The Island of Intrigue/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Hard-a-lee.
A LOW, squat, grayish rock, as square as a monument, and crowned with a sparse growth of pines, rose out of the water just off the port bow; far ahead, a level, vividly green disk, with clumps of trees here and there upon it, lay like a partly submerged meadow, and between the two oddly dissimilar islands, a larger one lay basking in the afternoon sun.
At the end nearest to us, a great, gray mass of stone jutted out into the water, its walls rising steeply, like a cliff. On the loftiest, outmost point the ruins of an old lighthouse reared itself, staunchly, pathetically courageous, like a superannuated hero, its useless, dismantled old head held high in the pride of past achievements. From the back of the promontory, the ground, thickly wooded, sloped down gradually to the water's level, at the farther end of the island, its edge bordered by a rocky, rugged little beach, upon which the low surf rolled.
I saw no indication of a house through the heavily massed trees, as we glided with diminishing speed along the island's length, but when we rounded the shelving beach at the northern end, a little cry of delight escaped me. There, between two narrow peninsulas of scrub and sand lay a little cove, its waters as blue and placid and crystal-clear as those of a lake, and on the horseshoe curve of the shore, the soft white sand lay smooth and glistening in the sun. Behind it, the densely packed foliage of towering oaks and pines was bisected by a winding, cedar-strewn path, and the tall veranda columns of a spacious colonial house gleamed whitely through the trees.
I went hastily below, for a last look about my cabin, to see that nothing had been forgotten, and when I came on deck again, I saw Alaric standing apart at the starboard rail, deep in conversation with one of the sailors. It was the sailor who had watched me so oddly.
I paused involuntarily, in surprise, and at that moment the sailor said:
"Yes, sir. Two years ago, on the Neptunic, and a year before that, on the Saxonia. I never forget a face, sir."
His tone was low and significant, but not so low that the word did not come to me distinctly. There could be no mistake about the man's manner now. It was not only disrespectful, but positively insolent. He looked up and saw me, and leaning nearer to Alaric, said something quickly which was inaudible to my ears.
I hurried away to the port rail, where the rest were gathered, and instantly the little scene which I had inadvertently come upon passed from my mind.
A trim little houseboat, looking more like a miniature yacht club than anything else, nestled in a curve of the beach, and a short broad dock ran out from it, beside which a smart little launch, glistening with new paint, and a slender, torpedo shaped racing motorboat rode at anchor. It was a perfect little haven of peace and beauty, and coming upon it so suddenly it was almost like a scene in a play.
"I knew you would like it, Maida," Aunt Julie said, at my exclamation of pleasure. "Just wait till you see the house! Gracious! I'm glad to be home again!"
We left the Tortoise, and were rowed ashore in the dinghy. Aunt Julie, Alaric and myself going first, and Lorna and Bijou following with Monsieur Pelissier on the second trip.
We had had a delightful run in the yacht, but it was pleasant to step ashore, and feel firm ground beneath one's feet once more, and inhale the fresh tarry odor of balsam and spruce and pine. I could scarcely realize that we had left New York only the day before; it seemed as if we had been at sea much longer than a mere twenty-four hours, so many impressions had crowded in upon me.
The curving path leading up to the house was longer than it had seemed at the first glance from the yacht, and the house itself loomed larger as we approached it, our feet sinking deep with each step into the soft fragrant carpet of pine needles. Low huckleberry and sumac bushes, sassafras and wintergreen scrub, and oak and maple shoots grew thickly between the serried ranks of the trees, and I observed that although the semblance of its natural sylvan wildness had been maintained, the woods had been carefully cleared and pruned, and its picturesqueness artfully intensified and accentuated by cleverly massed groupings of rock, over which luxuriant, vividly colored vines trailed, and by rustic seats and grottoes and summer houses placed here and there.
