ANY one watching Gull Island from the shore would have seen the yellow
shape of one bright window set like a small golden square in the
darkness. The bright window was Anne’s and over against it Anne sat on
the side of the bed looking at the floor. She sat perfectly still, held
in a staring concentration of thought, reviewing the happenings of the
night. The inability to understand that she had expressed to Bassett
had come back to her, there were things that she could not explain
away. Like a child piecing together the disconnected bits of a puzzle,
she contemplated separate facts, studied them, dropped each one in turn
and went on to another.
While Bassett had talked to her she had accepted his theory. His belief
in it had been so absolute and it was so plausible. Of course a person
in her state might have imagined anything. And as she dwelt on the
sentence to persuade herself, the vision of the dim shadowy room rose
before her with the figure coming toward her from the darkness of the
gallery, moving spiritlike as an hallucination might move. But as the
memory grew in vividness the shape took form and solidity, the slim
boy’s shape. She saw again its rapid advance, its sudden stoppage at
her words, its lightning-quick turn and soundless flight. The snap of
the closing door came to her mind as a last confirmation and she knew
it was no delusion.
“I did,” she said in a whisper, and raised her eyes as if confronting a
doubter with the truth. “I _know_ it--I _did_ see somebody.”
Somebody!
The word struck her ear with a startling effect, an effect of
discovery, of impending disclosures. Her body shrank together as if
in fear of them, her riveted glance grew fixed as a sleep-walker’s.
She lost all sense of her surroundings, her entire being contracted to
a point of inner activity. Before that intensified mental vision a
series of pictures passed like the slides in a magic lantern:--Shine’s
photograph, the worn, wide-eyed face of Sybil; Joe playing Sebastian,
his costume, his movements, a replica of Viola’s; the living-room as
they heard the shot, dusk falling outside; in the summer-house--with
its shrouding vines--it would have been almost dark.
The pictures were disconnected like spots of light breaking through
darkness. If the darkness could be dispelled and the spots of light
joined, fused into continuity, she would reach something, something she
was groping toward, fearfully groping toward. Suddenly a recollection
flashed up, clairvoyantly distinct--Joe at the flat trying to make
Bassett give him the part of Sebastian, imitating Sybil’s walk. That
picture brought her to her feet, brought a smothered cry to her lips.
The spots of light had joined, run together in a leaping illumination.
On the bureau lay the key of Joe’s trunk that she had brought from his
room after their last interview. She snatched it up and ran to the
door, out of it, along the gallery. In Joe’s room she turned on the
light and unlocked his trunk. She went through it to the bottom looking
for his Sebastian costume. It was gone, every appointment of it. She
had not needed the proof, she knew that she would not find it, that it
was Joe, dressed in that costume, Stokes had killed.
The rest of it--Sybil alive, hiding somewhere! She saw the gray dawn
on the window--the night was over, the house would soon be stirring.
She locked the trunk, turned off the light and stole out on the
gallery. She did not go back to her room but kept on down the hall to
the top-floor staircase. Half-way up she heard from the floor above a
sound, so faint, so furtive, that it would only have been audible in
the dead dawn hush. She made a rush upward sending her voice, low-keyed
but passionately urgent, ahead of her:
“Sybil, Sybil, if it’s you, wait. It’s Anne. I’m coming to help you.”
The door of the bedroom opposite the stair-head was open. Against
the pale light of the window, poised with one hand resting on the
raised sash, was a boy’s figure--surely the figure she had seen in the
living-room two nights before. It was so completely boyish, the cropped
round head, the knickerbockers and belted jacket, that she could not
yet be sure and went forward with slackened gait, peering and murmuring
fearfully:
“Sybil, it _is_ you?”
The figure left the window, came nearer, silently, creepingly, with a
hand raised for caution. She saw the face then, pinched and haggard,
strangely altered with the curling frame of hair clipped close, but
still Sybil’s.
