House Of Storm (2 page)

It happened on the boat coming down from New York; he asked me then to marry him and I said, yes. I said yes; and I am a lucky girl. Roy is everything anybody would want in a husband; he’s handsome and gallant, he’s worldly and intelligent and dignified and sophisticated all at once. He’s got plenty of money, so mine doesn’t make any difference; it only means that because he was my father’s friend I know him better, I feel more faith and trust in him, I think my father would have wanted me to be his wife. The island is beautiful and so is the house. Aurelia has been kindness itself; she’s kept house for her brother always and she says she’ll continue to do so if I want her to, but only if I want her to. They have given me the warmest welcome, the kindliest and most sympathetic refuge a girl in grief and loneliness ever had. So this is to be my home, darling; and you needn’t worry about your orphaned niece ever, because Aurelia and Roy are so good to me. And Roy and I are to be married next Wednesday.

Well, she couldn’t say all that.

She’d say only that it was to be a quiet wedding, of course, so soon after her father’s death; but there was no reason to wait; so Roy said and he was right. And it was a sensible, rational kind of marriage. They were the best of friends; Roy loved Beadon Gates and Beadon Island and she would soon grow to love it too. How could anyone not love so beautiful a place!

She went across to the balustrade and stood for a moment, leaning against it, her hands on the cool coral rock, looking out over Beadon Island.

The central mill was going. A wisp of smoke from it hovered over the Shaw place, Middle Road. A long two miles by road, which was winding and irregular, it was a short mile, perhaps, across the tree tops; so short that she could smell the bubbling liquid sugar in the vats, blended with the half-sweet, half-acid odor of molasses and rum and trash, the waste stacks of cane pulp. For three months out of the year they had told her the sweetish smell lay in a sort of a cloud upon the island, suggesting caramels, suggesting some sort of fermentation, suggesting nothing but itself. It was not unpleasant; it meant the central mill, which all the island used, was going. Beadon Island was small; with the exception of its banana crops, its subsistence and life, as well as the air it breathed, was sugar.

She’d go back now into her room and finish her letter.

It was a large room with a green-tiled floor and high ceiling. The great pearwood armoire almost touched the ceiling; the bed had an enormous canopy from which mosquito netting fell like the garment of a rather limp and unfashionable wraith. But the long chairs, the tables, even her writing table were wicker and looked light and airy. She sat down at the table but again as she began to write a multitude of things she wanted to say crowded into her mind. Aurelia has sent for my trousseau; my wedding dress has come and been fitted; it’s white with lace and a pink hat. I’m going to see the lawyer about business things, my will and all that, soon; to say it’s a pink hat and white dress doesn’t give you the faintest smallest picture of how elegant either of them is. The dress has a long full skirt and a tight basque-like top and the hat is just silk roses or something and lots of pale pink tulle and really delectable, darling, and I’ll wear Mother’s pearls. I’ve sent to the lawyers for them. They ought to be here by now. I hope they are not lost, and I didn’t write sooner because life has been so full and, besides, I knew you’d approve. But I wish you could be here.

She bent over the white note paper and wrote.

“Or perhaps it will not be such a surprise; perhaps you knew all along that this would happen. Since you can’t come anyway and there was no reason to wait we decided to be married very soon—next Wednesday, in fact.”

Next Wednesday.
Next
Wednesday, and this was Saturday. Again a wave of incredulity touched her; she bent quickly over the paper and went on:

“It will be a small wedding, of course; as I told you there are not many people here—the Vicar and his wife, the doctor, that’s Dr. Riordan who sees to everybody; Lydia Bassett …”

She paused, staring at the white paper, seeing Lydia; thinking, that’s Mrs. Bassett; she’s a widow; she’s an old friend of Roy’s and Aurelia’s; she comes to the house often; she’s very beautiful with her triangular face and red mouth and coppery hair and vigorous graceful body; she doesn’t like me; she didn’t like me from the first; but she’s very polite; too polite. Lydia Bassett.

She wrote: “The Shaws will be there, too. That is, Miss Hermione Shaw, who owns and operates Middle Road plantation adjoining Roy’s plantation, and her nephew, Jim Shaw.”

