by Averil Ives
“But you would prefer it if I made protestations that might not—be altogether true!”
Oh, no! She didn’t actually utter the words, but her anguished spirit uttered them, and all at once the tears were swimming in her eyes, and she moved almost blindly towards the lighted window behind them. “Do you mind if I—if I go to my room?”
“No,” he answered, almost dispassionately—or so it seemed to her—“I don’t mind!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AFTER that night Felicity felt certain that any hope of their marriage developing into a normal marriage had died.
They met at meals, and they sat for long hours on the veranda together—sometimes in the golden light of day, when the garden they overlooked appeared very restful and green, and sometimes after the sun had set, when that same garden was wrapped in velvety darkness, and stars burned overhead. Michael waited on them and appeared not to notice that their conversation was conducted with something of an effort. In the kitchen Moses thought out tempting meals for the Irishman to carry to the table in the dining room that was always flower-decked. Every night the tall candles burned in the silver candelabra, and the table was always laid with the lace table mats and the glass that Felicity had discovered was Waterford. The big bowl of island fruits stood at one end of the long polished surface, so that there was always a feeling of intimacy about their meals—even if it was only a suggestion.
Breakfast was not quite such an ordeal, because nowadays Felicity always had hers served to her in her room. She seldom came face to face with her husband before about twelve o’clock. Not that this meant that she remained in her room until twelve o’clock. Sometimes she went down on the beach as soon as she was dressed. On other days she sought the more shady corners of the garden and stayed hidden away there until Paul either came upon her by accident, or Bruno found her out and led him to her retreat, or Michael came to inform her that coffee had been served on the veranda, and the tray was waiting for her to preside over.
Sometimes Bruno deserted his master and accompanied her down on to the beach, but Paul never sought her out there. He wandered in the plantation, she knew. The habit of dinging closely to the house seemed to be leaving him now that his eyes were serving him normally again. Occasionally, however, her heart gave that strange, poignant leap when she saw him make a slight, groping movement round a piece of furniture, as if he was feeling his way, and an instant’s terror showed in her eyes lest after all the restoration of his sight was not to be permanent.
On those occasions, with her heart in her throat, she wanted to leap to his side, as she had leapt once before ... But she always managed to restrain herself. He would sink down into a chair facing her and smile very slightly as he looked towards her, as if just for an instant he had been aware of her panic. She could never make up her mind about the quality of that odd little smile. Sometimes she thought it held just a tinge of mockery, as if her concern intrigued him slightly and amused him a little ... Once or twice she could have sworn that the dark blue eyes softened. Whenever blue eyes and brown eyes met—really met and held for longer than a mere fleeting moment of time—so many emotions caught at her that she felt like a boat on a rushing current. A fierce yearning for him that she was always trying to suppress seemed to get out of hand, and the color rose in her cheeks so that they glowed like the smooth sides of a peach. She could almost feel again the hard pressure of his mouth on hers, and hear his passion-choked murmurs when he held her close ... Then in almost the same instant a swift revulsion of feeling sent the color ebbing from her cheeks, as she remembered how he had let her go to her room that night because he had so little to offer her—and knew it! She remembered how miserably shamed she had felt as she crept away to her room, because he couldn’t even pretend to love her as he had loved Nina Carlotti!
Not that she expected to be loved as he had loved the Italian girl ... But there were degrees of love. He must have something to offer her ... Otherwise why had he married her?
Why had she married him when at least he had been honest with her from the very beginning...?
He had never made any pretence at all!
Her hands shook sometimes when they returned to the work she always kept in her lap—a piece of sewing, or some mending—for moments when they were alone together, and her hands had to be occupied. She often wondered whether he noticed that they were not quit steady as she plied her needle.
She wondered sometimes whether he noticed how increasingly difficult it was becoming for them to carry on a conversation, even about nothing of very much importance to either of them. It was just as if there was nothing in their lives that was of importance, for they never touched on it. There were no more drives together or discussion of plans, no visitors from the other side of the island. No boat put in until nearly three weeks after their wedding, and then it brought mail for Paul, but nothing for Felicity. She seemed to have no longer any contact with the outer world. She even wondered whether there ever had been any life apart from this strange, tense, unreal island life that she was living now, with a husband who didn’t appear to be ravaged by any of the emotions that secretly ravaged her.
However, if he was regretting his impulsive marriage, at least he treated her with consideration and the utmost politeness. If he felt defrauded, he never showed it—If he was playing a game of patience—a waiting game—he never betrayed that he was, by so much as a flicker of the eyelid. And she didn’t nowadays lock her door at night, because she felt certain there was no necessity to do so.
He would not make demands on her that she was not prepared to meet. She was quite safe, alone in her attractive bedroom that Florence kept so spick and span, with flowers on the dressing table, and beside the bed. Pretty feminine articles of wearing apparel, such as a dressing gown and feather-trimmed mules, negligently disposed where they caught the eye instantly on entering the room, lent it an inviting, feminine atmosphere.
