Dorothy Eden (2 page)

“There’s some flooding,” she had told Julia, “but cars are getting through. I should think your friend would arrive.”

Had Paul been held up on a flooded road, or had he mistaken the day? Julia refused to panic. She had asked the girl at the desk for a room, since it now looked as if she might have to spend the night there.

One more night, after the weeks of travelling, didn’t matter much, she told herself. It was the tiredness that was getting under her guard, making her suspicious, uneasy, homesick. Had Georgina Heriot felt like this when she had arrived here nearly sixty years ago? Had she thought regretfully of home, of the old dull but dearly familiar ways, perhaps even of Jonathan whom she had rejected. Had the sharp strong sunlight, the bare hills, the sweeping winds of this country seemed too alien to her? If they had she would never have admitted it. She had quarrelled with Uncle Jonathan and left him for the New Zealander, Adam Blaine. She would have been too proud to confess she had made a mistake and come back. Perhaps she hadn’t made a mistake.

But Uncle Jonathan, convinced that one day she would admit she still loved him, had dedicated his life to waiting for her to return to him. Even when she and Adam Blaine had established their home, called it Heriot Hills and started their family, Uncle Jonathan had refused to believe in the permanence of her absence.

Poor Uncle Jonathan. His last words to her had been, “I’m so happy you’re going. Tell Georgina I still love her.”

She had known that he was feeling that in a strange and vicarious way his long faithfulness was being rewarded. His dearest niece was going to marry the grandchild of his old love. It was an unexpected but deeply satisfying fulfillment to his life.

A baby in the next room had begun to cry. Julia came away from the window and switched on the light. By electricity the room looked even more dreary and anonymous. She preferred the growing and melancholy darkness, and switched off the light again. She had begun to think of that silly letter someone off the ship had sent her in Wellington.

Think well before you marry Paul Blaine. Are you sure he really loves you?
It was signed
“A well-wisher.”

Obviously it had been the work of that foolish but rather nice Johnnie Weir who had followed at her heels during the entire voyage. Only someone off the ship would know the hotel at which she had planned to spend the night. The letter had been handed in at the desk.

It had been a stupid thing to do. People who wrote anonymous letters were not funny. And of course Paul really loved her or he would not have sent for her.

What was wrong with that baby next door? It sounded as if it were forsaken. Perhaps she could go in to it. That would be two forsaken people together. Even as she made that decision a door clicked and a moment later the baby stopped crying.

Almost at once a tap at her own door made her start. Paul! She hurried to open the door. The rather dull-faced girl from the reception desk stood there.

“A letter has just been left for you, Miss Paget,” she said, and handed Julia the unstamped envelope.

Julia closed the door slowly, staring at the handwriting. It was peculiarly familiar, yet she couldn’t think where she had seen it before. She tore the envelope open and suddenly her hand began to tremble. For the note was written in the same large black print as the one she had received in Wellington. The writer could not be Johnnie after all. Johnnie had stayed in Wellington. It couldn’t be Johnnie’s stupid joke. Perhaps it was not meant to be a joke at all.

The writing this time said bluntly,

If you marry Paul Blaine you are deliberately running into danger. Think well.

Rather breathlessly Julia crumpled the sheet of paper back into the envelope. She stood reflecting for a few moments, then she went downstairs.

The hotel no longer seemed the comfortable, happy, exciting, turkey-red place of her childhood. People stared at her too closely. Or did she imagine it? Wasn’t it in all their faces that there was the girl whom Paul Blaine had sent for, and now didn’t want?

She went to the reception desk and attracted the attention of the dull-faced clerk.

“Excuse me. Can you tell me who left this letter?”

The girl looked surprised. “I don’t know. I didn’t see. Doesn’t it say?”

“It isn’t signed,” Julia said casually. “I suppose it’s someone who expected me to know their handwriting.”

The girl had lost interest. She had got out her compact and was powdering her nose. It was six o’clock; no doubt her finishing time.

