No Other Haven (15 page)

“I know how you feel,” he returned. “I’ve gone through it a thousand times just lately, and got nowhere. But this isn’t an ideal opportunity for a conference, is it?”

“You admitted before you went away that we couldn’t continue as we are much longer.”

“It’s still true.” His voice was uninformative and she had not the courage to search his expression. “In the beginning I was confident that some sort of emotion would flare up between us—couldn’t visualize any other possibility,
h
uman
nature being what it is. Well, human nature seems to have failed us, Lindsey, and we have to handle the situation without its help. There’s nothing to be afraid of, so long as we’re honest with each other. I’m well aware that candor in such matters goes against the grain with a woman, so that it will be harder for you
than
for me. That’s why we can’t argue it now, while you’re still quivering from that vile dog. We’ve waited a couple of months; a few more hours won’t hurt.”

All very detached and deliberate, agonized Lindsey. He couldn’t express himself that way if he were in love with her; and if he wasn’t, what was there to argue about?

“Feeling better?” he queried. “Well enough to change your dress without help?”

So the session was at an end. Turning away, Lindsey stood up and went quickly from the lounge. Though it was early, she had a bath and lay on the outside of her bed,
drinking
her tea and attempting to imbibe the novel held open before her.

When she came out to see about dinner, Stuart had the car on the drive and was filling the radiator.

“All right?” he asked. “No effects from the fright?”

“No. I’d forgotten it.” A lie. How could she forget being encircled by his arms, the deep, regular thud of his heart against her? “Where’s Brutus now?”

“Where he’ll do no more harm,” he replied briefly. “Don’t look so sick about it. We couldn’t risk having him around any longer.” He went straight on: “Shall we go to ‘Komana’ right away for an hour, or dine there?” ‘Komana’... on top of everything else.

“Need I go? It’s you your mother will want to see. I could stay and get dinner.”

The suggestion pleased him. He smiled. “Shall we make a pact? After dinner this evening we’ll talk.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Without reservations,” he tacked on, his eyes keen. Lids lowered, she nodded.

He swung the empty water can on one finger. “On the boat you trusted me to the point of marriage. I’m no different from then, and knowing me better should make things easier for you. If I tell you that, were we faced with a similar problem today as on that night we left Madeira, I’d act as I did then, maybe it will help untangle your thoughts.”

Eyes wide with sudden, intense hope, she whispered, “Would you, Stuart? Would you, really? Yo
u
still like me as much?”

He grinned, but not at her. His attention was trained upon dusting a speck from the windshield. “Certainly I do. I like you differently, but no less. What about you?”

“I’m ... about the same.”

He gave a sharp laugh and caught her arm. “I’m dashed if I’ll conduct a life-and-death discussion as though we were neighbors talking cars on the drive. Let’s go in.”

Precipitately, she retreated. “No, Stuart. Please leave it till later.”

His mouth hardened with purpose. For a minute he seemed inclined to sweep aside her objections; then he relented and withdrew his hand.

“I’ll get along,” he said abruptly. “Shan’t be long.” As she watched the car back down the drive and reverse, Lindsey’s breathing evened out. Her heart was trying to sing, but she wouldn’t let it. Impulsively, she reached to snap off a spray of jacaranda from one of the overhanging trees, and looked into its depths. The bluest blue she had ever seen, like the African sky at evening. Not like Stuart’s eyes, which at times had metal in them.

Tonight
,
her uncertainly and fear would end. Dare she be certain that Stuart had decided he could not let her go?

CHAPTER
NINE

THE table lamp in the dining room flickered twice and then went out. This was part of the horror, shivered Lindsey, not moving from her chair near the window. Three and a half hours since Stuart had left. The dinner was spoiled and cooling on the kitchen table. Daniel and Meta, uneasily aware of anxious undercurrents, had taken food to their quarters and would doubtless stay away till called for.

The dining table, in the darkness at her back, was laid for two. Gold linen mats, crystal glass and silver, and a centre-piece of mountain roses, pink-flushed with dark, exotic hearts, which Daniel had bought from a native woman a couple of hours ago.

Lindsey did not for long consider the possibility of a car accident. The road into town was steep and treacherous and the few turnings badly concealed, but her faith in Stuart’s expert handling of the tourer remained unshaken. Yet
she
could not help recalling that some of the Indians who lived in the side roads were crazy drivers. How she wished the house had a telephone.

Supposing Mrs. Conlowe were ill. In that event, wouldn’t Stuart have let her know by sending a boy up in one of the cars? It was so unlike him deliberately to cause her worry.

More than an hour ago she had given up analyzing their relationship. The necessity for courage and candor had dissolved in the greater need that Stuart come back, whatever his demands or verdict.

Nine
m
uffled chimes came from the china clock in the kitchen. This suspense was insupportable; at precisely 9.
15
she would send Daniel to a public telephone. Her
fingers locked and twisted, pressing her
ring int
o
soft flesh.

Then, like a firm hand laid upon her heart, she heard the purr of the car. As headlights raked the drive she was on her feet, peering out, hoping he would turn his head as he passed. The car swept into the garage like a cyclone; doors slammed and a bolt zipped home.

