by Craig Rice
PART TWO
10
It was the little fountain in the garden that he heard in the last moments before sleeping or when, at morning, he tried to burrow his way back into those dark silences, struggling against the always undesired return to life.
He heard it, too, in intervals of half-waking in the night, times that seemed to be too small to be measured by the tick of a clock, or else that seemed to be eons, for the perception of time did not wake with him; intervals when he seemed to feel himself floating on the darkness as a leaf carried into the sky by the wind, his body in a paralysis without movement or sensation, his mind half returning to the warm and comforting shelter of the dream, half reaching out into the adventure of consciousness. It was the fountain alone that suggested to him that he was alive in those times; he felt nothing, saw nothing, thought nothing—he only heard that faint, sweet, melancholy little song.
There was one of those flashes of waking on the first night when the moon was full after the Sunday when the first (and last) service was held in the old chapel, and in it he could hear the fountain playing. Little by little it recalled him to life until at last he was conscious of his own breathing, and opened his eyes to the darkness. He knew, when he woke, that he had dreamed, but he could not remember what the dream had been, any more than in the dreams he could remember the hours just passed in the waking life. In the very instant of waking he hung poised between the one and the other, like a traveler who stands at the fork of the road, forced to make the choice between one way and the other, not knowing where either may lead. It seemed to him that he was leaving behind him some marvelous delight, to which he could never again return, yet the continual, tinkling sound of the fountain was in his ears, calling him to listen.
He thought that it had been the fountain itself that had wakened him, though it had gone on making its everlasting, gentle little sound all through the hours while he slept, entering his mind no more than the moonlight entered his closed eyes, and surely it had grown no louder now. Yet in that moment it seemed to David that the fountain had wakened him in the night, yes, and deliberately, for some secret purpose of its own.
It was a small, gray spiderweb of sound, the ephemeral threads of a waterfall caught together into a cunning fabric, a sound that he could not brush away since it recreated itself over and over. He fought against it for a while, still seeking to return to the dream, but little by little it wove itself into his mind until at last he lay awake, listening to it, utterly absorbed in the sound.
Slowly, then, his sight awoke, and he saw first a great pale patch of light on the polished floor, luminous, moon-colored. The edges of it, made by the shadows of the window frame, were sharp and clear, as though they had been cut there with a knife; in the oblong they made, the milky light poured itself into a pool that appeared to have depth and substance, as though he could scoop it up with a bowl. Across it the shadow of one single spray of vine showed black as ink, the stem gracefully curved, each leaf outlined against the luminous wood, the whole moving gently and rhythmically, back and forth and back again.
Listening to the fountain and watching the curious pattern on the floor, he woke slowly to full consciousness, aware of the odor of wet grass and the salt smell of the inlet that came up to his window, knowing once more that he was David Telefair—that he had awakened in the middle of the night, while the rest of Telefair slept.
For a while he lay in the center of the big old bed, watching the movements of the shadows, and observing how the various articles of furniture in the room had made use of the darkness to change themselves into other forms. At first it seemed to him that the house was very still. Then, as he lay there listening, he began to hear the little night sounds of an old house, audible only to those who listen intently and as though they actually expect to hear. There was the faint crackling of the vines outside his window, and the sibilant whispering of a curtain blown gently back and forth across the window frame. There were the tiny, almost inaudible moans and creakings of the walls—a moment of silence, and then a small, quiet snap somewhere behind the old wall paper; another hush, and then a muffled whisper from the ancient floor; then from somewhere in the framework a long, hushed, and almost human sigh.
He wondered if he could see the lights across the inlet from his window. Or, if he were to go and look, would there be only the impenetrable dark? It had been nearly a month now since the service held in the old chapel, and the Reverend Arthur Stone had not come to Telefair again. No one had mentioned him, or the service, or even the chapel itself, since that day. David had wished, indeed, that he might have some word with the old minister before his departure, but Arthur Stone and his daughter had seemed to vanish when everyone left the chapel, returning immediately to their boat, so that David did not see either of them again. Since that day life at Telefair had gone on as it had before; he had spent his waking hours wandering about the Island, exploring the books in the wonderful old library, or talking of anything and everything (save Telefair and its people) with Edmund or Doctor von Berger.
