Too Young to Marry

by Rosalind Brett

  She closed her eyes again, almost slept till she became aware of some kind of sound. Colin was back. But when she looked about her there was no one except a man plodding swiftly through the sand and grass towards the trees ... a smallish wiry man with a bale of rubber strapped to his back!

  She couldn’t believe it. The bales were terribly heavy; she had seen them being heaved off the boats at the jetty, always by two men. Possibly the way this man had the bale slung high on his back with straps which fitted over his shoulders made the load easier, but even so he must be immensely strong. He must also be the thief!

  As she got to her knees her heart began to beat faster. She looked about desperately for Colin, thought, momentarily, that she ought to shout for him. But that would warn the man; he would shed his bale as quickly as he could and run, and she would never know who he was, or where he was hiding his loot. No, either she or Colin should follow the man to his destination; but Colin, though he might be near among the rocks, was invisible. There was only one thing for it; she must tail the man and hope for the best. With that weight on his back he probably wasn’t going far.

  Stooping, she moved quickly through the long grasses. She glanced towards where the jeep was parked, but Colin had run it out of sight among the trees to keep it cool. She looked back once more, but there was still no sign of Colin, and because it was all she could think of in the circumstances she hurriedly tied her handkerchief to a branch, so that if he became anxious he would see which way she had gone, and follow her tracks. Feeling safer after that, she went on up into the growth behind the beach. The man was thirty yards ahead now, a small humped figure in blue cotton trousers and a faded colourless shirt. He trod regularly and methodically, as if he had done this many times before, yet he was not following a path; that was why he had not been caught, of course. This bush must have been combed by searchers, but there was the bland absence of footpaths to baffle them.

  Lorna’s sandals sank into warm damp earth, tiny fem needles clung to her frock and she had to push aside willowy branches, more and more of them as she penetrated the dense glades. Then came the eerie sensation of squeezing between bamboos; the wonder was that that man ahead seemed to leave no trace, not even a bent cane here and there.

  The jungle became thicker and she had to move more quickly, to keep a glimpse of the blue cotton in view. The wind seemed to have retreated to an incredible distance, and the green gloom hugged round her, cool and frightening. There was a nightmare barricade of growth. She watched the man part it carefully, and step through it, to vanish.

  Had she stopped to think sensibly, Lorna would have turned back at once and followed her own footprints. But somehow the chase had come to mean much more than merely tracking a thief to his lair.

  “Go on,” she whispered to herself. “This is the first worth-while thing you’ve been able to do for months. You can’t give up now.”

  She pressed forward, literally struggled with vines and creepers, great succulent plants and a luxuriance of young bamboos, for what seemed an eternity. And then she stopped and saw it—a bamboo platform loaded with something which was covered with fresh green branches. The man was there, loosening his straps and turning so that the bale fell conveniently on to the bamboo struts. He pushed the bale into position, covered it with some of the greenery. But Lorna was not watching his actions; she was staring at every aspect she could obtain of his flat inscrutable face with the thin slanting eyelids. She intended to know him when she saw him again.

  When he left his small structure she did not follow him. She stayed there till the silence became intolerable, and then she sought her own tracks. She persevered for an hour before a queer mid-afternoon darkness closed in and the wind tore dementedly at the roof of green far above her head. Patience and calm, she adjured her thudding pulses; nevertheless she had shouted Colin’s name many times before she admitted to even a small degree of defeat

  Paul lunched alone in the living-room. He had seen Colin’s note, controlled a grim impulse to break something, and decided to start preparing instructions for Bill Ramsay to observe during his own absence. But first he ate some of the salad Jake brought in, and drank a cup of coffee. After putting on a cigarette he sat at the desk, but instead of getting down to work he leant an elbow on the scarred surface and rested his chin on his hand, while the blue eyes under their dark brows grazed concentratedly at the cannas and oriental marigolds which had appeared out there since Lorna came.

