that was how the audience saw it, but they were outsiders. there was one outsider left on the island, wally shine, the photographer sent by the universal syndicate to take pictures of what was a “notable society event” in a place of which the public had heard much and seen nothing. he had arrived that morning with two cameras and a delighted appreciation of the beauty he was to record. but, unlike the other outsiders, his impressions extending over a longer period had not been so agreeable. he had seen the actors at close range, in their habits as they lived, lunched with them, watched the last rehearsal, taken a lot of pictures of miss saunders in the house and garden. and he had sensed an electric disturbance in the atmosphere, and come upon evidences of internal discord.
[pg 42]
that was at the last rehearsal, when the poetic viola had lost her temper like an ordinary woman and jumped on the tracy boy—something about the place he stood in—nothing, as far as shine could see, to get mad about. and the boy had answered in kind like the spitting of an angry cat. an ugly scene that the director had to stop.
then the man stokes who played the duke, a handsome, romantic-looking chap—something was the matter with him. “eating him” was the phrase shine used to himself and it wasn’t a bad one. he had a haunted sort of look, as if his mind was disturbed, especially when he’d turn his eyes on miss saunders. shine had noticed him particularly when they gathered for the group pictures; his hands were unsteady and the perspiration was out on his forehead though the air was cool from the sea. his wife—the woman they called flora—was on to him. shine saw her watching him, sidelong from under her eyelids, the way you watch a person when you don’t want them to see it.
[pg 43]
the photographer was a fat easy-going man, inured to the vagaries of those who follow the arts. but he was sensitive to emotional stress and he felt it here—below the surface—and was moved to curiosity.
the photographs were finished and the group broke up. part of the company were going and they ran toward the house—a medieval route—the big sir toby with a rolling amble, sir andrew, long and lank, cavorting like a mettlesome steed. their antic shadows fled before them over the dried sea grass, and their voices, shouting absurdities, rang rich and deep-throated on the crystal atmosphere.
miss saunders and miss tracy linked arms and moved off toward the headlands. receding in the amber light they were like a picture from some antique romance—the noble lady and her page. one in narrow casings of crimson brocade, the other in short swinging kilt and braided jacket of more sober gray. shine, fascinated, watched them pacing slowly over the burnished grass. [pg 44]flocks of sea-gulls, roused by their voices, rose into the air, poised and wheeled, one moment dark, the next floating shapes of gold. he turned to go and saw that stokes was watching them too, intent like a hungry dog, the hand that held a stalk of feathered grass against his lips, trembling.
the photographer shouldered his camera and went toward the house. a jeweled brightness of garden extended along its seaward front. beyond this was the one stretch of cultivated turf on the island, an emerald slope leading to the cuplike hollow that held the amphitheater. he skirted the side balcony, the wide-flung doors giving a glimpse of an entrance hall, and turning the corner emerged upon the land front of the long capacious building. the surroundings on this side had been left as nature made them—rock shelves and ledges, devoid of vegetation, a path winding round them from the entrance to the wharf. hayworth showed across the channel in a clustering of gray roofs from which smoke skeins rose straight into the suave rose-washed sky. the water [pg 45]rushed between, a swollen tide, threads of white dimpled eddies, telling of its racing speed.
the door on this side of the house opened directly into the living-room. no hall within or porch without interfered with the view; the path ended unceremoniously at the foot of two broad steps that led to the threshold. on the lower of these steps shine found a lady sitting smoking a cigarette. this was the maria of the cast, mrs. cornell in private life. she was still in her costume, her redundant figure swelling over the traditional laced bodice, the rouge on her cheeks hardly showing against the coat of sunburn a week at gull island had laid on. he had found her as easy as himself, good-humoredly loquacious and not involved in the prevailing discord. an admirable person to clear up mysteries. he sank down beside her on the step and took the cigarette box she flipped toward him.
“wouldn’t you think,” she said, “a man as rich as this mr. driscoll would fix up round here better?”
