Star Creek

by Pamela Kent

She had been thinking things over since she had escaped unseen from the beach, and inwardly she was seething with resentment because Roger’s own cousin was behaving so badly towards him. She even felt indignation with Valerie now that she had had time to dwell upon her defection, and she forgot that there appeared to be literally nothing in the way of a bond between the husband and wife, and that Valerie spent most of her time in lonely isolation where she could hardly be expected to feel entirely happy, and she longed for the opportunity to upbraid her for her flagrant disloyalty to the man she had married.

  But of course she could say nothing of this to the man who paced restlessly up and down in front of the flower-filled hearth, and grew increasingly more thoughtful and even rather heavily brooding as the evening passed. He always looked so distinguished in a dinner-jacket, despite his empty sleeve, and as she watched him covertly while sewing sequins to, a length of shadowy chiffon that was intended for an evening stole, his good looks actually hurt her a little, like gazing at something particularly desirable in a shop-window that could never be hers—only more so; and that slight, knotted look about his black brows hurt her still more, for she wanted so badly to do something about it and there was nothing that she could do.

  Suddenly he turned and looked at her.

  “What did you do today?” he asked.

  “Nothing very much. It was too hot. But I did go down on the beach, and I had tea under the cedar on the lawn.”

  His face seemed to lighten.

  “That sounds nice,” he said. “I wish I had been here to have it with you.”

  “I don’t suppose you had any tea at all,” she remarked, for something to say, and because of the way his strange, dark eyes were resting on her ... as if he was going to find it difficult to remove them. As if, apart from anything else, there was something peaceful and restful about her that drew and held his gaze, and filled him with a rather empty sort of satisfaction.

  She thought again of the afternoon, and for a moment she wondered whether she ought, at least, to tell him something of what had transpired. He had a right to know. Certainly, if his wife was planning to leave him for his own cousin, he had the right to be prepared. And it wasn’t because she was afraid that if she revealed the truth Perry would learn how much she had overheard and might react accordingly that prevented her from making her revelation just then ... because she knew perfectly well that it would not be a bitter blow to Trelawnce.

  But something else ... a kind of constant uneasiness prevented her. There was something happening here at Trelawnce about which she really knew nothing, although sometimes she thought she had a pretty shrewd idea what it might be. There were moments when she included the owner of the manor in this shady picture that cast a blight over the manor, and should have seriously affected her attitude towards the man who was her guardian ... and who was much, much more than that to her. But it did not, and more frequently than not she did not see him in the picture ... although this could have been a deliberate omission on her part.

  However, the main thing was that she had heard something that he ought to know she had heard ... and she felt quite unable to tell him. She could not even begin to think up the words that would enlighten him ... if he required to be enlightened!

  “That bruise on your cheek has practically vanished,” he observed suddenly, studying the bent curve of her cheek as she bent over her sewing, and a powerful standard lamp behind her chair cast its light across her. She looked up at him and smiled self-consciously.

  “It was never very much, anyway,” she said.

  “It could have been much worse,” he agreed.

  He bent and took her sewing away from her, surprising her considerably.

  “Let’s go outside and get a breath of air,” he said. “This room seems stifling tonight.”

  “But the windows are open—”

  “Don’t you want to go outside? Would you rather stay here?”

  There was a look in his eyes that was all but challenging her to say bluntly that she didn’t want to go outside into the shadowy gloom of the night with him, but would rather stay in the lighted room, where perhaps she felt safe ... safe from the night, and safe from him!

  She stood up at once, smoothing the front of her dress mechanically.

  “Of course I’d love to have a breath of air,” she said.

  Outside on the terrace it was intensely dark, for the moon had not yet risen. It was that velvety, bat’s-wing darkness that had so impressed her when she experienced it for the first time after living for so long in a brightly-lighted corner of the world like the French capital. It seemed to come at her and wrap her about as if it was an actual mantle, and for the first few seconds she could see nothing ... nothing whatsoever.

  She had no idea where the terrace steps were, so she moved cautiously. Ahead of her, somewhere—far ahead of her in the darkness—was the creek, with its murmuring water and night breeze sighing through the clustering leaves. She heard quite distinctly the call of a night-bird that must be sitting on one of those unseen branches in the far-away creek, and even as she waited for it another bird answered. As the darkness became dissipated and she recognised vague outlines ahead of her she took a few hurried steps forward, and disaster would almost certainly have overtaken her had not Roger anticipated it and shot out his arm.

  “Be careful!” he warned. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  As his arm closed round her with steel-like strength and declined to let her go she knew that, although one disaster had been averted, another had taken its place. And, this was not so much a disaster as an inevitable happening.

  “You wouldn’t have got away with a few bruises this time,” he said, into her hair, “you might very easily have broken your neck! What were you running away from?”

  “Nothing,” she answered, shivering with almost painful ecstasy as her ribs threatened to crack and her face was forced into his shoulder. “N-nothing ... nothing at all!”

  “Except this!” he said, and she knew that his cheek had lowered itself to hers, and the warmth and eagerness of his mouth was within inches of her own. And then his mouth had fastened on hers, and she gasped and gave herself up to a bliss that she had so often dreamed of—at least, since she had come Trelawnce—and had never believed she would ever experience.