“How queer,” she said indifferently. “It was lying on the counter. I didn’t hear anyone come. You don’t, on the carpet. It wouldn’t have been there more than a few minutes.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

Julia turned away helplessly. So someone who knew something—or was it just mischief—could not be far from here. But where? And how in Wellington yesterday, and Timaru, a town in another island, today? Was she being followed?

“Dinner’s at seven,” she heard the girl at the desk saying.

She didn’t get ready to go down to dinner. It had been going to be such a happy evening with Paul. Now, forlorn and just a little more frightened all the time, she knew she could not face dinner alone. She decided to go to bed. Whether the arrival of a prospective bridegroom were imminent or not, she would pull the sheets over her head and sleep. Then she would wake refreshed and be again the girl Uncle Jonathan admired, impulsive, ready for any experience, frightened of nothing.

First, for reassurance, she would unpack her wedding dress and re-read Paul’s letters.

If you marry Paul Blaine you are deliberately running into danger.
How utterly stupid. What was nice, shy, gentle Paul going to do to her? Make her unbearably unhappy? Murder her?

New Zealanders, she thought, must like playing cruel senseless jokes. Or one of them must.

She lifted the wedding dress out of the suitcase and shook out its folds. And then it was like the blossoming trees she had seen on the hillside, ethereal, immaculate as snow.

Julia began to smile to herself. The lovely thing. She imagined the girl who would be in it, herself and yet not herself, the pure, not quite of this world creature who would startle herself as much as Paul.

Suddenly she wished she was getting married in her grey suit and her favourite red tam o’shanter with the long tassel. That would be more honest.

But no. She had to wear this dress for the look it would bring to Paul’s eyes. One had to introduce these moments of utter perfection into marriage. Forever afterwards Paul would remember his first sight of her in the white dress, and she would remember the look in his eyes.

There! The magic of the dress was working. She had almost forgotten her state of anxiety and depression. When she was in bed she would begin Paul’s letters.

My dear love… This silence has not been my wish… I had longed to write to you sooner
…

In bed Julia fell asleep with the letter slipping out of her relaxed fingers. She dreamt that Uncle Jonathan was rapping on the bedposts with his sharp yellow knuckles, saying,
“You must go! You must go!”
while she herself was crying, “Am I crazy? Who is Paul Blaine?”

“Much less crazy than you think,” said Uncle Jonathan, knocking emphatically.

The sound became so loud that Julia awoke, and realised that the knocking was no dream but a reality. It was at the door of her room.

Paul at last! She leapt out of bed and ran to the door. She need not have wondered how she was going to greet him, for as she opened the door her spontaneous feet took her gaily into her caller’s arms.

“Oh, Paul! You were so long!”

“Hold on a minute,” said a strange voice. “This is extremely pleasant. But I’m not Paul.”

At first she thought she would never get over the embarrassment of having flung herself, in her nightdress, into the arms of a strange man. Waking from her dream like that, she had been so sure it would be Paul. It was dark in the passage and she could not see the man clearly, as she fervently hoped he could not see her.

She backed into the room and slammed the door. Then she opened it six inches and said belatedly,

“Who are you? Haven’t you come to the wrong room?”

“Are you Miss Paget?”

She still could not see his face. She had the impression that he was laughing at her. It made her curt.

“I am.”

“Then I have a letter for you.”

“Not another!” she gasped. “Wait a minute.”

She extricated a housecoat from her half-unpacked suitcase and put it on, then switched on the light and said, “Come in. Give me the letter.”

Without glancing at him she took the envelope from his outstretched hand and tore it open. The sheet of paper had Paul’s signature at the bottom. She read swiftly,

Dear Julia,

I hope you have arrived safely. I am afraid we shall have to ask you to stay in Timaru for a few days. I have had a cursed accident, twisting my ankle so that I am tied like a hen to a white line, and we have had a storm that has cut off the electric light and telephone. To put it mildly, we’re in a hell of a mess. Besides, I wanted to get the place tidied up before you came. I had planned for this to be done while we were honeymooning in the North Island, but as you preferred to be married from here my mother insists that the house has to be dressed up.

