House Of Storm (3 page)

Another long wave washed in against the rocks and slowly out, so even if she had said anything perhaps Jim wouldn’t have heard it. But he went on, speaking rather quickly: “You’re lucky, too. Roy’s a good guy. He’s certainly been a good friend to me! I’ve been here almost a year, you know, waiting for Hermione to do something definite about the plantation and me.” She looked up at him then and he was looking out to sea, so she suddenly felt more at ease, as if she could talk. She said: “Something definite? I thought that she was going to turn over the management of the plantation to you.”

The hard, icy look came back. “I thought so, too. I’ve always loved the place and she knows it. It’s home and I was born to be a planter. I love the place. And Hermione knows it!”

“But then—but why …?”

“That’s where she’s got me,” Jim said tersely. “That’s her hold.”

“Her hold!”

He turned to look at her directly. “You don’t know Hermione, do you?” He didn’t wait for a reply but went on quickly. “I do know her, so I didn’t expect her to be different. I knew the chance I was taking when I came to Middle Road.”

“I thought she was going to give up the active management; I thought that’s why she wanted you to come. Roy said she needs you. He says she’s not getting the most out of the plantation.”

“Roy’s right. At least I think so. I’m not pretending to know the business; but I can’t hang around any longer doing nothing, learning nothing. Hands tied by Hermione at every turn. I’ve been here for a year; in another year I’d know less than I do now. In another year she’d have me licked so completely I couldn’t leave! I’d be a sort of errand boy, a pensioner on her bounty, her tall nephew sitting around waiting for her to die. I couldn’t call my soul my own. And I’d deserve it. No. I’m going now, while I can.”

“But you don’t want to leave, Jim. It’s your home; it will belong to you.”

He smoked for a moment, his eyes narrowed; then he said more quietly, without the icy note of anger, “I hate to go, of course. I am inexperienced, but I can see what could be made of Middle Road. Roy would help me; we thought we’d join forces, a real partnership, using the same equipment, using modern methods, getting more cane land under cultivation. Things have changed since my father bought Middle Road. It’s no longer a hand-to-mouth, three-boys-and-a-mule-and-a-wagon project. I’d be green at it, of course, but I’d learn. Roy knows the whole set-up; and it’s something I wanted like hell to do. I want to be a planter. I—there’s a satisfaction about making the soil yield; something deep and real and—I can’t explain it, but that’s what I wanted to do. And I loved Middle Road. But I have to save my own soul, too. I can’t come back as long as Hermione is there, and by the time the property comes to me it will be too late. So I’ve got to forget it.”

He looked at her quickly, and added: “I’m beefing plenty. But that’s that. I’ll say no more. … I’m sorry I’ll not be at the wedding Wednesday.”

Why had she thought that his look was direct and candid. It was, instead, remote, guarded, as if a veil had come down between them. Suddenly the very air between them was formal and strained. She said, and her voice sounded stiff and strained and unfriendly: “I’m sorry, too.”

But she wasn’t sorry. She was glad; she was glad he wouldn’t be sitting there watching her in her white dress and pink hat and pearls becoming Roy’s wife. Forever and ever. If any man can show just cause why this man and this woman should not be joined in the bond of holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace. That wasn’t exactly the way the ceremony went; that was what it meant. And there would be just cause sitting back there in one of the pews, his brown angular face without expression, his arms folded, his eyes exactly as they were now, and all at once with the most devastating clearness and truth, she knew it.

And she was glad and thankful that he wouldn’t be there.

The force of that thankfulness was as unexpected and as strong as one of the waves of the sea below them, and like a wave it swept her up off the hassock, across to the table, her back turned to Jim.

What was she thinking about! What fantastic thing had happened! Her hands went out to the table edge and she looked at them with consternation, for they were trembling. Jim was going away; he was going to leave the island; he was never going to come back so long as Hermione was alive and managed Middle Road. And she, Nonie Hovenden, so soon to be Nonie Beadon, was thankful. Therefore her heart must not pound like that in her throat.

Jim was moving; she heard the wicker chair creak; he was coming toward her and she heard his footsteps, slow, a little indecisive, behind her; she sensed his nearness.

A car came rapidly up the driveway, stopped just out of sight of the veranda and Jim said: “That’s Roy.”

