The Shadow and the Star (53 page)

Leda.

The soft voice said her name, and in her dream she felt a wave of pleasure and relief—he'd come back, and everything would be all right now.

He said it again. She opened her eyes, coming awake to the ceaseless roll of the ship. A dark, cool breeze flowed over her, relief from the stuffy warmth of her nightgown. She could just see his shape as he stood over her berth; he wore white, a barely visible ghost in the blackness.

"Come with me," he whispered, and she remembered Dickie in the upper berth, remembered that Samuel had not approached her for seven days, remembered what was real and why the sound of his voice had soothed her so in her dream.

She realized that the constant rumble of the engines had stopped. The roar of the wind was gone. The cabin seemed silent, only the muffled sound of the ship's surge through the waves marking a slow time in the distance.

"Samuel." She sat up, reaching out her hand.

"Come with me," he murmured. "I want to show you something."

He drifted back out of reach. Squinting, Leda pushed the sheet away and set her feet on the carpet, searching for her slippers in the netting at the foot of the berth. She rose and made her way through the dark to the sitting room, shutting the door softly so as not to wake poor Dickie now that he finally slept sound after enduring seven unrelenting days of foul weather and motion sickness.

Samuel was a pale outline in the dimness by the open door. The light breeze came from there, carrying a fresh scent. As she went to him, he held her robe out to her. She couldn't really see his expression, but his hands were impersonal as he laid the garment around her shoulders.

She ducked her head and stepped out onto the little semicircle of the private deck. The wind was stronger there, blowing her hair around her face. Overhead, the steamship's empty masts had blossomed with sails. The vast arch of the sky flowed from midnight to a glowing blue at the zenith, a color she'd never seen before, vivid tint and transparency at once, blending down to a sapphire-tinged ivory in the east.

She hugged her robe around her and leaned against the teak rail. Before them, the dark water was flushed with the colors of the sky, an infinity of rushing mirrors that formed and broke and formed again, while the ship's wake trailed off in lines of dim phosphorescence.

The height of their deck and the curve of a small sail hid everything but the very bow of the ship. She felt as if they were floating alone in a crystal world, where the silver undersides of clouds on the horizon turned to pink towers at their height—a pink that ripened to orange as she watched, color as soft as the warm wind that caught her gown and hair.

"Look." He stood a little behind her, his own hair a golden disorder in the breeze. He nodded toward the vista ahead.

Leda looked. At the base of the clouds, the growing light revealed a shadowy form on the sea, a dark, steady shape at the horizon.

"Oahu," he said. Then he pointed off toward the left-hand distance, where Leda could barely see a gray hump beneath another spire of billowing clouds that held gold in their uppermost turrets. "That's Molokai."

She stared at them. She bit her lip. "They're very small."

"They'll get bigger. We're still twenty miles out."

Leda would have thought the islands no more than a few miles away, for already she could make out peaks and hollows as the dawn blossomed. She curled her fingers around the rail, waiting for him to speak again, afraid to break this moment of simple connection. But for a long time he said nothing. He stayed outside the circle of contact, one hand resting where the rail curved sharply round the deck.

"I just thought you'd like to see it," he said at last, rather stiffly.

"It's beautiful."

He made no answer, but he didn't leave.

Leda wished to say many things to him, but they were beyond saying. Even when all had been going straight and well, she could not have found words to tell him how she cherished his quiet company, how she treasured the way he had held her and fallen asleep at night. And her feelings about what had come before falling asleep—she could no more have spoken of that in words than she could have taken wing and flown from here to the distant rocks at the edge of the sky.

She missed him. Poor seasick Dickie had seemed to move into the master stateroom by some universal consent, his pillow and his clothes slowly making their way to the sleeping cabin while he occupied the upper berth. The child was so miserable and trusting and guilelessly confident in her solicitude that she could not have wished to do else, but she wished also that it had not meant she wouldn't see Samuel through the whole voyage.

She remembered his face when he'd realized his mistake with the steward—and thought, wistfully, that perhaps Samuel might need her, too, a little.

