He advanced more slowly, and a low, irregular house detached itself
from the tangled growth pressing upon it from all sides. The doorway,
dimly lighted by an invisible lamp from within, was now near by; and
John Woolfolk saw a shape cross it, so swiftly furtive that it was
gone before he realized that a man had vanished into the hall. There
was a second stir on the small covered portico, and the slender,
white-clad figure of a woman moved uncertainly forward. He stopped
just at the moment in which a low, clear voice demanded: "What do you
want?"
The question was directly put, and yet the tone held an inexplicably
acute apprehension. The woman's voice bore a delicate, bell-like
shiver of fear.
"Nothing," he hastened to assure her. "When I came ashore I thought no
one was living here."
"You're from the white boat that sailed in at sunset?"
"Yes," he replied, "and I am returning immediately."
"It was like magic!" she continued. "Suddenly, without a sound, you
were anchored in the bay." Even this quiet statement bore the shadowy
alarm. John Woolfolk realized that it had not been caused by his
abrupt appearance; the faint accent of dread was fixed in the illusive
form before him.
"I have robbed you too," he continued in a lighter tone. "Your oranges
are in my pocket."
"You won't like them," she returned indirectly; "they've run wild. We
can't sell them."
"They have a distinct flavor of their own," he assured her. "I should
be glad to have some on the _Gar_."
"All you want."
"My man will get them and pay you."
"Please don't----" She stopped abruptly, as if a sudden consideration
had interrupted a liberal courtesy. When she spoke again the
apprehension, Woolfolk thought, had increased to palpable fright. "We
would charge you very little," she said finally. "Nicholas attends to
that."
Silence fell upon them. She stood with her hand resting lightly
against an upright support, coldly revealed by the moon. John
Woolfolk saw that, although slight, her body was delicately full,
and that her shoulders held a droop which somehow resembled the
shadow on her voice. She bore an unmistakable refinement of being,
strange in that locality of meager humanity. Her speech totally lacked
the unintelligible, loose slurring of the natives.
"Won't you sit down," she at last broke the silence. "My father was
here when you came up, but he went in. Strangers disturb him."
Woolfolk moved to the portico, elevated above the ground, where he
found a momentary place. The woman sank back into a low chair. The
stillness gathered about them once more, and he mechanically rolled a
cigarette. Her white dress, although simply and rudely made, gained
distinction from her free, graceful lines; her feet, in black,
heelless slippers, were narrow and sharply cut. He saw that her
countenance bore an even pallor on which her eyes made shadows like
those on marble.
These details, unremarkable in themselves, were charged with a
peculiar intensity. John Woolfolk, who long ago had put such
considerations from his existence, was yet clearly conscious of the
disturbing quality of her person. She possessed the indefinable
property of charm. Such women, he knew, stirred life profoundly,
reanimating it with extraordinary efforts and desires. Their mere
passage, the pressure of their fingers, were more imperative than the
life service of others; the flutter of their breath could be more
tyrannical that the most poignant memories and vows.
John Woolfolk thought these things in a manner absolutely detached.
They touched him at no point. Nevertheless, the faint curiosity
stirred within him remained. The house unexpectedly inhabited behind
the ruined façade on the water, the magnetic woman with the echo of
apprehension in her cultivated voice, the parent, so easily disturbed,
even the mere name "Nicholas," all held a marked potentiality of
emotion; they were set in an almost hysterical key.
He was suddenly conscious of the odorous pressure of the flowering
trees, of the orange blossoms and the oleanders. It was stifling. He
felt that he must escape at once, from all the cloying and insidious
scents of the earth, to the open and sterile sea. The thick tangle in
the colorless light of the moon, the dimmer portico with its enigmatic
figure, were a cunning essence of the existence from which he had
fled. Life's traps were set with just such treacheries--perfume and
mystery and the veiled lure of sex.
