“Paul’s not likely to hurt her deliberately, but she’s mature enough to feel his distance from her, and very highly sensitive. If only there were something we could do!”
“There’s nothing,” he said soothingly. “Just give them time. Even if pity hastened the marriage, Paul would never have gone through with it if he hadn’t felt something more for Lorna than he’d ever felt for anyone else.”
She shook her dark head. “I’m not so certain of it as you are. It was becoming very awkward for him at the Residency. Everyone thought he was going to marry Kyrle Reynor.”
“But, good heavens, even in those circumstances a man doesn’t take on someone he doesn’t love!”
“He might, if he didn’t really want marriage at all but it was the only way out. If that’s how it was, Lorna was the ideal partner. I’ve heard him say that the young can be moulded but the mature can’t often be altered. What do you suppose he hopes to make of Lorna?”
“Just give them time,” he repeated. Then, very quietly, because his own feelings were not entirely under control, “Why did you ask several times for a divorce, Elise?”
She smiled at him softly. “Something made me, to test you. If you’d agreed I would have lost all hope and ambition, but even then I wouldn’t have sued for divorce myself. I married you because I thought you would be good for me; we had to part before I could be quite sure I loved you. Satisfied?”
“For the present I shan’t feel right till you’re under my roof again.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. “I’ll make you a promise, Bill. The day I leave this house I’ll come to you. But I do want to stay here a little longer—to help Lorna, if I can.”
“How can you hope to help her? Does she trust you?”
“Not far,” she admitted ruefully. “She thinks as you did—that I’m after Paul. Actually, I’ve never before disliked him as I did this morning, when he told me about that wedding gift.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said, and stopped abruptly.
Lorna had come into the room and seen those clasped hands on the table. She smiled apologetically. “I came for a hat. It’s rather warm outside.”
“That’s all right. It’s your house,” said Bill buoyantly as he got to his feet “I must get back to the job. Maybe I’ll look in later.”
“Yes, do.”
Lorna watched him go; then she looked at Elise’s heightened colouring. But somehow she could not think about these two; she was too dragged with sunshine and her own unhappiness to think much at all.
It seemed to Lorna that life was following some inhuman pattern which would never change. Elise stayed on at the bungalow and Paul took advantage of her presence to do some private snooping round the island, staying out sometimes till well after midnight on the look-out for rubber thieves. He would spend the rest of the night on the veranda couch, take his breakfast very early and be away before the women were about.
The rubber was no longer disappearing, but it was known that that which had been stolen was either leaving the island in single bales disguised as something else or was stowed somewhere, awaiting illegal shipment from some deserted part of the coast. Paul did not speak about it, but Bill mentioned it once or twice when he called.
Bill was now coming every morning to the bungalow but he was unable to stay long. Paul had not yet invited him to call during the evenings, and Lorna thought she knew why. She was quite certain in her own mind that had Elise been free, Paul would not now be a cold, unsmiling demon for work. He had not accepted Elise five or six years ago, and now events had conspired against him, landed him with a girl he had thought he could shape into a wife, while the woman he wanted was gradually returning to the husband who adored her.
It must be bitter for Paul, thought Lorna in her new, grave awareness. He seemed to have everything any man could desire, everything except a wife he loved. That was why the things she, Lorna, did and said were so apt to vex or even anger him.
Letters came from the Residency, several for Paul and one for Lorna from Lady Alys. They were begged to form the habit of a weekly visit to the Residency and Lorna was invited to stay for a week or two. Monsieur Chauvet, she learned, had given a dinner for his friends and returned to the Marquesas, but he had not forgotten his promise to inspect the rubber on Panai. That would be so nice for Lorna, stated Lady Alys; a young woman always felt so much more confident when she had an admirer on hand.