She hesitated again, and added slowly: “It’s a small group of neighbors and friends; they dine together, play bridge together; there are two other plantations on the island but the owners of one are in England and the other is run by a trust with a resident factor. Oh, yes, and Major Fenby will be there; he is Hermione’s factor, a retired army officer and a dear; and the magistrate who lives in the village, Seabury Jenkins. And of course the house servants, who all seem pleased, and Roy’s overseer, Smithson. And perhaps the bank manager and his wife; I don’t know them. Darling, this just about comprises our island society! But I like it and so would you; and it is a sensible marriage. … ”

She had thought of some other words to describe that marriage. What were they? Oh, yes, she wrote “ … a rational marriage, we are the best of friends. So we’ll be very happy.” She sat back and looked at what she had written.

So we’ll be very happy.

On that small lovely green island with a handful of neighbors and friends—Lydia and the doctor and the Shaws, Hermione with the small pale face, and Jim.

Again she rose with an abrupt motion, pushing her chair back from the table, leaving the letter with its black firm characters which looked final somehow, as if the deed had already been done, as if the marriage were already set in its course, as, in fact, it was—next Wednesday, she thought. Next Wednesday—and again crossed the room. She took up a cigarette and lighted it and went out again onto the balcony.

A rational, sensible marriage—the best of friends. Well, that made a marriage, didn’t it? And hadn’t she been happy with Roy and Aurelia there at Beadon Gates? And wasn’t she going to be happy and cared for for the rest of her life?

Except … A thought touched her lightly, brushed past her as if it were a bird and had wings, as if it were a humming bird, darting away and yet leaving a sharp and vivid memory of its passing. Did she really want to be happy that way?

Well, that was nonsense too; that was silly; that was a flight of the most arrant and erratic fancy; as purposeless, as willful as, indeed, the flight of a bird.

She’d think no more of that.

And someone was coming.

From the balcony she could see a part of the driveway that lead, winding between tall hedges, to the big, square coral-rock gates which gave Beadon Gates its name. Now briefly through a space in the hedges she saw a man walking rapidly along. A man with a steady swing in his walk, a steady poise to his solid shoulders; his face from there was blunt-looking and foreshortened and brown; his hair was black and, as usual, looked plastered down with water, yet stuck up crisply, like rather curly wings, wherever it could; it was Jim Shaw and he carried a traveling bag and a raincoat and instead of his usual sport shirt and balloon-cloth shorts, wore a gray city suit. He did not see her; he disappeared behind a great clump of bamboos; but she could hear the quick hard crunch of his feet on the myriad tiny white shells which made the driveway.

Jim! Where was he going?

Obviously, wherever he was going he was coming there, to the house, first, and Roy was out somewhere on the plantation and Aurelia was asleep. Nonie returned quickly to her room and put down her cigarette. She stopped for an instant to look at herself in the mirror over the dressing table, and picked up her brush—the gold-backed brush with the tiny monogram in brilliants that her father had given her long ago.

Her hair was dark brown and she wore it in rather short soft curls which she brushed up away from her temples; the sea air and the gentle humidity of the tropics made it softer and, somehow, darker. She looked at her face rather scrutinizingly; just a face, of course. … Blue eyes that were rather good, she’d always thought, candidly, dark blue with black eyelashes; regular features, nothing wrong with her face, nothing particularly beautiful about it, either. She put down the brush and picked up lipstick and leaned nearer the mirror.

Just an ordinary face.

Except all at once it was extraordinary.

She stopped, struck with that unusualness. What exactly was different? The same face she’d always seen in a mirror; the same nose, same shape, same chin, same. … Well, there was something different about her eyes. Something different about her mouth, too. Something very strangely different.

After a long moment, she finished putting scarlet lipstick on that singularly different mouth and slowly, almost gravely, put down the tiny silver tube.

She couldn’t, indeed she wouldn’t analyze that difference in her face; but she did know that Roy Beadon’s bride ought not to look like that, just then. Because Jim Shaw was there; because she had seen him come; because she was going down now to meet him.

A happy marriage—that was what her marriage to Roy was to be.

Again a thought touched her like the fan of tiny wings against her cheek. Was that the kind of happiness she wanted? She waited another moment and then turned, a slim swift figure in her white shirt, white slacks and red moccasins, as red as her lips, and went downstairs.