[pg 46]
shine, who had artistic responses, had long learned not to intrude them on the uninitiated.
“i guess he liked it wild,” he suggested, and lit a cigarette.
“but it looks so rough, not a flower bed or a vase—just paths. that one there,” she pointed to a path that skirted the side of the house and dipped to a small grove of pines below, “goes through those pines and up to that summer-house. nothing on the way and what’s the summer-house when you get there? old style rustic work with vines. you’d suppose he’d build a temple and have some marble benches round. the way the rich spend their money always gets me.”
shine had been in the grove of pines, a growth of stunted trees filling in a hollow. he had followed the path through it, up the slope to the summer-house and beyond to where the bluff dropped away in a sheer cliff to the channel. they called the place “the point” as it projected beyond the shore line in a rocky outthrust shoulder, gulls circling about it, water seething below. [pg 47]he looked there now, let his glance slip along the curve of headlands till it reached the two girls, perched on a boulder like a pair of bright-plumaged birds. he was thinking how to approach the matter in his mind, when mrs. cornell went on:
“i don’t see what any one wanted to build a house here for—cut off this way. it’s too lonesome. with the tide at the full as it is now you can’t get ashore without a motor-boat. you know that current’s something fierce.”
he looked down at it, its rushing corded surface purple dark:
“looks to be some current.”
“it would carry you out and ‘good night’ to you. gabriel who runs the launch told me. set’s right out to sea someway. and the rise and fall to it—i couldn’t tell you how many feet it is, but you’ll see for yourself to-night if you’re awake—all the channel bare, nothing but rocks and mud. and across the middle of it to hayworth, a causeway. that’s the only way you can get ashore at low tide. high or low you’re pretty [pg 48]well marooned. it’s seclusion all right if that’s what you’re after.”
shine was after information and with the talk running on tides and causeways he saw no chance of getting it. so he tried to divert the garrulous lady:
“that’s miss saunders and miss tracy out there looking at the sunset.”
mrs. cornell answered with emphasis:
“yes, they’re friends.”
“aren’t you all?”
“some of us knew each other before we came here,” was her cryptic reply. then she added pensively: “six months ago you’d never have found sybil saunders looking at a sunset. she was the brightest thing!”
“awful misfortune that what happened to her.”
she gave a derisive sound at the inadequacy of the word:
“hah—awful! took the heart right out of her. if you ever saw a girl in love it was she—bound up in him. everything ready, the wedding [pg 49]day set, the trousseau made.” tears rose in her eyes and she dove into her tight bodice for a handkerchief. “never to be worn, mr. shine—that’s life.”
shine gave forth sympathetic murmurs and mrs. cornell, dabbing at her eyes, furnished data between the dabs:
“two men drinking too much and then a fight, and before anybody knew, murder! if there hadn’t been a brass candlestick near jim dallas’ hand it would never have happened. honest to god, mr. shine, there was nothing evil in that young man. but the parkinson family are camped on his trail. the evil’s in them, if you ask me, with their rewards and detectives.”
“i wonder if she knows where he is.”
“i guess there’s more than one wondering that,” the lady murmured.
“terribly hard position for her if she does know—or if she doesn’t.”
shine looked at the page’s figure on the rock. she carried the thing stamped on her face. he [pg 50]had noticed it particularly where he had taken the photographs of her in the living-room. they were time exposures with his small camera, attempts to catch her fragile prettiness in artistic combinations of light and shade. once or twice the mask had been dropped and he had seen the drooping lines, the weariness, and something like fear on the delicate features.
for a space they smoked in silence. round the corner of the house the tall figure of stokes strolled into view. he looked at the seated girls, then turned and glanced behind him with a quick and furtive sweep of the eyes. at the sight of them he nodded, walked down to the wharf and dropped on a bench.
shine lowered his voice:
“what’s the matter with him?”
mrs. cornell met his eyes; her own were narrowed and sharp.
“what makes you think anything is?”
