FATE CASTS HER DIE
When he woke it was full sunset. The lonely reefs were red with it, (O
Margarita, well I know that hour! Do you remember our talks?) the
point of land seemed drowned in it, and with a sense of something
inexcusably forgotten and put off, Roger hurried to the house that
stood strangely deserted, it seemed, in the dying glow. In just that
glow I have watched it, leaning on my oars, and for a few strange
minutes, the exact time necessary for the sun to drop behind the
coast-hills, I have felt myself a small boy again, crouched in a cane
chair before my mother's sewing-table, unable for very terror to drop
my feet to the floor as I gazed through wide eyes at the House of
Usher, that home of sunset mystery. Such a strange, Poe-like
atmosphere could that sanded, secret cottage take upon itself.
Roger pushed rapidly up the beach and entered the house quietly, so
quietly that he caught Margarita's last sentences, which struck him as
odd even in his utter ignorance of their connection. She was evidently
scolding Caliban, for his grunts and shufflings punctuated her pauses.
"It is very saucy and unkind of you, Caliban," she was saying, "and
you need not think you can do as you like because Hester is dead. I
know she can not walk any more. My father could not walk when he was
dead. And you need not think that Roger Bradley will not ask, because
he will. He knows everything."
Roger thought that the lout had been teasing her with stupid ghost
hints and bade him begone sternly, more vexed than before as he
noticed the dim twilight drawing in and realised how late and
inconvenient the hour was for all he had to do.
"Can you get me a lantern, Margarita?" he said shortly. "I must get
back to the village and try to bring someone out with me to see about
the--all the matters that must be attended to--upstairs."
"Upstairs?" she repeated, "what matters?" He blessed her indifference
then, and explained as gently as he could the necessity for some
disposition of her old housekeeper's body.
"Oh! Hester," she returned, "you cannot do anything to Hester, Roger
Bradley, for she has gone."
"Gone," he echoed stupidly.
"Go and see," said Margarita, pointing to the stairway, and he took
the steps two at a time. The room that she indicated faced the stairs
directly. It was furnished plainly with an ugly wooden bed covered
with a bright patchwork quilt, a pine bureau and two cheap chairs. The
walls were utterly bare and the floor, but for a woven rug near the
bed, of the sort so common in New England. And yet there was an air of
homely occupation in the plain chamber, a bright, patched cushion in
one chair, a basket full of household mending and such matters, on a
small table, a pair of spectacles and a worn Bible beside it. The room
had that unmistakable air of recent occupation, that subtle atmosphere
of use and wont that no art can simulate--and yet it was empty.
Roger came down the stairs again and summoned Caliban. The fellow lay
in a deep sleep, just as he had thrown himself, on the straw beside
the cow stall, a full pail of milk beside him. It was hard to wake
him, for he scowled and snored and dropped heavily off again after
each shaking, but at last he stood conscious before them and appeared
to understand Roger's sharp questions well enough, though his only
answer was a clumsy twist of his large head and a dismal negative sort
of grunt.
Where was Hester's body? Was she really dead? Had anyone been in the
house? What had he been doing all the afternoon? One might as well
have asked the great hound in the doorway. Even to threats of violence
he was dumb, cowering, it is true, but hopelessly and with no attempt
to escape whatever penalty his obstinacy might incur.
Roger fell into a perplexed silence and the lout dropped back snoring
on his straw.
"I do not see why we came back from Broadway," Margarita observed
placidly. "I did not want to, you remember, and now Caliban is too
sleepy to get our supper. We shall have to have more bread and milk.
Let us eat it on the rocks, Roger Bradley, will you?"
And Roger, in spite of the fact that he was forty and a conspicuously
practical person (or was it, perhaps just _because_ of this fact? I
confess I am not quite sure!) actually left that house of mystery
carrying a yellow earthen pitcher of milk, a crusty loaf of new bread,
a great slice of sage cheese and a blueberry pie, followed by
Margarita and the Danish hound, Margarita prattling of Broadway, the
dog licking her hand, Roger, I have no sort of doubt, intent on
conveying the food in good order to its destination!