Sometimes Felicity found herself wondering whether Florence ever suspected that it was an atmosphere that had never been savored by the master of the house...
But if she did, Florence—like her master—was clever at not betraying things, no doubt in the kitchen she said a few things, sometimes, to Moses, who, after all, was her husband ... And Michael had no doubt formed his own opinion of this marriage into which the man he had served for so many years had so amazingly hurried.
But perhaps Michael understood Paul Halloran better than Felicity did. She knew he was devoted to Paul Halloran, and that, at least, was a bond between them.
The morning before the steamer brought the mail, Paul suggested—and Felicity was conscious of a distinct sensation of surprise because he should do so—that she should take the car and visit the other side of the island and Miss Menzies.
“And you?” she asked, looking up at him as she stood beside him. “Will you come, too?”
“No.” He was quite definite about it. “You two became very good friends, and it’s you, I feel sure, she would like to have a good talk with.” He sent her a suave, sideways look. “After all, we’ve been married for nearly three weeks now, and she won’t expect us to be still at the stage where we simply can’t bear to be out of one another’s sight.” Was it quiet irony in his voice, she wondered, or slightly brittle humor? “You can convey my regards to the rest of them if you see them.”
“They may be planning to leave quite soon.”
“I don’t think so. I understand that Menzies has already started building, and his niece will be curious to see what sort of a house he is going to throw up. After all, it may be hers one day!” The dryness still in his voice.
“That’s true.” Felicity decided that where Cassandra elected to remain Mervyn Manners would also decide to bide his time. Although she felt sorry for Mervyn—much sorrier than she ever had done since her own disastrous marriage—she shrank from the thought of meeting Cassandra’s shrewd, bright eyes, and but for a curious note of insistence in Paul’s voice she might have
declined to pay a visit to Miss Menzies just then. A little later, when Cassandra might have gone ... But not yet. Not when she had so little of the sparkle of a happy young wife about her.
“Please, I’d rather not...” she was beginning, when Paul said decisively:
“But I’d like you to go! I think it will be good for you to see someone else for a change.” And this time she was certain the words had no double meaning.
For an instant her eyes appealed to him.
“I don’t want to see anyone else...”
His face seemed to harden a little.
“Go, and stay to lunch if Miss Menzies asks yon. You don’t have to make any excuse about me. I never have gone in for casual calls, and in any case I’m seeing Whitelaw this morning. But if Manners offers you any further advice you can tell him you don’t really need any.”
All the way across the island in the big cream car Felicity pondered over that last remark, and she decided that there had been a slight trace of bitterness in it. Paul was disappointed in her—disappointed because she gave little without receiving a great deal in return. Because she was a cheat.
But she couldn’t help it. In an anguish of spirit she told herself that she couldn’t help it. She loved him ...And if only he had loved her!...
She was looking healthily tanned and extraordinarily composed when she arrived at the small, and rather ramshackle, building that at present housed Miss Menzies and her brother, as well as Cassandra and the persistent Mervyn. But her composure was really only on the surface, and it was an infinite relief to her to be received by Miss Menzies with the information that the others were all spending the day on the building site, and as that was three-quarters-of-a-mile away they were not even intending to return for lunch.
“Cassandra is taking such an enormous interest in the new house,” Miss Menzies explained, When she had embraced Felicity with enthusiasm and assured her that she was looking remarkably fit—which said a lot for a good coating of tan and Felicity’s determined haunting of the beach on her side of Menzies Island. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” Aunt Millicent confined, “if in the end James doesn’t give it to her for a wedding present, if she marries that nice young man Mr. Manners. I’ve got a kind of feeling that she will marry him one day—but perhaps it won’t be just yet, not for a while.”
Yes; Felicity agreed with Miss Menzies that Cassandra would almost certainly marry Mervyn one day—his persistence, and perhaps the thought of the title that would one day be his, would win in the end. But Cassandra would take her time about accepting him—she might also need a little time get over Paul Halloran.
Felicity found herself wondering about that.
She stayed to lunch, although all the time she had the fear that Cassandra would return unexpectedly from the building site and see through her camouflage of attractive golden skin and deliberately careful dressing. After lunch she and Miss Menzies took their coffee in the rather cramped little drawing room that overlooked a very delightful bay. The elderly maiden lady tried to find out for certain whether Felicity was happy, although her probing was so gentle and so completely inoffensive that Felicity could not even begin to resent it.
“I’ll admit, at first, I thought Mr. Halloran rather an—rather an aloof sort of man,” Aunt Millicent confessed. “And I’ll admit I didn’t think you were particularly suited, because he’s so many years older than you are, and that provides him with a past, doesn’t it? Not,” with a laugh, “that I think you need have even the smallest fear that there was ever anything discreditable about his past—quite the contrary! Cassandra has told me what a tremendous success he had at one time, and how much he was sought after for his musical talents! It seems such a pity that they should be rather wasting away here on this island ... So remote for anyone as young as you are! That’s what I mean when I say he’s had a past! ... You’re really young, and you’re only just beginning—your marriage is the beginning of everything. But for him...”
