by Craig Rice
Why was he so anxious to see her again? He had no reason to be. He had nothing to say to her; they were not even friends. She could not know, and, indeed, would never know that she had slept peacefully on his shoulder like a child during the fury of the storm. They would never have anything to say to each other, yet now, waiting impatiently until the time when she might appear at breakfast, he sat by his window measuring the slow movements of the hours with the color of the sky rather than the ticking of a clock.
There was a first light that seemed to have no color at all, or to be more a reflection of his desire for daylight than a perceptible light. Slowly it expanded into the palest of rose-yellows, a line against the sky beyond the inlet and then a band of it, a wider band and still wider, until at last half the sky was colored, and it began to fade by contrast with the thin line of deeper rose along the far horizon’s rim. The color in the west began to change now, too; the last clouds were swallowed up in it and the gray turned slowly light blue, smoky with haze along its border, then almost sapphire. Now it blended in the wide arch overhead with the light from the east into green, then gold. In the east itself a glow rose above the mainland.
Edris appeared at breakfast. They had been speaking of the storm; Edmund just in from his boat, weary and haggard, exhibiting a slight bruise on his prominent cheekbone made by a falling timber, old Philip Telefair speaking of branches dislodged in the grove. There was a little talk of famous storms that had ravaged the eastern seaboard in the past; Doctor von Berger recalled a blizzard in Norway; Philip Telefair remembered a hurricane that had passed near Martinique. The early morning sunlight came through the window, lightening the pale Cape jasmine in the little grayish Japanese bowl, and dulling the yellow and rose of the small fireplace.
She would not come to breakfast, David had told himself over and over—not more than half-a-dozen times in all his stay on the Island had she come to breakfast or, indeed, been seen at all until nightfall—but even as he told it to himself, half-oblivious of the talk going on around him, his ears caught the almost inaudible sound of small slippers on the stair, noted that they hesitated once between one step and the next, heard them grow louder on the polished wood of the hall and linger just beyond the door before they were muted by the thick, soft carpets of the morning room.
David managed not to look at her, yet somehow he knew that her little face was still delicately pink with sleep, her eyes unusually bright, her pale hair turning almost to gold in the light of early morning. He went on staring into the fireplace, suddenly cold with terror, yet without knowledge of what thing he feared.
“Good morning, Edris,” Philip Telefair said pleasantly. “We were just speaking of last night’s storm.”
David dared not look up to meet her eyes.
“I trust it did not disturb you,” the old man finished.
“Storm?” There was the slightest of rising inflections in her voice, like a very shadow of surprise. “Was there a storm in the night? I didn’t hear it.” She paused before she added smiling shyly and impartially at them all, “But then I always sleep very soundly.”
They all went in to breakfast.
Was it true that the sunlight on Telefair shone more brilliantly than on any day before? David stood on the edge of the terrace after breakfast and stared out over the gardens, almost shrinking from their blaze of color. Grass and leaf and petal, washed by the rain and still glistening with moisture, spread before him clear to the deep, verdant shadows of the old grove. The rose flaunted its scarlet and the primrose its saffron gold, bursting and dying in a last extravagance of bud and flower, a few already beginning to fall. Even as David watched, a handful of petals, more brown than crimson now, were shaken from a gaudy bloom and showered to the grass, lying there like drops of blood discoloring in the air. In the center of it the little fountain caught innumerable polychromatic reflections, a multiplicity of tiny rainbows.
He walked down the steps from the terrace and paused by the shallow pool, dipping the tips of his fingers in the water, startled by its unexpected chill. A miniature cascade of opalescent drops brushed by his cheeks, as though in a sudden caress, blown there by a new motion of the wind.
