by Craig Rice
There was a small stone, very plain, with the name of Eugene Telefair, and two dates that were only twenty years apart. David stood looking down at it for a moment, trying to believe that this unknown dead man was his father, a stranger whom he had never seen. This was the closest meeting they would ever know.
He looked up at the old man.
“How did my father die?”
“By accident,” said Philip Telefair calmly.
They walked silently back toward the house. It was as they neared the fountain that David remembered another question that had come to him while they were in the old grove.
“Your wife’s grave,” he said, a trifle diffidently. “I did not see it.”
“My wife is not buried on Telefair Island,” Philip Telefair said in the same quiet tone, and that subject too was closed forever.
As they walked back toward the house, David saw Edmund Telefair coming to meet them through the garden, and felt a sudden, unaccountable revulsion at the sight of the tall cripple. It was not that Edmund Telefair was deformed in the body, but it seemed to David that he could sense some inner deformity having nothing to do with bone and muscle, a depraved, mocking, secret thing that looked out slyly through the bitter laughter of Edmund Telefair’s eyes, and smiled hatefully through Edmund Telefair’s twisted smile. It was the look of a man who faced danger through having no desire to live, and who continued living from lacking the desire to die.
David had a strange feeling that Edmund Telefair was his enemy, and would continue to be his enemy to the end. Again it seemed to him that they all were on the Island as part of some preordained plan; whose plan it was he could not tell, any more than he could tell what it was. But Philip Telefair knew of it, and Edmund knew of it, and the knowledge was the bond that linked them irrevocably in their unvoiced hatred of each other.
“I take it David has been spending the morning among the family tombs,” Edmund said in the most pleasant and friendly of voices. “A very wise choice, of course. First impressions are always the lasting ones.”
“An appropriate introduction to Telefair, I believe,” Philip Telefair said, nodding pleasantly, as though by some miracle they were in perfect agreement. “The old graveyard is the history of Telefair.”
“I wanted very much to see my father’s grave,” David said a little hesitantly, wondering why he was suddenly on dangerous ground. He was conscious that Edmund was watching him closely, and that Philip Telefair was pretending not to watch him at all.
“Did you indeed?” said the cripple amiably, his smile brightening one half of his face. “Tragic, your father’s death.” Then suddenly he too was silent, as though a hand had been laid over his lips in the middle of a thought.
The three men walked on toward the house in silence.
At the fountain, David paused. Edris, dressed in white (did she always wear white, he wondered?), had appeared suddenly from nowhere and stood on the far side of the pool, unconscious of them, watching the sky beyond their heads. It was as though she had materialized from the spray of the fountain and now stood there enchanted, half mist and half girl, ready to vanish if anyone so much as moved.
Seen through the mist, and in the sunlight, her hair had become a cloud of light, spangled, glistening, shedding its own faint radiance into the air; her pale face was almost opalescent, glowing, exquisite. Through the softly falling waters of the fountain her delicate hands seemed to be almost evaporating into the pale vapor.
Watching her, David dared not move, nor speak, nor scarcely breathe; his last breath stopped, half indrawn, in his tight throat. Then in the very next instant she became aware of them, the spell was broken, and she joined them by the side of the now disenchanted fountain, a frail, colorless girl.
“A charming picture, Edris,” Philip Telefair observed agreeably.
David rather wished he had not spoken.
Luncheon that day was a gay meal, altogether delightful. Old Philip Telefair was at his happiest and most charming best, and while the rest of them were silent, listening, he made Telefair live again through days and eras its ancient paneled walls had all but forgotten. Days when Virginia was a colony, when the Virginia planters grew rich, and a great ball lasted for three days and nights. Music and laughter in the magnificent rooms, tutors imported from England for Telefair children, ships that came from Europe with silver and china, gowns of stiff brocade, and fine and fragile furniture: Telefairs who returned to England for the painting of their portraits that still hung on the walls, the Raeburn of Claire (she who had attempted, on a wager, to swim her favorite horse across the swiftest channel of the inlet, and was drowned), the Romney of gentle Rosalie (mother of Anthony, who was murdered), the Lawrence of Eugene (father of the David who was hanged).