He rose with an uncouth abruptness, a meager commonplace, and hurried
over the path to the beach, toward the refuge, the release, of the
_Gar_.
John Woolfolk woke at dawn. A thin, bluish light filled the cabin;
above, Halvard was washing the deck. The latter was vigorously
swabbing the cockpit when Woolfolk appeared, but he paused.
"Perhaps," the sailor said, "you will stay here for a day or two. I'd
like to unship the propeller, and there's the scraping. It's a good
anchorage."
"We're moving on south," Woolfolk replied, stating the determination
with which he had retired. Then the full sense of Halvard's words
penetrated his waking mind. The propeller, he knew, had not opened
properly for a week; and the anchorage was undoubtedly good. This was
the last place, before entering the Florida passes, for whatever minor
adjustments were necessary.
The matted shore, flushed with the rising sun, was starred with white
and deep pink blooms; a ray gilded the blank wall of the deserted
mansion. The scent of the orange blossoms was not so insistent as it
had been on the previous evening. The land appeared normal; it
exhibited none of the disturbing influence of which he had been first
conscious. Last night's mood seemed absurd.
"You are quite right," he altered his pronouncement; "we'll put the
_Gar_ in order here. People are living behind the grove, and there'll
be water."
He had, for breakfast, oranges brought down the coast, and he was
surprised at their sudden insipidity. They were little better than
faintly sweetened water. He turned and in the pocket of his flannel
coat found one of those he had picked the night before. It was as keen
as a knife; the peculiar aroma had, without doubt, robbed him of all
desire for the cultivated oranges of commerce.
Halvard was in the tender, under the stern of the ketch, when it
occurred to John Woolfolk that it would be wise to go ashore and
establish his assertion of an adequate water supply. He explained this
briefly to the sailor, who put him on the small shingle of sand. There
he turned to the right, moving idly in a direction away from that he
had taken before.
He crossed the corner of the demolished abode, made his way through a
press of sere cabbage palmettos, and emerged suddenly on the blinding
expanse of the sea. The limpid water lay in a bright rim over
corrugated and pitted rock, where shallow ultramarine pools spread
gardens of sulphur-yellow and rose anemones. The land curved in upon
the left; a ruined landing extended over the placid tide, and, seated
there with her back toward him, a woman was fishing.
It was, he saw immediately, the woman of the portico. At the moment of
recognition she turned, and after a brief inspection, slowly waved her
hand. He approached, crossing the openings in the precarious boarding
of the landing, until he stood over her. She said:
"There's an old sheepshead under here I've been after for a year. If
you'll be very still you can see him."
She turned her face up to him, and he saw that her cheeks were without
trace of color. At the same time he reaffirmed all that he felt before
with regard to the potent quality of her being. She had a lustrous
mass of warm brown hair twisted into a loose knot that had slid
forward over a broad, low brow; a pointed chin; and pale, disturbing
lips. But her eyes were her most notable feature--they were widely
opened and extraordinary in color; the only similitude that occurred
to John Woolfolk was the grey greenness of olive leaves. In them he
felt the same foreboding that had shadowed her voice. The fleet
passage of her gaze left an indelible impression of an expectancy that
was at once a dread and a strangely youthful candor. She was, he
thought, about thirty.
She wore now a russet skirt of thin, coarse texture that, like the
dress of the evening, took a slim grace from her fine body, and a
white waist, frayed from many washings, open upon her smooth, round
throat.
"He's usually by this post," she continued, pointing down through the
clear gloom of the water.
Woolfolk lowered himself to a position at her side, his gaze following
her direction. There, after a moment, he distinguished the sheepshead,
barred in black and white, wavering about the piling. His companion
was fishing with a short, heavy rod from which time had dissolved the
varnish, an ineffectual brass reel that complained shrilly whenever
the lead was raised or lowered, and a thick, freely-knotted line.
"You should have a leader," he told her. "The old gentleman can see
your line too plainly."