David turned and looked back at the old house. Its white walls freshened by the rain, it shone now, dazzling in the sun, yet not with what appeared to be a reflected light alone. Which one was Edris’ window? He tried to pick it out, and could not. There were so many windows, and so many rooms to Telefair; most of them he did not know. The bars on the windows in the old wing seemed more dark and ugly than ever against the pallor of the house, sinister, almost malignant. Again he wondered why they had never been taken down, and how long it had been since sunlight had entered those rooms beyond the tight shutters.
“It is a beautiful house. What a pity that it must—”
But of course, all houses inevitably fall in ruins, after a few years, or a few centuries. Nothing lasts forever, a house, or a blossom in the garden. The old wing of the house was already collapsing of its own age; even now it would take no more than a breath to blow it down. In the garden, the petals were beginning to fall, in the faintest, most delicate movements of the wind.
David wondered if he were going to live to be a very old man, like Philip Telefair.
He began walking slowly down the garden path toward the inlet, plucking a leaf here and there, examining their edges for signs of brown. Some day the fountain in the garden would shed its last feathering spray of water into the little pool, and be still. Some day Edris would be as completely vanished from the Island as though she had never been there at all.
It was hard for him to believe these things, he had never thought of them before.
Even by the inlet, the air was still and warm, a moist, clinging warmth. He went up the shore, his eyes watching for bright pebbles in the sand, wondering how his own death would come, and in how many years, and what would happen to him before it came.
David had never been in the habit of pondering over the things to come. As a boy in school he had wondered very little about what his adult life would be; he had known, somehow, that it would be made and planned for him, and that he would follow out its pattern when the time came. Remembering those days now, it seemed to David that, throughout his childhood, the immediate future itself was always so mysterious and uncertain that it had not led his thoughts beyond it to the far-off years ahead. Perhaps there had been a time, in his early boyhood, when he had not accepted the arrangements made for him, without question. Perhaps he had demanded, “Why?” or even declared, “I will not!” But always there had been the onnipotent will of old Philip Telefair, who had been kind to him. He could not remember ever having questioned it.
The path along the shore led to the most desolate part of the Island, a small point jutting out into the wildest reach of the inlet, sandy, and covered with boulders and coarse, dry grass. David walked out to the farthest end of it and sat down on a large, smooth stone, glad of the warmth of the sun.
The water of the inlet was glassy, more gray than blue, a strange, indescribable, metallic shade where the light touched and reflected on it. Beyond, the mainland was a narrow band of dark green between the water and the sky. It seemed to be very far away.
Was everyone in the world lonely and solitary, as though his soul dwelt on a single gray rock far in a gray ocean, where no boat ever passed, and no bird ever went wheeling by? People met and spoke, but never, truly, of themselves. There were always secret places in the mind where fears and doubts and dreads and longings lived and were kept forever hidden; none could communicate those things to any other—indeed, few recognized that they were there at all. Within that secret mind there were no voices, only silence.
Yet David Telefair’s solitude was not of the mind alone. During those years he had spent in schools, others around him had joined groups and formed friendships. Deep friendships, which seemed to have some secret, wordless communication of their own. They endured, or they ended, or they changed,
but still they existed. Not for him, though. He thought of boys he had known in the schools he had attended. There had been nothing that actually set him apart from them, save that he was forever a new boy, a stranger, and that he never remained long enough to overcome his strangeness. Even schoolboy friendships took time to build. He would have a term, or at best a year, and then there would be a different school. Through all that time only one deep attachment had been permitted to remain with him: his affection for old Philip Telefair, who had been kind. It was all that remained with him now.
He heard footsteps disturbing the sand behind him; they were brisk, yet uneven footsteps, and he knew that it was Edmund who approached.
“Beautiful day, now that the storm’s passed,” Edmund said.
David nodded, without turning around. He had been regretting his loneliness; now he found himself resenting the intrusion.
The tall cripple sat down on the sandy grass and looked out over the inlet.
“Had to send the boat away for repairs. Now I’m really marooned here,” he commented. “May take a few days, may take a week.” He drew a long breath. “And I can’t go on staying here much longer, either.”