The Telefairs in the old pictures came alive again in the old man’s telling of them. Sir Philip walked the halls of the house that had been built after his death, tall, dark, arrogant, a little cruel. He had been a rich man, proud and discontented in England, ostracized for the rumored, but never proved, beating to death of a mistress. He had come to the New World for the pure adventure of it, planted Italian poplars and cypress on Telefair Island, quarreled with the brother who had come with him from England (over a woman, so the story went), so that the brother left Telefair forever and built his own house on the James River (Claire, where Edmund lived now, when he was at home).
Eugene Telefair the hunchback (not the one who was father of the hanged David, but the one painted in the sable cape with the fine embroidered collar at his throat; the painting just below the stairs in the great hall), who had been Secretary of State, Ambassador to Russia, visitor to China, author of a book on Roman history, and whose bitter and twisted nature had destroyed him in the end.
Another Edmund Telefair, son of that David who was hanged, a strange, shy, delicate boy, who married his cousin at eighteen, fathered a son at twenty, and at twenty-one was dead in a duel over the dubious honor of his beautiful wife.
And that Edmund’s wife (another Edris, painted in the yellow gown, the portrait hanging in the north parlor), living for a hundred years, dark and proud and reckless, born illegitimately of Telefair cousins (as a matter of fact, it was a closer relationship than cousins, but who were we, of another generation, to pass judgment?), marrying a Telefair at sixteen, a mother and a widow at nineteen, marrying a second Telefair at twenty, riding horse like a cavalryman, giving great balls at Telefair and occasional entertainments the nature of which one did not discuss, publicly horse-whipping a lover in Rome (he shot himself the day after), living on the Island during the Civil War and saving the great Telefair fortune for posterity, making social history by slapping the face of General Sherman at a public reception in Washington not long after the war, spending the last forty years of her life in Paris and dying there during its bombardment in 1918, a hundred years old, the Comtesse du Perrière.
“A remarkable woman,” old Philip Telefair said, “but not a surprising one.”
David listened, enthralled, forgetting to eat. This was Telefair as he had dreamed of it, brilliant, daring, arrogant. This fascinating man was Great-Uncle Philip who had been so kind to him, coming incredibly to life after years of misty existence in a boy’s dreams, charming and clever; his life a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places and things. Telefair, London, Paris, Rome. Laughter, music, lights, color. Had it not been said that every man was the sum of the experiences that had come into his life? This, then, was Philip Telefair, the sum of all those years that were still so vivid and so gay, even in the telling.
Yet, and it seemed curious to David, Philip Telefair’s talk always came up to the point where he had returned to the Island some twenty years or so before, and ended there. Once the old man did mention the name of his wife, but that was the outward limit, and he did not speak of her again.
“When my wife, Angeline, came to Telefair, she knew not one word of English—” but that reminded him of a delicious—and almost unmentionable—anecdo
te of his young manhood in Paris, and he never came so close to the present again.
Listening to Philip Telefair, David forgot Edris and Edmund and Doctor von Berger; it was as though they had never existed. Once, during a momentary lull, he had a sudden, curious idea that the little doctor’s pale blue, protuberant eyes were watching him with a kind of instinctive and unintentional sympathy—but just then Philip Telefair remembered a disgraceful and scandalous—but delightfully amusing—story about Eugene Telefair—the poet, not the ambassador—and Doctor von Berger faded into some other world.
It was after luncheon that David went into the old, dark-paneled library with Philip Telefair, aware of a strange sense of expectancy and mounting excitement. In all the time he had been at Telefair—had it been only since last night, or had it been forever?—nothing had been said of himself, of his own life and what it was to be.
