ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND
It goes without saying that I have a retentive memory. Of course I
depend very largely upon it for all the small details that Roger has
from time to time vouchsafed me in regard to his relations with
Margarita, or I could not very well be writing these idle memories,
but Roger was always a poor writer--that is to say, so far as comment
and amplification and variety of manner may be supposed to make a good
one. Witness the following letter, which I received in answer to my
plea for details of that strange night journey from New York to
Margarita's town. It left a gap in my story of which I never happened
to receive any account, and it seemed to me a fairly important gap,
though you will see that this was not Roger's view of it.
DEAR JERRY:
It is rather late in the day to ask me about that trip to
----. We hardly spoke for a long time, as I am sure I have
told you before--either of us. There was no berth to be had
for her and no drawing-room car on, so we rode all night in
the day coach with a rather mixed lot. I remember they
snored and it amused her. She wanted to wake them up and I
had to speak sharply to prevent her. The air got very bad
and I took her out on the platform for a while. I remember
there were any amount of stars and the moon out, too. You
know she never talked much. About one o'clock we got to
S---- and changed cars for a few minutes' wait.... I think
it was then that she asked me abruptly what I meant by a
"convent." She said it in French and I saw that she spoke
and understood the language, but only in a simple, childish
sort of way. I told her it was a big school. "What is that?"
she said.... There were a number of Italians on the train,
and they were chattering like magpies, but she paid no
attention to them, and I was sure she did not understand
them. At ---- we got out and I asked her if there would be
any livery stable open at that hour, for it was not more
than four o'clock. She did not know, of course, what a
livery stable was and told me that we must either go in a
boat or walk. So we walked. The sun rose while we were
walking. I think this is all you wanted.
There you have it! Could anything be simpler? "I remember there were
any amount of stars ... You know she never talked much."--Oh, Roger,
Roger! Must you always have the doing and I the telling? Even to this
day, though I would cut off this hand for you, I am jealous of you.
"The sun rose while we were walking"! Ah me, to walk with Margarita
through the dawn! She was the very dawn of life herself, untarnished,
unfatigued, unashamed. To me who have known her, other women are as
pictures in a gallery--lovely pictures, many of them, but a little
faded and fingermarked, somehow.
We shall have to take that walk for granted. I know that it consisted
of a quarter-mile of sleeping village, three quarters of a mile of
scattered houses, two miles of widely separated farms and then two
last miles of bayberry, salt meadow, coarse grass, rocky sand and
blue, inrolling seas. I know how the salty, strengthening air blew
Roger's lungs clean of the frightful murk of the car, how the strange,
stunted windrocked trees gave an odd, unreal air of Japan to that
bleak shore; I can half close my eyes now and lo, Atami and her
thundering, surf-swept beach broadens out before me, and the breakers
as they come pounding in, chase--not the withered, monkeylike old
priest who searches endlessly for something in the sea-weed, girding
his clean, faded robe above his bare sticks of legs--but Margarita and
me. The camphor trees lose their lacquered green and turn to
distant chestnut; the scarlet lily fades to a dull rose marsh flower;
the lines of the temple are only quaintly-eaved rocks and ledges, and
I am over seas again. I wonder if that is the reason I love this place
so? But there were no geyser baths there and I had no rheumatism then!
_Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe_--even the sciatic nerve, we will
hope.
[Illustration: THE TALL, GAUNT, SILENT WOMAN ... STRIDING THROUGH THE
PASTURES]
Well, then, after they had made what Roger with his usual accuracy in
such matters took for nearly five miles, it occurred to him to ask
Margarita how it was that she knew her way so well, for she went
through pastures, broken walls, here and there a bit of the country
road, with the air of long practice. At first she would not tell him.
I can imagine that slanting school-boy look, that quietly malicious
indrawing of the corners of the mouth: the most enchanting obstinacy
conceivable. They were following at the time a narrow beaten path,
perhaps a cattle track, but that was not her guide, for often such a
path curved and returned aimlessly on itself or branched off quite
widely from the direction she took. At first, as I say, she was deaf
to his question, but when he repeated it, patiently, I have no doubt,
but evidently determined upon an answer, she yielded, as we all yield
to Roger in the end, and confessed that she had once followed Hester
to the village and back by this road. Hester had never guessed it,
never in fact turned her back when once started, and it had been easy
to keep her in sight. At the edge of the town Margarita had felt a
little shy and apprehensive of her fate if discovered, so she had sat
by the wood-side till Hester appeared again and followed her meekly
home.
