Island in the Dawn (15 page)

“We have to get a doctor to
him
somehow,” Felicity said. As mistress of the house she had to keep a cool head, and do something really useful for Moses.

“What about Mr. Whitelaw? Could he use the launch to fetch the doctor?”

“Mr. Whitelaw very good with this sort of
thing
himself,” Florence, seeking to compose herself, suddenly recalled. “He looked after the people in the village
—
mend cracked heads, cure sore places, and even treat some of the children when they’re ill! He has—what you call it?—a first aid box! Mr. Whitelaw very good,” Florence repeated, with pathetic relief. “But how can we get him here quickly?”

“I’ll go and get hold of him somehow,” Felicity offered, “if you tell me where I can find his bungalow. I know I can get to it through the plantation, and my husband pointed it out to me when we went for a drive in the car.” That one and only drive, she thought,
w
hich had never been repeated. “You’d better stay here with Moses, Florence, because you’ll give him more confidence.” He certainly looked as if he needed confidence, with the perspiration trickling down his black brow. “Just give me some idea of how I can get to the bungalow without wasting any time, and I’ll be off.”

Both Florence and Moses gave her directions—Moses groaning a little between each of his disjointed utterances—and if the two set together were a little confusing, at least they were enough to put Felicity on the right track. She simply flew out of the house without even waiting to snatch up a hat, and was in the very heart of the plantation within a matter of minutes.

It had been rather an extraordinary day—the first day since her coming to the island when the sun hadn’t shone forth brilliantly and clearly, and when even the dawn had seemed leaden. The heat while she was consuming her breakfast coffee and rolls was terrific, and now at three o’clock in the afternoon even the dim depths of the plantation felt like an oven closing in on her.

She kept to the well-beaten-out paths, because there were so many side-tracks in the plantation that she knew led off to tangled masses of growth where daylight never entered, and the last thing she wished to do just then was lose herself while on such an urgent errand. At last she saw the end of the straight-growing trees, and following the directions given to her came at last to a small white bungalow that looked as if it contained one living room and a bedroom. She hammered urgently on the blistered paintwork of the front door.

To her
infinit
e relief it was opened immediately, and Harry Whitelaw
hims
elf
stood looking at her with quite undisguised surprise. Then the surprise gave place to pleasure.

“Please come in, Mrs. Halloran!” Strange how she simply could not get used to hearing herself addressed as Mrs. Halloran. “I’m afraid it’s not very tidy in here, but if you can put up with a bit of bachelor’s clutter
...
”

“Of course,” Felicity said, sparing only a single glance for the interior of the living room, with its one or two photographs, and hard wooden table littered with books that looked like account books, and ledgers. As a result of that glance she made up her mind that, when Paul did return, she would insist on having the young estate manager back to live in the house. It was ridiculous that he should ever have vacated it just because she had married Paul and everyone had decided that the newly married couple couldn’t bear anyone else around. “Please, Mr. Whitelaw, there’s been an accident,” she said, “and I want you to come immediately!”

Harry heard her out in silence. Then he nodded and reached for the black tin box in which he kept medical supplies and stores.

“Poor old Moses,” he said. “He’s not the type to suffer pain like a martyr. Of course I’ll return with you at once. How did you come—on foot? I’m afraid I’ve only a motor bike—as a matter of fact, the jeep’s laid up, and we’re awaiting spare parts in the next steamer load. So unless you feel like pillion riding—and it isn’t a very comfortable pillion at that, I’m afraid!
...”

“No, thank you,” Felicity smiled away the offer of a lift back to the house, although the atmosphere was so stifling that her clothes were sticking to her, and her feet felt as if they were encased in he
a
vy brogues instead of light sandals, after her walk over the burning, dusty ground. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here for a few minutes to recover my energy—it’s the most extraordinary day isn’t it? And getting hotter every moment—and then walk back through the plantation. At least it’s possible to breathe there amongst the trees.”

“All right.” He smiled back at her, then peered out of the door at the yellowish light. “Don’t know quite what to make of it, although I’ve known the island for quite a while now. Everything’s so still, and yet there’s a feeling in the air as if the devil himself might break loose at any moment.” He squinted at the motionless tops of the trees. “You’ll be all right going back through the plantation, but I’d hurry, if I were you. You never
quite
know what’s going to happen in these latitudes when it looks like this, but nothing should happen yet. Later we may have some rain, or even a storm of wind, but it’ll probably blow itself out by morning.”

He sent her another flashing, white-toothed smile, and then moved under the lintel.

“Mr. Whitelaw—Harry!” she called, as he started to move towards his garden gate.

He paused instantly, and looked back questioningly.

“When is the next steamer due here, Harry?” she asked with her heart pounding heavily.