“There are certain practical matters that we will discuss, all in their time,” said old Philip Telefair, as though the discussion of any practical matters was intensely distasteful to him. “You must, of course, take a little time to become accustomed to life here.” He paused, and added thoughtfully, “As much as anyone ever becomes accustomed to life, anywhere.”
“Am I going to remain, then, at Telefair?” David longed passionately to ask, and dared not.
“Little by little,” Philip Telefair went on, “you must, of course, study and learn the management of the Telefair estate, so that you become thoroughly familiar with it all.” He smiled encouragingly. “That is not such an undertaking as it seems. Everything is in the hands of trustees, excellent, capable men, so that you will have little to concern yourself about. But it will be well for you to know all these details”—he paused again, and looked gravely at David across the great, carved desk—“since, after all, you are heir to Telefair.”
Once or twice before in his life David had been aware of the way the motion of time could suddenly seem to end, stopping dead in its tracks between one tick of the clock and the next tick, so that the very stars in their courses ceased to climb, and the round earth hung in space, motionless as the moon.
He was again aware of it now.
As he stood there listening to old Philip Telefair’s last words, breathless with their impact, his eyes rested on an old, gold-faced clock that hung on the wall, its hands pointing to two o’clock. It seemed to him that hours passed before he could speak, while thoughts ran through his mind like uncontrolled streams.
“After all, you are heir to Telefair.” He, owner of the Island, ruler of it. Was it for this that Philip Telefair had provided his education, his upbringing, and summoned him at last to the Island that would some day belong to him? Even the old graveyard. He was going to inherit a graveyard with the bones of his ancestors. Had anyone ever inherited a graveyard before? Could one inherit the dead? “… you are heir to Telefair.”
But what of Edris? She was the daughter, he was only the great-nephew. Or was the fairy tale of his young imagining to come true, was he to marry Edris with Great-Uncle Philip nodding and smiling benevolently in the background; marry Edris and inherit the Island? Yes, he would even marry Edris, he would be extremely kind to her, if it would please Great-Uncle Philip.
“Heir to Telefair—” But what of Edmund; had he no closer claim? Was that the reason for the enmity between Edmund and Great-Uncle Philip? Was that why Edmund remained here, unwelcome as he was? Was that why all of them—Edris, Edmund, Doctor von Berger—stared at him so strangely when they thought he looked the other way? “Heir to Telefair!”
He knew that he must make some answer, say something, anything.
Then he saw that the hands of the gold-faced clock had moved only the tiniest distance, eating away barely a half-minute of time, before he said, “But I didn’t dream of such a thing.”
“Who else could inherit Telefair?” asked the old man, almost irritably.
“Edmund,” David said hesitantly, finding it difficult to form the words. “Edris.”
“Edmund has his own estate, and his own fortune,” said Philip Telefair. “He would not wish to live on the Island. Edris is not a son, but a daughter. She cannot hand on the name of Telefair to other generations. These things may not be of importance to some, they may not be of importance to all the world, but they must be to us, else our own world will fall in ruins. Edris might marry anybody. The Island must belong to a Telefair.”
He smiled quietingly across the desk. “We will speak more of these things another time.”
There was a knock at the door, and a woman came into the room in response to Philip Telefair’s call.
David had not seen her before at Telefair. She was a large, spare, unpleasant-looking woman at some indeterminate middle age, with sparse, severely combed, iron-gray hair, and hard, black eyes. The features of her square face were large, coarse, and angular; the mouth too wide and thin-lipped, the nose too thick and blunt, the brows too dark and heavy, the massive jaw too prominent. She had just the faintest suggestion of a dark mustache. Her hands were large, badly formed, with great, protruding knuckles, and thick flattish fingers.
She was dressed in black; a little white collar at her throat was fastened with a slightly discolored cameo pin.
Old Philip Telefair explained her briefly and unimportantly to David. “Zenobie, my housekeeper. She has been here for many years.”