A queer paralysis caught Lindsey in the knees. As he strode down to close the gates her eyes followed
him,
but she could not run to the front door to meet him. The squared shoulders and outthrust chin revived her misgivings, increased them; so that when he came down the corridor and snapped on the main light, she could only face him across the room, her nerves tight.

“You’ve been so long, Stuart. What happened?”

His glance roved the table;
shining
glass and mountain-roses.

“Pity they were wasted,” he said in a voice as cold and hard as steel.

She strove to ignore his manner, came forward a few paces. “It doesn’t matter now you’re here. I was so afraid you’d had an accident.”

“Why should you be afraid?” he demanded with sarcasm. “Wealthy widows are popular.”

This angle on Stuart was new and terrifying. Her
mind
flew to Adrienne and back again. She ought to have gone with him to “Komana”; at any rate, she had a right to know what had occurred there to cause this hardiness in him.

A match cracked and he lit a cigarette in the spurt of flame. The bitter pull in his lean, dark cheek as he smoked reminded her of those early days, when he had brooded over the woman in England.

Desperately, she said, “Has Adrienne been
filling
you op with falsehoods about me? She’s always disliked me.”

“I didn’t see Adrienne, except for a moment. I spent the whole time with my mother in her bedroom. She’s unwell.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Certain there was more to it than that, Lindsey asked, “May I know what’s wrong?”

“Inertia, through shock.” His mouth thinned and inflexible, he leaned over
to flick ash on to a cheese plate. “I don’t have to tell you what caused it.”

Frantically, her brain tried to recapture the few outstanding incidents during her stay with Mrs. Conlowe.

“We parted happily on Tuesday. She didn’t mind my going to the Roberts’.”

His eyes narrow and glittering, he enquired softly, “You’re sure it was to the Roberts’ you went on Tuesday? Isn’t it possible that you chose the same companion as on Monday night and went to the same dubious establishment?”

It took Lindsey nearly a minute to grasp what he was implying. Swiftly, almost eagerly, she answered, “You’ve only to ask Gwen Roberts. And it was an accident about Monday—well, a sort of accident. Tony came here and begged me to go. I didn’t want to, but
...
”

“Spare me the details,” he said curtly. “Was that the only time the fellow came here?” Her ashen stillness convicted her. “You needn’t answer. At least you have the grace not to lie.” Savagely, he pressed out his cigarette and swung round to study her. “You knew I distrusted him and preferred you to ignore him, yet you invited him here more than once, while I was away.”

“I didn’t. He came unexpectedly.”

“And you asked
him
in, no doubt, and offered
him
hospitality?”

“What would you have had me do?”

“If you cared about my wishes, you’d have told him frankly that she was unwelcome here, and if a reason were necessary you had propriety on your side.” Although he spoke without heat, it was easy to see he was in a blazing rage. Some people rave when they get angry; he became pinched about the nostrils and quiet. “I take it that you enjoyed his company too much to fall back upon the excuse.”

Any other woman might have told him calmly and forcibly that she considered herself much safer with Tony Loraine than with Adrienne Cadell, and explained why. But Lindsey, confronted with a cold and deadly stranger, floundered wretchedly. Hazily, she saw Adrienne as prime mover in this nightmare, yet just how the other woman came into it she could not work out.

“Tony’s all right,” she said huskily. “Your mother allows him to visit Adrienne at ‘Komana’.”

“It’s as well for you that Adrienne has kept friendly with her cousin. But for that, your name
—my
name— would have headed the list of guests at that carousal you attended the other night. She pleaded with Loraine to forget you were there.” He turned away. “I never felt so sickened in my life, nor so let down. However you might disappoint me in other directions, I’d have sworn to your integrity. I’m not blaming you for being attracted by his obvious sophistication—I believe a good many women are—but to have amused yourself with
him
during my absence and while living at ‘Komana’ is beyond ... everything.”

White to the lips, she said, “Is your mother as convinced as you are that I’ve been having an affair with
T
ony?”

“What do you think?” he rejoined with vicious directness. “Your deceptive modesty had got under her
skin
and she was fond of you. Can you wonder at her prostration?” As she winced and grasped the back of a chair to steady herself, he went on quickly: “That was atrocious of me. Perhaps if you’d been through what I have this evening you’d feel like strangling someone too.”

He poured a drink and swallowed it, then lit another cigarette. Daniel stood in the doorway, s
miling
nervously. “Baas wish some dinner, please?”

“No,” said Stuart shortly.

“Madam wish some dinner?”

She shook her head. “Clear away, Daniel, and then you can go to bed.”

Stuart stood aside as she went from the room, but in a few minutes he followed her to the lounge.

“I suppose one’s bound to run into trouble with an insane arrangement such as ours,” he said a little thickly. “Unhappiness has to find an outlet.” He stopped, as though expecting an immediate retort. But Lindsey, her chest constricted, her endurance intolerably stretched, clung to the arms of the chair in which she sat and awaited the next whiplash.