Since then I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's appearance
from various sources, and I own that the situation has always seemed
to me picturesque in the extreme: the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her
severe, dull dress striding through the pastures, and behind her,
stealthily as an Indian--or an Italian avenger--the dark, lovely
child, now crouching amongst the bayberry, now defiantly erect, but
always graceful as a panther, her hair loose on her slender
shoulders. I cannot forbear to add that in this picture of mine, a
great vivid letter burns on the woman's breast, inseparable from her
name, of course. But this only adds to the sombre power of the
picture. It is a thing for Vedder to paint, in witchlike browns and
greys.
Margarita had never made this journey but once, but she followed her
old trail with the precision of a savage. I myself have gone that way
once only: and then but half of the distance, or a little less. It was
not in bayberry time, but through a land smooth and blue-white with
snow and with a terror pulling my heart out that I am sure I could
never endure again. How we flew over the snow! It was all a ghastly
glare, a dancing sun in a turquoise sky ... No, no, one does not live
through such things twice and I hate even the memory of it. Even with
the boiling geyser rumbling behind me, filling the baths with comfort
and oblivion, I shiver to my very marrow.
After they had followed a certain marshy band of vivid green for
several pasture-lengths, Margarita shook her head slightly, retraced
her steps and stopped at a point where three or four great flat stones
made a sort of causeway across the glistening, muddy strip, and Roger,
following her as she jumped lightly over, saw that they stood upon a
little rocky promontory joined only by this strange bit of marsh to
the mainland. The strip was here not a hundred feet wide, and winding
in on either side of this two little inlets crept sluggishly along and
lost themselves in the marsh. The promontory was there very barren and
it seemed to Roger that the girl was going to lead him out into the
shallow cove that faced them, but a few more steps showed him that
just here the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far
inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of meadow-hay
dotted with sparse, stunted cedars.
Directly before him lay a wet, shining beach, for the tide was half
gone, and a hundred yards out, the tops of what might almost have
been a built wall of nasty pointed rocks formed a perfect lagoon
across the face of the promontory. At high tide these would not show,
but they were there, always guarding, always bare-toothed, and as far
again beyond them a bell-buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to
point to the existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome
bay of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side
desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly,
as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long,
quavering bellow came from behind him.
"It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled around,
"she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose."
Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and Roger perceived
that what he had carelessly passed over as a great sand dune was in
reality a square cottage built of sand, apparently, for it was
precisely the colour and texture of sand, sloping off in a succession
of outbuildings, just as the cliffs and dunes slope, windowless,
nearly, from that side at least, and offering only the anxious cow,
peering from the furthest outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to
it on one side, the right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up
and ran like a wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the
sand of the beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was
perched on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the
straggling grass began. They moved on toward this house, then, and as
they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the cow's lament, a howl
with a baying, mellow undertone that lingered on the morning air. For
it was honest morning now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes
and sea sand and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the
house a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying
monotonously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her,
arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beautifully brindled
and very massive. She fondled him quietly, smiling as he clumsily
threw his great paws about her waist, and pushed him down.
"I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think I will have
Caliban bring me some warm milk."
She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow stall, and as
he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the internal structure of
the building might be, it was certainly covered with rough sand.
"Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking fellow,
small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared to rise out of the
ground before them, dangling a milk pail on his arm. At sight of
Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to
faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to
approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded
as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and
began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while.
Plainly he had thought her gone for good and this was his
thanksgiving.
"Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita impatiently,
after a moment of this, "and get me some bread. Make haste with it."
He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow stall and
appeared almost immediately with a large silver mug and a huge piece
torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the cow he balanced the mug between
his knees and deftly milked it full. She seized it, drained it
thirstily and began munching her bread, holding the mug out to him
again to be filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the
loaf, like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused, half
irritated.
"You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality, I see," he
said finally, and as she looked at him over the silver mug
inquiringly, he explained.
