Island in the Dawn (14 page)

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 a
c
count 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
r
unnin
g
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
any
thin
g
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 he
r
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
li
ttle 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
mornin
g
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!”

He said nothing
—
only went on staring into the night.

Felicity reached the nearest of the glass doors. “Can I help Michael with your packing? Or do you think he’d prefer to do it alone?”

“I think he would
—
prefer to do it alone!”

“I—see!” She clutched at the handle of the glass door. “How early does the steamer leave in the morning?”

“About eight o’clock!”

“Then, I—will I see you before you go?”

“I think not! Better say good-bye tonight! Although it’s not a very harrowing good-bye, because I’ll be back in a few weeks!”

“Yes. Yes, of course!”

They seemed to be talking in the most stilted phrases, yet inside her words were simply crowding together for utterance, and she could actually feel them rising up in her throat and imploring to be let loose. Words that might not prevent him leaving her, but words that might make the parting just a little easier to bear
...

“Good—good-bye, Paul!’’ she said.

He turned and looked at her. For one instant she thought he was coming across to her, and then it was plain that he changed his mind.

“Good-bye, Felicity! Don’t look so tragic! I’ll be back before you’ve had time to miss me!”

She tried to smile, then she turned and fled. The words in her throat had been successfully bottled up after all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LONG before the steamer left at eight o’clock Felicity had been watching the island emerge from the mists of dawn. She had been standing on her balcony, in the
thinn
est of wraps, although just before dawn, even on Menzies Island, it turned a little chill. She was waiting for the moment when the sky would lighten, and that magical rush of color pour in from the east that heralded a new day.

She stood, shivering a little, and grasping the balcony rail, listening to the monotonous noise of the surf, above which the voices of early morning bird life never seemed to make themselves heard. There were vague rustlings in the trees around her, and when the lavender mists finally lifted, and the warm primrose light seeped through and induced a welcome touch of feeling in her stiffened limbs, she saw bright flashes as specimens of the gaudily-plumaged feathered world that made the island their aviary flew out and circled the sleeping lawns. But she never saw the car slip away from the front of the house as the light grew stronger still. She only knew that on Menzies Island it was this part of the twenty-four hours when things were renewing themselves, and there was
—
or should be
—
so much promise in the very atmosphere she breathed, that a poignant feeling of inevitability assailed her.

On the steamer’s deck, on the morning she arrived, it had been a feeling of inevitability in connection with her arrival. Of all the places in the world she
might
have visited, or been taken to, she had had to come here, to this island
...
For what? She had known, even then, that it was for some particular purpose, to fulfil something that was all part of a plan arranged long before her birth. Something that had to happen.

Now, the inevitability was accompanied by a dreadful feeling of longing to escape that inevitability, and knowing that she couldn’t
...
That Paul would leave, as he had arranged, on the steamer, and that nothing she could say or do would stop him. Perhaps for the simple reason that she hadn’t the power to say or do anything
...
Therefore Paul was leaving!

In those moments she wasn’t even certain that he would ever come back.

She dressed herself, when she knew the steamer must have left, and leaving the tray
that
Florence had brought her practically untouched
—
although
a little of the coffee had seemed to
help the feeling
of numbness she was experiencing
—
went down into the exotic lushness of the garden.

Bruno joined her. The dog was looking puzzled and disturbed, and she knew it was because its master had gone away. She sank a hand into the thick fur at its neck, and tried to make it understand that it still had her
—
she was, after all, its mistress now. But, although Bruno had accepted her
—
although, out of all the people who had come to the house, she was the only one it allowed to so much as rest a hand on that thick fur at the base of its splendid neck, or attempt in any way to caress it
—
its huge golden eyes looking up at her told her it wasn’t the same. She was a poor substitute for its master, and why had that master gone away?

Nevertheless, it remained at her side throughout the whole of that first day they were alone together
—
left alone by the one man they both adored. And that night it slept outside Felicity’s door, and in the
morning
was waiting for her anxiously when she appeared outside her room. She took it with her down on to the beach,
and it sat guarding her bright beach-wrap while she swam in the warm, silken-feeling water inside the reef. Paul had once objected to her swimming alone, but he never offered to accompany her
—
through Florence she had learned accidentally that one permanent legacy from his accident
was a
damaged muscle that made even warm-sea bathing inadvisable. Felicity had felt it impossible to give up so great a pleasure altogether, and had gone on
enjoying a
morning, and sometimes an evening swim. She
was
not a
strong
swimmer, and she never took any risks, so
she did
not feel she was disobeying something
that
would have been an order if Paul had felt like enforcing it.

With Bruno sitting watching her on the beach she didn’t feel so much alone as she would have done otherwise. After the swim she lay in the sun for a while—at midday that would have been impossible, but early in the morning the direct sun’s rays were still far from being lethal. Then she and Bruno wandered up and down the strip of golden sand. Felicity looked for unusual shells and fragments of coral, and collected colo
r
ful strips of sea-lavender and other plants that throve beside the sea—particularly the sort of aquamarine sea that broke upon Menzies Island beaches.

The tall palms that overhung the beach cast quite a lot of shade, and Felicity found it pleasanter, and somehow less intimate than the garden of the house that was James Ferguson Menzies’s first attempt at house building. Moving up and down searching for things—pretending to herself that she might start a collection of shells, or start pressing some of the rarer plants in a book—kept her mind
from eternally reverting back
to Paul, and the endless question shaping before her eyes: Where is he, and what is happening to him now...?

