[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Here they had lived their stormy lives, loving and hating each other with equal intensity, and here Meg had contracted the leprosy which, had left her even more notorious in death than she had been in life.Her bones still lay on the Leper Island, even if the island was now deserted, shunned by all as a place of evil spirits; the Government had itself taken over the segregated treatment of the disease and built its own lazaretto close to St.John's.But it was Meg Hilton's spirit which dominated these fields, and this house.And Meg, with her single-minded determination to have what she wanted, regardless of legal or moral impediment, would surely be smiling on this latest example of Hilton perversity, Hilton disregard for convention.Matt felt it in his bones, knew it in the swelling of his heart, as the gig started its downward journey.He glanced at Sue, and found her watching him.He closed his fingers over hers.'Happy?''If you will be happy.Matt.'He pursed his lips to blow her a kiss.'I am happy whenever I am near enough to touch you.'Now at last she smiled.'There is a challenge no woman should resist.I shall always be near enough to touch, Matt.Until you grow tired of me.''There is an incomprehensible thought.' He watched the drive unfolding in front of the horses, the muscles flexing in Thomas Henry's shoulders as he tightened the reins; the slaves on Green Grove had always retained the double names invented by Marguerite.But there were so many incomprehensible thoughts, chasing about his head, demanding to be exposed.He had spoken no more than the truth; when Sue was within an arm's length he knew no doubts, no fears, would accept no self-condemnation.Yet was she also right.Their love depended on their physical joy in each other, and it was difficult to see that lasting a lifetime, through sickness and inevitable separation, even if neither of them doubted it would at least survive the current scandal.But there was the sum of her problem.She had acted as a Hilton, thrown up husband and respectability for the company of a man she had chosen to love.Her business must be to keep him, if only to justify herself.But what of him? How simple to say, why, I am the same.I saw, I loved, and now my existence is controlled from embrace to embrace.Except that he had used those thoughts, enjoyed those emotions, once before, and in so doing brought catastrophe upon a girl who had done no more than respond.Perhaps, he thought, this is what truly frightens me, that having destroyed Gislane, merely by loving, I am now in the process of destroying Sue.But Sue could never be destroyed; no matter what happened to her, she would face life, and treat life, and conquer life, as a Hilton.Not a slave.So, then, every moment he sat here, or rode the dams at Green Grove, or drank his punch and sangaree on the front verandah, he was compounding his crime.He had, to all intents and purposes, committed murder, and was taking his ease while his victim still died.But always his conscience foundered upon the same rock.Was not Gislane already dead? Or at least, the Gislane he had known? Could he not but make matters worse, by seeking and finding her? Must not her hatred of white people, and of the Hiltons, and of Matt Hilton most of all, be the dominating fact of her life? Whatever had become of her, however horrible her life, he could only accept the fact that to him she was dead, as to her he must be dead.It was a simple enough resolve.The pressure of Suzanne's fingers tightened on his own, and he started.She smiled at him, but her eyes remained solemn.No doubt she was sufficiently used to his brown studies, and sufficiently aware of their cause.But now too the time for thought was past, at least for a while.The gig was pounding up the driveway, and as it was late afternoon they were encountering files of slaves returning from the fields, driven by the whips of their overseers.They stared at the carriage in disinterested bemusement, two visitors for Mistress Lander's dinner table, perhaps.But one of the overseers recognized Sue, and then Matt, and raised his hat, and called out to another.Here was a fruitful cause for speculation in the white compound.The gig rolled to a stop.Green Grove Great House was but a smaller version of that at Hilltop, from the carefully constructed mound of earth on which the house stood, through the deep verandahs and the reinforced doors, past the mahogany floors and the cedar walls, to the huge skylights in the roof; Hilltop was in fact no more than an enlarged copy of the original Hilton house.And on the verandah were Thomas Arthur the butler, and Jane Lander herself, a tall, angular Scotswoman, complexion bleached yellow by an adult lifetime in the tropics, grey-streaked black hair drawn back in a tight bun to emphasize the pointed forcefulness of her features.She was frowning at the sudden appearance of an unexpected carriage, and the frown was only deepening as she recognized the occupants, even as she hurried down the stairs behind her butler to assist Suzanne to the ground.'Mistress Huys,' she cried, and bit her lip.'How good to see you.Matthew, is that you?' She could remember him as a babe.'The bad penny himself, Jane,' he cried.'Ian home yet?''I expect him shortly.But come inside.Come inside.There are mosquitoes.Thomas Arthur, you'll prepare sangaree.Is this a visit.' she checked, to glance at Suzanne, and flush.'I am afraid we are come to stay, Jane, Suzanne said, lifting her skirt to climb the stairs.'We? I.I do not understand.''Robert has decided it is time I become a planter,' Matt explained.'Of course Ian will continue to oversee the plantation.Make no mistake about that.No doubt in the next twenty years or so I will learn the business.'She glanced at him, before her eyes seemed to roll back to Suzanne.Antigua was only a dozen miles from St.Eustatius; they had seen the Dutch island on the northern horizon as they had sailed past St.Kitts
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]