Stormy Haven

by Rosalind Brett

  Very gradually Melanie grew a thin skin over the wound to her heart and mind. Resolutely she turned to the work that had temporarily become pointless, and soon she was completing the twenty pages a day that she had set herself in the beginning. She lived with the Jamesons as a younger sister might, and Lucille was the best possible friend in the world, while Henry was continually showing his delight in having her around. Neither appeared to notice that the spirit had gone out of her; but Colin suspected it.

  He came over most weekends, and invariably stayed the night. His presence was quiet and unobtrusive; his drawl, conveying nothing important, managed to offer sympathy. He swam with Melanie, took her to Pirree or Port Fernando in his car, which was no larger than Henry’s but of a later vintage. On Saturday evenings the four of them played cards, and on Sundays Colin turned up the stereo and chose the liveliest records.

  One weekend he took her to his plantation at Carimari. His main crop was sugar, so there was nothing much to see except the shiny green acres bent low in the wind. His bungalow was old, with iron veranda posts and small windows, and inside it had the plain, established look that is inseparable from old, ordinary furniture and unimaginative ornaments.

  He seated Melanie in his small living room, gave her a cigarette and lighted a pipe for himself.

  “The house is more or less as my brother left it,” he said. “For a year or so Lucille lived here, too, but she took her imprint with her.”

  “Don’t you get bored with living alone?”

  He smiled. “Occasionally, but there’s always the club as an antidote. If you like, we’ll have dinner there this evening. It’s not so stylish as the Miramar but the atmosphere is matey. Stephen always said he preferred it.” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “Have you heard from him since he sailed?”

  She shook her head. “They don’t bother much with the mail for Mindoa. Even airmailed correspondence has to come by sea from Bombay. He may not have written yet, of course.”

  Colin did not hasten to reassure her, as she had expected. In his slow voice he said, “He should have taken you with him. All that stuff about women being unequal to camp life is eyewash. If he wouldn’t have you under canvas with him, he could have billeted you in the nearest town with the wives of his colleagues. In his shoes,” he finished, “I’d have let you make the choice, and I’m pretty certain what it would have been.”

  She disposed of the scarcely smoked cigarette. “I think,” she nerved herself to reply, “that Stephen was rather glad to have the El Geza contract to complete. It will give us both time to be ... sure of ourselves.”

  “What I can’t understand is a man like Stephen Brent walking out on something that belongs to him.” Quickly, he went on, “I’m not doubting that he loves you as much as you love him—I know he does, but—”

  “How do you know?” she had to ask.

  Colin looked curiously confused. “Well, surely, Melanie ... would he be engaged to you otherwise?”

  So that was it. Crazy and irrational to hope Stephen had thrown out some unmistakable hint to Colin Jameson. She judged it prudent to smile.

  “I don’t suppose he would,” she said. “Let’s hope the mail will come in soon. And now tell me what goes into the growing of sugar.”

  He complied, while Melanie reflected that he was almost too easy to get along with. She was in a mood to welcome conflict in any form, and to Colin the verbal skirmish was anathema. But she was grateful for him.

  Four nights later they went to the Miramar for dinner. The diners were the same strange mixture of nationalities as before, the air was heavy with perfumed smoke and the sickly scent of overblown jasmine that further reduced Melanie’s appetite. She ate a little of the curry and ricebread, tasted a syrupy dessert and drank some wine, but it was refreshing to go into the fan-cooled ballroom and dance. It was there that she caught sight of Colonel Davidson, stepping a sedate measure with his wife. He saw Melanie at the same time and worked his way toward her.

  His greeting was courteous. “Good evening, Melanie. How are you, Jameson. I’m very happy to have met you tonight. Next week we’re opening the Indian clinic—it’s in the house that was Stephen’s—and I felt sure that you, Melanie, would like to be present.”

  “They’ve turned the house into a clinic?” she said rather dazedly. “That’s quick. Whose idea was it?”