The woman spoke politely to David, in a guttural, foreign voice, and went on to discuss some detail of the day’s menu with Philip Telefair. She seemed efficient, David thought. Certainly the household was smoothly and excellently managed. But he wondered if anyone could ever grow to like her. Perhaps one simply became accustomed to her, like an ugly but utilitarian piece of furniture. He did not consider her of any interest or importance.
Yet as she left the room and turned for a moment at the door, with Philip Telefair’s back to her, she directed such a look of burning hatred at the old man that David’s breath caught in his throat. It was not a merely passive hatred, but one that flamed continually in the mind of the hater, burning there, clamoring passionately for action until it absorbed and atrophied all other emotions, a suppressed, and yet violent, incarnadine fury.
It was only the briefest glance that he caught in the woman’s eyes, but for that moment the library of Telefair grew dark and clouded with it, and after she had gone, closing the door silently after her, David stared out the window and suddenly again saw Telefair Island deep in perpetual twilight, shrouded with the penumbra no sun could penetrate and that was not to be seen with the eye alone.
“An excellent woman, Zenobie,” said old Philip Telefair, lighting a thin, black cigar with an incredibly graceful gesture of his long, pale, exquisite hands.
4
For the rest of the afternoon, Philip Telefair tactfully left David to himself, and for a long time he sat alone in the great paneled library, thinking of what had just been told to him. With the knowledge that he was heir to Telefair, a new sense of assurance had come over him, a feeling of mastery and power over the world around him. In the passing of a few minutes, he had ceased to be a rather diffident boy, unsure of himself and uncertain of his future, and had become a proud man, self-possessed, confident, secure in his knowledge of his own destiny.
He loved Telefair almost as much as he loved Great-Uncle Philip. Now that he knew it would some day belong to him, he saw new and unsuspected beauty everywhere, beauty and the bright promise of days to come. Already he could see some things that he would change. Most of all, he knew, he would end its seclusion. These great rooms were meant for voices and laughter, for music, for gaiety. The perfection of the Telefair gardens should be shared. The wonderful old house was like someone who had lived too long as a recluse, in an enforced hermitage.
The unused wing, too—that would need to be repaired. Yes, that needed to be done. Another thing, he would have the bars taken down from those windows.
Historic interest or none, they marred the pale perfection of th
e place and, secretly, they disturbed him when he looked at them.
He would like to keep a boat in the inlet, like Edmund.
How long would the old man live?
David caught his racing thoughts up sharply. Old Philip Telefair who had been so kind to him, whose kindness had even made him heir to Telefair! How could he have even wondered such a thing for one unguarded moment, absently, haphazardly! Surely Philip Telefair would live for many years to come and he, David, wished with all his heart that it might be so.
Great-Uncle Philip was master of Telefair; he, David, was but a guest in the house. He thought again of old Philip Telefair’s unfailing kindness to him, of his generosity, his cleverness, his courtesy; affection for his great-uncle bubbled up and overflowed in his heart like wine, and he wished, honestly, that the old man might live forever, if that were only possible.
The riding coat of a Telefair in a portrait over the fireplace caught his eye, and he thought suddenly that some day, when the estate was his own, he would like to reestablish the stables on the mainland. Surely this countryside would be excellent for riding.
The man in the crimson riding coat—that was an Edmund Telefair, he remembered. The same Edmund Telefair who had built the old gallows on the Island two hundred years before, to hang an occasional unmanageable slave as a warning to the others.
All at once he found himself repeating what Philip Telefair had said: “The man who lives too long on an island becomes not a king, but God.”
It was late that night, when the rest of the household was asleep, that David heard a faint knock at his door.
He had been watching the Island from his window, trying to remember and understand all that had taken place during his first day there. A light mist had risen under the moon, and the Island was half veiled by it, strange and secret, the silver giving way to darkness and then becoming silver again. The edges of trees and bushes were blurred and wavering, as though the whole were lying under moving and translucent water.