Again he wondered why old Philip Telefair had ever sent for the minister, and why the episode had never been mentioned since that day. There was no one he felt willing to ask.
On a sudden impulse he rose and went to his window. Though the moon was full, the garden was dark and shadowy. The inlet was a pale streak in the night, the color of gun metal; across it the mainland was one long dark shadow against the sky. No lights showed anywhere; the Italian cypress and the poplars in the Telefair graveyard were tall, dusky, feathered plumes.
The sky was murky, overcast, with clouds the color of ink. Through one great triangular break in them the moon glowed against a patch of almost ashen gray. It was a globular moon, round as a cannon ball, and livid, deathly pale, wreathed in mist, and ringed with a pallid glow.
It was while he stood there watching it that David heard again what he had not heard since those first nights at Telefair—from somewhere in the old house the sound of a woman weeping.
He heard it for only a moment. Then came silence, a sudden, smothered silence, like a hand laid over an open mouth.
David stood listening, wondering if it would begin again. Even the old house seemed to be listening; the little night sounds, the creakings and the rustlings and the soft moans had ceased. The fountain seemed to be whispering now, not singing.
He closed his eyes against the pale light from the sky, and stood motionless. This darkness, this silence, this complete absence of sight and sound might be like death, a mind alone, disembodied, without sensation. What had Laurel Stone said? To the blind, there is no darkness. To the deaf then, no silence. Suddenly, standing there, he felt that there was no silence and no dark, there was nothing, only a great empty void, and in that emptiness his mind went on and on like the ticking of a watch.
He felt curiously light, as though at any moment he might rise and float in mid-air, giddy, almost drunken.
Then, in that enormous silence, he heard it again, a small sound, muffled now, but unmistakably the sound of a woman weeping. He knew that it must be Edris. Zenobie was the only other woman who slept in the house and Zenobie would not weep like that. It had to be Edris, alone, and weeping. He felt his heart contracting painfully in his chest with pity.
Suddenly he had to know if he was light, if it were indeed Edris crying softly in the middle of the night while the rest of Telefair slept. For if it were not, then there was someone else at Telefair, not another man nor woman, but some unhappy presence that wept about the long dark corridors at night.
Making no sound, he opened his door and stepped out into the hall, closing the door silently behind him. For a moment he stood there motionless and listened.
There was not a sound in all the old house, save for that faint, subdued weeping. He could not hear the little fountain now. Ahead of him stretched the great upstairs hall, dim and shadowed and cavernous. Only one small night lamp burned, behind him at the head of the stairs. In the dusky glo
om the ceiling, the walls and the corners were obscured, half-hidden, spectral. The hall was now like a dark tunnel, deep underground, leading to some mysterious fastness far in the earth, veiled by that shadow that no light could penetrate, and that could not be seen by the eye alone.
He knew the location of Edris’ room, at the far end of the hall. Moving slowly and quietly he made his way to it, as he might have followed the tunnel into the earth, without knowledge of where it led or what he sought at its ending. At the door to Edris’ room he paused, and listened again.
The sound of weeping had ceased now.
How was it that a house could be so still? He laid his ear close to the door and listened so intently that he mistook the beating of his own pulse for sounds. Edris was quiet now. Quiet, hushed, and alone. No one could be in that room with her, else he would hear some movement, the faint whispering of some muffled voice.
But why had she wept, late in the night, shut alone in her room?