Jim Shaw was waiting on the veranda.

I
T WAS A WIDE
veranda running almost the length of the house, gracious and hospitable with its deep wicker chairs and tables, its bright cushions, its grass rugs, its great jars of yellow and green croton leaves and, beyond the railing, the blue sea.

Actually of course there was a slope of lawn down from the house, a strip of coral rock and sand, and great thickets of mangroves, even a boathouse and a small pier, between the house and the sea, but always when Nonie walked out of the wide door from the hall and onto the veranda the sea seemed to leap at her. It was so broad, so blue, so glittering with light that it seemed to encompass all creation as it did in very fact the island. Then she saw Jim. He had set his bag down on a chair and dropped his coat over it and was wiping his face with his handkerchief; he heard her at the door and turned quickly.

“Nonie!”

Seen from there, on a level, or rather looking up, for he was as tall as Roy, his face was angular and determined and, just then, white under the sun tan. His gray eyes were light as agates and looked very unlike Jim. She went to him quickly. “Jim, what’s wrong?”

The hard bright look in his eyes was anger. “I’m leaving, Nonie.”

“Leaving!”

“I’ve had it out with Hermione. I want to get to Cienfuegos and catch the night plane for Miami and New York.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I’m not coming back.” His mouth closed tight and hard.

Not like Jim, she thought again. What had Hermione Shaw done? She said rather helplessly: “Sit down, Jim. Will you have a drink? I’ll ring for Jebe.”

“No, thanks. I only want to see Roy before I leave. And—you, of course.”

“Sit down then. I’ll send for Roy.”

“All right. Thanks.” He dropped into one of the deep wicker chairs, stretched out his long legs, and reached for a cigarette. His eyes were as gray and dark as the sea in a storm.

“Did you walk from Middle Road?”

He nodded and got out of the chair again to offer her a cigarette. “I’ll tell Jebe to find Roy.”

“Thanks,” he said again as she went to the door and the bell inside it. But Roy was in the village, Jebe told her, his straw slippers flapping, from the dining room.

“When will he be back? Mr. Shaw is here.”

Jebe wasn’t sure. She went back to the veranda.

“I’ll wait,” Jim said. “I want to tell him.”

He was smoking with an effect of calm but his eyes were still hard and cold with anger.

She went to the enormous cane hassock beside him. “Jim, can you tell me? What happened?”

He looked at her. “Hermione is my Aunt. And if I don’t get out of here, I’ll kill her.”

“Jim!”

His eyes softened a little, although the muscles around his jaw were hard and tight.

He leaned over and put his hand lightly on her arm. “Don’t look so worried, Nonie. It was in the cards. I’ll get away from here and forget the whole thing.”

She didn’t speak for an instant, and for an absurd reason, and that was a sudden strong awareness of his hand upon her own.

He moved his hand so suddenly he almost jerked it back, away from her. And mysteriously she seemed to know that his swift move toward an ash tray, pulling it near him, as if the ash tray were all at once the most important thing in his consciousness, was assumed.

But she couldn’t have known that, she thought in confusion. A wave of embarrassment made her heart quicken; her face felt hot and pink; and she felt like a schoolgirl. She, Nonie Hovenden—so soon to be Mrs. Royal Beadon, dignified and settled. Mrs. Royal Beadon. Next Wednesday. She linked her hands around her white-clad knee, and could still feel the touch of that brown hand so near her.

Jim said suddenly: “I’ve got several things to forget. It’s just as well I’m leaving.”

He wasn’t looking at her now; he was staring at the ash tray. A long wave rolled in along the rocks below and slowly, sighing, washed out again. Nonie opened her lips to say something, anything, that was cool and collected, impersonal and friendly, and said instead, as irresistibly as the sighing of the wave: “What? What have you to forget, Jim?” He glanced at her quickly, a question in his eyes. “I don’t think you meant to ask that. I might tell you.” No, she hadn’t meant to ask that. And she was behaving like a schoolgirl, silly and flirtatious and awkward. She looked down at her hands and started to speak and there was nothing to say, and Jim said: “The wedding’s on Wednesday, isn’t it? Roy’s lucky.”