The house, oddly enough for such a locality, had been planned consistently in the colonial style, most frequently seen now in old mansions of the South. Its broad, shady veranda was two stories high, and a wide hall ran down the center of the house, with great, square rooms opening from it on either side. The straight wide staircase led to a gallery, which reached all around the hall on the second floor, and formed a landing from which the bed-room doors opened.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Macpherson, a pleasant faced middle-aged Scotchwoman met us in the entrance hall, but Aunt Julie herself showed me to my room, which was perfectly enormous. It contained a great, fourposted bed and massive dressers and highboys of black walnut, but the heavy furniture seemed almost lost in its immense space. Quaint, vivid-lined chintz draperies on the bed and at the low windows added bright, cheerful touches, and a huge cut-glass bowl of early June roses on the table filled the air about with its fragrance.
"Would you like to lie down for awhile?" suggested Aunt Julie. "We'll have tea on the veranda, but yours will be sent to you, if you like. I hope you will be comfortable."
"Oh, I'm sure I shall!" I hastened to assure her, adding laughingly, "if I don't get lost! I never saw such a huge bedroom! It would provide sleeping quarters for a family!"
Aunt Julie laughed, too.
"I made up my mind I'd have one house with rooms large enough to suit me!" she remarked. "I feel cramped and stuffy in a little bedroom, and the town house in Chicago seems narrow and confined, even if it is almost the biggest on the Lake Drive. I don't suppose you remember our ranch in Concho County."
"Indeed I do!" I interrupted her. "The Circle Four! The whole county used to gather for dances in the big living-room, and we children would sneak out of bed and peep in at them! I'll never forget old black Sam's squeaky fiddle, and 'Gene's 'cello"
"Your memory will be an embarrassing asset some day, Maida! Poor old Sam and 'Gene! I wonder what's become of them! Dead long ago, I suppose. —Well, I'll go and see how my own room looks. I left orders to have it done over since last year. I'll send Lucie to you."
"Oh, no. Please don't trouble. I really shan't need her," I said. "I will be down in ten minutes."
I didn't like that beady-eyed Frenchwoman, either, although she was a clever, capable maid. She was respectful enough, but she had a sneering, ironical expression which made me sure she would be impudent if she dared, and she stared at me, when she thought I wasn't looking at her, until I grew vaguely uncomfortable. It may have been unjust, but in my mind I questioned her honesty, and I never let her see where I put my jewels at night.
I went to one of the windows and looked out. It was high up under the veranda roof, and commanded a view of its entire length, which seemed almost a quarter of a mile, from where I looked down upon it. Rugs and wicker furniture and boxes of ferns and flowering plants grouped upon it robbed it of the atmosphere of barrack-like bareness which would otherwise have pervaded it. A man servant appeared, wheeling a tea-wagon, and began arranging the chairs about a low table, and I turned away from the window, and opened my dressing bag.
Lorna was alone on the veranda when I descended, but I caught a glimpse of Bijou's white gown between the trees, and Monsieur Pelissier's figure beside her. Lorna looked suddenly tired. She was paler than ever, and there were dark, shadowy circles about her eyes.
She looked up with a smile as I approached, and closed the book she had been reading. I glanced at the cover and saw with surprise that it was a treatise on chemistry.
"You are interested in that?" I asked. She laid the book on the table with a whimsical shrug.
"I found it upstairs,—one of our guests last summer, an inventor of a sort, left it when he went away. I like chemistry, I used to dabble in it quite a little, at school. I've sometimes thought I should like to make a study of it, like Madame Curie,—or Lucretia Borgia!" she added laughing.
"I don't know much about it," I said. "I very nearly blew myself up once, in the laboratory at Miss Farmingdale's and it quite discouraged me from further experiments. Lucretia Borgia was a very terrible person, wasn't she?"
"She'd have been a genius in any vocation," Lorna replied. "And if it hadn't been for that little criminal warp in her mind, we might read of her in a different light. I have a certain amount of sympathy for her."
"I have not!" I said, with a little shiver. "The idea of any crime is horribly repugnant to me. But a woman like that—a hand that caresses you and strikes in the dark! A creature who worms herself into your confidence under the guise of friendship and then betrays you! Such a person is unspeakably low and vile, and a coward, too."