"I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry, too, Miss
Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me anything to eat and drink?"
She shook her head doubtfully.
"I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks from this cup
but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will get you another ..."
"Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested mildly.
"Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has finished
milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding, "I do not think
he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did that when the doctor came
to see my father."
I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for me how she
first entertained Roger: I had already a good idea of his initial
hospitality to her in the French restaurant. Here is her letter.
DEAREST JERRY:
What an odd thing to ask me to tell you--my first
hospitality to Roger! But I remember it very well. Only it
was not very hospitable, because, of course, I did not know
anything about that sort of thing. One has to learn that,
like finger bowls and asking people if they slept well. You
know I called for some bread and milk and ate them very
greedily, standing by the cow so that I could get more when
I should want it. By the time I had finished, Caliban had
finished milking and then Roger asked me quite politely if I
thought he might have something to eat now. You know, dear
Jerry, I had never been used to eating with people. All the
people I knew ate their meals separately and it never
occurred to me that I ought to be there when he ate. And
then, I was so sleepy--oh, so sleepy! You know I have always
felt sleepy and hungry and angry and things like that so
much more than other people seem to. I have to sleep and eat
when I feel like sleeping and eating. So I only said, "You
had better ask Hester to get you a breakfast. I must go to
sleep now," and flung myself down on some fresh hay just
beside the cow stall, in the sun, and went to sleep! Was not
that a dreadful thing to do? But I did it. I do not know how
long I slept, nor how Roger looked when I turned my back on
him, but when I opened my eyes he was sitting beside me,
smoking a cigar and staring at me. He had been there all the
time.
"Did Hester get you a breakfast?" I asked him, stretching
myself like a big baby.
"I have not asked her," he said very quietly, "suppose we go
in now and see about it, if you are rested."
So we went in, but Hester was not in the kitchen, and when I
went up to her room and knocked there was no answer, so I
supposed she had gone out for the roots and herbs she used
to hunt so much.
"You will have to get it yourself," I told him, "unless
Caliban will."
"Are you not willing to do that much for me, then?" he said,
and I felt very strange, though I could not explain why. I
think now it was because I began to understand that I ought
to have done something I had not.
"I would get it for you if I could," I said, "but _I_ do not
know how to make a breakfast, nor where Hester keeps her
things. Why do you not ask Caliban?"
So then he asked Caliban if he could manage some breakfast
for him, but Caliban only stared and walked away.
"Does he understand?" Roger asked me, and I felt that his
voice was not the same as it had been.
"I am sure he does," I said. "Will you not do as this man
asks you, Caliban?" But he only scowled and turned away.
"You see," I said, "there is nothing to be done until Hester
comes." But Roger shook his head and walked over to Caliban.
I am sure he knew it was not that I grudged him food, but
that I had no idea at all of how to set about getting it
ready. People always have known that what I say is truth,
though much of what I say seems to surprise them.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will try a slightly
different method," and I knew he was very angry. He lifted
Caliban in the air by the collar of his coat and gave him
several sharp blows on each ear and shook him. Then he threw
him away on the floor. Caliban cried like a young dog and
sat upon his knees and covered his face. He meant for Roger
to excuse him. I was surprised, for I had always been a
little afraid of Caliban.
"Get up," said Roger, very quietly, "and make me some coffee
and whatever else you have. And see that you obey me in
future."
Caliban hurried about and looked here and there and made
some coffee and broke eggs in a black pan and cut pieces of
bacon. He set a place at the kitchen table and made some
biscuits warm in the oven. Roger ate five eggs and a great
many pieces of bacon and six biscuits. He gave me some
coffee. When he had finished he drew a long breath and gave
Caliban a piece of silver money and Caliban kissed it. Then
Roger took another cigar and told Caliban to fetch a match
and then he asked me if I would like to walk by the sea for
a little.
"I ought to find this Hester of yours," he said, "but I
won't just yet. I am too comfortable. Will you come out with
me?"
So I said I would, and that was all my hospitality, dear
Jerry. I had learned better when you came, had I not? This
letter has been so long that I cannot write any more.
Your MARGARITA.