Lorna answered the letter very politely in two paragraphs and fatalistically put her reply with Paul’s outgoing mail. It was very unlikely that she would ever again visit the Residency. Even when Colin came over and stayed the night at Bill’s bungalow, Lorna could not rouse from her apathy. Some part of her responded to his comic qualities, but on the whole he moved her not at all. She was waiting for some vital event. Just waiting.
Then suddenly, Elise made public her decision to return to Bill. She said it airily, over lunch, after a few preliminaries.
“What about the new plantations, Paul? Are you really going to offer the managership to Bill?”
Paul looked up from seasoning a plate of salad. “Definitely. I’ve already mentioned it to him.”
“Has he accepted?”
“As if you didn’t know what he said,” Paul scoffed, but a little sharply. “He won’t go unless you’ll go with him, but I must have someone who’ll take it on permanently. You wouldn’t stick it, Elise.”
“I’ve stuck to this bungalow of yours.”
“For three weeks—with a low-geared emotional outlet two miles away. Supposing you became bored again with Bill?”
“I shan’t. It wasn’t boredom before, either.”
“What was it—one of life’s little mistakes?”
“Yes, and don’t sneer. What do we have to do—sign a contract to stay there for a certain time?”
Paul’s eyebrows rose. “So you really mean it. Why aren’t you already with Bill, then?”
“I’m going to him this evening. I stayed,” she said deliberately, “because I thought Lorna might be finding it lonely here.”
“Really? Are you lonely, Lorna?”
Lorna broke a rye biscuit. “No, but it was good of Elise to think of it. I’m very glad to hear she’s going back to Bill.”
“For Bill’s sake, I’m afraid,” remarked Elise.
“Yes, chiefly. I knew when I first met him that he was devoted to you.”
“You’re embarrassingly candid,” said Elise with a light laugh. “I’ll pack this afternoon and Bill will collect my things—and me—around cocktail time. Suit you, Paul?”
“If you must,” he said, “but let me hand out a warning. I shall need a three years’ contract out of Bill!”
“You’ll get it. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take my coffee to my room and start packing.”
Elise had been gone some moments when Lorna poured coffee for herself and Paul. She gave him his cup, looked up to meet his enigmatic stare.
“Tell me something, Lorna,” he said reflectively. “How did you know when you first met Bill that he was devoted to Elise?”
She looked down at her cup, confusedly. “I don’t remember very clearly. Possibly it was his tone of voice when he spoke about her.”
“What was it in his tone of voice?”
“I really don’t know. It was an impression, and I’ve had no reason to change it.”
“But that first impression,” he persisted. “Did he talk much about Elise?”
“No. He only said that he hoped she would join him.”
“Nothing more? Yet you gathered that he was her slave.”
She swallowed on a peculiarly dry throat. “Not her slave. If he’d been that he would have clung to her at all costs. He loved her and it showed that’s all.”
“Would you say that it always shows?”
“I think it does in ... in simple people. Bill is essentially a simple man.
“Seems we have a young psychologist in our midst,” he
said with sarcasm. “Do you apply that knowledge of your to your own problems?”
She hesitated. “I suppose so.”
“How does it act with people who aren’t so easy to assess as Bill Ramsay?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid.”
He dropped two lumps of sugar into the black coffee, said casually, “We shall be alone again. Is it too soon for you?”
She looked up, startled. “Too soon? How do you mean?”
“Never mind—skip it.” He drank and put down the cup. “I’ve been thinking about you. You’re pale and you don’t talk enough. As soon as we’ve caught up with these rubber thefts I’m going to take you for a cruise.”
Her mouth dry, she said, “Please don’t worry about me, Paul. I don’t need a holiday.”
“Yes, you do, and so do I. A liner calls at Panai at the beginning of next month and I’m hoping things will be in shape for us to go on with her through the South Seas. You haven’t seen Tahiti yet. You can have some fun away from these people, and forget you’re married.”
She lost colour. “That’s an odd thing for a husband to say.”