That hadn’t been what he was going to say; and he hadn’t intended, she thought, to move merely to another chair and lean there against it.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that must be Roy.” Her voice was as flat and taut as a violin string but it wasn’t tuned right; it was all out of tune, in fact, all wrong and Jim knew it.

He was looking at her and she wouldn’t look at him. And still, oddly, she could see every feature, every line and hollow and shadow of his face. She wouldn’t look at him and she held her breath as if that would help. Then Roy was running up the steps at the end of the veranda that led down to the shell-covered, little oval below, where he had parked his car.

Suddenly, as if she were hurrying from danger, she moved across the veranda to meet him. Roy, who was going to be her husband.

Royal Beadon of Beadon Island looked exactly as if he had been born to be exactly that; which, of course, in a very real sense was true. His father had lived all his life on Beadon Island; the island had taken its name from his grandfather, the first Royal Beadon to come out from England and settle there within sight of the blue and golden Caribbean.

He was a tall man, with big bones, well-fleshed, and a dignity and force of bearing which was both perfectly sincere and imposing. At fifty-odd his hair was iron gray and he wore gold-framed eyeglasses. There was still about him an air of leashed strength, as if he might fight wars or sail ships or shoot lions. In fact, of course, he had spent most of his life running the plantation, living on the island which he loved.

Nonie’s father had been one of Roy’s closest friends; he was older than Roy but not much older; they had met long ago, when Nonie was a child at school and her father, in one of a lavish succession of yachts anchored off Beadon Island to take refuge from a storm, had stayed to become Roy Beadon’s guest and friend.

And now, she, Nonie, was taking refuge from a storm, in much the same way, except her storm was one of grief and loneliness and her refuge was Roy’s home for the rest of her life.

Something like guilt, something like compunction and sorrow touched her with quick fingers. She went to Roy and linked her arm through his, as if reassuring herself by the gesture and its implied closeness; Roy’s wife, next Wednesday.

But the island grapevine was swift; Roy must have heard already about Jim and Hermione, for he looked at her so blankly that she had an instant’s impression that he didn’t see her at all, and he was obviously both troubled and angry. He’d been for the mail, he put a stack of magazines and letters down on the table, and said to Jim: “I hoped you’d be here.”

“You’ve heard then!”

“I met Dick Fenby. Hermione told him.”

“It had to come sooner or later.”

Roy tossed his green-lined sun helmet onto a chair and sat down and looked at Jim, frowning deeply, his face both angry and perplexed.

But I won’t, thought Nonie. I won’t look at Jim. He’s standing there, outlined against the blue sea, looking younger, somehow, as he always does when he’s with Roy, and very tall and brown with head lifted, and his gray eyes very steady and I’ll not look at him. She sat down again near Roy, linking her hands together around her knee. This time Wednesday there would be a ring on one of those hands. There was indeed, already a ring, a sapphire set with diamonds, an old ring which had belonged to Roy’s mother and then to Aurelia. It was too large for her hand and the weight of the stone slid the ring so the deep-blue stone, as blue and as deep-looking as the sea, pressed into her finger. She turned it and Roy said slowly: “So you’re leaving.”

“I have to, Roy. I thought you might take me over to Elbow in the motor boat. I can get the mail boat there and the night plane for Cienfuegos.”

Roy thought for a moment. “Well, perhaps you’re right to go. Hermy’s not treated you as she ought to have done, and as she promised to do.”

“That’s in the past,” said Jim. “The only thing I can do is wash it out.”

“Why are you leaving tonight, though?”

“Oh, that. It’s what precipitated the thing. A job.”

“Job? For you? Where?”

“My old job. In New York. I can have it back again—probably—if I get there fast enough. The guy that took it on when I left to come down here has left; the firm cabled me this morning. I’ve known, especially lately, that I’d have to have an understanding with Hermy. This gave me the chance.”

Roy nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve seen it coming. What did she say?”

The white hard line came back around Jim’s mouth. “Roy, I can’t stay at Middle Road!”

Roy looked out across the sea and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“Do you want to leave Beadon Island, Jim?” There was a little silence. Nonie would not look up; she turned the ring on her finger, around and around.

“Yes, I think it’s best,” and again his voice was distant and guarded and unlike himself.

There was another long pause; the slow crash of the waves seemed to have a fateful quality in their slow and regular rhythm. Jim was going, of course; he’d probably never come back to Beadon Island. … At least it would be so long that it might as well be never. She’d be Mrs. Royal Beadon for years and years before Jim came back. Before probably she saw him again.