“his whole make-up—something’s wearing on him.”
[pg 51]
she blew out a long shoot of smoke and, watching it, murmured:
“yes, it’s out on him like a rash. he oughtn’t to have come, but the first man they had, sylvanus grey, took sick and mr. walberg engaged stokes in a hurry and sent him up. it’s spoiled everything for the rest of us. he’s crazy about sybil if you want to know what’s the matter with him.”
“oh!” it came with an understanding inflection, the haggard glances rising on shine’s memory.
“can’t hide it, doesn’t want to hide it. there’s no shame in him, tracking after the girl. and it’s not as if he got any encouragement. she can’t bear him; that’s why she has anne tracy out there, afraid if she sits alone five minutes he’ll come loping up. you’d think if he didn’t have any pride he’d have some feeling for his wife. she’s half crazy with jealousy, burning up with it. these purple passions are all right in books, mr. shine, but believe me they’re not comfortable to live with.”
[pg 52]
“i felt it.”
“i guess you would, it’s in the air. all of us cooped up in this place where you can’t get off. i thought it was going to be such a nice restful change. but lord! it’s about as restful as camping on the side of vesuvius. sybil and joe tracy ready to fight at the drop of the hat and flora going round in circles and stokes like one of those fireworks that starts sputtering and you don’t know whether they’re going to explode or die on you. i tell you i’ll be glad when we get out of here to-morrow morning.”
there was a footfall in the room behind them and mrs. cornell turned to see who was coming.
“oh, flora,” she said. “come out and take a look at the sunset. it’s something grand.”
the woman stepped out and stood beside them. she had changed her costume and her narrow blue linen dress outlined her too slender figure. shine thought she would have been pretty if she had not looked so worn and thin. he noticed the brightness of her dark eyes, brilliant and quick-moving [pg 53]as a bird’s. there was red on her cheek-bones, a flushed patch that was not rouge. mrs. cornell’s expression recurred to him, “burning up”—the meager body, the hot high color, the dry lips resolutely smiling, suggested inner fires.
“yes,” she answered, “it’s a wonderful evening.”
“take a cig.” mrs. cornell offered the box.
“sit down, there’s plenty of room.” shine moved up.
“no, i can’t sit down. there’s something about the air that makes you restless—too stimulating maybe.” she raised her voice and called to her husband, “aleck, aren’t you coming in to change your clothes?”
without moving the man called back:
“not yet. there’s no hurry.”
she turned to shine with a little condoning air of wifely tolerance:
“mr. stokes has been shut up so long in town he can’t get enough of the fresh air.”
“he’s enjoying the scenery, too,” shine answered,[pg 54] and saw her eyes travel to the two figures on the rock.
“oh, that of course—that’s the best part of it.” then in a tone of bright discovery: “why look where anne and sybil are! have they been there long?”
“ever since i’ve been here.” mrs. cornell’s voice was more than soothing, bluffly reassuring as the voice of one who tells a child there is no ghost. “and ever since mr. shine got through the pictures! wallowing in the beauties of nature like the rest of us.”
“won’t you wallow, too?” shine indicated the long unoccupied space on the step.
she shook her head:
“i like moving about. something in this place gets on my nerves, it’s like being in a jail.” on a deep breath she shot out, “i hate it,” and stepped back into the room.
“going?” mrs. cornell veered round to follow her retreating figure.
“yes. i enjoy the scenery better when it hasn’t got people in it.”
[pg 55]
they looked at each other; a still minute of eye communication.
“she’s all worked up,” he murmured.
her answer was to point to the two girls and then to stokes:
“now she’ll keep her eye on them from somewhere else—probably the side piazza. that’s the way you are when you’re jealous—the sight of it kills you and you can’t stop watching.”
“lord!” whispered shine into whose life no such gnawing passions had entered. and he thought of the girl in the page’s dress who was afraid to sit alone, and the man on the wharf brooding within sight of her, and the woman who was hovering round them like a helpless distracted bird.