  He must have sat like that for a very long time, because it was nearly four when a tap came at the swaying door and Elise Ramsay walked in. She looked cool and lovely and only slightly wind-tossed in a stiff white blouse and navy linen skirt, but her expression, though smiling, was a little diffident.

  “Hallo, there,” she said with an attempt at her usual careless manner. “Am I intruding?”

  Paul stood up and said automatically, “No, of course not. Is Bill with you?”

  “I came alone. Are you alone, too?”

  He nodded. “Colin took Lorna for a drive. He should have returned by now, but as usual he’s leaving everything till the last minute. Sit down, Elise.”

  She did, awkwardly for her. “I thought Colin would already have left for Main Island. Actually, I hoped for a word with Lorna.”

  “Yes? What can you have to say to Lorna?”

  She looked both exasperated and rueful. “I honestly don’t know. On the way here I was trying to think of some way of convincing her that I like her immensely and want to be friends. But even if I were to put it into so many words she wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Is this something new?” he asked coolly.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s only that ... well, last night she couldn’t bear to speak to me. She still seems to have the notion that I’m vamping you.”

  ‘That’s your own interpretation of her attitude. I’m sure she doesn’t think anything of the sort.” He paused. “That’s not the main reason you came here this afternoon, is it? There’s something else on your mind.”

  Her smile was forced. “You’re still the great man who sees through other people, aren’t you, Paul? Yes, you’re right. I came to see you.”

  “Getting cold feet over Bill’s new job?

  “You would think of that—but I’m not. I came to say something rather impertinent.”

  “Then you hadn’t better say it, had you?”

  She looked up at him, genuinely puzzled. Then her glance wandered to the desk and she saw the overflowing ashtray and the thin spiral of smoke which still drifted from his last cigarette. She knew his coldness and mercilessness, but she didn’t know this mood in him. Still, she did have a certain amount of courage.

  “I think I had,” she said, “or it will go on worrying me. I came to ask you not to take Lorna for that cruise. If you do, you’ll hurt her far more than she’s hurt already.”

  “You haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Is that all?”

  “I’m terribly serious, Paul.”

  “So am I. Keep out of what doesn’t concern you, Elise.”

  “You didn’t do that—you helped me back to Bill.”

  “I did nothing, except to bring you close and let you work it out for yourselves. In any case, there’s nothing here that needs your help.” He looked at his watch, and out of the door at the persistent darkness and the flailing trees. “Damn Colin! I don’t even know which direction he took.”

  “They’ll be all right. A jeep always sticks to the road and Colin’s a slick driver, even in a wind. Paul...” she hesitated, “at the risk of making you violently angry I have to say it. Lorna isn’t ready for what you’re planning. She gives the impression that she can stand anything, but she’s very strung up. I was watching her when you mentioned the cruise last night, and...”

  “For Pete’s sake shut up, Elise,” he said in a dangerously soft voice. “If you were a man I’d have kicked you out five minutes ago.”

  She looked down at h
er hand. “I know. It’s simply that I feel rather responsible for the way Lorna looks just now. You think that because she’s very young she doesn’t realize how little you care for her. You think she’s deceived by that protective air, but she isn’t. She’s thoroughly awake, and I believe she loves you.”

  Paul said icily, “And that’s about enough. I’ll see you off the premises.”

  Elise had no choice. She got up and went out into the porch, held her hair as the wind caught it, and bowed her head as she want down the steps towards Bill’s jeep. Paul opened the low door, tested the hood to make sure it would stand up against the gusts which were gathering strength. Elise got behind the wheel, looked down at the copper-coloured hair rising in the wind, his lean, unsmiling face.

  There came a sudden racketing noise as another jeep shot round the drive from the road. It stopped, and Colin slid out and came running, the fair thatch wild, his eyes staring. Paul grabbed his shoulder.

  “Where’s Lorna?”

  “Paul, I don’t know,” Colin gasped. “It was the most amazing thing. I ... we were at the beach...”