I’m infernally sorry that I couldn’t meet you because of this accident. I am sure they will make you comfortable at the George for a week or so. I’ll be in the minute I’m able to get about.

I am sending this note with the shepherd, Davey Macauley. Even without the help of his name he is a learned bloke. Get him to buy you a meal.

All my love, Paul

Julia’s first feeling was one of intense anger. So the very first moment of her arrival she was being tossed casually to the shepherd. It was unbelievable. How could Paul
do
that to her? It just didn’t fit in with his previous ardent letters, his impetuous desire to be married the moment she stepped off the ship. Was he behaving in this cold way because he was angry with her for having crossed his wishes?

The Paul she had known could not have been vindictive. No. The answer came to her instinctively. Paul hadn’t written that letter. It was too queer and cold and indifferent. It might have been a business arrangement about a consignment of sheep. It just wasn’t a letter from a bridegroom to his prospective bride.
You are my day and my night…

The warmth came back into Julia’s heart. She looked with confidence at the strange young man who stood in the doorway.

“You are Mr. Macauley?”

He nodded.

“Paul suggests that you buy me a meal. But I think we ought to leave at once.”

“Leave?” he said. His voice had a pleasant deep intonation. He seemed to be a respectable if not particularly friendly young man.

“Yes,” she said. “You are going back to Heriot Hills tonight, aren’t you? If you are, I’m coming with you.”

He seemed taken aback.

“Oh, I don’t think you should do that, Miss Paget”

“Why not? Is there something there I shouldn’t see?”

Did he hesitate ever so little?

“It’s just that it’s a long way and the roads are bad. It will take four to five hours with the flooding. If the streams have come down any more we might not get through.”

“I’m prepared to risk that,” she said decisively. “I’m coming with you.”

T
HERE WAS NO STOPPING
her. It was useless to tell her that Paul had written that letter, and to suggest that she compare the handwriting with that of previous letters. She only said, “Yes, it does look the same, but a clever person can imitate handwriting. Paul wouldn’t write that.”

She made him think of that couplet about the goddess Ate:
Her feet are tender for she sets them not on the ground, but on the heads of men.
He imagined he could feel the weight of them already. He let women do nothing to his heart, but his senses inevitably responded to feminine charm. And this girl was extremely charming, as one might have expected when Paul Blaine wanted her. Her hair was tousled and there were fatigue marks under her eyes. But there she was, with her dark fly-away hair, her shell-pink skin offset by eyes so deep a blue as to seem black, and a square jaw that was almost belligerent. Her figure, as he had felt it, momentarily and accidentally, through her nightdress, left no grounds for criticism. A shade thin for her height, perhaps. That was one surprising thing. Paul liked more voluptuous women. He also liked them fairly complaisant to his wishes.

What was he going to say if they arrived at midnight, with things the way they were? It might be amusing to see what did happen.

In any case this girl, who had trustingly come across the world to marry Paul, was entitled to know the true state of things. Whatever the truth was…

The final thing was, of course, that the owner of that small square chin was not going to be thwarted over a desire. The likeness came to him of a sea-pink, improbably fragile, yet surviving with an astonishing vitality cold winds and poverty-stricken soil. He began to smile sardonically at his unwittingly sentimental imagination, and he heard her crisp voice,

“Is there something funny, Mr. Macauley?”

He was not quite used to being called by that name yet. Somehow it sounded stranger still and rather foolishly pretentious on her lips.

“Nothing at all. But if you’re coming with me we’d better start. It’s a long drive. And I have some things to pick up in town. Among them, candles.”

“I won’t take five minutes if you’ll help me pack this dress.”

She took the filmy white dress from the wardrobe and spread it on the bed. Davey looked at it in amazement. It was like a frothing white wave. It would be as incongruous, at Heriot Hills, as champagne at a shepherd’s supper.

“Are you planning to take that?”

“Indeed I am. It’s my wedding dress.”

She began expertly to compress the white billows into a transferable size. She paused to give him a look.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? You should. It’s a Lanvin.”