Harry seemed to look down at her almost gravely. “Tomorrow morning,” he told her. And then he added: “Perhaps Mr. Halloran will be on it!”

“Yes,” she echoed, sitting on a chair with her hands folded limply in her lap, “perhaps he will!”

When he had left her alone she sat staring unseeingly at his photographs, while his electric fan whirred, and a false coolness stirred the ends of hair on her brow. Then, at last, she rose, and sighed a little, and moved towards the door. Harry had suggested to her that she might like to help herself to a drink before she left, but she didn’t do so. She went straight down the path to the gate, and walked briskly towards the plantation.

The light was certainly brazen, and most strange. There was no longer any sun making any attempt to shine at all. The entire sky was overcast, and the sea looked black and menacing. She could hardly believe it when she recalled the brilliance of the blue Caribbean day after day, and the way it reflected the stars at night. Just now it had an oily swell, as if somewhere far off there was a disturbance to which it was not accustomed, and which was causing it to frown and behave mutinously.

Felicity stood looking at the sea just before she entered the somewhat forbidding darkness of the plantation. She was fascinated by the sight of ominous waves that were breaking the oily surface of the strange, heaving mass of most unfriendly-looking ocean. Even as she watched, one of the waves leapt up and crashed upon the beach with a noise like muffled thunder. Another behaved in a similar manner, and another
...
Then the noise of real thunder seemed to have drowned completely the roar of the surf on the barrier reef.

Aghast, Felicity watched a palm tree that had for long overhung one of the most sheltered parts of the beach,
torn
up by its roots, and cast into a heaving, boiling ocean. In almost the same instant the wind started dru
mmin
g in the very depths of the plantation. It was like the violent humming of telegraph wires come suddenly to life. Felicity felt the hair first prickle
on
her scalp, and
then stream
back from her face as a thousand
angry fingers seemed to
catch at it
and seek
to wrench it off her
head. Only
the terrified plunge she made into the
plant
s
prevented
her thin, cotton
dress
from
being ripp
e
d r
i
ght off her
body.

Gasping,
and stumb
li
ng amongst
the trees, for the first time she
thought
of the darkness of the plantation as a welcome
shelter that offered
her not merely sanctuary, but temporarily preserved her sanity. She could not forget the palm tree being
torn
up by the roots, and hurled into the boiling mountainous seas. She shuddered as she thought of the beach, usually so placid, now littered with arms of trees and great sprays of brilliant blossom, which were being driven before a shrieking, frenzied wind that had arisen in a moment, out of the most leaden calm she had ever known in her life.

She had no idea how long she wandered blindly amongst those serried ranks of trees, listening to the terrified shrieks of
bi
rds as they swooped past her head, and hearing crashing noises all about her. Once she escaped being pinned beneath a fallen giant by nothing less than a miracle. Then, at last, she came to a part of the plantation which must have been its deepest heart, where it was like wandering into the lonely nave of a cathedral. The noises gradually faded away, and the roar of the sea became just a murmur. No wind seemed able to get at her, or touch her.

She sank down on to ground that was still warm and sweet-smelling at the foot of what must have been the giant king of the plantation. Although still gasping for breath, and bruised by the flail-like branches that had lashed at
h
e
r and
torn
her flesh, she was able to feel with certainty that if only she remained where she was
,
she would be all right.

It was a conviction that came to her out of the riot and the tumult.
Hours later, when
the storm was at its peak around her, she felt, and knew, that she was safe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE hurricane lasted all night. It reached pitches of ferocity that were lost on Felicity, as she crouched at the foot of her magnificent specimen of a tree, in the heart of the plantation James Ferguson Menzies had interposed as a shield between his first house on Menzies Island and the sea.

With the dawn the hurricane died down, and absolute silence
replaced
the
infe
rn
o of
sound. Felicity wondered at first why
no
vague crashing noises reached her any longer. The hush inside her retreat
—
her sanctuary, as she looke
d
upon
it
—
seemed like something solid that pressed on
her.
Even the birds were still. She wondered whether it was because they were exhausted, or whether most of them had been destroyed during the night. It seemed impossib
le to her that anything that ha
d not shared her shelter could have escaped and still have the power to show itself, alive and fearlessly, in the full broad light of day.

Not that it was quite daylight when she emerged from the deep gloom of the trees, and stood on a strip of shelving beach that led down to gently encroaching wavelets. They were so unlike the waves of the night before that she gazed at them in wonder. The beach was pale yellow in the orange flush of dawn. The sea was pearly grey
—
pearly grey with a molten gold effect on the back of each gently curling wave. The sky overhead was a soft, tranquil blue, and one or two stars that hadn’t dared to show their faces during the night hung in it, like lamps waiting to be put out by an extinguisher. At Felicity’s feet it looked as if a giant had flung down a huge basketful of scarlet blossoms,
torn
and mangled, but recognizable as having once had velvet petals. There were some waxen bloom
s, too, all mixed up with seawre
ck, and a spray of something violently purple that was actually opening up before the warmth of
the
sun’s first rays. Felicity stooped and picked it up. The heady scent of it seemed to steal up into her brain.

