On the following evening there was so much more dancing than usual--a
number of officers had come over from St. Kitts--that the saloon was
deserted by the young people, and at the height of the impromptu ball
Anne found herself alone near one of the open windows. The older
people were intent upon cards. Anne, who had grown bolder since her
first appearance in the world, now close upon three weeks ago, obeyed
an impulse to step through the window, descended the terrace and
walked along the beach. She could have gone to her room and found the
solitude she craved, but she wanted movement, and the night was so
beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The moon was at the
full, she could see the blue of the sea under its crystal flood. The
blades of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons unsheathed.
She could outline every leaf of palm, cocoanut, and banana that
fringed the shore. The nightingales ceased their warbling and she
heard that other and still more enchanting music of a tropic night,
the tiny ringing of a million silver bells. What fairy-like creature
of the insect world gave out this lovely music she was at no pains to
discover. It was enough that it was, and she had leaned out of her
window many a night and wondered why Byam Warner had never sung its
music in his verse.
Byam Warner! How--how was she to think of him? Her overthrown ideals
no longer even interested her, belonging as they did to some far off
time when she had not come herself to dream upon these ravishing
shores. And now the surrender of the past three weeks had been far
more rudely disturbed. Would even Nevis dominate again? Must not such
a man, even in his ruin, cast his shadow over any scene of which
he was a part? And of Nevis he was a part! She had been able to
disassociate them only until he stood before her, quick. And now she
should see him, talk to him every day, possibly receive his devotions,
for there was no doubt that he admired her as the antithesis of all to
which he had been accustomed from birth; unquestionably she must take
her part in his redemption. The thought thrilled her, and she paused
a moment looking out over the water. Faded, even repellent, as that
husk was, not only was his genius so far unimpaired, but she believed
that she had caught a glimpse of a great soul dwelling apart in that
polluted tenement. From the latter she shrank with all the aversion
of uncontaminated girlhood, but she felt that she owed it to her
intellect to recognise the separateness of those highest faculties
possessed by the few, from the flesh they were forced to carry in
common with the aborigines. And it seemed almost incredible that his
life had not swamped, mired, smothered all that was lofty and
beautiful in that inner citadel; her feminine curiosity impelled her
to discover if this really were so, or if he had merely retained a
trick of expression.
She was skirting the town, keeping close to the shore, but she paused
again, involuntarily, to look in the direction of that baker's
dwelling, through the window of which, some months since, Byam Warner,
mad with drink, had precipitated himself one night, shrieking for the
handsome wife of the indignant spouse. For this escapade he had lain
in jail until a coloured planter had bailed him out--for the white
Creoles thought it a good opportunity to emphasize their opinion of
him--and although he had been dismissed with a fine, the judge had
delivered himself of a weighty reprimand which was duly published in
the local paper. He had lain in prison only forty-eight hours, but
_he had lain in prison_, and the disgrace was indelible. No wonder he
had been ashamed to hold up his head, had hesitated so long to accept
Lady Hunsdon's invitation. The wonder was it had been extended. Anne
shrewdly inferred it never would have been in London, no matter what
the entreaties of Lord Hunsdon, but on this island many laws were
relaxed and many a sin left behind.
Then her thoughts swung to his indubious assertion that he had emerged
from his lair merely that he might meet her. She recalled the
admiration in his eyes, the desperate effort with which he had
overcome his shyness and approached her. What irony, if after having
been ignorant, unsuspecting, of her existence during all those years
of her worship, when she had been his more truly than in many a
corporeal marriage, he should love her now that she could only think
of him with pity and contempt. It gave her a fierce shock of
repulsion that he might wish to marry her, dwell even in thought upon
possessing her untouched youth after the lewdness of his own life. She
must crush any such hope in its bulb if she would not hate him and do
him ill when she sincerely wished him well. She reviewed the beaux of
Bath House for one upon whom she might pretend to fix her affections,
and at once, before Warner's inclination ripened into passion; but the
very thought of entering into a serious flirtation with any of those
tight-waisted, tight-trousered exquisites induced a sensation of
ennui, and with Hunsdon she did not care to trifle. He might be
wearisome, but he was good and sincere, and Lady Mary should have him
were it in her power to bring about that eminently proper match.
It was at this point in her reflections that she found herself
opposite the house of the poet.