My Margarita! The very words are not like any other two words. I think
no woman's name is so purely sweet to the ear, so grateful on the
tongue. My Margarita! Alas, alas....
As to that walk by the sea, I have never been able to get any
satisfactory account of it. Any, that is, which could hope to prove
satisfactory to one who did not know Roger. Such an one might be
incredulous, in face of all that had gone before, when assured that
Roger paced back and forth on the firm sand, filling his lungs in the
clean sea air, puffing his cigar in perfect silence, Margarita at his
heels as silent as he, and the big Danish hound at hers, more silent
than either. But so it was. To me who know them both, nothing could
seem more natural. They were healthy, well-poised animals, well fed,
supplied with plenty of fresh air (a prime necessity to them both)
and in congenial company. Neither of them was given to consideration
of the past or prognostication of the future; both of them were
content. Roger has always had that priceless faculty of reserving
mental processes, apparently, until they are necessary. When they are
not, he lays them by, as a sportsman lays by his gun, and the teasing,
relentless imps that poison the rest of us with futile regrets for the
past and vain hopes for the future avoid him utterly. It is the pure
Anglo Saxon corner-stone of that great, slow wall which I firmly
believe is destined to encircle the world, one day. Your slender,
brown peoples with their throbbing, restless brains and curious,
trembling fingers may--and doubtless will--build the cathedrals and
paint the frescoes therein and write the songs to be sung there; but
they must hold their land from Roger and his kind and look to him to
guard them safe and unmolested there. Or so it seems to me.
After an hour or so of this walking Caliban approached them, and
bending humbly before Roger made it clear that he greatly desired
their presence at the cottage. They went after him, Margarita
incurious because she was utterly indifferent, Roger wasting no
energy, of course, with no facts to proceed upon. At the kitchen he
endeavoured to lead them up the narrow stair, and then Margarita asked
him if anything was wrong with Hester and if she had sent him.
He nodded his head violently and led her up the stair. In a few
moments she returned.
"Hester," she said composedly, "is dead."
"Dead?" Roger echoed in consternation, "are you certain?"
"Oh, yes," she replied, "she is cold, just like my father. She is
sitting in her chair. Her eyes are open and she is dead."
Roger stared thoughtfully ahead of him. He never doubted her for a
moment. It was always impossible to doubt Margarita.
"I wonder if Caliban will make my breakfast, now?" she added, with a
shadow of concern in her voice. "I think he puts more coffee in the
pot: I shall be glad of that."
"For heaven's sake," Roger cried sharply, "are you human, child? This
woman, if I understand you, has taken care of you from babyhood!"
"Of course," said Margarita, "but I do not like her and she does not
like me. She liked my father."
It may seem strange to you that Roger did not immediately ascend the
stair and confirm Margarita's report, but he did not. Instead he spoke
to Caliban.
"Is the woman dead?" he asked shortly.
The clumsy, slow-witted youth nodded his head and sobbed noisily, with
strange animal-like grunts and gulps.
"Has she been dead long, do you think?" Roger asked.
Caliban raised his hand and checked off the five fingers slowly. It
was understood that he indicated so many hours. He placed his hand
upon his heart, then shook his head from side to side. Suddenly he
shifted his features unbelievably and Roger gazed horrified upon a
very mask of death: there was no doubt as to what Caliban had seen.
This being so Roger thought a moment and then spoke.
"I am very sleepy, Margarita," he said, "and I don't care to walk back
to the village directly, since it would do no especial good. I think I
will take a little nap on the beach, if you don't mind, and then I'll
go to the village and get help to--to do the various things that must
be done. Later I will have a talk with you. Tell me once again--you do
not know of any friends or relatives of your father's or Hester's?"
She shook her head, carelessly but definitely.
"Does Caliban?"
But this question was beyond the poor lout's intelligence; he could
only blubber and fend off possible chastisement.
"Take another nap, if you can, Margarita," said Roger, "and I will go
to the beach. Call me if you want me."
She went off to her warm straw, threw herself on it like a tired
child, and passed quickly into a deep sleep; he tramped for a moment
on the beach, then stretched himself in the lee of a sun-warmed rock
and fell into the dreamless, renewing rest that he took as his simple
due from nature.