Dolan of Sugar Hills (9 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My wife!

Cane’s words seemed to poise in midair. Sheila had the ridiculous feeling that if she had reached up she could have plucked them down.

Now I know,
thought Sheila drearily,
why Cane’s arms slipped away from me on the island. Now I know a lot of things.

But the thing she would never understand was why Cane Dolan had not come happily to Silverwake, to such an exquisitely lovely girl.

She let herself puzzle over it—better that than to wonder bitterly why the man had deliberately deceived. Not deceived in words, perhaps ... not once had Cane said he was unmarried ... but deceived nonetheless.

She remembered charcoal eyes in a cane-blackened face, drawing, compelling, commanding hers ... that night of the dance, his lips only a breath away ... a soft whisper across a room of sleeping children ... an island kiss that had turned into disenchantment, and she had wondered why it had.

Now she knew. Cane was married. He had just said so. Here was his wife.

Sheila did not know whether the three people had acknowledged the introduction or not, she did not know whether she had, herself. She saw the man, Tress, bend over and pick up a bag; Cane took the other bag. Fleur shared Sheila’s parcels, and they all began walking toward the house.

The elderly Mrs. Dolan wielded her chair vigorously. No one took a step forward either to help, wheel or guide her. A little shocked, Sheila half stepped forward herself.

She stopped—not from any gesture or word but from something that seemed to come from Cane. She looked at him for the first time since he had performed the introductions and saw a direct order in his cool, clear eyes. Her hand that had raised instinctively to guide Mrs. Dolan’s chair fell back. The woman, entirely unaided, kept pace with the rest.

Fleur chattered all the way. She had a voice like cool little water-bells. She never waited to finish a subject before eagerly starting another.

Presently it occurred to Sheila that Fleur was the only one talking. Cane nodded from time to time, but Mrs. Dolan and Tress did not say a word.

A quick look at the older woman surprised Sheila. It was not only the lips that were tight, she found, it was the entire face. There was suspicion there, too, unconcealed enmity. Enmity against whom?
What is this I have come to,
Sheila asked herself.

She glanced next at the man Tress and saw an entirely different expression. He was looking only at Fleur, and there was pure worship in his face.

All at once she was aware that Cane Dolan was watching her, watching for her reactions. She averted her glance and kept walking stolidly, solidly ahead.

But Fleur was anything but stolid and solid, both in speech and gait. She was a feather in a wind, Sheila thought again, a little reed, an unreal phantasmal thing.

As they approached the house Sheila saw that her first impression of prepossessing grandeur had been well founded. This, she decided, was almost a fabulous place.

Cane said to Fleur, “Honey, find Miss Guthrie a room.”

“Yes, Mark,” Fleur said.

Mark ... so that was his name. Mark Dolan. Sheila remembered that first day on the Sunlander how he had said of “Cane”: “There is another name, but you wouldn’t be interested, not in anyone so crude. Simply put me down as one of the ‘barbarians’ of this ‘primitive’ land.”

That all seemed an eternity ago. Many things had happened. The most important of all was that she had become interested. Too interested. Cane Dolan was a married man.

Elderly Mrs. Dolan, still unaided, wheeled her chair into the house and down a corridor apparently leading to her own rooms. Tress, carrying the bags, followed Fleur and Sheila along another passage to a room on the left.

“Do you like this one?” Fleur asked, flinging a door open.

It was a very large room, and, like the house, prepossessing.

“Perhaps a smaller one...” Sheila murmured doubtfully.

“They’re all big,” Fleur said.

She sat down on the bed while Tress deposited the luggage.

“Do you prefer small rooms?” she asked. “I think I do, too. I remember a room, it had pink curtains. It was a very pretty room. I think I was very happy in that room. I remember...”

Her voice trailed off.

How frequently in the days to follow was Sheila to hear Fleur’s little “I remember...” and then the soft, unsure trailing off.

She sat now and watched Sheila unpack, talking in the same eager unfinished way. Her gentle syllables rang on and on. The man, Tress, still stood looking adoringly at the lovely girl’s face.

Sheila finished unpacking and suggested that Fleur show her outside the house.

