Sunshine Yellow

by Mary Whistler

  “In future—that is to say, when I get these confounded bandages off my eyes, and get out of here—I hope it won’t be necessary for anyone to lead me,” Stephen replied.

  “The future is going to be wonderful,” Veronica said, still more softly—and to Penny there was a whole undercurrent of meaning in her voice as she turned her head and looked at Stephen, whose handsome mouth and chin gave away nothing below the bandages.

  More than once Penny actually felt in the way. She did so on the day Veronica started to discuss convalescence, and the length of time Stephen should take to convalesce.

  “You’ll have to go right away somewhere and get brown and fit in the sun,” she said. “Mummy and I are thinking of renting a villa in the South of France for the season, and you could come to us. I’d take such care of you, Stephen,” her voice a seductive caress. “Penny could have a rest—which she deserves!—and I’d devote myself to you. I’m just aching for a chance to make it all up to you, Stephen, for—” Her voice broke. “You know what I mean!”

  Stephen was silent.

  Veronica’s voice came muffled.

  “I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you! Never!”

  “Never’s a long time,” Stephen said, with a little smile.

  “But I mean it, Stephen! I—” Her fingers groped appealingly for his. “You have forgiven me, haven’t you?”

  “If I haven’t,” Stephen replied, with the same little smile, “I’ll have to do so, since you’re going to devote yourself to me!”

  Penny made an excuse to leave them alone together, and the excuse was that Stephen’s afternoon tea was late in arriving.

  Another afternoon, when she managed to have a few words alone with Stephen, Veronica waited for her outside the door of his room.

  “There isn’t any point in putting up a pretence any longer,” Veronica said bluntly. “You must see the way things are going, Penny ... and although I don’t want to hurt you, I did warn you months ago that I must have Stephen back! And it’s so obvious that you’re just my little Cousin Penny to him that you can’t accuse me of robbing you of a husband.”

  “I’m not,” Penny said quietly, remembering Roland Ardmore’s words about putting up a fight. But she couldn’t put up a fight for something that was not hers, and never would be hers.

  “In any case, I’m not breaking up a marriage, am I?” looking probingly at Penny. “You know what I mean? You and Stephen—”

  “Yes, I know what you mean,” Penny said hastily.

  “Then will you do this for me?” Veronica requested. “I happen to know—as a matter of fact, he told me this afternoon—that Stephen is having his bandages off tomorrow, and I want to be the first person he sees when they come off. So will you do the decent thing and stay at home tomorrow? Don’t visit him at all!”

  Penny stared at her for a moment incredulously. Surely if Stephen were having his bandages off he would have told her, too? Then she recollected his complacent little smile when Veronica promised so fulsomely to devote herself to him.

  Of course ... if the bandages were coming off, then Veronica would be the first person he would want to see! She mustn’t risk getting in the way herself.

  The next day was such a long day for Penny that she wondered whether she would ever live through it. Waters followed her restless movements with concern as she found things to do in the house that were quite unnecessary, and it was quite obvious that he didn’t understand why she hadn’t paid her usual visit to the nursing home.

  Tentatively, he asked her once:

  “The master is quite all right, madam? He’s going on nicely?”

  “Oh, yes, Waters, he’s going on nicely.”

  But in Penny’s heart nothing was quite all right. It felt frozen, blighted, as if all the warmth in it had dried up, and never again would it beat quickly at the sound of a masculine footstep, or a masculine cough ... an impatient voice outside the door calling “Penny!” She realized that she would have devoted the whole of her life to Stephen, asking for nothing more than that impatient voice, that occasional repentant squeeze of the fingers or light, caressing pat on the head, if such a state of affairs could have continued. If it had had to continue for Stephen!

  But now that he was expecting to see again she wouldn’t have even the pat on the head or the squeeze of the fingers.

  She swallowed. She wondered what she was going to do with the future ... how she was going to bear it when the final break came.

  That night Veronica telephoned, and when Penny asked her breathlessly whether Stephen had had his bandages removed she replied coldly, “No.”

  She went on:

  “I don’t know what happened, but there was evidently a change of plan, and they didn’t come off. Stephen, however, was furious because you didn’t put in your usual appearance, and he vented his ill humour on me. I never knew he had such a beastly temper before, and I don’t know how you put up with him for six months in such a God-forsaken place as Cornwall! You must have an angelic temperament, or something...”

  Penny’s heart had once more started to beat so quickly that it made her voice tremble.

  “But why didn’t they remove the bandages? Is Stephen all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “Perfectly all right, as far as I could make out,” her cousin replied. “Except for his filthy temper! I promised I’d ring you and give you his message. You’re to be at the nursing home without fail tomorrow! And that means without fail!”

  “W-what time?” Penny asked.