It was so extraordinary--such a gulf of unknown happenings lay between
them--that at first they said nothing. In the spectral light they were
like two ghosts come together in some debatable land beyond earth’s
confines--too astonished at their encounter to find speech, too
removed from the recognized and familiar to drop back to its facile
communications. They stared, eye to eye, breath coming brokenly
through parted lips, drawing together as if each were a magnet
compelling the other. Anne spoke first.
“Joe,” she said. “It’s Joe that’s dead.”
“Yes. Do they know?”
“They know nothing. They think it was you. It’s all over, Stokes has
told. But, oh, what is it? I can’t understand--it’s like a fearful
dream.”
The words died away and a sudden violent trembling shook her. With
the joints of her knees like water she sank on the side of the bed,
gripping the other with her shaking hands, pulling her down beside her.
“Tell me, tell me,” she implored. “Why is he dead? Why did he pretend
he was you? What was he doing?”
They sat, clinging together, two small huddled figures in the gray
light. Though the house below was as silent as the tomb they spoke in
subdued voices, question, answer, surmise. Each knew a different aspect
of the story, brought her own knowledge of Joe’s motives and actions.
In that whispered exchange they pieced together the separate facts,
combined them in coherent sequence and came to a final enlightenment.
Joe had met his death in his last effort as a police spy, his last
effort to get the Parkinson reward. Leaving his room to come down
and make ready for his departure, he had heard the voices of Stokes
and Sybil in the living-room. Sybil remembered Stokes’ upward look
and question about some one moving in the gallery--Joe creeping to
concealment behind the arch. The nature of their conversation would
have held him listening: here was his last opportunity to get the
information he sought. He had heard the rendezvous in the summer-house.
Its open situation offered no hiding-place outside, but knowing that it
would be almost dark inside, he had conceived the idea of putting on
his Sebastian costume and impersonating Sybil. He probably thought he
risked no more than Stokes’ rage, and he also probably thought that he
might escape before Stokes had discovered his identity.
His room was next to Sybil’s. He had heard her come up-stairs and from
his window could command the Point. When Shine left it he had gone
down, passed the balcony where Stokes was waiting, and hearing his
following footsteps, moved with that close imitation of Sybil’s gait
to the summer-house. There the dim light and the drooping curls of his
wig enabled him to carry through the deception. Stokes’ wild speech,
followed by the drawing of the pistol, had terrified him. Confronted by
a man armed and half-mad, panic had seized him and he had made a rush
from the place.
So Joe had died, a body clad in gala dress swirling out on currents
that would never bring him back. Anne said nothing. She did not feel
any special grief, or feeling of any kind. Too much had happened, she
was benumbed. She had a vague sense that in some future time, when she
had recovered from her dulled and battered state, she might be sorry,
cry perhaps. Her eyes fell on her hand with Sybil’s clasped around
it and the sight of the linked fingers roused her. They were like a
symbol of the intertwined closeness of their lives, so much closer
than hers and Joe’s had ever been. That brought her back to Sybil and
Sybil’s inexplicable actions. She lifted her head and looked at the
face beside her:
“But--but--why did you do all this? Hide, not say anything, let them
think you were dead?”
“I wanted to get away.”
“Get away! What for--where?”
“To Jim Dallas. I know where he is.”
“You’ve known?”
“For a month. I’ve written him telling him I’d come if I could, if
I _ever_ could. Oh, but it’s been hopeless. I was spied on, dogged,
followed--” Her voice rose on a hoarse note, stopped, and after a
scared listening hush, went on whisperingly: “I want to stay dead,
never come to life here again. It’s my chance--the only chance I’ll
ever have. You’ve found me now and I’ll tell you everything.” And she
told Anne the story--the story that no one else has ever heard.
Since she had received his address the longing to join her lover had
possessed her. She had written she would come, she knew he was waiting
for her, but the watch kept upon her made any move impossible. Whatever
her anguish, she could not risk betraying his whereabouts; if it had
been only herself she would have dared anything. In this position,
growing daily more unbearable, had suddenly come the means of escape.