  “Whose would it be but Stephen’s? His Development Corporation is tremendously wealthy. As you know, they buy tracts of land all over the world and test for various minerals, and so on. They happen to be on the eve of wonderful developments in northeast Africa, and they can afford to be generous with the comparatively worthless soil of Mindoa. They’re relinquishing their rights here; the land is to be divided up among a few worthy but poor Indians, and the house is to be used as an outpatients’ hospital and pharmacy; it will replace that germ-ridden little hole on the Marine Drive. The grounds are sufficiently large to accommodate a hospital, and perhaps one day we’ll collect enough funds to start building one.” With a pleased smile, he added, “In this sort of thing Stephen is very much as his father was. He gave permission for the house to be converted before he left, and now he’s sent a substantial cheque to head the subscription list for the proposed hospital.

  Melanie heard herself saying huskily, “You’ve had a letter from him. Where is he?”

  Mrs. Davidson put a gentle hand on her arm. “But surely he’s written to you, too, my dear? Ours came yesterday, from Alexandria.”

  It was Colin who suggested, “He’ll probably have written to Melanie by the same mail. Henry hasn’t collected since Thursday, and I’m afraid she’ll have to wait now till Monday. Hard luck, Melanie.”

  “That will be it!” exclaimed the colonel. “Go on dancing, you two. We’ll expect you at that opening, Melanie.”

  The couples parted, and after one more dance Colin brought around the car and they started for home.

  Sunday and most of Monday were a protracted series of bad dreams for Melanie. Stephen had written only to the colonel; he had put off sending a note to Melanie as a piffling duty he would have to perform sometime, but not right now. He was forgetting her already, falling back into the condition of mind in which she had first known him, when she had meant nothing more than a vague nuisance to be relegated to a position way down in his thoughts.

  Between convincing herself of the worst, Melanie tried to visualize the house given over to the quest of good health among Indians. It was only a beginning; Stephen must have realized that. Those young, tuberculous women would never be healed, but perhaps their many daughters would grow up better for and without that fatalistic slant on life and inevitable early death. For long, wild moments Melanie saw herself training feverishly to assist at the clinic, but deep at heart she was aware of a stronger force that must eventually carry her away from Mindoa, no doubt forever.

  Henry got back from Port Fernando at about six and at once had his bath. They were on the veranda in the early darkness when he said suddenly, “I clean forgot. There’s a letter for Melanie. I expect it’s from Stephen.”

  He had to go indoors and sort through his own correspondence to find it, and Melanie followed him with a fist pressed fiercely against her heart. She took the letter into her bedroom, shakily slit the envelope, but she had to sit down before she could read.

  Stephen might have been in the room with her; the aloof, smiling Stephen, not the one who could be cruel and proprietary. He was now the purposeful geologist, not a man on vacation idly tinkering with buried villages and foolish young women. The El Geza project, he said, had been wound up by one of his, subordinates. He himself had transferred farther south on a hush-hush mission that promised to be interesting. She could write to him at the Alexandria office; they sent a special messenger to his camp every two days so there would not be much delay. He hoped she wasn’t finding the writing too tough on her wrist muscles, “and I think it would be wise if you took all the antifever precautions that are avail
able on Mindoa. This is a filthy time of the year in the tropics, and though the wind is regarded as the ‘island doctor’ that keeps away epidemics, it doesn’t stop these pests from breeding. Take care of yourself, and give my regards to Henry and Lucille—”

  From the first word to the last the epistle was typical of him. He did not beg her to write, but he gave her an address at which she might communicate with him. He did not mention the engagement, probably because it had ceased to exist for him. Nevertheless, the bold writing, the phrasing that was Stephen’s and no one else’s, sent warmth along her spine, and when she answered Lucille’s call to dinner, her cheeks and eyes were bright, her red lips sweetly curved.