So she’d forget the momentary, strange fancy that had seemed to hover in the air between them that hot, tropical afternoon with the glittering blue sea washing in and out and the bugle bird calling in the garden.

Roy said slowly: “Perhaps you’re right.”

“I’ve got to have a job, Roy. I can’t sit around, supported by a woman.”

There was an edge in his words that made them sound like a quotation. Roy said sharply: “Did Hermione say that? She promised to give you a job when she asked you to come.”

Jim said in a kind of burst: “I didn’t want Dick’s job. He’s a good factor when Hermione lets him alone. Or he used to be, and still could be. I wouldn’t expect or ask for responsibility until I knew something about planting. I realize I’m inexperienced. But I had to have a job! Something clear and definite.”

“I know,” Roy said. “Hermione—well, she’d make another Dick Fenby of you. Yes, you’d better go. What about money? She’d never give you plane fare. Have you got any at all? I can see you haven’t. … Here. … ”

“All right. Thanks. I was going to ask you for a loan.”

Roy laughed. Nonie twisted her ring and would still not look up and knew that Roy was getting out his billfold; knew he was extracting notes from it. “That ought to be enough.”

“It’s more than enough, two hundred. Thanks, Roy.”

“Hermy keeps you right down to bedrock in the matter of cash, doesn’t she?”

“I’ll be all right as soon as I get to New York.”

“It’s lucky for you she can’t touch the trust fund! Now then, we’ll have to get you to Elbow.” Roy turned his arm to look at the watch strapped on his brown, strong wrist. He gave a start. “You’ll have to get under way in a hurry, Jim. The mail boat leaves at four; there’s barely time to run over to Elbow. And I, well, now let me see what I can do.”

“Oh, look here, Roy, you’re busy. You needn’t take me. Somebody else can go along and bring the boat back. I don’t want you to …”

“Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right. I only had to do some telephoning about a shipment of sugar. I can do it tomorrow …”

Nonie said, twisting her ring, “I’ll take Jim to Elbow.”

I
T WAS SAID AND
she could not retract it; and Roy at once agreed. She knew the motor boat and had driven it often; it was a straight course to Elbow Beach, and a short one with no rocks, no shoals, nothing to trap even an inexperienced boatman, as she was not. But why had she offered? Why had she not let well enough alone? Why had a voice—her voice—spoken up without her intention or knowledge?

Roy said: “Good. Jebe can go with you if you want him; but it’s not necessary. You know the boat and you know the course, all right. How’s that, Jim?”

But before Jim could answer, before Roy had stopped speaking, really, a car came slithering rapidly along the driveway. It stopped, still out of sight, with a squeak of brakes. A car door banged and Jim said: “It’s Hermy!”

Nonie glanced at him then. His eyes were like gray ice. Roy said: “I think you’re right, Jim. Sounds like her. Look here!” He sat up abruptly. “Don’t tell her I gave you plane fare.”

“She’ll know I got it somewhere.”

“She won’t know I gave it to you. I have to live on this island!”

Jim gave a short laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “All right.”

Roy rose and stared across the veranda. “Hermy! We thought it might be you.”

Hermione Shaw was walking up the steps.

In view of her shell-spattering, brake squealing arrival, her appearance was startlingly composed and quiet, but then Hermione was always composed and quiet and very certain of herself.

The certainty and composure, and the remains of a rather feverish fine-drawn beauty had been Nonie’s main impression of Hermione Shaw. She looked at her now with deeper attentiveness, seeing in the revealing light of what Roy had said and what Jim had said, the fine sharp lines in Hermione’s camelia-white skin, the cruelly aquiline nose, the thin yet smiling mouth. Her dark hair was parted sleekly in the middle and rolled into a black smooth knot at the back of her neck; not a hair was out of place. Her eyes were a very light, cold gray, so bright and sharp that they seemed to see everything. She wore dark-red lipstick and dark-red varnish on her unexpectedly square and blunt fingernails. Somehow in that land of baking sunshine Hermione’s face and hands remained white; her figure was that of a young girl. It was indeed difficult to see why she was not still beautiful; yet there was a curious look of wasting in her face, as if some inward fire burned, consuming the quality of beauty and leaving only its shell.