To dine on the veranda of the Marine Hotel is the one delightful
surprise which Port Charlotte affords the adventurer who has broken from
the customary paths of travel in the South Seas. On an eminence above
the town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and nestling deep in its
garden of lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By
day, the Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a
blur of distant islands on the horizon--chief among them Muloa, with its
single volcanic cone tapering off into the sky. At night, this smithy of
Vulcan becomes a glow of red, throbbing faintly against the darkness, a
capricious and sullen beacon immeasurably removed from the path of men.
Viewed from the veranda of the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the
horizon seems hardly more than an insignificant spark, like the glowing
cigar-end of some guest strolling in the garden after dinner.
It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor
Stanleigh to where I was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major
Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the
respite from the queer business he had involved me in. The two of us had
returned that afternoon from Muloa, where I had taken him in my
schooner, the _Sylph_, to seek out Leavitt and make some inquiries--very
important inquiries, it seemed, in Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated
mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent
questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses--all this,
as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's
niece--had made me frankly curious about the girl.
I had seen her only once, and then at a distance across the veranda, one
night when I had been dining there with a friend; but that single vision
of her remained vivid and unforgettable--a tall girl of a slender
shapeliness, crowned by a mass of reddish-gold hair that smoldered above
the clear olive pallor of her skin. With that flawless and brilliant
coloring she was marked for observation--had doubtless been schooled to
a perfect indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of
her movements was that of a woman coldly unmindful of the gazes
lingering upon her. She could not have been more than twenty-six or
-seven, but I got an unmistakable impression of weariness or balked
purpose emanating from her in spite of her youth and glorious physique.
I looked up to see her crossing the veranda to join her uncle and
aunt--correct, well-to-do English people that one placed instantly--and
my stare was only one of many that followed her as she took her seat and
threw aside the light scarf that swathed her bare and gleaming
shoulders.
My companion, who happened to be the editor of the local paper, promptly
informed me regarding her name and previous residence--the gist of some
"social item" which he had already put into print; but these meant
nothing, and I could only wonder what had brought her to such an
out-of-the-way part of the world as Port Charlotte. She did not seem
like a girl who was traveling with her uncle and aunt; one got rather
the impression that she was bent on a mission of her own and was
dragging her relatives along because the conventions demanded it. I
hazarded to my companion the notion that a woman like Miss Stanleigh
could have but one of two purposes in this lonely part of the world--she
was fleeing from a lover or seeking one.
"In that case," rejoined my friend, with the cynical shrug of the
newspaper man, "she has very promptly succeeded. It's whispered that she
is going to marry Joyce--of Malduna Island, you know. Only met him a
fortnight ago. Quite a romance, I'm told."
I lifted my eyebrows at that, and looked again at Miss Stanleigh. Just
at that instant she happened to look up. It was a wholly indifferent
gaze; I am confident that she was no more aware of me than if I had been
one of the veranda posts which her eyes had chanced to encounter. But in
the indescribable sensation of that moment I felt that here was a woman
who bore a secret burden, although, as my informing host put it, her
heart had romantically found its haven only two weeks ago.
She was endeavoring to get trace of a man named Farquharson, as I was
permitted to learn a few days later. Ostensibly, it was Major Stanleigh
who was bent on locating this young Englishman--Miss Stanleigh's
interest in the quest was guardedly withheld--and the trail had led him
a pretty chase around the world until some clue, which I never clearly
understood, brought them to Port Charlotte. The major's immediate
objective was an eccentric chap named Leavitt who had marooned himself
in Muloa. The island offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning
his own kind, if he did not object to the close proximity of a restive
volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not. He had a scientific interest in the
phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions and was versed in geological
lore, but the rumors about Leavitt--practically no one ever visited
Muloa--did not stop at that. And, as Major Stanleigh and I were to
discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine affection for
Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of the
adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its whims
and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one lives with.
It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to
find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there was
something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names
for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The
Single-breasted Virgin"--these last, however, always in the musical
Malay equivalent. He had no end of names--romantic, splenetic, of
opprobrium, or outright endearment--to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's
varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me--they were of conflicting
genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's
loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his days and
disturbed his nights were hermaphroditic.
Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the world
he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue was right,
for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known Farquharson well
and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so. With the _Sylph_
at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and Leavitt gave us our
fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes,
neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt
to a coherent narrative about the missing Farquharson. He was incapable
of it, and Major Stanleigh and myself had simply to wait in patience
while Leavitt, delighted to have an audience, dumped out for us the
fantastic contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all.
He was always getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was
unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the
solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending
stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had
its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as
he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become
a little demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous
fumes exhaled by the smoking crater above his head. His mind smoked,
flickered, and flared like an unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking
gases, in which the oil had run low.
But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority,
for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa--a
period of about six months, it seemed--and there Farquharson had
contracted a tropic fever and died.
"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed with
satisfaction when the _Sylph_ was heading back to Port Charlotte. Muloa,
lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the water's edge,
had waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly turned back into the
forest, very likely to go clambering like a demented goat up the flanks
of his beloved volcano and to resume poking about in its steaming
fissures--an occupation of which he never tired.
"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?--the grave, Farquharson's
personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."
I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the _Sylph_ I had merely
undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back,
but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many
conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the
rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was from sharing
his real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor Stanleigh gave
me hers.
"My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this--a family
matter, you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we landed.
"I should like to present you to them before we leave Port Charlotte for
home."
But, as it turned out, it was Eleanor Stanleigh who presented herself,
coming upon me quite unexpectedly that night after our return while I
sat smoking in the shadowy garden of the Marine Hotel. I had dined with
the major, after he had explained that the ladies were worn out by the
heat and general developments of the day and had begged to be excused.