It was on the tip of David’s tongue to say, “Then why do you stay at all?” It seemed to him that Edmund had really meant to say “waiting here.” But what was it that he waited for? What were they all waiting for?
“I hope it won’t take long,” he said politely, gazing out over the inlet.
There was a long silence, in which David forgot Edmund. He gazed out over the water, at the reflection of the sunlight on the windows of the Reverend Arthur Stone’s house, and caught the faint motion of what might have been a gray shadow on the far shore. That would be Laurel Stone moving among her flowers.
As from a great distance he heard Edmund saying, “You seem to be lost in thought.”
“I was wondering how the blind dream,” David said thoughtfully.
After a moment Edmund said, “That’s odd. I never thought of it before, but they must dream.” He paused, and added, “She must dream.”
“I know that the blind, the blind since birth, can’t see in dreams,” David said. “Yet sometimes it seems as though they might.” He was thinking of his own dreams.
“But Laurel isn’t blind,” Edmund Telefair said almost sharply. “It is true that her eyes are blind, but she sees far more than we do.”
David was silent. He was trying to explore a dream that Laurel Stone might have, to create it in his own mind. Suddenly he found himself wishing for her.
Far out in the inlet a small dark speck of a boat caught his eye.
“There goes old Jonas,” Edmund said, “rowing over to the mainland for household supplies and tobacco and newspapers that nobody ever reads, except possibly Doctor von Berger.”
The boat was like a little shadow on the surface of the water, rapidly fading. Then it was gone.
“When you inherit Telefair,” Edmund said unexpectedly, “you must keep a couple of dependable motor launches moored at the landing, and marry some nice, healthy, normal girl who knows a great many charming people and who will make this infernal place come alive again.”
David said nothing for a moment, staring over the water. “I don’t know any girls.” He tried to laugh. “Suppose I never fall in love?”
Edmund made an impatient gesture. “What does that have to do with it? Marry anybody. There’s plenty of well-bred girls looking for husbands. Keep horses in the old stables on the mainland, too, and a sailboat in the inlet. There’s enough to do here to keep you from ever being bored.”
“I have never been bored at Telefair,” David said quietly. It was the truth.
“As far as women go,” Edmund said, paying no attention to him, “they’re all pretty much alike. Oh, a beautiful woman is better to look at, and a clever woman is more amusing to have around, but really it always comes down to the same thing.”
David looked up at him curiously. As though in answer to an unspoken question, Edmund went on:
“Me? Damned few women want to marry a cripple.”
There was a long silence. Far in the distance the small dark spot that was old Jonas’ boat reappeared, growing larger and clearer now as it returned to the Island.
As though there were still unspoken questions to be answered, Edmund said unexpectedly, “I haven’t been in love since I was ten. I was here on the Island then, too. I was a homely, club-footed boy.… She was the flowers in the garden, and the fountain and its pool, and the light of the moon, and the early morning mist over Telefair, all at the same time.… A little thing, delicate and fragile, and very pale. I don’t think, now, that she was real. Still, I worshiped her for all one summer, and then I never saw her again.”
He rose abruptly and began limping back toward the gardens. David rose too, and followed him. He wished with all his heart that Edmund had said what he had seemed about to say. Who was she, and what had happened to her? Where had she gone? It seemed almost as though the cripple had been describing Edris. Yet it had been eighteen years since Edmund was ten years old. Edris had not even been born then.
At the widening of the little path, Edmund waited for him, and laid a light hand on his shoulder as they walked toward the old house. “I’ll feel better about everything when my boat is back. It’s always good to know that she’s there, ready.” He dropped his hand again.
“Ready for what?” The words came to David’s lips in a rush, penned up in his mind these many days. What did Edmund mean? He had to know, there could be no more holding back of questions now. But before the words could actually be spoken, they came around a bend in the path and saw Philip Telefair coming to meet them across the garden, and the question died in David’s throat.
