by Averil Ives
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 horny 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 recover 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 bored 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 gleaming 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 matinee 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 of 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 o
ver 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 himself 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 it 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!”
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,” she 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?”