"I hadn't realized that the sky was so tall." She looked up at the steeples and heights of clouds. "It never seemed so at—" She almost said "home." But this was to be her home, these gloomy lumps of rock on the horizon. "At London," she finished, pushing her hair from her eyes.

Still he didn't speak, nor take his leave. She watched a small and lacy cloud drift past, glowing as if it carried its own pink light within it.

"Do you suppose that it will continue a fine day?" she asked.

"I can't say." He spoke in a formal tone, as if she were someone to whom he'd only just been introduced at an evening party.

"But you have a supposition?"

"It rains off and on, this time of year."

Leda began to feel somewhat dismayed at his stiffness. "Why are the sails up?"

"We've got a fair wind. We're sailing."

"Oh. I thought perhaps the engine was broken."

"It isn't broken."

The seed of anxiety grew. He was so cool, as if she had done something that he hadn't liked. Tentatively, just to keep the conversation open, she remarked, "I should think it would be faster with the engine and sails, too."

"Are you in a hurry?" he asked dryly.

"No. Not precisely. But it seemed that everyone was. I thought speed was the great thing about steamships."

He paused. "I asked them to shut down the boilers. For a little while. I thought—you might enjoy it."

He was still behind her as he said it; she couldn't see his face. She felt shy, and perplexed, and wished that she could think of something more eloquent to do and say than looking down at her hands and murmuring, "Thank you. That was very kind."

She saw his tanned fingers drum quickly on the rail. He released it.

"I have paperwork," he said abruptly. "Good morning to you."

Leda turned, but he was already gone, disappeared by the cabin door that swung gently back and forth with the rock of the waves.

Somehow, Leda had got the notion that Hawaii would look rather like Scotland. Not that she'd ever seen Scotland, but she knew it for a bleak place of barren mountains and tiny villages—and the gray-and-white dry-plate photographs of Honolulu, with stark black masts on the sailing ships in harbor, the dingy buildings and hazy mountains in the background, had seemed to fit that description. She had not expected the color.

It was color beyond imagination. As if someone had spilled a giant box of watercolor in the sea: indigo flowed into cobalt, into azure, turquoise, jade, advancing in brilliant wreaths to the shore. Behind the black and reddish-tan slopes of Diamond Head, clouds caressed green mountains, glowing and dissolving as they passed. Another crater, clothed in intense volcanic red and vermilion, stood in perfect symmetry at the base of the mountains, rising from a fringe of palms and forest.

Even the air seemed vivid, soft and yet full of sweetness. As they steamed along the narrow, twisting channel into Honolulu Harbor, where one could see right down into the edge of the coral jungle, the dull thunder of surf mingled and faded into strains of music. On the dock, amid hundreds—thousands—of people, an excellent brass band in red coats and golden epaulets played exuberant tunes.

Leda stood with Dickie, as amazed and enchanted as the twelve-year-old at this fantasy land, while the crowd from the dock streamed aboard the
Kaiea
by the dozens, every shade of nationality, sweeping loose gowns, scarlet and yellow, green, white, pink—and all, every one, male and female, adorned with garlands and strands of flowers and leaves.

It was all Leda could do to keep Dickie from running down the stairs and into the lively confusion, or leaping over the rail to join the brown sprites swimming and splashing in the clear water below. Mr. Vidal had told them both to wait on the private deck, while he located the boy's parents. Leda could see why. Dickie tugged and pleaded "just to go down and see—", filling in whatever caught his eye for the instant, until finally he leaped up and down and yelled, "There they
are! Daddy! Mum
!"

He broke free of her hand and tore down the stairs, tumbling into the flower-loaded arms of a couple dressed all in white. In a moment, he was twined and decorated with blossoms, and the next, he was gone amid the crowd surging and flowing on the deck below.

Leda watched the greetings. She really had no reason to feel doleful, she thought. She really had every reason to feel cheered. The city seemed no more than a sleepy town, dirt streets, a few church spires and roofs amid the greenery, but what a smiling face it had. She found herself searching among the numerous white-suited men wearing straw boaters and thinking:
If only
…

Which was a very foolish thing to think. It was certainly a sign of weak character and want of self-control. She'd built up a large castle of air in the past month; there was nothing to be gained by living in it. Miss Myrtle had always said that things that came too easily were not be relied upon.