They climbed the hill behind the garden. Sheila had her own arm around Fleur now, because she could see that even this gentle graduation taxed the slight strength. It was like supporting a flower. Fleur was a flower, in name and in appearance, she was a piece of white lilac on a slender stalk.

At the top of the hill the aspect to which Sheila had become accustomed again opened out before them, the pattern of pine-clad islands, the coral beaches, the rings of reef.

Sheila turned from it and looked down on the house. It was rather an ornate place, she thought. Certainly not the type that she would have associated with Cane Dolan.

It was built with its rear to a large rock outcrop, and though level in entrance and in living quarters, with its basement it achieved two stories. The bottom story, unlike the guarded patio above it, was completely unprotected either by wall or rail. From it was a sheer drop to more outcrops of rock, and though this probably made for a magnificent view, it could make for unsafety as well.

Sheila said so to the girl at her side.

“Yes, Sheila, it is very dangerous, isn’t it? It will be very dangerous for an old lady, won’t it? An old lady will fall over, won’t she? Mark says that.”

Sheila glanced at her quickly, searchingly. Fleur only looked dreamily back. In her little cool voice she echoed again, “Mark says that.”

“Says Mrs.—says an old lady could fall over?”

“He says she will fall over. Mark says that.”

Sheila was aware that for all the gentle moderation of the trade wind that had sprung up yesterday, and would, Captain McAllister had told her, probably blow for another week, she was very cold.

“I’d like a hot drink, Fleur,” she said hurriedly. “Let’s go back to the house.”

At that moment Cane came to the doorway and looked up. “Tress has made tea,” he called out.

Either Tress or Cane had set a tray out on the big dining-room table.

Sheila heard the sound of wheels, the turning of a knob, and the next moment Mrs. Dolan was there, too.

She found herself unable to look at her, to look at Cane, and yet curiously longing to look at both.

“... It will be very dangerous for an old lady, won’t it? An old lady will fall over, won’t she?
Mark says that.
”

“Here is your tea.” Cane Dolan handed Sheila a cup.

She accepted it eagerly and drank deeply. The heat thawed out her frozen courage. She found that she was able to look directly at Cane again. She saw then that she need not have avoided glancing at him, for he was not even slightly interested in her. His attention was entirely on his aunt.

It would have been hard to analyze his look. It was at the same time both expressionless yet fraught. Sheila was aware of icy control yet savage fury. She was fascinated. She wanted to look away but she could not.

“You sent the maids home,” he remarked coldly to Mrs. Dolan.

“I did not, they went.”

“Why did they go?”

“They were bone lazy, anyway.”

“That’s no answer.”

“I tell you I didn’t do anything. They couldn’t stand the isolation, so they walked off.”

“They knew what it would be like before they came here, I particularly told them. I don’t believe it was isolation that sent them packing. You don’t move away,” he said. His charcoal eyes flicked at Mrs. Dolan.

Mrs. Dolan flicked her eyes back at Cane.

“It’s different when a house belongs to you.”

“It does not belong to you,” he said in a low hard voice, “yet.” Sheila glanced at Fleur. She was sitting very quietly. She did not appear to be affected by the staccato cross talk, but the possibility of it stirring up those already unsteady emotions inspired Sheila to whisper urgently, “Hush.”

Cane turned his cold eyes on her now.

“Mind your own business, Miss Guthrie,” he said, and getting up from the table he pushed back his chair and strode out of the room.

No one took any notice of her rebuff. Mrs. Dolan followed Cane’s actions, only she went back up the corridor to her suite of rooms. Fleur still sat on. Tress came and put the dishes on a tray and bore them to the kitchen. Sheila followed him with the intention of helping him wash up.

“No, please,” he protested. “I do them myself. You look after the little girl, that’s all.”

“But, Tress—”

“Please, it’s nothing. Just look after the little girl. I ask you that.”

Sheila paused a moment, then went back to Fleur.

They strolled down to the sandy reach where
The Star
had deposited Cane and Sheila only an hour ago. It seemed much longer than that. Somehow the carefree tourist ship seemed a world away. She had known doubts before, Sheila thought, but she had not known fears. She had not known that frightening coldness that she had known when Fleur had said, “It is dangerous, isn’t it, it will be very dangerous for an old lady, an old lady will fall over, Mark says.”