Tragedy, swift and terrible as a bolt from the blue, had been her
opportunity, and she had desperately seized it.
From her window, after the interview with Stokes, she had seen Joe,
in his Sebastian dress, pass below. She had known it was he because
of the costume and was astonished, supposing him already gone. Stokes
came into view following him and the disturbing idea seized her that
he had mistaken the boy for herself. She had run to the door to go
down and end the misapprehension, and then stopped--at close quarters
Stokes would see who it was, and to let Joe--evil-tongued and
hostile--discover their rendezvous, was the last thing she wanted. She
went back to the window to watch the outcome and saw neither of them.
This frightened her--the only place they could have disappeared to was
the summer-house. Stokes might say too much before he discovered his
mistake, and panic-stricken, she was about to rush out, when Joe ran
from the doorway and the shot followed.
For a space--she had no idea how long--she was paralyzed, not believing
her senses. She remembered moving back into the room and from there she
saw Stokes issue from the summer-house and flee to the shelter of the
pine wood, _that_ told her what she had seen was real, a murder had
been committed under her eyes, and she went to the door to go down.
Holding it open she paused on the threshold, heard the voices below,
heard Stokes’ entering words and had made a forward step to run down
and denounce him, when a sound from outside stopped her. Flora’s cry
that Sybil was killed.
It was that wild screaming voice that gave her the idea, sent it
through her brain like a zigzag of lightning. While the people below
made their clamorous rush from the house, she stood in the doorway,
motionless in contemplation of the possibilities that opened before
her. The excitement that had shaken her a few minutes earlier died, her
mind steadied and cleared, she felt herself uplifted by an invincible
daring and courage. There was no danger of a recovery of the body for
she had heard from Gabriel and Miss Pinkney that bodies carried out on
the tide were never found.
Alone on the second floor with little fear of interruption she had gone
about her preparations at once. She had taken nothing from her own room
but money from her purse (leaving a small amount to avert suspicion)
the candies from the box on the table, a few crackers she had brought
up the night before from supper, and a pair of scissors. Then going to
Joe’s room she had gathered the clothes he had discarded, lying ready
to her hand on the bed--everything from the shoes to the cap--and
stolen out and upward to the top floor. Here she had put on the clothes
and cut off her hair--she showed Anne the ends of the yellow curls in
her jacket pocket--hiding her own clothes in a box in the store-room.
As to when the police would be summoned and of what their procedure
would consist, she knew nothing. Her hope was to escape by the causeway
that night. From this Anne had saved her. In her terror of recognition
she had kept silent knowing her voice would betray her.
The next day she had been a prey to a rising tide of alarm. From behind
a curtain she had watched the search of the island and realized a hunt
through the top floor must follow. Every sign of her presence was
obliterated and she studied her surroundings for a hiding-place. The
windows, opened half-way to air the rooms, suggested the possibility
of a cache outside. Climbing up the wall and extending to the roof was
the great wisteria vine, its outspread branches twisted into ropes and
covered with a mantle of dense foliage. The main trunk passed close
to the window of the room that faced the stair-head, the place where
she sat waiting for ascending footsteps. When Anne had made her visit,
she had heard the first creak of the stairs and crawled out under the
raised window. With a foothold on the gutter she had slipped behind the
curtain of the vine, her hands gripped round its limbs. Even from the
garden below she thought it would have been impossible to detect her.
Of Anne’s whispered pleadings she had heard nothing; she had supposed
the intruder one of the men. When they came up she had had plenty of
time to hide for she had heard their footsteps when they came along the
hall.
“Sleep!” she said, in answer to Anne’s question. “I never thought of
sleep. I was in this room all the time, waiting and listening. I didn’t
even dare to lie on the bed for fear I couldn’t get it smooth again.