"No!" cried Lorna. "Not a coward, at least! It is not cowardly to fight with the only weapons society has left you! If you have only your wits, you are not to blame if you are forced to use them, in any way you can!"
I looked at her curiously, surprised at her vehemence. "You're a queer girl, Lorna! Where do you ever get such funny thoughts?"
She shrugged again.
"I'm going to give you your tea now," she remarked, with a change of tone. "We won't wait for mother. She's probably found a speck of dust somewhere, and is hauling somebody over the coals for it!"
"The house looks charmingly in order," I said. "Quite as if it had been occupied for weeks."
"The servants came by rail a week ago, all except our own maids, to make everything ready for us."
"Oh, there you are, children!" Aunt Julie appeared with Alaric in the doorway. "I'm glad Lorna didn't let you wait for your tea, Maida. I had to see the housekeeper. Bijou! Bijou!"
They joined us, coming slowly at her call, and talking earnestly in lowered tones until they reached the very steps of the veranda. Then they separated abruptly, and Bijou seated herself near her mother, while the Frenchman drew a chair very close to Lorna's, and leaning toward her almost caressingly, murmured something in a soft voice.
Lorna made no reply. She stared at him coolly, steadily for a long minute, and under her searching look he flushed redly and seemed to flinch, and turned his head away. She smiled at that, a slow, almost contemptuous smile, but it seemed to me that her lips trembled slightly as her eyes wandered out to the woodland, which crept up nearly to the veranda, and lingered, as if its somber, green depths rested and eased them.
I was puzzled by this bit of by-play. I had not been able to decide which of the two girls Monsieur Pelissier had chosen as the object of his probably mercenary affections, for he seemed equally attentive to both, but Lorna's constantly changing attitude toward him bewildered me. It seemed sometimes as if she disliked him almost as much as I did, and yet at others there was an eager air of possession about her when she looked at him, which I could not fathom.
"What were you two children talking about so earnestly?" asked Aunt Julie. I thought she was addressing Bijou and Monsieur Pelissier until I glanced up and found she was gazing at me over the rim of her tea-cup.
"Crime," I answered succinctly.
Aunt Julie jumped.
"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "Whatever started you on such a subject!—I hope nothing is missing!" she added, turning to Lorna in swift alarm. "Have you noticed that anything has disappeared? I haven't had time to go over the plate. Mrs. Macpherson says everything is all right"
"You needn't be alarmed, mother," replied Lorna indifferently. "The crimes we were discussing were committed several hundred years ago. Everything is so petty nowadays nobody plays for very high stakes, there's no glamor of adventurous achievement."
"I dont know about that," I demurred. "Remember Connie Cole!"
Aunt Julie dropped her spoon with a clatter.
"Heavens, child!" she exclaimed, "how did you ever hear of such a person?"
"Connie Cole," repeated Monsieur Pelissier, reflectively. "I do not remember that name. Who was she?"
"An adventuress, a swindler on a gigantic scale," I returned. "The papers were full of it at the time of her arrest and conviction, but perhaps you were not in this country then. It was all of six years ago, but Daddy told me something of her. She must have been a wonderful woman, with a remarkably shrewd brain, and a magnetic personality. Daddy said she could talk you into anything. She managed to rob him of quite a sum, twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars, I believe, and he isn't easily fooled. She swindled old established, conservative banks and trust companies all over the country out of perfectly colossal sums of money."
"She commands my admiration!" Monsieur Pelissier smiled cynically. "But she was caught at last, was she not? You spoke of her conviction."
"Yes. A great part of the money she had accumulated was recovered, and I fancy her lawyers got most of the rest. She had a standing army of them, Daddy said, the most noted in the country, but they couldn't save her. She was sentenced to prison for a long term, but Daddy told me she was liberated about two years ago, and that she went abroad."
"I wonder what has become of her," remarked Monsieur Pelissier. "She would be a profoundly interesting person to know."
"Heavens, don't let's talk about such dreadful people," Aunt Julie cried. "It fairly gives me the creeps. In my day, young girls discussed beaux and bonnets; but now it's crime and sociology! It doesn't seem possible that such people as the Cole woman can exist in the world, does it?"