No, she told herself, I did not know any fears then—and I did not know something else.

I did not know that Cane Dolan had a wife.

Fleur played happily on the sand much as a child might have played. She gathered shells, she collected seaweed, she took off her shoes and dabbled her toes in the water.

“I’m glad you’re here, Sheila, it’s nice for me as well as being necessary,” she said guilelessly.

“Necessary?”

“Mark says it’s necessary. He says that it’s necessary for someone to see how she falls over, to say for certain that she can walk when she chooses. You see, she has to walk there to get there for it to happen, Mark says.”

“Who, Fleur? Who is ‘she,’ dear?”

But Sheila might just as well have not probed. Already the girl’s attention had fled. She had found a starfish and was kneeling beside it, exclaiming happily at its shape and hue.

They stopped on the beach till dusk, and once more Sheila watched a frigate bird coming after meals for which the gulls had worked all day, which they were carrying home to their young. There’ll be some more hungry little fellows tonight, she told herself vaguely. Together she and Fleur went back to the house.

Tress had cooked a one-dish meal and he placed it on the table. He was no expert, but he coped quite capably. He brought chairs for the ladies, arranged Fleur’s carefully, served her daintily and fastidiously, watched her anxiously as she pecked at it like a small bird.

Mrs. Dolan did not come out at all. Sheila asked Cane if the older woman knew the meal was prepared. He hunched his big shoulders.

“A bell is rung. If she wants to starve let her, it might be a good way out.”

He saw Sheila’s shocked eyes and grinned sardonically.

“I don’t believe she will starve, however, she probably filled up this afternoon.” He shrugged again.

It was a silent meal. Cane ate as he pored over some papers, Tress ate in the kitchen, Fleur dreamed.

Eventually when Tress came in for the dishes Fleur said simply, “I’m sleepy, Mark.”

Tress looked at her, his eyes tender. When Cane did not answer but still leaned over his books, Sheila suggested, “Then, Fleur, why not go to bed?”

The girl went at once, her small feet down the passage making no more sound than a bird’s.

Sheila carried out the dishes and this time Tress accepted her help. He did not speak, however. Sheila tried to start a conversation several times, but he answered her only in monosyllables, not actually unfriendly ones, simply in the manner of one who has nothing to say, so remains quiet.

Sheila returned to the dining room, turned over some magazines, then, lured by the beautiful, tropical evening, lovely and velvet and lemon mooned again, she went outside.

It was a few minutes before she saw Cane. Her eyes had not gained their night focus. When they did she wondered why she had not seen him at once. He was leaning against a tree, and it was the same position in which he had leaned last night on the hill, indeed the two of them could still have been there ... all that had happened since then might not have happened at all, time could have stood still for twenty-four hours.

But it hadn’t stood still. All those disquieting things had been said by Fleur. And Fleur, thought Sheila, was this man’s wife.

There was a marked quiet. All at once Sheila knew in spite of all her confusion, her desire to understand, that she had only one thing to say to this man.

In a low voice she said it.

“You didn’t tell me you were married, Mr. Dolan.”

Her words took him by complete surprise. Evidently he had not expected her to speak in that strain.

He looked at her first searchingly, then with disbelief, then quite furiously.

“I thought there was no need,” he flung back.

He kept staring at her a moment longer, then he straightened up from the trunk of the tree and went down the track to the beach without another word.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Throughout the night Sheila heard the soft lapping of the sea against the rocks, the washing of the tide over the coral sands. There was no boom of breakers, for these islands were protected by the outer reef. Only when the cyclones blew did the Whit Sunday ever become disturbed, and the cyclones were over now, there were just the trade winds blowing friendly sweet.

It all would have been very pleasant had Sheila not heard something else.

She heard footsteps in the house, and though that could be expected in a domicile for four people somehow they were not careless steps ... she found herself shivering at their discreet tread.

She lay listening. They seemed to come first from the direction of Mrs. Dolan’s suite of rooms, then to move down the hall. But they could not belong to Mrs. Dolan, she moved around in a wheelchair. Sheila pricked her ears for the turning of a wheelchair, but all she heard was that tread.

Then she found herself remembering clearly and coldly Fleur’s “Mark says it’s necessary for someone to say for certain that she
can
walk ... you see she has to walk to get there for it to happen, Mark says.”

