by Averil Ives
“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 understand 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 thing! 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 mind 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 chiffon that was rather like a blue-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 carelessly; 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 English 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 realized 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—very dry—if it was possible, Felicity 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-laundered 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. Hallora
n 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 his young estate manager would be simply attired he had made no real concession to the visitors’ arrival, although he was wearing a beautifully tailored white silk suit that made the dark elegance appear nothing 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 rested,” she added.
“Good,” he said.
Cassandra, sitting in the full revealing light of the standard lamp, tightened her lips a little. Harry Whitelaw thought that her face looked like a pale, smooth, deceptive mask—although he had known her such a short while he was certain it was a mask.
“You don’t ask me whether I am feeling refreshed after a long day devoted to being appallingly lazy, Mr. Halloran,” she said, in oddly silken tones.
He turned to her at once.
“I am sure you both needed to be appallingly lazy,” he returned, “and I hope you found your rooms comfortable? If not we must do something about it!”
Cassandra’s mouth turned down a little at one corner, as if this was not quite the answer she had expected—or the reaction to her mild reproof.
“Our rooms are beautifully comfortable, thank you,” she told him. “This whole house is an island of comfort.”
“I like to think that the island is one to which one will always wish to return,” he said, and although he might have been speaking out of pure politeness, Felicity had the feeling that he was actually speaking from the heart. That for him the island was a place of refuge, a place to which he would return again and again—if he ever left it, that was—and that in his scheme of things it had acquired a very special significance.
CHAPTER FIVE
FELICITY remembered every detail of that first evening on Menzies Island very clearly in after days.
She remembered the gong booming suddenly for dinner. It was a huge brass going that stood in the beautiful entrance hall, and looked as if its rightful place was the palace of some eastern potentate, or somewhere where its hollow voice would pall many people to obey an insistent summons. In the gracious white house on Menzies Island it summoned four people to take their places in a room that reminded Felicity of the dining room of an English country-house.
There were panelled walls, a sideboard groaning with Georgian silver, and a long dining table sparkled with cut-glass and plate and flowers. Above the table a magnificent specimen of a crystal chandelier was responsible for much of the sparkle, and Cassandra wanted to know whether the house made its own electricity—apparently in her uncle’s time they had had to be content with oil lamps. Paul Halloran admitted that he had introduced many improvements since commencing his tenancy. Most of the improvements were of fairly recent date, for when he first took over he had not, as he explained plainly without desiring any sympathy, been in a condition to be interested in improvements. He hoped to introduce still more.
Cassandra tried again to extract information about his future plans, and whether or not he intended to remain for some time on the island. But as before the information was not forthcoming.
Paul Halloran had no intention of discussing with anyone his future intentions, and certainly not a young woman he had met for the first time that day.
Cassandra accepted this, but explained that she was a little curious about her uncle’s movements. The added with a slightly artificial laugh that her curiosity was not unnatural, for one day—one day!—if anything happened to her Uncle James, the island might become hers. She would be quite thrilled to be the possessor of an island.
But even this drew nothing further out of her host. His expression grew a little more remote, perhaps, that was all.
The dinner was beautifully cooked and beautifully served, Michael doing most of the waiting, although Florence assisted by carrying in side dishes. Michael’s broad Irish accent sounded a little strange in such surroundings, particularly as he occasionally uttered exclamations that were full of uninhibited Irish humor. When he stopped behind his master’s chair, and that master refused something that Michael assured him had been prepared especially for him, he threw up his hands and called upon the saints to witness that he was doing his best to put a little flesh on Mr. Halloran’s bones, and thereby aid his convalescence. And when Paul waved him away with a good-humored smile—and the proffered dish also—he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and declared that it would injure Moses in a spot where he could not be injured more.
“And where is that?” Paul asked with interest, and waited with the smile of amusement clinging to his shapely lips while Michael thought out the answer.
“At the heart of him, sor!” he brought out, at last. “The white heart of him, t
hat is not a bit like his skin, that is black patent leather!”
Paul met Felicity’s eyes across the table, and he could see that she was smiling, too. His vivid blue gaze seemed to become temporarily anchored to her soft brown one, and when he looked away the color was palpitating gently in her cheeks, and Cassandra—on the opposite side of the table—drew her lips into one of the noticeably thin lines that had surprised Harry Whitelaw.
After dinner they returned to the big, comfortable lounge, and when the noise of the festivities in the village reached their ears they went out on to the veranda. The night was not so dark now, for a moon like a great yellow lantern had climbed into the star-studded sky above the plantation. It sailed into a position where it could be seen clearly by every human soul on the island, and turned to a plaque of beaten silver. From it poured light that transmuted everything, save the blackest shadows, to silver also.
The plantation was a thicket of mystery, but the tops of the trees had an iridescent shimmer that was quite unearthly. The lawns surrounding the house, running right up to the veranda steps, were lakes of silver, and the flowers in the beds were either carved out of ebony or made of mother-of-pearl. Roses actually tapping against the veranda posts were waxen and wonderful, and their perfume was like incense prodigally released.
From the village came a steady throbbing like the beating of drums, and there was also a gayer note, as if expert fingers were plucking the strings of guitars and twisting the heart out of an accordion. Harry Whitelaw explained that one of the villagers possessed an accordion, and he was obviously making the most of it tonight. Chanting voices sounded as if they were singing calypsos.