  But not merely was she experiencing it now, she was surrendering herself to it. He had only one arm to hold her, but she had two good arms, and one of them went up and around his neck, and the other clasped him with equal closeness. The kiss was something that left them both so shaken they were quite unable to form any words, even when their lips were free. So Roger kissed her eyes and her hair and the smooth sides of her cheek, and then murmured chokily into her hair.

  “You lovely thing! Oh, Helen, I love you so much there are no words to tell you! ... No really useful words! You’ve just got to believe it...”

  She wanted to utter the name ‘Valerie’, but she couldn’t. In those moments it didn’t really seem to her that Valerie existed. So instead she said.

  “Oh, Roger, please!”

  “Please what, darling?” he demanded huskily. “The advantage is with you, you know. I’ve only got one arm, and if you really want to escape I don’t think I can prevent you! But why should you wish to escape? Helen, you don’t really want to, do you?”

  It was no longer dark on the terrace, and she could see far-away pin-points like stars in the sky above her. They appeared to be conducting some kind of eccentric dance and whirling round her. And away down in the far more concentrated darkness where the creek lay the two nightbirds were still uttering lonely cries that roused the echoes in the night-enshrouded garden that overlooked the creek.

  “Helen!” the man exclaimed sharply, as she did nothing but cling to him. “Helen, you’re not frightened of me, or anything like that, are you? If I only had a free hand I could lift your face and look into your eyes and read for myself what is there ... But I can’t!” and he
sighed distractedly. “Helen!” still more sharply. “It’s not my empty sleeve, is it? Does it revolt you so much?”

  She gasped.

  “Roger, you must be mad!”

  “Then what is it? Sweetheart ... dearest! Oh, Helen, there is something, isn’t there? I felt it the other day when I wanted to name the boat after you! You didn’t really want me to do anything of the kind. Why not? If you love me? And you wouldn’t stay like this, close to me, if you didn’t love me, would you?”

  Instantly Helen withdrew from him. Quite determinedly, and with an upsurge of strength she would have never dreamed she possessed, she withdrew at least a couple of feet from him, and it was then that, looking out over the dimly seen lawns and flower beds, away out beyond the creek to where the sea lay and slapped softly against the sides of the cliffs, she saw the lights of the grey shape anchored in the bay. Instantly she was provided with distraction.

  “It’s the yacht,” she exclaimed. “The yacht that was there this morning!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  INSTANTLY Roger’s whole expression altered. If she had said something about a thunderbolt falling from the heavens and landing in the sea with a loud hissing noise and a major disturbance of the sea bed itself she could not have succeeded in diverting him more completely. “Yacht?” he echoed her sharply. “What yacht?”

  He thrust past her towards the edge of the terrace, and he stood staring out over the garden and the woods even as she had done, only with ten times more alertness in his whole attitude.

  “The yacht I saw this morning.”

  He wheeled round on her. His eyes were surveying her as if she was a stranger in the darkness.

  “You saw what you took to be a yacht this morning, anchored in the bay?”

  “It was near the mouth of the creek,” she explained, all the warmth and excitement of the past few minutes seeping away from her, and she felt as if those moments were something she had imagined, and that she had never heard his heart thundering wildly just below her ear, and that if he had kissed her it had been in a dream.

  A frenzied, delicious dream that would never be repeated, because now, all at once, although standing within a foot or so of each other, they were miles apart.

  It was an extraordinary experience, and one that shattered her. And it was highly difficult to adjust herself to this new, tense awareness of something altogether different. But apparently equally important ... to him!

  “I was down on the beach with Perry,” she explained more hurriedly, “and he said it was a yacht. He seemed to think it might belong to some multi-millionaire whom he seemed to despise.”

  Roger stared hard at her for a moment, and then started to pace up and down.

  “You were down on the beach with Perry,” he caught her up, at last, speaking in a remote but cool voice. “What, precisely, were you doing on the beach with my cousin?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head, mystified. “I ran into him by accident. I intended to paint ... in fact, I think I had been painting...” She couldn’t remember now. She felt confused, ridiculously confused.

  “And Perry appeared suddenly on the beach? Do you happen to remember whether he used the steps that are approached through this garden, or whether he approached the cove in his motor-boat? It isn’t his boat, incidentally, it’s mine—but he uses it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I didn’t notice. He was just suddenly there.”

  “And you pointed out the yacht to him?”

  “I wondered what it was doing.”

  “And Perry...? Was he surprised?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Very well.” He turned away, as he might have done in the early days of their acquaintance. “I think you’d better go to bed. It’s getting rather late, and I’ve one or two letters to write before I go to bed.”

  She needed no further dismissal ... and this was; dismissal, she realised. Almost without glancing at her he let her go, and she went upstairs to her room with her mind in an absolute turmoil of bewilderment and resentment and a gnawing, overpowering hurt that actually seemed to numb her faculties as she went about her preparations for retiring.