To get where? For what to happen? Did Mrs. Dolan walk after all?

Mark says ... Mark says...

Sheila’s mind became chaotic. Only one thing seemed to emerge clearly, and that was the knowledge that she must not remain here any longer, that she must tell Cane Dolan so tomorrow, tell him she could not stay on.

Then she realized starkly that she did not want to do that, that whatever was going to happen, however distasteful, that this was still the place she wanted to be. By
his
side.

I love him, she said hopelessly to the darkness. He has a wife, there are things about him that make me fear him and fear for him, things I don’t understand, don’t want to understand, but I love him for all that.

The steps stopped. Sheila slept.

She wakened to a more cheerful atmosphere. Fleur was calling outside her door in her clear little voice.

“Dress quickly, Sheila, some turtles have come ashore. Perhaps we can ride on their backs, Mark says.”

Again “Mark says,” but this time nothing frightening, nothing ulterior. Sheila climbed into her slacks once more, pulling on a cotton shirt.

Fleur was waiting outside, hopping excitedly from one foot to the other. “They come in the midsummer, so this is quite unusual. Let’s run.” She sped down to the beach.

Sheila could not catch her. She thought ruefully that it was like competing against the wind. Fleur’s feet must have touched ground, but it didn’t appear so, she seemed to fly there.

There were three big green turtles on the sand, one much smaller hawksbill.

“The hawksbill is no good for eating, but is hunted for his shell, or carapace,” Cane said.

He showed Sheila the difference in the shields, of plates of the carapace, the hawksbill’s shields overlapping, the green turtle’s joined at the edges and not as ornamental.

“Mr. Green is as tender as veal, however, and yields a good soup.” He eyed the green turtle speculatively.

“No,” protested Sheila and Fleur in unison, and Cane grinned and shrugged.

“All right, but we must at least make them serve as a carriage.” He set Sheila on one large fellow, Fleur on another.

Fleur’s simply meandered along the beach, but Sheila’s, to her horror, made back to the sea. Slow though he was she was taken too much by surprise to haul herself off. She yelled to Cane, but he just stood arid laughed. Before she could get away the turtle had plunged into the water, plunged her in as well. She came up soaked and discomforted, but Cane just roared his delight again. Sheila wrung herself out, found herself instantly beginning to dry in the warm air, then laughed, as well.

She even consented to try again, and this time the turtle treated her more kindly, though his laborious pulling with the front flippers and heaving with the hind ones made for a ponderous journey. He also rested quite frequently, so that the pace was very slow.

Fleur would have stayed there all morning, but Tress rang the bell from the house.

“Breakfast,” said Cane, “not turtle done as the locals do in banana, palm and ginger, but something plebeian like bacon and eggs.”

They all went up again.

Over the meal Cane said that he and Tress would run the Silverwake launch across to the reefed Sugar Hills boat and fix it sufficiently to bring it back.

“Will you be able to find the island?” Sheila asked.

“Of course,” he said. He looked directly at her. “Couldn’t you?”

“I’m a stranger here,” she reminded him flatly. But she knew with an odd certainty that she
could
have found it. Out of a million islands she still could have found that one island. She knew that.

She became aware that he was watching her closely. She felt herself flush and hated the rising pink.

“Please bring back my coral,” she directed.

“I’ll probably break it. Remember what you were warned, it can break as easily as a heart.” His eyes still probed hers.

Sheila did not reply to that, she just looked down to her plate. When Cane left to get the Silverwake boat, Tress came to Sheila’s side.

“You’ll stay with the little girl?”

“Why, of course, Tress.” She looked inquiringly at the big, awkward man.

He hesitated a moment, then shuffled off.

Sheila watched him, puzzled. She heard him leave to join Cane at the mooring, she heard Mrs. Dolan’s wheelchair moving in her room at the end of the hall.

With its rotating she felt her last night’s mood of depression returning all over again. It was like the turtle plunging back into the sea, she thought wryly, only she was plunging this time into doubts and fears again.

She found Fleur and insisted on taking her outdoors. Fleur came unwillingly. She evidently felt depressed now, as well. She looked pale, not animated as during the turtle episode; she looked more dreamlike than ever.