Such scent, such a sunrise, such a marvellous freshness and sweetness in the air, such a placidly gleaming sea, bemused a little. In
fact,
she didn’t feel at all like Felicity Harding
—
or
Felicity
Halloran. She stood there pushing the heavy dark
curls
back from her brow, and wondered whether one
had
to
live
through an experience such as she had just endured in order to become a different person.

She felt like someone who had been purged of fear, for one thing, and she
felt many,
many years older
—
and wiser! Her face was
pale,
and had an ethereal look about it. The heavy
eyes
were almost unseeing. They had been looking inwards
all night,
seeing pictures that had nothing to do with the hurricane, or the island. Now it was not easy to focus them again on the island sights and loveliness.

And it was lovely
...
She could appreciate that Menzies Island
...

She thought of Paul as she had done during the night, and wondered whether the steamer would venture to tie up to the jetty today. If not, it would probably come in sight tomorrow, just about this time. Perhaps he would be on
it...

She thought wearily that she did so hope he would come home. She wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter
—
nothing mattered so long as she could go on being his wife, and sharing his life. However important, or unimportant, she was to him, she wanted to share his life. Wherever he elected to lead that life she wanted to be with him
—
in the background, if that was what he would prefer. One could be a lot of help in the background, sometimes, and she felt so much wiser ..
.
She
was
so much wiser since last night. Paul must have had some particular reason for asking her to marry him. Whatever he wanted her to be she would be. Or she would try to be
...

“Oh, Paul, Paul!” she whispered, as she stood there. Suddenly tears of utter weariness were running down her cheeks, and in spite of all the resolutions she had formed during the night she felt weak with longing for him, and utterly forlorn and alone because he wasn’t there. If only she knew
where
he was
...

Suddenly it struck her that she must go
b
ack to the house
—
that Florence and Moses must be half out of their minds with anxiety about her, and that she had no right to keep them in suspense. The miracle was that she was unhurt
—
almost unscathed
—
and they had a right to be reassured. Poor Florence, with a husband who had injured his ankle, and a mistress who had apparently been swallowed up by the hurricane
...
Her black eyes would be rolling in her anxiety, and not even Moses’s ankle would keep her from wondering what she was going to say to her master when he did eventually return, in explanation of the disappearance of the lady of the house!
His
lady!...

Felicity couldn’t help smiling very faintly as she thought of Florence and her agitation, but as she turned to move back into the plantation the weariness that dragged at her steps and her cramped limbs, seemed to rush up all over her. She wondered suddenly whether she was going to fall; whether she could even make her way back to the house.

She leaned against a tree trunk for a minute or so, resting her pale forehead against the cool bark. While she did so she thought she heard someone call her name.
She remained absolutely still, and then lifted her forehead. She felt dull, and rather stupid, but someone
had
called her name
—
in a sort of frantic relief
—
and she knew the voice.

She looked round slowly, unbelievingly, certain she would be disappointed
—
knowing that she would be disappointed.

But
i
t
was Paul who was coming towards her with ligh
tning
strides along the pale golden beach. It
was
Paul, unless,
of
course, she was a little light-headed! She had carried the picture of his sleek dark head, his well-held shoulders, and slightly pantherish movements about with her so often that she couldn’t possibly be mistaken now. But when he came within a few yards of her she could see that, surprisingly, his hair wasn’t at all sleek
—
it was ruffled and lack-lustre, as if the hurricane of the
night
before had got to work on it, as it had got to work on her own hair. When he was nearer still she was shocked because his eyes were no longer blue. They were black
—
black with concern! His face was white and haggard
—
as white as her own, but far more haggard
than
she had ever imagined any face could look.

“Felicity!
... Oh, Felicity!”

He almost lurch
ed up against her, and caught her in hi
s arms. She could feel his hands frantically searching her slight body to make certain she was intact, and that no terrible injuries had been inflicted on her. Then those same hands pressed her face into his shoulder and kept it hidden there.

“You are all right? ... My darling, you are all
right
!”

“Of course.” She spoke quite gently, freeing her face so that she could look up into his eyes and reassure him with the light in her own
eyes. “I’m perfectly all right
but I don’t understand how you—how you come to be
here! Did the steamer tie up after all?”

He didn’t seem able to answer her, and she could feel how he trembled as he held her as if he could never possibly be induced to let her go again for an instant.

