, nothing!”

“Oh, dear me!” Aunt Millicent looked a little disturbed. “But don’t people always have honeymoons?
—
And wouldn’t it be better to be married in a church?”

“There isn’t one on the island,” Felicity heard herself saying in a confused sort of voice.

Cassandra smiled as if she was be
ginning
to enjoy herself.

“But there are other islands where there are churches
—
there are churches on the mainland! It’s only a matter of travelling a short distance to get to one! And if I were getting married I’d want at least a weekend in Paris to mark the most important event in my life! I’m sure
Felicity
looks upon marriage as terribly important,” with a slight but unmistakable jeer on the scarlet mouth. “She’s that type!”

“Well, it’s only natural to look upon marriage as important
...
I feel sure it is!” Miss Menzies sensed something here that was certainly a little unusual, and she looked at
Felicity
as if she would like to put it right if she could. No white frock, no bridesmaids, no orange blossom
...
Possibly not even a wedding cake! And she was just the sort of young woman who ought to trail down the aisle on her father’s arm, while all her relatives looked on and the organ thundered forth bridal music!
...
But if there wasn’t an aisle, and perhaps she hadn’t a father
...
“Well, at least we’re here to see you get married, and James is quite taken up with the idea of giving you away,” Aunt Millicent went on with sudden brightness. “And you can borrow the pearls to go with whatever it is you will wear. Perhaps it’s
quite natural that Mr. Halloran doesn’t feel like a lot of fuss when it’s only recently that he’s been entirely himself again!” She adopted a penetrating whisper. “I mean, such a frightful thing to be
blind,
and that terrible accident he suffered!
...
Ja
me
s tells me he was quite a wreck when he first came here, and rented this house.”

“If Uncle James hadn’t let the house to him he would probably have remained a wreck,” Cassandra said, as if she was voicing something she was secretly certain about. “It wasn’t only that he was injured in that accident
—
he lost everything that made life worth living to him!”

“You mean his music?” Aunt Millicent enquired.

“No
—
I don’t mean his music!” Cassandra replied, and looked across the lighted space at Felicity with a kind of cold triumph in her eyes.

Just at that moment Felicity became aware of Paul himself stan
ding
almost at her elbow, and her heart lurched. Cassandra put back her head and looked up at him, and there was a cool challenge in her look.

“Ah, the prospective bridegroom!” she exclaimed “My aunt is disappointed because you’re not going to have a white wedding, and all the t
rimmin
gs! She doesn’t think it’s fair to Felicity to have a hole and
corner
affair on an island!
—
And not even a honeymoon afterwards! Can’t Felicity persuade you to relent a little on that one point, at least?”