This was her new home. She was the wife of the owner of this noteworthy vessel. She would not be so misguided as to weep because she was afraid that he had renewed regrets of his marriage, or because he did not turn to her�because he avoided her—in matters that troubled him deeply. One proved oneself deserving of trust. One held up one's head and overlooked the ship with a smile and was truly, sincerely, unreservedly proud and pleased to be Mrs. Samuel Gerard at this moment.

She saw Mr. Vidal at the foot of the stairs and picked up her skirts to follow him. But before she could, he was halfway up, at the head of a column of ladies and gentlemen all trooping up and thronging onto the private deck and into the master stateroom.

"Aloha!" A fragrant wreath of flowers went over her head and dangled down her shoulders. Another "Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii, Mrs. Gerard!" and another wreath, and more, as perfect strangers greeted her by name and bestowed trails of blooms and took her hand, calling out their names and laughing over the noise. Tropical flowers of shapes and perfumes unknown piled one atop the other, up to her collar, and then her chin. At last she was standing on tiptoes, trying to respond to the greetings over the cool brush of petals at her mouth. A giggling lady, not very old, but quite old enough to be more reserved, twined a length of blossoms around Leda's hat, and a bearded young gentleman pushed a bouquet of red carnations into her hands.

"Aloha! Best wishes, ma'am! Walter Richards, your general manager. I've already telephoned the hotel and got you the king's own suite. Mrs. Richards and I'll see y' settled."

Mrs. Richards was the giggling lady. The others crowded along, guiding Leda down the stairs wrapped in her flowers as if she were a player at blindman's bluff. As she came to the gangplank, the whole crew was lined up along the deck. The captain awaited her. He took off his hat; Leda shook his hand and thanked him cordially for a safe and pleasant trip. As she walked down, the crew waved their caps and cheered, an acclaim that was taken up by the remaining crowd below.

Samuel stood at the base of the ramp. Among all the smiling and welcoming faces, his was the only one without expression. He held a trailing cascade of flowers over his arm: purple, red, white.

Leda hesitated, daunted for a moment by his remoteness. Then she thought: I shall
not
disgrace him. No one here is going to think that I'm not splendidly happy.

She smiled, and lifted her hand to the crowd, and felt rather like the dear Queen herself as she walked down and set foot for the first time in Hawaii. She blinked and swallowed, surprised to find that solid ground didn't seem quite as steady as she'd anticipated.

Samuel reached out and caught her arm. She saw him frowning at her, but as the illusion of motion passed away, his grip loosened. "Rubber legs?" he asked.

She'd forgotten; the same few moments of deceptive dizziness had plagued her when she'd disembarked in New York, too. She held onto his arm. "Oh, dear. I should so dislike to fall down in front of all your friends."

He loaded his flowers overtop the ones she already had on, right up to her eyes, so that she couldn't see a thing but blossoms. The onlookers renewed their cheer, as if it were some sort of holiday.

"What a very ebullient company," she remarked.

He held her by both shoulders. Though she could only see him through the blind of petals and leaves, she felt him bend close to her ear. "Aloha, Leda," he said softly. "Welcome—" He stopped, as if he'd lost the tail of his sentence. Then he stepped back. "Welcome to Hawaii."

Leda had a wild moment. She burrowed her fingers among the coil of flowers around her hat, pulled it off, and lifted it. Finding a peephole through the floral tribute, she reached up and tossed the pink and purple wreath over his head. It caught on his hat, and then fell onto his shoulders.

The onlookers seemed to find that quite a pleasing gesture, for the men yelled and whistled enthusiastically, and all the ladies laughed. Samuel turned dark beneath the golden skin at the collar of his linen suit.

"Aloha, dear sir," she said, although she doubted anyone could hear her, muffled as she was in flowers.

Mrs. Richards and Leda sat in rocking chairs of white wicker on the wide veranda, where the ruby flame of a trailing bougainvillea hid them from the greater part of the Hawaiian Hotel. The hotel was an easy, busy place, open to the air all the way through its broad corridors, overlooking a shaded lawn with the brilliant blue sky and the mountains beyond.