  “The usual time, I suppose.”

  “And are you going to be there, too?”

  “No, I’m not,” and the receiver clicked at Veronica’s end.

  The following afternoon Penny reached the nursing home a little ahead of her usual time, and as the pretty nurse took her up to Stephen’s room in the lift she cast admiring eyes at the youthful Mrs. Blair’s dark green velvet coat, and the leopard-skin cap that sat so attractively on her soft gold hair. And although she usually looked quite pretty, today she looked radiant, somehow ... and it wasn’t all due to the new range of cosmetics about which the pretty nurse knew nothing!

  Penny was left to tap on Stephen’s door alone, the nurse departing blithely down the corridor after she had passed on the information to Penny, in a stage whisper:

  “You’ll find he’s doing very well. But he wasn’t at all an easy patient yesterday!”

  Stephen called, “Come in!” and Penny opened the door. He was sitting in a chair by the window, and the afternoon sunlight was pouring over him. She could see at once he was fully dressed and there were no bandages—not even dark glasses—concealing his eyes.

  Her knees began to tremble quite ridiculously as he just stood there looking at her. He took in every detail of the slim-fitting green coat, the little hat, the colour that had simply poured into her cheeks and was making her eyes look huge and brown and bright. She tried to say something, but no words would pass her lips, and he came up very close and took her hands.

  “Oh, Penny,” he breathed. “Penny!”

  Her lips moved.

  “But—but the bandages...? Veronica said you were still wearing them yesterday.”

  “Yesterday you didn’t come,” he said reproachfully. “I was livid ... so mad I’m afraid I upset your cousin Veronica for good and all! She came in with an armful of flowers, and thrust them all over me. I told her to take them away ... you see,” he explained, his eyes so tender, so liquidly blue, that Penny’s heart practically melted in her breast, “it was all arranged. I’ve been wearing the bandages only a few hours each day for the past three days, and yesterday they were to come off for good. You were to be the one I looked at for the first time when they came off finally ... and you didn’t come!”

  “Oh, Stephen!” she moaned, and then he was holding her with her face crushed against the lapel of his jacket, and his unsteady hand was stroking her hair.

  “Oh, darling, darling,” he said, “my sill
y little darling! That you could be so blind! It was incredible to me, when you’re the one person I’ve thought about—the one woman I’ve wanted—ever since I recovered consciousness after the accident! I told you so, but you still wouldn’t believe me! I lost my temper with you a thousand times, but you put it all down to frustration because I’d lost my sight and my job. Partly it was frustration, of course, but only partly. There were times when I wanted to shake you!”

  “Veronica?” she murmured, and he shook his head. “Will you never stop thinking of Veronica? She’s gone, I hope, out of my life for good—except I’ll have to see her occasionally, and be polite to her! But so far as you and I are concerned, Penny, my foolish little beloved, Veronica is out! ... do you understand?” She nodded, a light like the sunrise creeping into her eyes, and he uttered a queer little sound—almost as if he were hungry for something, as if, in fact, he was starving.

  “Penny,” he whispered, and his arm tightened round her until she could scarcely breathe, and she was completely reassured about his physical strength. “Penny, you kissed me once ... do you remember? It was a real kiss. Kiss me again, please!”

  And then her arms were round his neck, and she was holding him to her with the same sort of desperation, and with something like abandon she gave him her lips. This time the response was so immediate, and so violent, that she closed her eyes and couldn’t see the fire in his blue ones.

  Later, when they had recovered their breath, and were both sitting by the window, he put his fingers under her chin and lifted it, and looked deep into her eyes.

  “Shall I tell you something?” he said. “I love you as I never thought it possible to love a woman, and that’s the way I shall love you all the rest of my life. It’s a life sentence for you, Penny, because I’m not a patient man, as you know, and I shall make fantastic demands ... but I believe you love me almost as much as I love you, and I promise you I’ll make it a glorious life sentence!”

  “I do love you, Stephen,” she told him. “I love you with all my heart.”

  “Yet you were ready to hand me over to Veronica!”

  “Only because I thought it was what you wanted.”

  “Blind,” he said, reproachfully. “Of the two of us, you were the one who was wilfully blind! But I forgive you, because we had a bad beginning, and it’s small wonder you didn’t believe in me. There were times when I was so jealous of that fellow Ardmore that I couldn’t bear the sound of his voice.”

  Penny said nothing. Ardmore had told her to fight, but she hadn’t fought ... and yet she had won!

  “Oh, Stephen,” she said, “when will they let me take you home?”

  “You’re taking me home with you this afternoon,” he told her, surprisingly. “That, too, is all arranged! Tonight we’ll be together in our own home, and tonight I’m afraid I shan’t let you forget that I really am your husband!”