She tried not to think of him in an air-liner, being borne, at the fantastic rate of speed made possible by four powerful engines, away from her and the islands towards the civilization he had left behind two years ago. Two years during which his sophisticated life had been exchanged for a life of extraordinary simplicity, save for the beauty with which he had filled his house. He had clung on to beauty, or at least Michael had seen that he was surrounded by it; and now Michael was with him
—
more important to him than a mere wife, who, in any case, wasn’t really a wife at all. Felicity was glad, wholeheartedly glad that Michael was with him, because otherwise, as she had quite truthfully said, she would have worried about him
—
incessantly and all the time. But Michael had been with
him
during the dark days after his accident, Michael had been the one entrusted with the task of clearing his flat and disposing of many of his personal possessions. No doubt it was Michael who had gone through such
thin
gs as photographs, and selected the one that had stood for so long beside Paul’s bed
...
Or had Paul
hims
elf asked for that one to be brought to him?

Felicity shook her head, because this kind of wildly disturbing thought affected her whole outlook
—
made it seem as if the whole future was obscured. If she was going to take heed of what Miss Menzies had said to her, part of her had to be sublimated to the less demanding half
...
She had to remember that she had entered into a bargain when she married Paul. If all that she yearned for could not be hers, then she still had a duty to fulfill
...
A duty to Paul, Who was so honest that he couldn’t pretend. Not even for the sake of her poor little pride.

She pictured him arriving in Paris
...
Going to an hotel where the background would be just right for him, and where he would feel that the two years of which he had been robbed were just a dream after all. He had refused to tell her why he was going to Paris
—
or why he was going to Italy
—
but she didn’t think she needed to be told. Some things were too strong for one, and he had had to get away for a bit, to be alone amongst the settings where he had once been acclaimed, and where he might even yet be acclaimed again! Would Paul feel, once the old life had closed in on him again
—
although the woman he had loved was dead
—
that he could never again return to his island home, and settle down there? Would he realize that with the restoration of his sight, and because he was still a young man, the doors of success were open to him again, and that it would be a crime to turn his back on them, and return to obscurity?

Return to a wife who was not the sort of wife for a famous and temperamental man
...
? He should have a sophisticated, shining star of a wife who would be good at giving parties and mixing with smart people
—
able to back up her husband’s lustre, if not to add to it. That was the sort of wife he would need if he ever decided to make music his life again.

Felicity wandered how she would feel if he came back to her and announced that those were his plans
...
That he
was
going to take up his career again
—
really live his life
—
and that she must play her part. She was married to him, she bore his name
—
Mrs. Paul Halloran,
wife
of
the famous conductor
...

No; she could never be that! People who had looked upon Nina Carlotti, and known her
—
known all about her background
—
would never accept her, Felicity, as a substitute!
...
She could never rise to that. She had so far proved that she couldn’t rise to anything
—
not even the duties of a wife.

So the days passed. Every day she tormented herself with trying to solve a problem that was unsolvable, and every day the distance between her and Paul seemed to be lengthier. She had the feeling that they would never be together again, Paul didn’t want them to be together again
...

Perhaps he would see a solicitor and get the marriage annulled. Her face flamed at the thought
...
Perhaps, if he decided to stay in the world, he would make it easier for her to slip back into obscurity. And then the wild thought entered her head, should she slip back into obscurity before he came back? She could do so
...
Take the next steamer that came to the island, if he wasn’t on it, and be far away when he finally did return. She need not even leave an address behind her, so that he wouldn’t have to seek for her, so that he could just forget her.

Then she knew that, whatever happened, she couldn’t do that. She had to wait for Paul
—
or some word from him.

But a week slipped away, a fortnight, three weeks
—
and then a whole month.

In all that time she hadn’t been visited by anyone on the far side of the island, and she had received absolutely no word from the outer world. Sometimes she found it difficult not to panic, fearing
—
terrified
—
that Paul was ill. Perhaps something had happened to him; perhaps his sight had failed him again, and he was receiving medical care. Then she reminded herself that Michael was with him; Michael would let her know a thing like that.

No; the fact that he was staying away so long meant that he wanted to stay away.

Florence and Moses had been busy on redecorating some of the rooms in the white house, and amongst them was the big bedroom they imagined Felicity would one day occupy. But Felicity declined to look into it. She took more interest when they got round to some of the other rooms—it was surprising how many of them there were—that were not generally used, and decided to refurbish them as well.

“One of these days you might be having a whole houseful of guests—and what then?” Florence had asked, when Felicity had protested that they were working too hard, and for little purpose. Felicity had shaken her head. She knew that Florence would have liked to add: One of these days you might be having children ... And what then? Wasn’t a nursery essential, and playrooms, and so forth? In any case, both she and Moses were thoroughly enjoying themselves with the quantities of paint that had been stored away in an out house, and which they were putting to excellent rise.
But one day, when they got around to redecorating their own kitchen, Moses slipped on the high step-ladder, and fell with a crash to the hard kitchen floor, badly spraining his ankle. He looked so shaken and was in such obvious pain that Felicity, when she saw him, was really alarmed. There was no doctor nearer than the next island that she knew of, and Moses’s black face seemed to have lost so much of its blackness that she became convinced he had done rather more than just sprain his ankle. She tried to ascertain with her own sensitive fingers the extent of the damage, but she had no real knowledge of first-aid, and although Moses revived a little after a stiff brandy, he continued to shake like a jelly. Florence looked almost as ashen as her husband, and trembled almost as much.

Between them she and Felicity got Moses on to a couch, but having done so there was nothing much more they could do.