The candies and crackers kept me from being hungry. But when your whole
being is on such a strain you don’t think of those things, you forget
your body.”
After the visit of Rawson and Williams she knew the danger of detection
increased with every hour. Also the necessity for food could not be
denied much longer. The one chance left her was to get away that night,
make what she felt would be a last attempt to gain the freedom that
meant life to her. The darkness was in her favor and she resolved
to slip from the house and cross the bed of the channel below the
causeway. She was a good swimmer and though the central stream was
deep and swift she was ready to match her strength against it. If she
failed--but she hadn’t thought of failure--the goal to be reached was
all she saw.
At the foot of the stairs she had hesitated, undecided whether to go
by the living-room or the kitchen. Finally she chose the way she knew
best, where she was familiar with the disposition of the furniture. As
the flashlight burst she had made a noiseless rush for the stairs, was
in the upper passage when the women’s doors flew open and Rawson came
running along the hall below. The darkness and noise had covered her
flight, but in her eyrie on the top floor she had crouched at the head
of the stairs sick with uncertainty and dread. The concerted shrieks of
the women had come eerily to her--cries of her own name. She guessed
then a picture had been taken, they had seen it, and she waited not
knowing what was coming. She had stayed there a long time, listening
with every sense alert, heard silence gathering over the house and then
gone back to her place by the window:
“I hadn’t given up, I had the spirit to fight still. But it was so
awful not knowing anything, what they were doing, if they’d found out
I was alive. And what was I to do--stay here, get out on the island? I
couldn’t tell, I was all in the dark, and I felt my nerve weaken for
the first time. And then I heard your voice, Anne, ‘I’m coming to help
you,’ it said.” She drew back and looked with solemn meaning into the
other’s face. “You meant it? You will help me?”
“Sybil, you know it.”
“There’s only one way you can.”
“Any way.”
“Let me go.”
“Never tell--that you were here--that it wasn’t you?”
“Yes, let me stay dead. Everybody believes it, let them go on
believing. It _was_ death, my life since that night when Jim
disappeared. It wasn’t worth going on with. Now I can go to him, be
with him, there’ll be no one watching Sybil Saunders any more. Even
if I looked like myself it would be only the chance resemblance to a
murdered woman. And do I look like myself?”
She turned her face to the light, bright now with the coming of the
sun. Below the smooth sweep of hair across her forehead it was so
changed in its pallor and thinness, so bereft of its rounded curves and
delicate freshness that it was only a dim reflection of Sybil’s--the
face of a way-worn lad in whom the same blood ran.
The havoc worked by the suffering that had so transfigured it drove
like a knife to Anne’s heart. She felt the prick of tears under her
eyelids and lowered her head--Sybil gripping at her happiness with the
fierce courage of despair, and now Sybil going, breaking all ties,
going forever. For a moment she could not speak and the other, thinking
her silence meant reluctance to agree, caught at her hands, pleading,
with breathless urgence:
“They’ve accepted everything--it’s all explained and ended. Joe has
gone, dropped out of sight. Boys of his kind do that, do something
they’re ashamed of and disappear. What good would it do Stokes or
Bassett or the police to know it was Joe who was killed? It’s not lies,
it’s not being false to any one, it’s only to keep silent and let me
go. Oh, Anne, we’ve been real friends, we’ve loved each other-- Love me
enough to let me be happy.”
The rim of the sun slipped above the distant sea line and sent a ray of
brilliant light through the window. It touched their seated figures and
lay rosy on Anne’s face as she raised it.
“Go,” she said softly. “Go. I’ll never tell--I’ll keep that promise as
long as I live.”
She could stay no longer, the house would be waking soon. There was a
rapid interchange of last injunctions, information for Sybil’s safety.
To-night at low tide she would cross on the causeway. Every evidence
of her occupation would be removed and with this in mind she took
her Viola dress from its hiding-place and gave it to Anne. No one,
ransacking the top floor at Gull Island would ever find a trace of her.