Felicity looked at her. How much had Cassandra told Miss Menzies about Paul, she wondered, apart from making the most of his musical triumphs and successes?
“But I’m sure you’re a very sensible girl, my dear, and you won’t expect too much! ... I mean,” Miss Menzies added hastily, “that you’ll be content with the future, and not bother about the past—anyone’s past! After all,” a little soberly, “we have to live in the present, don’t we?—It’s always the present, and it’s what affects us at the present time that really matters. Have you ever thought, my dear, that it’s quite true that there’s never a tomorrow? ... It’s always today, and what happens today is the thing that really counts!”
She was so earnest about it that Felicity had no doubts any longer that Cassandra had talked a good deal. Particularly when her hostess touched her cheek gently, and confessed: “There was a time when I was in love with a man who had been married before. He’d even had children—two quite charming children! But I didn’t feel I could share him with them, or his past memories—so I let him go out of my life! It was a mistake,” and she sighed. “Because as it turned out he was the only love of my life!”
And then she went on a little anxiously: “But you won’t tell anyone I’ve admitted all this, will you, my dear? It was just that I—I thought it might help you!...”
Felicity thanked her, so touched that she hardly knew how to speak. When she finally took her departure, she felt as if something salutory had happened to her. And when Miss Menzies, before seeing her settled in the back of the oar, whispered to her, after giving her one of her affectionate hugs: “Don’t despise anything for being second-best, because it may one day turn out to be the very thing you want!” She-was certain that her outing that day was something that had been ordained.
When she got back Paul listened politely to her account of her day—although of course Miss Menzies’s confidences were not disclosed, and Felicity said nothing whatsoever about receiving any advice. Paul waited until after dinner to break a piece of news to her. The news didn’t merely cause her to forget Miss Menzies’ advice, but made her feel absolutely shattered. She wondered afterwards whether that feeling showed in her face.
“I’m leaving Menzies Island for a few weeks,” Paul told her. “Perhaps only a couple of weeks, but there’s just a possibility it may be longer! I’m going to Italy, and I shall also spend a day or so in Paris. I shall take Michael with me, but you will be perfectly all right with Florence and Moses to look after you—and Bruno to keep you company,” he finished a little dryly.
Felicity could say nothing. Her throat worked, and her lips trembled.
“Won’t you?” Paul insisted. “You’ll be perfectly all right?”
“I ... Must you go?” she got out at last.
“I must. And I can’t take you with me, although it may strike you as unfair to leave you behind. Perhaps one day I’ll show you Italy, and perhaps one day also we’ll spend a few days in Paris—but those possibilities are in the future, and have nothing to do with the present time.” Odd that he should be altering the context of Miss Menzies’ words, Felicity thought, with the dullness of one who has received a blow. “Just now I want to receive your reassurance that you have no fears about being left here?”
“Fears?”
“Yes. You don’t mind being left—you’re not afraid to be left?”
She shook her head.
“No, I—No; why should I be afraid? As you say, I’ll have Florence, and Moses—”
“And your friends on the other side of the island!” he reminded her. “In particular your good friend Miss Menzies! If anything should go wrong, James Menzies would do anything to help you, I know, but I don’t anticipate that anything can go wrong. Harry Whitelaw has the running of the estate, and he also is thoroughly reliable ... A new motor-launch is arriving within the next few days. It will be in Harry’s charge, and if anything should be needed Harry has instructions to fetch it for you. You won’t have the feeling that you’re cut off any longer, and
I have the knowledge that you could hardly be safer in any part of the world than you will be here!”
“Yes.” Once again her throat worked, and she fought hard to keep the dismay out of her eyes. “And you? You’ll—be all right?”
“Why shouldn't I be all right?”
“You haven’t left the island for two years!”
“It could be two years too long,” he remarked, with an odd little twist to his lips. “However, Felicity, my dear child, that’s all beside the point—and quite irrelevant! I want to know that I can feel easy in my mind about you, and that’s all that really matters! And in case you feel that I’ve sprung this on you rather suddenly, it isn’t as sudden as it seems—although until the post arrived this morning I couldn’t make any actual plans. But I shall be leaving with the steamer in the morning, and I promise you I’ll be back as soon as it’s possible.”
“So soon?” she gasped, grasping only at the fact that he was leaving her the following day.
He turned away and walked towards the veranda rail. They both heard the surging of the surf beyond the barrier reef—a sound that she would listen to alone after tonight, until he returned—and they both heard the dry rustling of the palm leaves in the intermittent night breeze. Felicity also seemed to be listening to the disturbed thumping of her heart in her own ears.
“I suppose you can’t tell me why you’re going?” she asked, in a small voice, at last.
“No.” His voice was very decisive. “I’m afraid I can’t!”
“Very well.” She turned blindly towards the door. “I’ll be all right—don’t worry about me! And I’m glad you’re taking Michael! I’d worry about you if you weren’t—taking him!”