  “For God’s sake! Where is she?”

  “I honestly don’t know!” Colin’s voice cracked. “We drove right out on to the eastern side of the island and found a beach. We had lunch, and Lorna was so tired that she dozed right off. I sloped away and did some scavenging...”

  “You left her!”

  “No. I was just wandering on the same beach—could hardly have gone out of sight. I went back once and she was still sleeping, so I trotted off again. Next time I came back she was gone!”

  Paul’s face was an odd colour, a palish tan without a vestige of blood under it; his nostrils were peculiarly thin and white. “Go on! What then?”

  “She hadn’t taken a thing with her. I called several times, then I did a bit of searching. Paul, I ... I don’t know how to tell you this. There was a ... a handkerchief tied to a twig, this one.”

  Paul took it, spoke thickly. “Yes, it’s Lorna’s. Didn’t you follow her tracks?”

  “Yes, as far as I could, but the ground hardened and I lost them. There were no paths.”

  Paul did something which neither Elise nor Colin had ever seen him do before. He closed his eyes for a second and pushed his hand over his forehead as if to ease some sort of pressure. But his voice was entirely controlled when he asked, “Where exactly is this beach?”

  “It’s right over to the east, through the forest and then left towards the sea. I parked just beyond the point where the road ends.”

  “A couple of needle-shaped rocks to the left of the beach?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You fool. Colin! That’s the beach I mentioned—where the stolen rubber is landed. It’s the most dangerous spot on the island!”

  Colin was even more shaken. “I didn’t realize or I wouldn’t have left the place. Where would she have gone?”

  But Paul was already moving towards his own car. “I think I know. If anything’s happened to her...” He swung back, savagely. “Go over to Bill Ramsay and tell him to find out if Li-Chung is at his home. After that you’d better follow me, you and Bill in separate jeeps in case we need to scour the roads. If anything’s happened to her,” he ended indistinctly, “I’ll tear your heart out.”

  White and cold, Colin watched the car vanish in a cloud of dust. He turned to Elise and said hoarsely, “He meant that.”

  Her mouth quivered into a strange smile. “Yes, he meant it. I only hope he hasn’t discovered something too late. Let’s get moving, Colin. I’ll go first.”

  Paul let the car out to its utmost. The wind drove at its side and at intervals a scurry of rain lashed at the windows. It was a little lighter now, which meant that the wind was unlikely to last more than another hour or so, but when it dropped there might come a really heavy rain. It was because the labourers on duty had foreseen a squall that they had omitted to keep watch today. Freighters seldom sailed on a Sunday, anyway. That thieving hound had also smelled the coming wind and taken advantage of it; that was certain.

  Paul’s hands were tight and wet with sweat on the wheel. He was covering twenty miles of deserted road at seventy miles an hour, yet it seemed as if he would never reach that spot where the road petered out and became a footpath. But he got there, left the car and slithered down the path to the grassy back of the beach. Within a few minutes he came upon the impressions in the sandy soil, where Colin and Lorna had picnicked and rested. He looked about him, strode over on to the sand and noticed a couple of imprints near the rocks; flat footprints which certainly were not Lorna’s. His whole muscular system tightened up.

  Swiftly, he picked up Lorna’s trail, and in a few minutes he reached the place where Colin had given up. He looked ahead, at the teeming greenness of the glades, and plunged straight in. Relentlessly he searched, and twice he came upon small evidences that someone had gone before—a patch of crushed jungle flower, a slight division in a wall of bamboo. Neither, he was certain, had been caused by the thief; he was too practised to leave clues.

  The wind died to a moan in the tree-tops, and a faintly gold dusk percolated through the branches. Paul lost the track, and then found it again, the prints pointing back the way he had come. Ten minutes later he found her.

  She was standing with her back to him, supporting herself against a tree-trunk while she shook out one of her sandals. For a moment the relief was paralysing; he simply watched her slip her foot back into the sandal and fasten it. Then, with an infinitely weary movement, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin; her small and valiant figure moved on. He covered the distance between them.