  After that letter of Stephen’s, she worked harder and her spells of despair were fewer. She wrote to him in a carefully airy tone and thereafter attempted, with little success, to put him from her.

  Both Lucille and Henry went with her to the opening of the Indian Clinic. The avenue was lined with cars and a colorful procession trooped along close to the frangipani hedge. Children had turned up with their parents; little boys in white cotton pajamas, and girls similarly dressed but in pastel shades, with their eyes rimmed with mascara as if this were a fete day.

  “It must be bad for their eyes,” Lucille commented, “but their mothers are convinced it beautifies them.”

  There were the usual beggars, including a leprous one who was compelled to stand away on the opposite side of the road and shout to draw attention to himself. Having refused to enter a leper colony, he had to live alone in a hut in the bush, and the population was forbidden contact with him under pain of immediate extradition to a leper hospital.

  Outside, the house appeared no different from when Stephen had lived there. The interior, however, was so vastly changed that it was almost impossible to recognize the vast tiled lounge, the various bedrooms and, in particular the workroom where she had spent the night of the tornado. The equipment was old but clean and would be supplemented from a fund already in existence. The two colored doctors, dressed in white European suits and red tarbooshes, smiled upon everyone in great satisfaction.

  The head of the Hindus on the island declared the clinic open and made a speech of thanks. The colonel spoke for the island government, other speeches followed, and tea was served to the committee and to all those who had been specially invited. While they sat on the lawn, drinking, and eating delectable fancies contrived from nuts and fruits, uninvited jugglers performed on the lawn, and a small Chinese girl walked around on her hands with her moonlike face raised at a strange angle, for applause ... and coins.

  “Well, that’s the end of another fabulous dwelling,” said Lucille, as they were leaving. “Stephen was only at Mindoa a few months, but he’s left his mark. It must have been on his recommendation that the land was given free to the poor, and that village he unearthed will add to tourist attractions and bring more money to the island. For one who goes out of his way to help others to health and happiness, he’s not particularly happy himself. I don’t mean he’s not happy about you,” she tacked on quickly, looking sideways at Melanie, who was crushed into the car beside her. “I should say he’s the type who must have everything, or nothing. He couldn’t make do with half measures, or second best.”

  “Don’t frighten the girl,” Henry said. “It’s true that a man seems to lose some of his humanity when he’s dealing with his womenfolk, but it’s generally a sign that the best in his fife so unquestionably depends on the woman that he demands no less from her. A woman can go on living with a man she no longer cares for, but there aren’t many men who’d be content with such conditions.”

  “This is going to be enlightening,” laughed Lucille. “Explain, Henry.”

  “It isn’t complicated. Women have compensations in the home, particularly when there are children, but with a man his wife always comes a long way first; the home and children are wonderfully pleasant, but they’ve little value without the wife. I believe most women don’t realize that the great majority of husbands would never have the slightest urge to look at another woman if they were quite certain their own wives were still in love with them.”

  “Henry’s telling us,” stated Lucille kindly, “that man is innately more faithful than woman, and that we, ourselves, are to blame if he goes wrong. We’ve drifted somewhat from the subject.”

  “No, we haven’t,” her husband corrected her. “You were saying that Stephen’s not a happy type. I contend that a man who gives—who does good in the world and satisfies his many instincts besides, can’t help but achieve happiness.” He bent across the wheel and smiled past Lucille at Melanie. “You’ve no cause to worry. If Stephen is hard and sarcastic sometimes it’s because his experiences have taught him to distrust human nature. But just by putting him before everything and everyone else, you’ll unlearn him. It’ll come easily enough when you’re together again.”

  Melanie nodded, wordlessly. They were darlings, both of them, and not for anything would she undeceive them.

  They were passing the Perez villa, which apparently belonged to the Spaniards no longer, for three well-dressed dark-skinned children played near the white gates and coolies were felling one of the larger trees. The senor must have sold out; neither he nor Ramon would ever come back to Mindoa.

