II

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.

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.

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. 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 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?”

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. 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 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 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 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.”

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.”

“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 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, 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.”

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.