"No," I replied, for she seemed to address me. "It is so lovely and calm and peaceful here, it doesn't seem as if anything could happen anywhere to disturb its serenity."
"But there was a serpent, you know, even in the Garden of Eden," Monsieur Pelissier remarked.
"Thank Heaven there was!" ejaculated Lorna, rising. "It must have been deadly dull before Eve experimented with the apple!"
"Lorna Bailey Smith, I'm ashamed of you!" Aunt Julie cried in consternation. "I'm sure I don't know what you are coming to! Young girls didn't say such things in my generation!"
"No, mother, I've no doubt they thought them instead, and simpered!" retorted Lorna, pertly. Then she turned to me. "Come and take a little stroll before the sun goes down, and it is time to dress for dinner, Maida. I want to show you my favorite nook, near the house. I love the great, bare pile of rocks where the old lighthouse stands, but that is too long a walk now."
She slipped her arm through mine in a girl-like, impulsive way, and drew me down the winding path between the trees. It was quite dark in the depths of the woods, where the beams of the westering sun could not penetrate, and spicy, herby odors assailed us, but the air was chilly and a little damp. It was lovely, although it made me think, somehow, of a graveyard, and I shivered.
Lorna paused, now and again, and looked about her as if she had almost forgotten the way, but at last we came quite suddenly to where a tiny spring bubbled up out of the moss, and a rude seat had been made of flat stones.
"Here!" she exclaimed. "This is my summer den. Here I sit and write my letters, and read, and dream by the hour together, without fear of being disturbed. You like it, Maida?"
"It's lovely," I said, a little doubtfully. "But don't you find it rather dark and lonely sometimes?"
"I like to be alone," she replied. "I think I should go mad if I couldn't get away off by myself sometimes. It's like what church means to some people, I guess. I wrestle with my problems, and struggle with my moods, and think, and plan, and dream, and come away stronger and refreshed. I fancy that is what prayer means."
"I don't know," I hesitated. Lorna, in her introspections, delved sometimes a little deeper beneath the surface of things than I was able to follow. "We were told at school, but I've forgotten who said it—that all inspiration is prayer, but it seems to me that prayer means asking for help from someone stronger and wiser than you are."
"There is no one stronger than you are, if only you will believe it, and rely upon your own strength. No one will ever really help you in this world but yourself, as you'll find, little Maida!" There was the same odd, vehement intensity in her voice that I had noticed before that afternoon, as if she were arguing against herself, fighting something out in her thoughts, and it gave me a queer little puzzled thrill to hear her.
"I should not like to think that!" I said. "It's a kind of cheerless, hopeless philosophy, isn't it, if you happen to feel insignificant, and helpless, and untried? You're not so much older than I, you know, Lorna—only three years, after all!"
She smiled.
"I am centuries older than you, little friend, ages older! I live more in a day than you have in all your life!"
"That's what Bijou said this morning!" I cried resentfully. "She said I didn't know I was alive, just because I haven't been allowed to go about as she evidently has!"
I couldn't help that little thrust, mean and petty as it was. Bijou's lazy contempt still rankled.
"Oh, Bijou!" Loran shrugged disgustedly. "Life will always be to her a marble lined, velvet cushioned sty!—Shall we go back? It is getting late, I'm afraid."
It was. The pale sunlight which filtered slantingly through the dense foliage had faded perceptibly, and a dull, angry red glowed in the western sky.
We made our way in silence through the leafy gloom of the woodland trail to the house. Once, I heard, faint and faraway the silvery, measured tolling of a church bell.
"That's funny, isn't it?" I remarked.
"What is?" Lorna looked back at me.
"There, don't you hear it? Church bells, on the mainland, somewhere. It's just vesper time, too. Isn't it queer, on Saturday! It must be a funeral."
"Or Seventh-day Adventists!" laughed Lorna. "Come along, or mother will think we are lost."