His mind whirled back through the past days.—I do this to wipe out the great wrong I have done.… Zenobie, Doctor von Berger, the Reverend Arthur Stone.… Why did Edris weep, in the dark hours of the night? The man who lives too long on an island becomes not a king, but God.… What did Telefair hide, what dark secret, and did Edris know of it? What was the matter with the dogs? Nothing, unless they saw a ghost.… The fountain, the little fountain, and the mist.… Remember, in the extremity, I am your friend. Who wept at night in the old house? It is a beautiful house. What a pity that it must end in ruins.… There was no place on the Island from which the house could not be seen. After all, you are heir to Telefair.…
Did Edris know, and could she tell him if she did?
Carefully, soundlessly, he opened the door to Edris’ room, slipped in, and closed it behind him.
He saw immediately that it had not been Edris who wept. She lay asleep, in the exact center of her immense carved bed, directly in the path of the silver-gold light that streamed in through the open window.
The veil across the moon had thinned a little now; its light was pallid, translucent, almost fluid. Edris lay in it as in a moon-colored, opalescent pool, one delicate arm curved about her head. The fine white muslin robe that she wore was mistlike; through it the fragile perfection of shoulder, breast, and rounded knee seemed more like some curious phenomenon of the moon than flesh itself, evanescent, almost glimmering. One exquisite small hand reached out across her pillow as though to catch the shadows; her face was motionless, inscrutable, veiled in sleep.
Her loosened hair flowed out over the pillow, seeming to shed its own glow, its ends like a spray of little, disconnected, flickering gleams where the moon touched it. It seemed almost to be moving, like some iridescent waterfall; the pale strands that dripped off the edge of the pillow seemed to let drops fall into a shining pool on the floor, like quicksilver. David caught himself listening for the tinkling, whispering little sound as they fell.
If there had been a clock in the room, he felt its ticking sound would have ceased, so surely did time pause in the space between one second and the next. He stood, one hand still on the latch of the door, half-indrawn breath frozen in his lungs, even the beating of his own pulse grown quieter in his ears. He might have stood there, motionless, for less than a minute, and it might have been hours; his sense of the passing of time had been so utterly stilled as he looked at her that he could imagine and believe that the very stars upon their courses had ceased to climb, houses and trees and flowers, wood and stone and brick all lay in a frozen stillness, and the round earth itself hung in space, as motionless as the moon.
Edris slept. Her little breaths came softly in quiet, whispering sighs. She slept, unconscious of his scrutiny, only the shadow of a smile upon her lips, her eyelids like frail and yet impenetrable shells that protected her against awakening.
Slowly, silently, without consciousness of what he did, he came on into the room, one hushed and cautious step at a time, until at last he stood at the edge of the bed, so near that, had he dared, he could have touched the little pale foot that had slipped out from beneath its covering. A chair had been placed there, as though to wait for him, and he sank into it without realizing that he did so, rested his fingers on the cool, smooth satin of its arms, and remained there watching her.
In her sleep she moved slightly, a shadow of a movement releasing the delicate arm that curved about her head, and David held his breath till it half strangled him, lest she should wake. Then she was still again, the pale, silver-gold hair rippling and flowing over the whiteness of the pillow toward him, one glittering strand falling, almost floating, on the gentle curve of her breast.
How long he remained there, watching her, he never knew. He only knew that suddenly the room darkened, glow, sparkle and spangle vanishing all at once, as the moon was eclipsed. In that instant there was a faint, almost inaudible, fluttering sigh from the sleeping girl, and then silence again. David looked toward the window and saw that night and the clouds had eaten up the moon; he saw too that beyond the mainland, toward the east, there was a soft, pearly gray that grew lighter even as he watched it, and that, from the inlet, the mist was now beginning to rise, floating white vapor that was like a pale shadow over everything, burying Telefair, swallowing up the Island as though it were to be submerged forever beneath the waters of some strange and secret sea. It was not until he had returned to his own room and closed the door behind him, that David realized he still had not learned the secret of the soft weeping he had heard in the night.