There was a sharp pull, she rapidly turned the handle of the
protesting reel, and drew up a gasping, bony fish with extended red
wings.
"Another robin!" she cried tragically. "This is getting serious.
Dinner," she informed him, "and not sport, is my object."
He looked out to where a channel made a deep blue stain through the
paler cerulean of the sea. The tide, he saw from the piling, was low.
"There should be a rockfish in the pass," he pronounced.
"What good if there is?" she returned. "I couldn't possibly throw out
there. And if I could, why disturb a rock with this?" She shook the
short awkward rod, the knotted line.
He privately acknowledged the palpable truth of her objections, and
rose.
"I've some fishing things on the ketch," he said, moving away. He blew
shrilly on a whistle from the beach, and Halvard dropped over the
_Gar's_ side into the tender.
Woolfolk was soon back on the wharf, stripping the canvas cover from
the long cane tip of a fishing rod brilliantly wound with green and
vermilion, and fitting it into a dark, silver-capped butt. He locked a
capacious reel into place, and, drawing a thin line through agate
guides, attached a glistening steel leader and chained hook. Then,
adding a freely swinging lead, he picked up the small mullet that lay
by his companion.
"Does that have to go?" she demanded. "It's such a slim chance, and it
is my only mullet."
He ruthlessly sliced a piece from the silvery side; and, rising and
switching his reel's gear, he cast. The lead swung far out across the
water and fell on the farther side of the channel.
"But that's dazzling!" she exclaimed; "as though you had shot it out
of a gun."
He tightened the line, and sat with the rod resting in a leather
socket fastened to his belt.
"Now," she stated, "we will watch at the vain sacrifice of an only
mullet."
The day was superb, the sky sparkled like a great blue sun; schools of
young mangrove snappers swept through the pellucid water. The woman
said:
"Where did you come from and where are you going?"
"Cape Cod," he replied; "and I am going to the Guianas."
"Isn't that South America?" she queried. "I've traveled far--on maps.
Guiana," she repeated the name softly. For a moment the faint dread in
her voice changed to longing. "I think I know all the beautiful names
of places on the earth," she continued: "Tarragona and Seriphos and
Cambodia."
"Some of them you have seen?"
"None," she answered simply. "I was born here, in the house you know,
and I have never been fifty miles away."
This, he told himself, was incredible. The mystery that surrounded her
deepened, stirring more strongly his impersonal curiosity.
"You are surprised," she added; "it's mad, but true. There--there is a
reason." She stopped abruptly, and, neglecting her fishing rod, sat
with her hands clasped about slim knees. She gazed at him slowly, and
he was impressed once more by the remarkable quality of her eyes,
grey-green like olive leaves and strangely young. The momentary
interest created in her by romantic and far names faded, gave place to
the familiar trace of fear. In the long past he would have responded
immediately to the appeal of her pale, magnetic countenance.... He had
broken all connection with society, with----
There was a sudden, impressive jerk at his line, the rod instantly
assumed the shape of a bent bow, and, as he rose, the reel spindle was
lost in a grey blur and the line streaked out through the dipping tip.
His companion hung breathless at his shoulder.
"He'll take all your line," she lamented as the fish continued his
straight, outward course, while Woolfolk kept an even pressure on the
rod.
"A hundred yards," he announced as he felt a threaded mark wheel
from under his thumb. Then: "A hundred and fifty. I'm afraid it's a
shark." As he spoke the fish leaped clear of the water, a spot of
molten silver, and fell back in a sparkling blue spray. "It's a
rock," he added. He stopped the run momentarily; the rod bent
perilously double, but the fish halted. Woolfolk reeled in smoothly,
but another rush followed, as strong as the first. A long, equal
struggle ensued, the thin line was drawn as rigid as metal, the rod
quivered and arched. Once the rockfish was close enough to be
clearly distinguishable--strongly built, heavy-shouldered, with
black stripes drawn from gills to tail. But he was off again with
a short, blundering rush.