There was a small pool of deep shadow just beyond the grove, and Philip Telefair paused there, nodding and smiling to them. David hastened his steps, suddenly warmed by an upsurge of happiness at the sight of him. There was a narrow band of sunlight which broke suddenly through the ancient trees and for an instant it fell on the old man, silvering his hair, whitening his face, casting a momentary aura of pale light around him in the midst of the dark shadows.
“… who had been so kind to him!” How he loved Philip Telefair! Even as he thought it, he sensed the continual, eternal hostility between Philip Telefair, and Edmund. Thoughts ran through his mind without end, uncontrollably. “After all, you are heir to Telefair.” … Beyond Philip Telefair he could see the great pale house, its barred windows black in the sunlight. “I don’t think, now, that she was real.” … Had Edmund been in love with a ghost? Delicate, fragile, gentle, pale … mist, fountain, flowers. But Edris had not been born eighteen years ago.… Old Jonas rowing over to the mainland. “Darkness is something one must see. To the blind, it does not exist.” … Old Philip Telefair was smiling and nodding to him in the thin sliver of sunlight between the shadows.
“It is on a day like this,” Philip Telefair said, “that one regrets the dead.” He lifted a slender, graceful hand toward the burying ground in the grove. “But there they are, my father and grandfather, and your own father, David, and that other David Telefair, and poor, murdered Anthony.”
“Why do you call him poor Anthony?” Edmund asked lazily, almost lightly. “Murder is a good way to die.”
There was a faint wind through the grove, briefly passing, and very cold. The shaft of sunlight vanished, cut off by the leaves.
“Who could ask for a better way?” Philip Telefair said pleasantly and just as lightly. He linked a familiar arm through David’s as they strolled back up to the house. “To be worthy of murder is a glory few men achieve in life, or rather, in death.”
The sunlight had moved so that the whole garden was now in shadow. The crimson had faded to purple, and the blue to violet. On the shaded grass a few petals still lay. In the center of it the little fountain was pale and colorless; the rainbows had all vanished and the spangles had disappeared, leaving no more than the softly falli
ng water, cold and clear, slipping endlessly into the shallow, mirroring pool.
It was late in the afternoon when the three of them sat on the terrace, David, Edmund, and old Philip Telefair, watching the shadows slowly enlarging upon the grass. David was silent, aching with fatigue from his sleepless night, yet with no desire for sleep, his hands and face coldly numb, his skin tingling faintly when the wind touched it. The gardens were all enshadowed now. Deep purple caverns appeared under the trees. Behind the grove a thin, pale yellow showed in the sky, marking where the sun had gone down, unseen.
“One pities them,” Philip Telefair said quietly, as though resuming a conversation interrupted only a little before, “for being dead. How do we know they do not pity us for living in spite of ourselves?”
Instinctively David looked toward the grove, dark and shadowy and mysterious, its greens changing to black as the light receded. It had been a day when the sunlight spun an enchantment over all the Island, a day of lassitude and languor, richly golden, and warm as the very breath of life, a day when merely being alive, under the sun, was of itself an exquisite pleasure. David had spent the long, quiet afternoon lying on the shore, half sleeping, half acutely awake, watching the miniature waves as they formed to dash themselves into tiny sprays of foam against the pebbles at the water’s edge, listening to the almost indistinguishable sound that they made.
“It is a day to pity the dead,” old Philip Telefair had said softly, and in his heart David had wept for them, for Anthony, for Amabel, for all those other Telefairs shut from the sunlight in the old grove.
“Yet one pities most,” Philip Telefair said, “those who loved, and still died. Only those who love, dread death.”
David held his breath, and dared not look at either of them, yet he knew that Edmund sat silent and motionless as a gravestone, his cane rested against the arm of his chair, his twisted face dark and impassive. In the shifting light David’s eyes caught and saw how the last rays of the sun sought out the great yellow sapphire on Philip Telefair’s white, graceful finger.
