House Of Storm Read Online Free PDF

change or flicker, yet it seemed suddenly an adamant and ruthless line, not a smile at all. “But what about money? Oh, I see. Roy gave it to you!” She did not so much as glance at Roy, but Roy got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Hermione said, suddenly coaxing: “Now, Jim dear, I am making no complaints. I don’t object to supporting you. You can help me with—oh, with errands, all sorts of things. You play a very good bridge game. But really you mustn’t behave like a child in a tantrum. What will Roy think of you? What will Nonie think of you?”
    Roy said suddenly: “Lay off, Hermione …”
    And Jim said, with those agate hard eyes blazing from his white face very distinctly, very deliberately: “If I don’t leave, Hermione, I’ll kill you.”
    Hermione laughed. Roy said quickly: “You’d better go, Jim. Nonie, my dear, are you sure you’ll be all right? I can manage to take him, you know, if …”
    “I’ll be all right, Roy. I know the boat ….” How quickly again she spoke; how certainly as if she had planned it! And, again, once the words were spoken, she could not retract. She, and Jim with his bag and coat, and Roy were hurrying across the veranda, down the steps.
    Jim did not look back at Hermione and she stood still and unruffled with the red smile on her face as if it had been painted there.
    Roy put his hand on Jim’s arm. “We’ll have to hurry.”
    They went quickly down the path, without speaking. Yet the three of them were sharply aware of that slender, elegant figure above them on the veranda—of the greedy fire and frustration behind the smiling, once-beautiful face.
    Roy led the way along the graveled path with its hedges of yellow and green croton plants; at the end of the path a narrow flight of steps went down to the pier, and the motor boat, a small utility cruiser, was lying alongside, rocking gently in the wash of the waves.
    “There’s plenty of gas,” said Roy. “In with you. I’ll cast off.”
    Jim dropped his bag and coat into the boat and turned to Roy, pulling at his hand. “Thank you, Roy. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I’m sorry things have turned out this way.”
    “Well, well! Hermy’s the way she is; can’t be helped. You’ll have to hurry to make the mail boat. Good luck …”
    The two men shook hands briefly. Jim got down into the boat and put up his hands toward Nonie, but Roy, holding her strongly, helped her down into the boat, cast a quick and weatherwise glance over the placid water and sky, nodded reassuringly, and smiled down at her.
    “Okay?” he said, and she settled into the seat and said: “Okay.”
    Jim started the engine with a loud roar of the exhaust which brought Hermione to the veranda railing to watch.
    Roy cast off and tossed the line into the boat behind them, and waved. The rhythm of the motor steadied, Jim turned the wheel slowly and they were headed away from Beadon Island. The sea was blue and gold, glittering with light; the sky clear blue above and clear pink toward the west.
    Nonie glanced back and already the island seemed smaller. The cove below the house was a cup of blue, the house seemed higher than it actually was; the pinkish, coral rock walls and breakwater, the mangrove thickets, the slope of green lawn above, all stood out with extraordinary clarity like objects in a painted scene.
    Roy was going up toward the house. Hermione’s slim figure was moving rather quickly but still arrogantly across the veranda to meet him. One of the windows of the house was open; a window at the end, above the veranda, probably in Aurelia’s room with its great Victorian chests and marble-topped tables. And the huge wardrobe where, now, a white dress, a wedding dress hung, in waiting.
    Wednesday—how many hours away? And Jim would not be there; and she was thankful for that. Why had she volunteered to go with him to Elbow Beach? Why had she insisted? Why hadn’t she, instead, stayed with Roy at Beadon