  That trip to Stephen’s former abode and on up the avenue was like watching the final, disillusioning scene of a stormy drama. The whole thing had fizzled out before the climax. The senor and Ramon, Elfrida and Stephen had gone. Strange that she, the least of them, should be the only one remaining on the island.

  By the end of her first month on the task, Melanie had completed a little more than a quarter of the chronicles. The pages were beautifully written and Henry took charge of them as if they were rare treasure. With the pronounced accent that was always noticeable when she grew excited, Lucille said she just wished her father could see how perfectly his instructions were being adhered to; he would forgive her for postponing the business for five years!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE FOLLOWING MONTH was one of anxiety and frustration. It started off well enough. Colin came over for the four days of the Christmas holiday; presents were exchanged and Denise was allowed to marvel over the doll’s furniture but not to touch it. The house, though not profusely decorated, had a festive atmosphere, and meals were an odd blend of the customary English fare and French salads and iced desserts.

  The sun was grillingly hot, the temperature of the water in the lagoon well up in the seventies. Though the wind still blew it was so weighted with moisture that everything was drenched. Good growing weather, remarked Henry, but the intense heat was coming too early this season.

  The new year had hardly begun when Melanie became sick with enteritis. She starved and got over it quickly, but it left her slack and lifeless and unmistakably thinner. There was no hope of fostering an appetite with the shade temperature around a hundred and ten degrees and a correspondingly high degree of humidity.

  Then came a hurricane, the real thing this time. Though it was sheltered from the most destructive blasts, the house rocked upon its foundations, most of the thatched roof was ripped off and a veranda pillar caved in. None of the damage was known till just after dawn when the wind had died to a whistling moan and Henry braced himself to go outside. He returned grim faced but philosophical.

  “Devil of a mess,” he growled, after enumerating the signs of wreckage. “We can consider ourselves fortunate it didn’t rain much; the ceilings might have come down.”

  “There’s one thing,” said Lucille, undaunted, “we’ve enough palms to thatch a hundred houses, and if you get all the boys on it they’ll finish in a day.”

  “They won’t work up there in this wind.”

  “Maybe it’ll drop soon. Let’s have some coffee.” Melanie brought in the tray, left Lucille to pour and went through to the nursery to see why Denise was so quiet. The baby was slowly but determinedly picking off the silk binding of her blanket. Unde
r the tossed heap she was copiously perspiring, but she gave Melanie a benevolent smile and made no protest when her plaything was withdrawn. In the early morning Denise was always contented.

  Melanie dipped her in the bath and dressed her, let her toddle off to the dining room. She heard Lucille exclaim, “My precious pigeon! Melanie has made you smell so sweet. Come and kiss papa.” Through sunshine and gale disaster those three were an entity.

  Over the next few hours the wind lowered, and the boys could set to work on renewing the roof. But two days passed before the road to Port Fernando was drained and cleared of uprooted trees.

  The port itself had suffered near devastation. Older buildings were heaps of rubble and thousands were homeless. A relief kitchen had been opened in the main street, and a pitiable lineup received hot rice and broth twice a day. Up on the hillside they burned their dead, about forty altogether, and at the clinic broken limbs were set and wounds bandaged.

  On the weekend Colin arrived. He stood back to inspect the fresh thatch that was still green in streaks, and tapped expressively at the new veranda post.

  “So you got it, too,” he said, “but not as badly as I did. My living room wall caved in.”

  “Good heavens,” from Lucille. “Did you put it up again?”

  He nodded. “It’s up but not plastered. I came over to make sure you were all safe, but I’ll have to go back and get on with the job. The coolies have knocked off.”

  “Like me to give you a hand?” asked Henry.

  “Lord, no. You’ve had enough of your own mess to deal with.” He looked cheerfully at Melanie, who sat sewing near the doorway. “Care to go with me? You could fix us some lunch.”

  “I’d love to. I might even help with the plastering.”