“Maybe I’ll be able to forget it, too. It could be the answer to everything.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You will, little one. Just think it over a bit—not a cruise with your father but a holiday as an engaged woman. I think it’s what we need.”
She looked down again, said almost inaudibly, “You’d really like an annulment, wouldn’t you?”
He was so long in answering that she almost lifted her head; but not quite.
“I don’t walk out when something seems to be failing,” he said. “I try some other angle. You’re not to think on those lines, Lorna!”
“I’m sorry!”
More gently he said, “I have to go on inspection tomorrow morning. I’ll take you with me—we’ll picnic by the sea. There’s a good deal I haven’t yet told you about Panai.”
The conversation ended there. He had to go down to the jetty, and by the time he returned, at five-thirty, Bill was there, and Elise’s bags were already in the front porch. There were drinks and some banter, which seemed a little edged on Paul’s side, before Bill put his wife and her belongings into the jeep and drove away.
At once, Lorna stripped the bed in the room Elise had occupied, turned the mattress and made it afresh, with clean sheets and blanket. She dusted thoroughly, with the windows wide, but could not dispel the smell of powder and perfume; so she brought a tin of furniture polish and was impregnating the rooms with its antiseptic aroma when Paul came from his bath.
He sniffed. “You shouldn’t work like this tonight. Tomorrow would have done for the polish, and Jake’s the one to use it.”
“I was only obliterating the smell of cosmetics.”
His smile was irony. “Some men thrive on it, but I’ve never tried. Leave it now. I’ll go to your room for my clothes.”
It was a quiet and pleasant evening. They had dinner, read newspapers which had come over from Main Island that morning and he showed her how to do the chess problem. At ten-thirty she stood up, to go to bed.
But Paul said, “Let’s have a nightcap. A spot of gin?” On the point of an automatic refusal, Lorna said, “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? My father used to take lemonade with a teaspoonful of rum in it every night, and while he drank it he invariably talked about books.”
“Sounds dry. We’ll play the gramophone with ours.”
He put on an old dance record, let her sip her drink before taking it from her and slipping an arm around her. He danced well but took care not to hold her close. Lorna moved mechanically, her breathing uneven; he didn’t know that this sort of thing could hurt more than his vexation or mockery. It was so tantalizing; it so painfully pointed the differences between them as a couple, and other couples.
The music ended and she finished the drink, said brightly, “It really is bedtime now. Good night, Paul.”
But he went with her to her room, switched on the lights and closed a cupboard door which he had earlier left open. And tonight, for the first time since their return from Main Island, he kissed her cheek. Lorna’s teeth set hard but her eyes shone with tears.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said under his breath. Then, more loudly, “If we’re going on a cruise we’ll have to develop an attitude towards it. You’re not a baby any longer!
The door thudded and Lorna was alone. She fingered her cheek where his lips had touched, and her heart ached abominably with the knowledge that he was trying to deceive her into believing that he did not care a scrap that Elise had returned to live with Bill.
The cruise he had suggested was a different angle of the same deception. He wanted to prove to Elise that she meant nothing at all. The shattering part of it all was that she, Lorna, had to be the means to that end.
CHAPTER NINE
IT is an incontrovertible fact that one can go on living almost indefinitely through what may seem to be an impossible situation. Part of oneself is shut away but the rest follows the old routine of rising and dressing, eating, walking, gardening and so on till bedtime.
For days Lorna could not have told anyone the date, and she was even hazy about the time of day. She bathed and took long walks in the jungle-like growth at the far end of the beach, read books without absorbing their content and occasionally wondered how long she would be able to keep it up.
Nothing unusual happened, except that Elise did not come to the bungalow. Lorna thought about it detachedly, and decided that Paul had asked her to stay away; possibly her present happiness was more than he could bear to witness.
Without interest, she began to investigate things and places which had never before bothered her. She reorganized the layout of the kitchen, had the back veranda tidied up and a trellis erected to shut out the servants’ quarters. She took walks from the back of the house, through the rubber and out on to a road which ran down to another bay.