“Aren’t you well, Fleur?”

“I don’t know.” Fleur walked slowly this time.

They crossed to the other side of Silverwake ... it was a small island ... and Sheila drew the girl’s attention to a flying Fish in flight, she found her a sea urchin in a coral pool. It was all of no use. Fleur would not smile.

“What is it, darling?”

Fleur shook her head dumbly.

“It’s Mark.” Fleur choked as she said it. “He’s gone and he won’t come back. Mark’s gone. He’ll never come back.”

“Silly, he’s only gone to get the Sugar Hills boat.”

“He’s gone, he’s gone, Mark has gone and he won’t come back.” All at once Fleur began to cry heartbrokenly, as a child might cry, great tears coursing down her pale cheeks, her eyes brimming over, her lips trembling.

Sheila put her arms around her and tried to whisper reassurances. It was of no avail. “Mark has gone, he’ll never come back,” Fleur wept.

Sheila decided to let her exhaust herself, it seemed the only thing to do. When Fleur at last had finished she suggested that they return to the house.

She had planned to make Fleur rest as soon as they arrived, but as they entered the front door, Mrs. Dolan came down the hall in her chair. Her sharp eyes appraised Fleur, then they narrowed slyly. Instantly she blocked the hall with a quick maneuver of the chair wheels. “I want tea,” she said pettishly. “Fleur, make me some tea.”

“Yes, Aunt Ursula,” said Fleur, but she still stood there.

“I’ll do it,” offered Sheila hastily, but Mrs. Dolan put up her hand.

“You stay with me and let her do something for once. All right, girl, get moving, don’t stand there in a trance.”

Sheila said softly for Fleur’s ears, “Can you manage, darling?” Fleur nodded vaguely and drifted off.

“Inefficient lazy slattern,” said Mrs. Dolan watching her. “One thing about
him,
he does get things done. By
him
I
mean
—” her small eyes flicked “—her
husband.
”
She put back her head and laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

While she was talking Mrs. Dolan had maneuvered her chair into the big dining room. Tress evidently had anticipated a call for tea, for he had set everything in readiness. All Fleur was required to do was to brew and pour.

As she did so in a slow listless manner, Mrs. Dolan kept up a volume of vituperative abuse, did it with unconcealed relish. She also did it, Sheila noted, with one eye to the beach, apparently for the men’s return. Obviously all this was something kept strictly for Fleur when no one else was around. Obviously, too, Sheila did not count. She listened to the woman angrily, longing to speak up for Fleur, deciding it wise first to hear the whole wretched thing out.

“Don’t knock that saucer ... there, you fool, you’ve chipped it. That tea’s too strong ... don’t water it, I despise watered tea ... Must you have that window open? ... Close the door... Haven’t you anything but biscuits? ... The tea is cold, you witless thing, and it’s stewed.”

She now addressed Sheila, but without taking her mean, small eyes off Fleur.

“We had two girls, Miss Guthrie. As you see they didn’t stay. Nobody stays with Fleur. Her
husband
doesn’t either.” Again the hateful laugh.

Sheila jumped to her feet, nauseated.

Mrs. Dolan’s voice kept on.

“A queer marriage, don’t you think, Miss Guthrie? I’ve told Fleur many times what I think of her marriage.”

Sheila’s eyes had left the woman ... had wandered to the scene outside the door. In an inspiration she said boldly, “Why not tell Mr. Dolan, then, Mrs. Dolan? I’m sure he’d be a better one to tell, and he’s coming right now.”

Mrs. Dolan wasted no time. Twisting the chair rapidly around, she left the room and went down the hall to her own suite.

She’s not so brave with him, Sheila decided, satisfied, she’s not so sure. She wondered apprehensively if she would come out again, begin all over again, when she discovered that Sheila had made the remark only to get her away.

She glanced nervously at Fleur, then saw to her immense relief that the words had not really touched her. Thank goodness for once for those currents, she thought, for those tides within her, for that dreamlike daze.

And then she saw, to her greater relief still, that there would be no more today from Mrs. Dolan.

As though in answer to her wish the two boats appeared in the bay, and within a few minutes Cane Dolan was striding along the beach to the house.