by Craig Rice
“No. Not ever.” She shook her head, and a little cascade of sunlight raced through her hair. “No, David,” she said softly. “I have never wanted to go away from the Island.”
Suddenly she clasped her frail hands about her knees and looked out over the water, her eyes dreamy, seemingly unconscious of his presence. “There are so many things I think about that are over there, in that other world—things that Edmund and Zenobie and Doctor von Berger have told me about. Theaters, and crowds of people, and great balls, and—oh, David, so many things I would like to see. But I am almost afraid of what it is like, it seems so big. And”—she lifted her shoulders ever so little—“I am very happy here.”
With those words, “I am very happy here,” she released something in his mind, and he flung himself prone on the sand, reaching out bravely to take both of her small, cool hands in his, and gazing up into her pale, composed face as he had once gazed at the sky over Telefair.
“Edris, tell me, are you never bored here? Do you never wonder how to spend the days that keep coming and coming, with never anything new to see, nothing new to do, nobody new to meet?” He paused, and took a long, slow breath, and said, “After all, the Island must be a dull, lonely place for a girl.”
She laughed again, and slipped her hands away gently. “I am never lonely, Cousin David, and the Island is never dull.”
“I thought I didn’t know how to talk to you,” he said all at once, the words bursting from his lips. “I didn’t know what to say to a girl. But now—” Suddenly he remembered that he had once disliked her, even thought her mad, and a pang of remorse tore at him. “Edris,” he said, “when I first came to the Island, you didn’t like me very much, did you?”
“Yes,” Edris said shyly. “Yes, I did like you, David. I liked you … a great deal.”
“But—” He couldn’t finish it. What was it she’d said to him, that night of his arrival at Telefair? “You ought never to have come here. You must go away at once.” No, he would never ask her what she’d meant.
This time it was Edris who reached out impulsively to join their hands. Her grave eyes looked into his face.
“I am happy here.” She almost whispered it. “I have never wanted to go away from the Island.” Then she turned her head suddenly, and stared out over the water. “But I have a feeling—oh David, I cannot explain what it is—that some day I will go away, I must go away, and I will never come back again.”
For just that barest instant it seemed to David that a cold wind had blown in from the water. Then, as quickly, it passed. All at once she was on her feet, a delicate, almost childlike figure, her hair blowing and tumbling over her shoulders, her little face illumined by the sun.
“I told you I was never lonely, and that the Island was never dull,” she said gayly, pulling at his hand. “Come, I’ll show you what I mean.”
That was the beginning. They ran, hand in hand, along the beach like laughing children, the wind in their hair. There were secret places under the stones where tiny shells were hidden, pink, and lavender, and opalescent, and Edris knew them all. They gathered a handful of them, and David swore he’d make them into a necklace for her. Then in the next instant the little waves landed a starfish at their feet, and they tossed the shells carelessly into the sea.
There was a game of hunting for bright pebbles; there were breathless races over the sand; there were strange, small wildflowers growing high among the rocks, and David climbed about gathering them for her to weave into a chain.
Noonday came, and they raced halfway to the house, then paused at the edge of the gardens to straighten their hair and compose their young faces, and walked quietly and sedately past the fountain and up to the terrace. Somehow they managed neither to speak nor to glance at each other during luncheon, but sat listening to old Philip Telefair’s gay reminiscences of a famous running of the Derby, not hearing one word of it, their eyes bright with suppressed laughter over nothing at all.
Then there was a quiet, almost golden hour of lying on the lawn in the sunlight, out of sight of the house, playing a game they’d invented, seeing who could pluck first the longest, then the shortest blade of grass. It was David who won, and declared that he would kiss her for a prize, but she ran away from him then and hid, laughing, among the trees beyond the grove.
But after a time she came back again, and he brushed her smooth cool cheek quickly and lightly with his mouth, half frightened, half impetuous. For just a moment her little face became grave, and she looked away from him, but in the next moment she was running gaily down to the beach in the sunlight, her hand in his, saying, “Come with me, David. There are things on the Island that no one has seen but me—”
There were old bits of ships’ timber tossed up on the sand by waves of who knew how many years ago; there were small caves hidden among the rocks of the shore; there was a bird’s nest high in the trees; and there was a tiny clearing in the woods, thick with grass, where flowers grew that were seen nowhere else on the Island.
It was a golden, an incredible day, a breathless day, and in the midst of it David found himself remembering that he had never romped or laughed as a child, that he had never had a playmate. Indeed, it was almost as though he had never been a child at all.
Then in the late afternoon the mist began to drift in from the sea, pale, delicate, and cool. One instant they were racing each other along the beach and tossing shiny pebbles into the water, and in the next they were enveloped in the vapor, figures moving in shadows. David felt his heart contracting sharply, his breath dying away in his throat.
What was it old Philip Telefair had said? “The Island … the variability of its weather …”
Yes, she felt it too. The moment before she had been a playmate, a joyous child; now suddenly she was standing motionless beside the sea, silent, a little grave, curiously detached from him.