One afternoon, when a sudden wind got up and it was unpleasant outdoors, she remembered that Paul had hung maps of the islands on the wall of the third bedroom, which was filled with trunks, suitcases, sports gear and other oddments. She turned the key in the lock and entered the dim room, half raised one of the reed blinds so that she could see the map of Panai more clearly.
The map did not tell her much—only that the rubber estate covered nearly all the northern half of the island and was bounded on the west by a strip of natural forest. Actually that western side was the only part of Panai she had not yet seen, but she was not curious about it.
She looked at the covered bed heaped with boxes, tennis rackets, polo sticks and old magazines. The built-in wardrobe was empty, and it seemed silly to leave all those things in the open, gathering dust, when they might be tidily stowed away.
Half-heartedly, she began to pack the smaller suitcases into the bottom of the cupboard, the sports gear into the shelves. A box or two she lifted to a higher shelf, and then she lost interest and wandered to the pile of books on the writing-table. She opened one or two, then idly pulled out the drawer. Almost without surprise, she saw a letter lying in there, addressed to herself. It had been opened, and she took out the sheet of paper to which a cheque was attached. From an insurance company with whom her father had invested, it seemed. For three years she would be entitled to an amount of three hundred pounds, to help her to train for a career. This was the first of the cheques, and she was begged to acknowledge receipt. It had been addressed to her, care of the Panai Rubber Corporation, more than a month ago.
Unmoved, Lorna slipped letter and cheque back into the envelope, dropped it into the drawer and turned away. Paul, apparently, hadn’t wanted her to have the money. She could order what she liked from any store in Panai Town or on Main Island, but he didn’t care for the idea of her having money of her own. She didn’t know why, found that it didn’t matter very much.
There were only three things left on the bed—a cricket bag, a large sq
uare box and a pile of technical magazines. She put the bag in the corner of the cupboard and came back to pick up the box. It was extraordinarily light, and thinking it might be almost empty she lifted the lid and stirred the wads of thin tissue paper inside. She felt something hard, unwrapped a piece of Sevres; it was a Louis XV couch with a hoop-skirted lady seated upon it and a courtier at the back, bending over her. An exquisite ornament, and apparently one of four. Lorna unwrapped them all and set them on the desk, stood back to study them and wonder how in the world they had arrived at this bungalow in the tropics.
Searching once more deep in the box, she found a folded sheet of writing-paper right at the bottom, as if hidden there. It was from Armand Chauvet. “Please accept my apologies, dear Paul, and this gift to you and your charming young wife. If I transgressed, it was because I thought she looked just a little lost and I have the old-fashioned conviction that every bride should appear radiant. Please convey to madame my best regards. For you, my friend, I make the three wishes which are usual here in the Marquesas: a long life, a happy wife, and a son.”
Carefully, as if the paper were brittle, Lorna folded the note and thrust it back into the box. She was trembling as she re-wrapped the ornaments and shut them away. Then she found herself taking everything from the cupboard and arranging them as she had found them, so that the box was smothered by other things. Paul had pushed it out of sight because he hadn’t wanted her to come upon it; she wished with all her heart that she had not entered the room.
She let down the blind and went to the living-room, but there she was imprisoned, for a high wind blew across the garden and rattled through the rubber trees. It was the first really bad wind she had known on Panai but she could regard it only as something which prevented her getting away from this place for fin hour or two.
That afternoon awakened the dormant anguish in Lorna. She walked from room to room, watched the bending trees and the couple of wild palms threshing against the sky. She saw the canna leaves ripped and fluttering, a bird dashed to death against a trunk; and she knew a frightful sense of loss and deprivation, an unbelievable despair. She thought of Lady Alys Garfield, that indestructible monument to a past age; of Elise, purring under the roof of her husband and uncaring about anyone else.
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