And I was frankly glad not to have to endure another discussion of the
deceased Farquharson, of which I was heartily tired after hearing little
else for the last three days. I could not help wondering how the verbose
and pompous major had paraphrased and condensed that inchoate mass of
biography and reminiscence into an orderly account for his wife and
niece. He had doubtless devoted the whole afternoon to it. Sitting under
the cool green of the lemon-trees, beneath a sky powdered with stars, I
reflected that I, at least, was done with Farquharson forever. But I was
not, for just then Eleanor Stanleigh appeared before me.
I was startled to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly
begging me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor. She sat down
also, her flame-colored hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the
darkness. She was the soul of directness and candor, and after a
thoughtful, searching look into my face she came to the point at once.
She wanted to hear about Farquharson--from me.
"Of course, my uncle has given me a very full account of what he learned
from Mr. Leavitt, and yet many things puzzle me--this Mr. Leavitt most
of all."
"A queer chap," I epitomized him. "Frankly, I don't quite make him out,
Miss Stanleigh--marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly
content to spend his days there."
"Is he so old?" she caught me up quickly.
"No, he isn't," I reflected. "Of course, it's difficult to judge ages
out here. The climate, you know. Leavitt's well under forty, I should
say. But that's a most unhealthy spot he has chosen to live in."
"Why does he stay there?"
I explained about the volcano. "You can have no idea what an obsession
it is with him. There isn't a square foot of its steaming, treacherous
surface that he hasn't been over, mapping new fissures, poking into old
lava-beds, delving into the crater itself on favorable days----"
"Isn't it dangerous?"
"In a way, yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes
unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to
obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to
spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides--just tamely
subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But
Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, half
strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his
feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows--a
narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any word of
caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific curiosity to
that extreme."
"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.
Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to
mine--almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candor, her warm
beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit
darkness--all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt
impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.
"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been down
on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole--a look
that is--well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the
earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science. You might
think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind. He
prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living creature. Queer,
yes; and he's impressive, too, with a sort of magnetic personality that
attracts and repels you violently at the same time. He's like a cake of
ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame. I can't describe him. When he
talks----"
"Does he talk about himself?"
I had to confess that he had told us practically not a word. He had
discussed everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a
fleer of cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely.
He had given us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from
the time the poor fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a
native craft. Talking about Farquharson was second only to his delight
in talking about volcanoes. And the result for me had been innumerable
vivid but confused impressions of the young Englishman who had by chance
invaded Leavitt's solitude and had lingered there, held by some
attraction, until he sickened and died. It was like a jumbled mosaic
put together again by inexpert hands.
"Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?"
"Quite the contrary," I answered. "But Major Stanleigh should know----"
"My uncle never met Mr. Farquharson."
I was fairly taken aback at that, and a silence fell between us. It was
impossible to divine the drift of her questions. It was as if some
profound mistrust weighed upon her and she was not so much seeking to
interrogate me as she was groping blindly for some chance word of mine
that might illuminate her doubts.
I looked at the girl in silent wonder, yes, and in admiration of her
bronze and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth--and I
thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love
simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It
was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle,
which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have
touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach,
and by the rarest of chances--her coming out to this remote corner of
the world. Lucky Joyce! I knew him slightly--a straightforward young
fellow, very simple and whole-souled, enthusiastically absorbed in
developing his rubber lands in Malduna.
Miss Stanleigh remained lost in thought while her fingers toyed with the
pendant of the chain that she wore. In the darkness I caught the glitter
of a small gold cross.
"Mr. Barnaby," she finally broke the silence, and paused. "I have
decided to tell you something. This Mr. Farquharson was my husband."
Again a silence fell, heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged
by the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed
incredible that in that fleeting instant she had spoken at all.
"I was young--and very foolish, I suppose."
With that confession, spoken with simple dignity, she broke off again.
Clearly, some knowledge of the past she deemed it necessary to impart to
me. If she halted over her words, it was rather to dismiss what was
irrelevant to the matter in hand, in which she sought my counsel.
"I did not see him for four years--did not wish to.... And he vanished
completely.... Four years!--just a welcome blank!"
Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her.
"But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always
dragging at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her hand
slipped from the gold cross on her breast and fell to the other in her
lap, which it clutched tightly. "Four years.... I tried to make myself
believe that he was gone forever--was dead. It was wicked of me."
My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words.
"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually
prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."
I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I
reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of
their first meeting and instant love.
"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it
all definitely settled at last."
"If I could only feel that it was!"
I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands
still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant
horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed
and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of
that distant flare.
"I want you to take me to that island--to-morrow."
"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may have
embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's
books and things--the material evidence of his having lived there----"
"And having died there?"
"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with
him----"
"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."
"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in a
sudden flash I understood. "But that's preposterous--impossible!"
I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rôle, tried to imagine
the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh
and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious
detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have
argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.
"I devoutly hope you are right," Miss Stanleigh was saying, with
deliberation. "But it is not preposterous, and it is not impossible--if
you had known Mr. Farquharson as I have."
It was a discreet confession. She wished me to understand--without the
necessity of words. My surmise was that she had met and married
Farquharson, whoever he was, under the spell of some momentary
infatuation, and that he had proved himself to be an unspeakable brute
whom she had speedily abandoned.
"I am determined to go to Muloa, Mr. Barnaby," she announced, with
decision. "I want you to make the arrangements, and with as much secrecy
as possible. I shall ask my aunt to go with me."