  It was like being injected with a wonder-drug—caught up by something miraculous—and then suffering all the aftermath of disillusionment and regret when she woke up. Only she hadn’t been injected with anything, and she hadn’t yet closed her eyes, so all that had happened to her had been reality. Roger’s one strong arm had held her, and she had wound her own arms about his neck and held him tight—although, and she grew hot as she remembered it now, she hadn’t the smallest right and he wasn’t even a free man. And when his lips had met hers they had both been transported to some ecstatic haven of bliss that must have been as blissful for him as it was for her, judging by the huskiness and unsteadiness of his voice, and the desperation in the way he had held her.

  And implored her to confess that she was in love with him...

  The only comfort she had was in the knowledge that she hadn’t entirely given herself away.

  She found it impossible, with her mind in such a tumult, to undress and get calmly into bed and go off to sleep as if nothing stupendous had happened. Instead, she sat beside her open window for a long time, listening to all the muted sounds and vague stirrings that occurred in the garden below her, and in the velvety black patch of shadow that was the woods crowding down to the water in the hollow that formed the creek. Apart from those vague stirrings there was no indication that anything human was abroad, although once or twice she thought she heard measured footfalls on the stone flags of the terrace below her bedroom window. But when she ventured to peer out she could see nothing. It was only when she withdrew her head that the footfalls continued, and a faint scent of cigarette smoke came up to her.

  She stiffened, as she sat upright in her chair. Was it Roger who was out there in the stillness and the coolness of the night, walking up and down because he couldn’t sleep, and he had something very serious on his mind?

  She asked herself two questions: The yacht? Or herself? Was it her unfortunate mention of the yacht that was keeping Roger Trelawnce wakeful, or had the fact that he was a married man and he had allowed himself to make temporary but very ardent love to a girl who had come to him for shelter upset him?

  Or was it, possibly, Valerie?

  Valerie who was planning to leave him quite soon...

  At long last Helen grew so weary that she found it necessary to crawl into bed—and by that time the footsteps below her window had ceased—and she fell asleep instantly. The sun was high in the sky when she awoke, and Mrs. Pearce was standing beside her bed with a breakfast tray in her hands, and already the curtains were drawn and the room was full of blinding golden light.

  Helen struggled up on her pillows and looked horrified when she caught sight of the little travelling clock that always stood beside her bed.

  “Why, it’s after ten!” she exclaimed.

  Mrs. Pearce looked normal and undisturbed.

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “You don’t often oversleep, and I hadn’t the heart to wake you. Besides, the master went off early this morning, and he won’t be back until this evening. There’s nothing very much for you to do, and no reason why you shouldn’t spend the whole morning in bed if you feel like it.”

  “But I don’t.”

  Helen scrambled out of bed and into her candlewick dressing-gown. She moved to the window and the first thing she noticed was that the bay was empty of anything resembling a vessel of any size ... not even a tiny black speck on the horizon which could indicate that a ship was passing.

  “You say that Mr. Trelawnce has gone off for the day?” she said, recalling the fact which had only dimly penetrated her understanding before. “Have you any idea where he has gone? And why?”

  The housekeeper shook her head. She poured Helen a cup of tea.

  “The master’s affairs are not my concern,” she replied in her best houseke
eperly manner. “But I’ve an idea he’s gone to London, because I heard him put through a call to London before he left this morning.”

  Helen felt curiously stunned. After being awake for the better part of the night, and then sleeping so heavily that she was not yet in full possession of her senses, the news that Roger had coolly taken himself off without leaving any word for her affected her like a blow in an unprepared moment. And then she suddenly realised that she had only assumed he had left her no word. She asked, with a faint uprising of hopefulness:

  “Did—did Mr. Trelawnce ... I suppose he didn’t leave a note for me, or anything of the sort, before he went?”

  Mrs. Pearce gazed at her with an utterly unreadable expression in her eyes.

  “No, miss,” she replied.

  Helen finished her breakfast—or rather, she made a pretence of eating breakfast—and then she dressed as soon as she had taken a shower, and went out into the garden.

  This magnificent summer that was filling every day with blue skies and golden sunshine was continuing, and the garden of the manor was a dream of beauty under the hot and slightly sultry sun. It was true that a slight haze was overspreading the larkspur blueness of the sea, and far down on the horizon a vague purple darkness was spreading: Later on there would probably be a thunderstorm, which at least would have the effect of cooling the air. At the moment it was a little difficult to breathe, as if every vital quality in the atmosphere had been slowly soaked up, leaving a strange lassitude lying on land and sea.

  Helen glanced up at Valerie’s windows in the isolated wing, and she thought she caught a momentary glimpse of Valerie’s face peeping out at her, and her golden hair tossed back in that restless movement that was typical of her nervous, unnatural state.

  When she thought of Roger holding her close the night before, and pleading to be told that she loved him, she experienced an unfamiliar rush of embarrassment that made her acutely dislike the thought of coming face to face with Valerie, or having any conversation with her, and she decided to ask Mrs. Pearce to put her up some sandwiches which she could take down to the cove with her easel and her paintbox, and there on the very rim of the sea she might find coolness as well as escape from an unwelcome encounter.