David looked at her. The mist had seemed to gather around her, wrapping her in its thin substance, clinging to her hair, veiling her frail arms. He could not tell where the soft white stuff of her dress ended and the mist began; the two were blended, one with the other, at some indistinguishable border.
Then, for the first time that day, as he stood there listening, he could hear the music of the little fountain, a very shadow of sound, water falling in tiny drops somewhere in the clouds.
“Edris.”
His own voice sounded sharp, and almost harsh, in his ears.
She turned to face him then, and they stood staring at each other through the fog, motionless, without saying a word.
There flashed into his mind a memory, faded by time, of that last trip abroad, provided by the generosity of Philip Telefair, of the tutor who had accompanied him—David had never liked him very well—and of that last night in Marseilles, just before returning, when he had been left alone in that dingy little room with its painted iron bed, with the thin, over-painted woman laughing at him with a shrill, almost jeering note. The tutor, who had got magnificently drunk on the last night of the journey, had told David, brutally, what was expected of him, and indeed, David had wanted to carry it out, but at the same time there had been that freezing terror, that paralysis of nerve and muscle, so that he could only stand braced against the door, feeling the blood in his veins turning to ice, while the thin woman on the bed laughed, and tried to address him in English.
It was the same freezing terror now, and the same cold, bloodless, and yet overpowering desire.
He knew that if he were to reach out once through the mist and touch her pale face, the spell would be broken, the terror gone. Yet he did not move. The fog did not hide her eyes from him; he could see them through its veil, deep, gray, impenetrable, eyes that he could plunge himself into and drown there, like the sea itself. He knew that those eyes could see into his mind, that they could see the thin, painted Marseilles whore laughing on her iron bedstead, and at the same time he knew that those eyes too were laughing, and that if the laughter had made any sound, it would have
been shrill and harsh and almost jeering.
“… the variability of its weather …”
In an immeasurable fragment of a second a sudden wind from the bay lifted the fog, and the air was clear again; the sun turned Edris’ hair into a series of little glistening waterfalls; they stood in a small island of sunlight in what was still a sea of mist.
Yet for one more moment both of them stood there, motionless, staring at each other, neither saying a word.
And then, in a quick move, she turned away and seemed to vanish into the air, moving so swiftly that he hardly saw where she had gone. The vapor, still clinging to the shore, hid her first, and then the shadows, and then the trees carried her away from him.
David stood looking at the spot where she had been, while the mist broke and evaporated and was devoured by the sunshine. Then he began walking slowly up the path that led away from the shore. As he walked, he passed beyond the reach of the incoming fog, and by the time he had reached the top of the little hill there was only the unclouded air again around him, the old trees of the grove rustling softly in the light winds, the gardens beyond blazing with color where the full-blown blooms fell apart of their own weight and perished of their own fragrance.
It was almost as though the day had never been; as though he had never walked carefully down that narrow, sandy path; as though he had never seen Edris there, pale against the sand. The golden day was over, irrevocably gone.
But he knew, now. This was the dream he had had as a boy, and its fulfillment; this was the way it was all intended to be. His mood of early morning returned, sparkling through the gloom in his mind: he was David Telefair who lived on the miraculous island he would some day inherit from old Philip Telefair who had been so kind to him.
… A dream came slowly up through the mists of his thought … a dream in which he made old Philip Telefair proud of him and pleased with him, a dream in which he met the daughter of Philip Telefair.… In the dream he inevitably fell in love with her and she with him, and in time they were married splendidly at Telefair, with Great-Uncle Philip nodding and smiling beneficently in the background.…
It would all be as he remembered it from the dream.
15
For some reason David did not turn toward the house, but crossed the gardens at their far end, and followed the little path that led to the inlet. The sun was low in the sky now, yet still warm and bright; the air was brilliantly clear. Behind him, on the bay shore, mist still clung along the water’s edge, but here on the higher ground there was not a trace of it, the sky over his head was a soft, faraway blue.
As he walked toward the trees he saw one cloud, or rather a fragment of a cloud, seeming to his eyes about the size of the palm of his hand, triangular in shape and almost transparent, a delicate bit of vapor lost there in the sky. He watched it as he walked, and saw it changing in shape, growing first brighter and then threatening to disappear, drifting into lost little islands, feathering and fraying, and falling at last into a few pale wisps that vanished somewhere into the sky and were gone forever.
By that time he had reached the edge of the inlet, not far from the landing, and flung himself down on the narrow strip of sand. The sun, that was still so warm, was pleasant and comforting on his skin.
He was scarcely thinking at all, only feeling the mellow happiness that filled him, warming him like the sun on his back. A little to his right a dark shadow stood up against the sky; he stared stupidly at it for a moment before he recognized the old gallows. Another David Telefair had died there with the bitter taste of his last glass of brandy on his tongue, and a scornful smile on his lips. But that had been very long ago, years and years ago. It was strange that anyone should even remember it now. Some day, he promised himself, when he had inherited the Island, he would have the gallows torn down and made into one great blazing bonfire on the shore.
