House of Storm, page 2
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.
2
IT 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.”
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.”