  “Lorna!”

  She turned dazedly, swayed slightly, and looked at him as though he were something which had materialized to torment her. Then she felt his warmth, his shirt under her cheek, his arms so tight about her that she wasn’t sure whether it was her own heart she heard, or his. And as she became convinced that this was Paul, that he had sought her and was holding her as she had longed so many times to be held, she crumpled and wept

  It was seven-thirty. Two lamps shone in the living-room, one from the dining-table and the other from Paul’s desk, and the reed bands clicked slightly in the warm wetness of the breeze left behind by the squall. The table was set for two, and the indispensable trolley stood nearby, bearing dishes of cold savouries and salads but covered with the inevitable square of mosquito netting.

  A door opened along the corridor, there was a minute of hesitant silence and then a faint rustle as Lorna came along on bare feet, with her blue silk dressing-gown flowing about her ankles. She paused shyly in the doorway.

  “Come in,” said Paul. “You belong here.”

  “I’d rather dress. It won’t take two minutes.”

  “No. Stay like that—it’s more restful. Feel better for the bath?”

  “Heaps.” She looked towards the door, and then at the table. “Where’s Colin?”

  “I sent him home. He’ll get there in time for a late dinner. Sit down just here and drink this up. I’m afraid I’ve already drunk mine—I needed it.”

  “You poured something into me that made me hot.”

  His smile was strained. “Well, we can cool down now. Comfortable?”

  She nodded and drew in her feet. His chair was close but he sat back in it, regarding her and apparently not very anxious to speak. For Lorna, too, the closeness seemed to be enough; she was reluctant to analyse it. But the tension became rather wearing.

  “I hope you weren’t angry with Colin,” she said.

  “Angry is hardly the word. I threatened him with capital punishment.”

  “But he couldn’t help it. If I’d yelled he would have come—only if I had shouted the man would have got away.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that I might object to my wife trailing a thief?” He leaned forward. “Didn’t you honestly realize the sort of trouble you might be chasing?”

  She nodded. “But I was very
careful. He was moving, so he couldn’t hear me, but even if he’d seen me I’d have had a good start because of that load on his back. It wasn’t something he could drop easily.”

  ‘To hell with the stolen rubber!” he said more forcibly. “You should never have followed the man. You know that, Lorna. I can shudder even now when I think what could have happened.”

  “I only wanted to see where he took it,” she protested. “You haven’t talked much about it...”

  “Because I wouldn’t have you worried about something that’s just a hazard of the times!”

  “Bill mentioned it, though, when he used to come and see Elise. He said it was a case of finding the hide-out and keeping it under observation till you could catch the Li-Chung man red-handed. I think it was Li-Chung, Paul. He had a Chinese look, he was small and very strong.”

  “Very strong,” he repeated grimly. “And your strength is just normal for a girl. The moment you saw the man you should have called Colin. He shouldn’t have left you, anyway.”

  “Poor Colin. He did look hangdog when we got in.”

  “Poor Colin indeed! If he hadn’t drunk too much last night he’d have taken in what I was telling him about that beach. I specifically warned him to avoid it while he was here.”

  “Will you have that Li-Chung person arrested?”

  “You forget it,” he said tersely. “Through you, we know more or less where the stuff is hidden; we’ve known for some time how it’s landed and we’ll do the rest without your assistance, thanks very much.” He stopped, shifted his position slightly and asked casually, “Would you have clung so hard if it had been Bill or Colin who’d found you?”

  She picked at a thread of the rattan arm of the chair, and smiled self-consciously. “I don’t think either Bill or Colin would have held me so tightly, and I certainly wouldn’t have cried all over them. I ... I wasn’t dreadfully frightened, but I felt so alone. It’s funny, really,” she flickered an appealing glance at him, “I thought I was lonely here, in this house, yet that was far worse.”