At the head of the stairs they clung together for a moment--a life-long
good-by. There was no time for last words and they had no need of any.
It was too solemn a farewell for speech. They were like shipwrecked
comrades parted by tempest, Anne to find a haven, Sybil to ride forth
on unknown seas, rapt and dauntless, following her star.
That night was cloudy--great black banks passing across the heavens.
At times they broke and through serene open spaces the moon rode,
silvering the sea, turning the pools and streamlets of the channel
bed to a shining tracery. A boy’s figure that had started across the
causeway in the dark, was caught in one of these transitory gleams,
a flitting shadow on the straight bright path. It stood out in sharp
silhouette, running on the slippery stones, then clouds swept across
the moon and in the darkness it gained the shore and the sheltering
trees. Padding light-footed on the wayside grass, it skirted the edge
of the village.
Dogs scented its passage and broke out barking; the sound following its
progress till the houses were passed and the road stretched on between
quiet fields to the railway.
Some people heard the dogs--light-sleeping villagers who turned and
wondered if a tramp was about and lapsed into comfortable slumber. In
the stillness of the room where Stokes lay unconscious, drawing toward
the hour of deliverance, the barking sounded loud and insistent. The
nurse was disturbed by it and went to the window and looked out, but
Flora never heard it. Anne did and sat up in bed following it along the
edge of the village till it died on the outskirts.
_EPILOGUE_
THREE years later Bassett and Anne had a friend at dinner. He was
a writer who had just returned from a successful lecture tour in
Australia. On his way back he had ranged through the pleasant reaches
of the South Seas and had fallen under their spell--a little more
money in his pocket and for him it would be a plantation on some isle
of enchantment. Not the accessible places, they were already spoiled,
steamers had come, jazz music, and tourists in pith helmets with red
guidebooks were under your feet. It was the remoter islands, still out
of the line of travel, where a trading schooner was the sole link with
the world.
He had made a point of visiting some of these--hired an old tub with
a native crew and gone batting about and had a glimpse of the real
thing that Stevenson saw. And he enlarged on a particular island, the
endmost of a scattered group, where he had found an American and his
wife running a copra plantation. Delightful people called Whittier,
he’d stayed several days with them in a long bamboo house on the edge
of a lagoon--you couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful.
Anne smiled at his enthusiasm and said she thought such a life might
pall, especially on the lady. But he was convinced of the contrary,
in fact Mrs. Whittier had told him she never wanted to come back, she
couldn’t stand the futile strain and bustle of the world. And it was
not as if she were a person unused to the refinements of life, she was
a pretty intelligent woman, cultivated and fond of the arts, especially
the theater. She had asked him any amount of questions about plays and
players--said it had been the thing she loved most in the old days. But
she didn’t regret it; she had told him she regretted nothing but the
separation from her friends.
After dinner, moving about in the sitting-room, the guest had stopped
before a photograph standing on a side-table, picked it up and asked
whose it was. Bassett had answered--a friend of his wife, now dead. But
he would remember--it was Sybil Saunders who had met with such a tragic
death some years ago. The guest nodded; of course he remembered, a
horrible affair. Then after a last look at the photograph he turned to
Anne:
“It’s like that Mrs. Whittier I was telling you about. Just the same
eyes--quite remarkably like, only she’s a bit stouter and more mature.
It might have been her picture when she was a girl.”
When the evening was over Bassett escorted the guest to the door. On
his way back to the sitting-room he thought he would suggest to Anne
that she put away the photograph--people noticed it and the subject
kept coming up. It was evidently unbearably painful to her for she
rarely spoke of it; that dark chapter in her life was a thing closed
and sealed. He had the words on his lips as he entered the room and
then saw that she held the picture in her hands and was looking
intently at it, softly smiling, her expression tranquil, even happy.
That was good--the wound had healed--so he said nothing.