"If you will hold the rod," Woolfolk directed his companion, "I'll
gaff him." She took the rod while he bent over the wharf's side. The
fish, on the surface of the water, half turned; and, striking the gaff
through a gill, Woolfolk swung him up on the boarding.
"There," he pronounced, "are several dinners. I'll carry him to your
kitchen."
"Nicholas would do it, but he's away," she told him; "and my father is
not strong enough. That's a leviathan."
John Woolfolk placed a handle through the rockfish's gills, and,
carrying it with an obvious effort, he followed her over a narrow,
trampled path through the rasped palmettos. They approached the
dwelling from behind the orange grove; and, coming suddenly to the
porch, surprised an incredibly thin, grey man in the act of lighting a
small stone pipe with a reed stem. He was sitting, but, seeing
Woolfolk, he started sharply to his feet, and the pipe fell,
shattering the bowl.
"My father," the woman pronounced: "Lichfield Stope."
"Millie," he stuttered painfully, "you know--I--strangers--"
John Woolfolk thought, as he presented himself, that he had never
before seen such an immaterial living figure. Lichfield Stope was like
the shadow of a man draped with unsubstantial, dusty linen. Into his
waxen face beat a pale infusion of blood, as if a diluted wine had
been poured into a semi-opaque goblet; his sunken lips puffed out and
collapsed; his fingers, dust-colored like his garb, opened and shut
with a rapid, mechanical rigidity.
"Father," Millie Stope remonstrated, "you must manage yourself better.
You know I wouldn't bring any one to the house who would hurt us. And
see--we are fetching you a splendid rockfish."
The older man made a convulsive effort to regain his composure.
"Ah, yes," he muttered; "just so."
The flush receded from his indeterminate countenance. Woolfolk saw
that he had a goatee laid like a wasted yellow finger on his chin, and
that his hands hung on wrists like twisted copper wires from circular
cuffs fastened with large mosaic buttons.
"We are alone here," he proceeded in a fluctuating voice, the voice of
a shadow; "the man is away. My daughter--I----" He grew inaudible,
although his lips maintained a faint movement.
The fear that lurked illusively in the daughter was in the parent
magnified to an appalling panic, an instinctive, acute agony that had
crushed everything but a thin, tormented spark of life. He passed his
hand over a brow as dry as the spongy limbs of the cypress, brushing a
scant lock like dead, bleached moss.
"The fish," he pronounced; "yes ... acceptable."
"If you will carry it back for me," Millie Stope requested; "we have
no ice; I must put it in water." He followed her about a bay window
with ornamental fretting that bore the shreds of old, variegated
paint. He could see, amid an incongruous wreckage within, a dismantled
billiard table, its torn cloth faintly green beneath a film of dust.
They turned and arrived at the kitchen door. "There, please." She
indicated a bench on the outside wall, and he deposited his burden.
"You have been very nice," she told him, making her phrase less
commonplace by a glance of her wide, appealing eyes. "Now, I suppose,
you will go on across the world?"
"Not tonight," he replied distantly.
"Perhaps, then, you will come ashore again. We see so few people. My
father would be benefited. It was only at first, so suddenly--he was
startled."
"There is a great deal to do on the ketch," he replied indirectly,
maintaining his retreat from the slightest advance of life. "I came
ashore to discover if you had a large water supply and if I might fill
my casks."
"Rain water," she informed him; "the cistern is full."
"Then I'll send Halvard to you." He withdrew a step, but paused at the
incivility of his leaving.
A sudden weariness had settled over the shoulders of Millie Stope; she
appeared young and very white. Woolfolk was acutely conscious of her
utter isolation with the shivering figure on the porch, the
unmaterialized Nicholas. She had delicate hands.
"Good-by," he said, bowing formally. "And thank you for the fishing."
He whistled sharply for the tender.