When I descended, at dinner-time, only Bijou and Monsieur Pelissier were in the drawing-room, where a wood fire had been lighted on the great square hearth. Although it was really summer, the evening air was autumnal in its sharpness, and there was that settled chill about, as of a house long untenanted.
The dining-room was charming, wide and almost square, with long French windows opening on the veranda, and a low, beamed ceiling. The soft light of many clustered candles in their silver sconces glowed on the graceful, curving lines of the Chippendale sideboard, and gleamed on the faultlessly arranged glass and silver upon the round table. The housekeeper, Mrs. Macpherson, must have been a person of discriminating taste.
Everyone seemed to be a little distrait, and dispirited, except the indefatigable Frenchman, and he kept up a steady flow of merry nonsense until Alaric fairly guffawed at his sallies.
After dinner we sat about the log-fire in the drawing-room, and all at once Lorna seemed to come to life. Her eyes were misty dark and glowing, and the light in them leapt to meet the blazing flames. She urged Monsieur Pelissier to play until he was tired, and then took his place at the piano, and dashed from czardas to mazurka, from lilting waltz to the crashing, thundering, sonorous chords of a dead march.
I was amazed at this swift, erratic change, no less than by the depth of sensibility and passion which she revealed. She played with a verve and brilliancy which equalled Monsieur Pelissier's, but with more vibrant feeling, more soul.
At dinner she had eaten scarcely anything, and maintained a stony, immobile aloofness. Now she was all sentiment, fire, her emotions rippling just beneath the surface, like the velvety muscles of an athlete.
She finished her performance with a risqué irresistibly captivating little French chansonette, which she sang in a purring, slurring contralto which fascinated one, and then swirled about on the piano stool with the rebellious moue of a mischievous child who anticipates a rebuke.
Aunt Julie did not disappoint her, but beneath her shocked reproof I could feel the lurking elation of a respectable barnyard hen who had hatched out a duckling by mistake, and was secretly proud of its eccentricity.
Sunset Island was lovely, but I felt vaguely uncomfortable and nervous. I was very glad that Daddy would soon come.
How long I slept I don't know, but I awakened suddenly, to find myself sitting bolt upright in bed in the darkness, with every nerve in my body tingling. I didn't know what had aroused me for the house was as still as a tomb. The wind had risen and the branches of the trees outside my window were thrashing and soughing about with a whistling sound which was inexpressibly dreary, and there was the faint mutter and rumble of distant thunder, which heralded a coming storm.
I was positive that it was a sharper sound which had aroused me so swiftly, and as I listened it came again, borne unmistakably on the wind—a horrible, choking cry. I sprang from the bed, and rushing to the window, flung it wide. The wind whipped the hair about my face, and in the swirling darkness I could see nothing. I crouched there, shivering and straining my eyes to see into the night, but no further sound save the rising storm broke upon my ears.
A spatter of wind-driven rain drove me from the window, and I went back to bed, wondering what that strange cry could have meant. I knew that I hadn't imagined it, but the reassuring thought came to me that perhaps it had been the voice of one of the yacht's crew. The Tortoise was not to start upon its return journey until the following morning. Possibly the wind had raised some havoc, and the sailors had been calling to one another.
I am not in the least afraid of a thunder storm, but the electricity in the air increased the state of nerves I was in, and I lay a long time imagining all sorts of awful things. The wind died down finally, however, and the driving rain diminished to a soothing patter, and! was just drifting off into a dreamless unconsciousness, when a new sound came to my ears.
It was a soft, but heavy thud, somewhere below in the house, like the stealthy closing of a door. I raised myself on one elbow. Was someone coming softly up the stairs? I listened, holding my breath. The footsteps grew unmistakably distinct, mounted to the landing, and came nearer and nearer my door. There were two different steps, one very soft but firm and light, like a cat's tread, and the other heavier and dragging. They reached my door, and I could have screamed in sheer nervous terror, but they passed on without a pause. Only, I heard the sudden creak of the bannister railing as someone clutched or collapsed against it, and then through the silent house came the echo of a long, shuddering groan.