Across the smooth waters of the inlet, he could see the small house of the Reverend Arthur Stone, its windows catching the last rays of the sun, its roof bright against the deep greens of the trees that encircled and embraced it. That had not been part of the dream, but in his mind he filled it in now.
… in time they were married splendidly at Telefair, with Great-Uncle Philip nodding and smiling beneficently in the background, and the Reverend Arthur Stone, in his white, lace-edged robes …
Where? In the old chapel? Certainly in the old chapel, swept and polished and shining, and joyous with lamps fragrant with bloom.
David remembered suddenly, as from a dream, that it was underground, the old chapel, and in memory his mind went down that narrow, twisting flight of damp stone stairs, down them and through the dark, unknown and unseen passageway beyond.
A cold terror seized him, cold even against his weariness and the comforting warmth of the sun. He was afraid of something nameless and hidden and indescribable, yet even in the very agony of his fear the sunlight and his weariness overcame him, and he let his head fall heavily back on the loose sand, and slept.
When David woke again, the sun had set, and twilight was already beginning to settle over the Island. For just an instant he was startled, wondering where he was, and how he had come there. Then he remembered and sat up, to gaze at the world that had begun to turn dark while he slept.
There was still a soft light, more blue than gray, and the air was wonderfully clear. Overhead, the sky had taken on a curious, almost lavender shade; below, the shadows that deepened under the trees were not black, but purple. The waters of the inlet were glassy, glistening, perfectly smooth, of a strange, pale color, not quite the color of steel, but more nearly like steel than anything David could remember. The Island seemed as a half-world, neither of the living nor the dead, but hung perilously somewhere between, in an hour that had left the day behind and still dared not enter the night.
There was not one sound, anywhere.
The birds were hushed, no leaf stirred on a single tree, even the little waves of the inlet had ceased to whisper, and were still.
For a while David rested there, gazing over the water, his arms wrapped about his ankles and his chin resting on his knees, lost and wandering in thought. There would be a time when he would remember this day, he told himself, this day when he had gone down that narrow sandy path to the shore and found Edris by the water’s edge, her white dress like a wisp of fog caught in the rocks. He would remember it as the day in which he told old Philip Telefair that he wanted Edris for his wife.
Already, in his mind, David could picture the scene so well that it was as though he had lived through it. The paneled library, with the bright flames leaping in the fireplace, old Philip Telefair at his great carved desk, his white hair reflecting the glow from the lighted lamps. David closed his eyes and imagined the pleased smile on Philip Telefair’s beautiful face, the warmth in his resonant voice as he said, “My dear David … I had hoped …”
A soft little sound shattered the silence and recalled him from his reverie, the sound of oars dipping rhythmically into the still waters of the inlet. David opened his eyes and saw a small boat moving near the shore, sending great, deep ripples over the smooth, glistening surface. It was rowed by a Negro girl, whose face he could not see, and its one passenger was Laurel Stone.
She was part of the twilight and the deepening shadows, her gray dress blending with the color of the water around her, her dark hair like a shadow itself above her face. In almost the same instant that David saw her, she said something to the rower, and the boat turned and came nearer to the Island, and he could see her face clearly, with its great, beautiful, sightless eyes.
She called out, “A pleasant afternoon, isn’t it, David Telefair?”
He had called back, “Yes, it is,” and added a greeting before he wondered how she had recognized him when he had not spoken a word, when she had not even heard the sound of his footsteps.
He dared not ask, nor did she volunteer to make any explanation.
“It’s good to hear your voice again. Ho
w is it with you, on the Island?”
David called, “It’s been very pleasant the past few days, almost unbelievably so …” then paused and wondered if it was of the weather that he spoke.
They talked a little of trivial things across the water that divided them, the sun and the fog, the beauty of the gardens at this time of year; she asked him if he were happy on the Island and he answered truthfully that he was very happy indeed; she spoke of a slight chill that had kept her father indoors for a day and he expressed his concern. And all the time he was aware of the bond between them, the Bond that had come into being that night in the Reverend Arthur Stone’s study, when they met as two travelers whose paths might intersect in a strange and dangerous country. Too, through the light and delicate overcurrent of their talk, David was conscious that she knew the secrets he longed so passionately to hear, why he was on the Island, and what was going to happen at Telefair; she knew all its secrets not because she had been told, but because she had guessed, because she could see what others could not see. He was glad to have her so reassuringly near; he wished that she might never go away again.
But even as he wished it, she spoke quietly to the Negro girl, and the boat began to move away from the Island. David looked at the widening strip of glassy, gray-blue water between, and thought that he might easily swim so small a distance. It seemed to him that he would find safety from all the terrors that were real and all that he had dreamed—though he could not tell which were which—with Laurel Stone.
Then as he helplessly watched the little boat going away from the shore, she called out to him again, her voice clear across the quiet water.
“David, if you should ever need help, if you should ever need me, place a lantern on the wharf. My father will see it from our windows, and I will come to you.”
Before he could think to ask her what she meant, the boat was far beyond the reach of his voice.