At last, burying his face in her hair, he seemed to groan out the words: “I flew in yesterday afternoon, just after you left the house! There’s a strip of land behind the house that can be used as a landing-ground, and we risked it. I chartered a ’plane, and
—
Oh, does it matter? Does anything matter except that I’ve found you, after a whole agonized night-time of searching? Felicity, I’ve been half out
of
my mind with anxiety
about
you, and
if
I
hadn’t found you just
now, I
—
”

He swallowed. “Oh, darling, thank heavens I’ve got you safe!” He clasped her with so much strength that her bruised body should have shrunk, but it didn’t. She didn’t even wince.

Instead she asked wonderingly, looking up at
him:
“But would it have mattered
—
as much as all that!
—
if
—if
—
?”

“Don't!” he said.

“But would it?” she insisted. She touched his face as if she still couldn’t believe that it was him
—
really him! “Paul, would it have mattered?”

He took her own face between his hands, and looked down at her in a way that caused her breath to remain suspended in her throat. Utter wonder looked at
him
out of her great brown eyes.

“Felicity, I love you more than anything else in the world,” he told her, “and you ask me whether it would have mattered!”

“Oh, Paul!” she said, and suddenly her eyes smiled at him. It was a smile as radiant as the sunrise. “Oh, Paul!” she whispered, and then, despairingly, they were clinging
to on anther, and his lips were on
hers.

Later
—
Felicity had no real knowledge how much later it was, except that the sun seemed to be considerably higher in the heavens, and the beach was warm amber instead of pale gold
—
he drew her down on to the comfortably warm sand, and looked at her as if he had been starved of the sight of her, and now he was going to enjoy his fill.

“Darling,” he said softly, stroking her hair, and noticing the purple shadows beneath her eyes
—
the way her mouth drooped wistfully even now that she was happy
—
“you really aren’t hurt at all, are you? Not physically hurt, I mean? I know you’ve had an appalling night, and I really ought to carry you back to the house, and put you straight to bed. I’m going to do that, anyway, very soon
—
put you to bed for about forty-eight hours
—
but first I want us to be alone for a short while, and get everything absolutely straight between us. Felicity, we’ve got to get things straight.”

She put her tired head down on his shoulder, and looked up at him with bemused eyes.

“So long as you love me, everything is straight,” she told
him
simply. “And I’m not going to bed for forty
-
eight hours
—
not even twenty-four. It’s four weeks since you went away, and I want to be with you.”

“You will be with me, my dearest
—
now, and all the rest of our fives!” He kissed those purple smudges beneath the soft eyes, because they distressed him acutely. “Felicity, I went away
—
and stayed away
—
for two reasons. First, I had to see someone in Paris, who had been writing me appealing letters. It was the sister of Nina Carlotti, who had lighted on rather evil times, and was terribly hard up in a kind of Paris garret. She’s about a couple of years older than Nina would be now, if she was alive, and very like her. I wanted to confront myself with someone who looked like Nina
—
painfully like
—
and make absolutely certain that I’d got her out of my system!”

“Oh!” Felicity’s eyes dilated as if she had been wounded, suddenly, afresh.

He took her hand and carried it up to his cheek, and held it there.

“Don’t worry, dear heart
...
She was out of my system two years ago. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a few minutes. But I wanted to make certainty doubly certain, and as soon as I saw Tina
—
never, really, to be confused with Nina, I must admit
—
I knew that I was absolutely free. I paid some money into a banking account for her, saw her installed in a reasonably decent little hotel, and then went on to Rome!”

He paused, and Felicity’s eyes hung on his face.

“In Rome I wanted to be certain of something, too. I wanted to find out whether I could pick up the threads of my past life, for your sake
—
not my own. I know now that this island is all I want, but it isn’t what I want in future
—
it’s what you, my darling little wife, need, and must have! I mean to make you happy, beloved, and somehow or other I must make up to you for not telling you something you should have been told before
—
long before. Our wedding night would not have been quite such a farce if I’d told you, I think!”

“And what
—
what was that?” she asked, in a whisper.

“That I loved you, I suppose from the moment I saw you
—
in tha
t
blue dress of yours, with your sweet eyes and hair, and your lovely, heart-warming smile. Oh, my darling!” He drew her to him, and she felt his lips moving rapturously in her hair. “I wanted you from that moment
—
I knew I had to have you. But Nina had done something to me years ago, and she haunted me, somehow. I didn’t keep her photograph beside my bed because I wanted to look at it, but because
—
there was just the possibility that I’d misjudged her. You see, on the night of my accident
—
incidentally, we were to have been married within a very short time after that
—
I called at her flat, which was also in Rome, and found another man there with her. The situation was highly compromising, and I’d have been a fool if I’d believed the excuses she made. That’s why I once said to you that it isn’t always a wise thing to attempt to surprise a person
—
as I was surprising Nina that night, for she didn’t expect me. In fact she thought I was out of Rome! Do you remember me saying that to you?”