It came. “Life’s odd, isn’t it?” His tone was self-goading. “Our meeting was propitious in every way for eventual marriage. From
the
beginning we were attracted, and I’d have wagered we were the sort to make a go of it—which proves that years don’t make for wisdom. No other couple flung together out of the blue could have failed so utterly to find common ground as we have.”

With the bravery of despair, Lindsey answered, “I’ve tried, Stuart. I ... I wanted us to be in love just as much as you did.” More, her heart wept, much more. “At first you insisted that everything was going splendidly, but we hadn’t been long in Port Acland before you admitted doubts. You said yourself that love can’t be forced. If ... if we can’t love each other
...”
Her throat was too clogged with bitterness for further words.

“Love,” he echoed with contemptuous bluntness. “How much do you know about love besides the quickening of the pulse to a footstep or a perfume, or wanting to
kiss
someone because the moon is shining?” Now his cheekbones were stained with red, though the strained whiteness persisted at each side of his nose. “There’s no
mistaking
love once it gets inside you, and there’s no casting it out or living it down. It’s a perpetual grinding pain and at times so near to hate that the only relief is violence!”

Lindsey knew that he was describing the only kind of love he had known, the unrequited; an eroding anguish which was hers, too, from now on. But women had not the relief of violence. Nevertheless, sparks came into her eyes and her head lifted with more defiance than she felt. Without realizing it, she was making a last reckless bid.

“What you seem to have ignored, Stuart, is that when you marry someone you assume responsibility for their happiness. Please let me finish. You’ve been kind and considerate, heaped gifts upon me and saved me from dangerous situations. Today you even shot the dog because he scared me. You’ve treated me as though I were a nice, immature little sister, and in return you expect me to react as something superhuman. I’ve attempted to show you how grateful I am to you for marrying me, though I really don’t see that you took any greater risk than I did; the other way about, in fact.” She gulped, turned her gaze sharply from the cold distaste in him, and hurried on: “I haven’t rammed Gresham dignity and tradition into you, though I can assure you that we possess our quota, even if we haven’t a few millions in cash to back it
up...”

“Just when have I rammed home Conlowe dignity and tradition?”—each syllable crisp as frost.

“Every day,” she cried, “in your gallantry and thoughtfulness for the little things, your anxiety to preserve a veneer of—of happy marriage. Whatever boils underneath, no breath must tarnish the solid platinum fa
c
ade of the house of Conlowe.” At the moment muddled metaphors meant nothing at all to Lindsey. “You came home furious tonight because I attended a party at the Baumanns’ with Tony Loraine. Your sole concern was that your name might have got into a questionable paragraph in the paper, that your mother’s peace might have been disturbed.”

“Nothing of the sort! If I felt one emotion above others it was disillusionment. Till I visited ‘Komana’ this evening I still imagined we mi
gh
t make a moderate success of marriage.”

He considered her in aloof silence; her wan cheeks, her trembling lips and drawn forehead. Her flash of hostility was over.

She said, low-voiced, “Our marrying was a horrible mistake. You see, through Lionel talking about you so much I was certain I knew you, but all I knew was the indomitable officer, the man’s man. The rest of you was an enigma—it still is. You know my history pretty thoroughly, but you’ve never talked to me about yours. How could there be confidence and trust between us?”

“How indeed?” with cruel mockery. “Yet there was— of a
kin
d—till you shattered it. I’m not pretending that all was well between us before I went away, but there was nothing that honesty couldn’t deal with and
disperse. I’m convinced of that. Thank heaven all this has happened now, and not later.” His teeth snapped. “It would have been too bad if we’d committed ourselves in any way.”

The door thudded and he was gone. But he couldn’t go like that, thought Lindsey wildly, as though by closing the door he had walked right out of her life. There was so much more to say. She flew into the hall, but stopped abruptly. No; there was nothing more to say. That he chose to believe whatever story Adrienne had put over to Mrs. Conlowe only proved the more decisively that he could never have come near loving her.

Was it but a few hours ago that he had confessed to
liking
her just as much, but “differently”? Foolishly, she had imbued that “differently” with a hint of passion and need, because that was what her whole being yearned for. But it had simply meant that it was pleasant to have her there to come home to after a fortnight of hotel life, which he detested.

How much of what he had spoken came from the reopening of old wounds—would he never forget that woman!—and how much from annoyance that his mother should be embroiled in his domestic difficulties? About half, she painfully calculated. The other half was resentment of his position as husband to a woman he could not love.

Lindsey was spent and her head buzzed as she stole into her bedroom. Strange that the cream walls and rose curtains were unchanged, the bed still dented from her rest this afternoon. And that was herself in the large round minor above the dressing table. Her skin almost sallow because her tan was fading and the healthy pink still absent, and a bruised look under her eyes. The blood had drained from her lips as well as from her heart; in her lips it had left a chill, but her heart was stricken with the numbness that precedes unendurable pain.

Throughout the night she dozed between bouts of mental fever. The sun, when it came up, did its brilliant best to charm away her lassitude, but nothing could lessen the almost concrete ache of loss.

Meta brought tea but no grape-juice. The master, Lindsey learned, had already taken breakfast and wished to speak to her before he left for town.