11
The routine of the day at Telefair went on as it had the day before, and the day before that, and the immeasurable succession of other days. It was a day of mist, thick and mysterious, that hid the Island from the house from the moment of David’s waking, that called for candles on the breakfast table, flickering feebly against the half-darkness; mist that buried the grove, the gardens, the inlet, and the little fountain. Toward noon it began to lift, becoming almost transparent, yet still present everywhere, so that everything on the Island took on some new, mysterious form.
David went through the day as though it were any other. Idle talk of the mist and the weather at breakfast, Philip Telefair’s recollection of a famous fog that had once blanketed the Island for twenty-three days; a walk through the moist vapor at mid-morning, its feathery coolness against his face; an hour in the library acting as secretary to Philip Telefair in some business of the estate; laughter at luncheon over some slight mishap that had occurred to Edmund’s boat in the fog; long hours before the fireplace in the little library, an open book unread on his knees; a walk with Doctor von Berger who talked learnedly of astronomy. Yet it was like no other day that he had ever known.
It seemed to him that he was waiting for something. A dozen, a hundred times during the day he glanced impatiently at the clock, each time feeling certain that it must be some later hour than was recorded, anxious for the day to be gone, yet knowing that he had nothing to wait for at the end of the day but sleep. He was waiting, going through the routine of the day, striving to hurry the passing minutes.
There seemed to be a subtle, indefinable difference in the air that he breathed, in the color of strange, exotic flowers half-seen through the thinning mist, in the cool feel of the vapor on his face, and in the manner of all those who peopled the day for him. Before breakfast, as he walked down the hall to the staircase, he met Zenobie with a wooden-faced Negro girl at her heels carrying an armful of fresh linen. The swarthy foreign woman had spoken only her customary morning greeting, yet there had seemed to be a new, strange note of warm friendliness in her guttural voice. Her coarse, heavy features had been lightened momentarily by what was almost a smile. Even the Negro girl who had paused, waiting with the expressionless, patient immobility of the deaf-mute, had shown a light of friendly recognition in her eyes.
Indeed it seemed to David that everyone had changed. Old Philip Telefair was his most charming at breakfast; he was more than that, he was endearing
. There was a heartwarming tone in his beautiful voice; his reminiscences of famous fogs on the Island were enchanting and delightful; the mingled gaiety and tenderness of his gentle laughter swelled David’s heart till it nearly burst with affection for the great-uncle who had been so kind to him.
There was a warmth about little Doctor von Berger, the glowing, brownish warmth of firesides and easy chairs and mellow pipes and deep, important talk about trivial, unimportant things. The protuberant eyes did not peer, they twinkled; and to David the light in them was like a beacon seen across a wide and pleasing valley, not so much a beacon that guided, as one that called the wanderer to his hearth again.
Then there was Edmund, with his deep-throated laughter over the inconveniences of the fog, his air of easy friendliness, a friendliness as easy-flowing as the trickle from some rain-filled pool, and at the same time deep and invulnerable, a fastness against all men and whatever things might come.
David loved them all, so greatly that once or twice he half-imagined aching tears rising in his eyes like the tidal rivers of the inland, and the pain in his eyeballs all but unendurable at the suddenly revealed awareness of their enchanting charm and goodness, his own unworthiness of their affection for him. He only wished that he liked Edris half as well as, the others on the Island.
Most of all, there was that bewitched quality to the day, the luxuriant and warming nearness to those about him and, at the same time, his sense of utter aloneness, as though he were a castaway on some shore where he knew neither the language nor the customs of the country; the weight of lassitude that bent his shoulders and the impatience that would not let him rest; the exquisite delight in the feel of the cool mist on his face, and the fear of what it hid behind its pale shadows; the sense of strangeness when he came upon some beautifully designed small table he had never examined before, tracing its graceful lines with his finger and catching the glow from its rose mahogany as a new and undiscovered wonder, and then the pleasure in the familiar as he picked up the delicate Sèvres vase it held, to feel again the warmth and friendliness of some loved and well-remembered thing.