They sat on the rocks, warm yet with the September sun, and ate with a
healthy relish, while the first pale stars came out and the incoming
tide lapped the smooth beach. I have been assured that they never in
the conversation that followed mentioned the island--though it was not
then an island, to be sure--that they were sitting upon, nor the
extraordinary events which had happened there and had brought them to
it. And I believe it. I also believe, and do not need to be assured,
that they talked little of anything. They never did. Again and again I
have imparted to Roger some or other of Margarita's amazing
conversations with me and he has listened to them with the grave
interest of a stranger and even questioned me indolently as to my
theory of that stage of her development. I must add that he has never
seemed surprised at what she said and has occasionally corrected me in
my analyses and prophecies with an acuteness that has astonished me,
for he was never by way of being analytic, our Roger. When I once
remarked to Clarence King (who was devoted to her) apropos of this
silence of theirs that it was like the quiet intimacy of the animals,
he looked at me deeply for a moment, then added, "Or the angels,
maybe?" which, like most of King's remarks, bears thinking of, dear
fellow. I never heard him in my life talk so brilliantly as he did one
afternoon stretched on the sand by Margarita, while she fed him wild
strawberries from her lap and embroidered the most beautiful butterfly
on the lapel of his old velveteen jacket, and Roger tried to ride in
on the breakers like the South Sea Islanders.
From time to time Clarence would turn one of those luminous sentences
of his and kiss the stained finger tips that fed him (I never did that
in my life) and from time to time Roger's splendid tanned body would
rise between us and the sun, triumphant on his board or ignominiously
flat between the great combers. But he was as calm as the tide and we
knew that he would beat it in the end and "get the hang of it" as he
promised. She never turned her eyes toward him, that I could see, but
I am convinced that she was perfectly aware each time he fell. She
never talked much to King and he was always a little jealous of me on
that account. But she was very fond of him and always wrote to him
when he was off on his ramblings. His letters to her were always in
rhyme, the cleverest possible.
There are, of course, whole pages to be written--if one wanted to
write them--of that night on the rocks. I naturally don't want to
write them. To say that I have not imagined them would be a stupid
lie; I am human. But I have never been able to bring myself to the
point of view of the modern lady novelist in these matters. Why is it,
by the way, that God has hidden so many things in these latter days
from the prudent and revealed them unto spinsters?
Not that I need to rely on my imagination: Margarita would have saved
me that. Once she got the idea that I was interested in those early
days, she was perfectly willing to draw upon her extraordinary memory
for all the details I could endure. But of course I could not let her.
The darling imbecile--could anything have been so hopelessly
enchanting as Margarita? It is impossible. If you can picture to
yourself a boy--but that is misleading, directly, when I think of her
curled close against me on the rocks, her hand on my arm and all my
veins tingling under it. She was all woman. And yet who but me who
knew her can ever have heard from the lips of any woman such absolute
naivete, such crystal frankness? It was like those dear talks with
some lovely, loved and loving child. But that, again, gives you no
proper idea. For no child's throat sounds such deep, bell-like tones,
such sweet, swooping cadences. And no child's eyes meet yours with
that clear beam, only to soften and tremble and swim suddenly with
such alluring tenderness that your heart shakes in you and slips out
to drown contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no
describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it when he said
that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of humour! But Eve is
distinctly Miltonian to us (unfortunately for the poor woman) and
Margarita would have horrified Milton--there is no doubt of it.
Well, well, I left them on the moonlit rocks, and there I had better
leave them, I suppose. It is so hard for me to make you understand
that Roger was incapable of anything low, when I am apparently doing
my best to catalogue actions that can be set only too easily in an
extremely doubtful light. All I can say is, pick out the best fellow
you know, the one you'd rather have to count on, at a pinch, than
another, the one you'd swear to for doing the straight thing and
holding his tongue about it--then give him five feet eleven and a half
inches and blue eyes and you've Roger. This is rather a poor dodge at
character drawing: I know a competent author would never throw
himself on your mercy so.
But then, what does it matter? When the members of a man's own
household, who have known him from boyhood, fail to understand him and
take a satiric pleasure in looking at what he does from the nastiest
possible standpoint (none the less nasty because it is a logically
possible standpoint) why should I, a confessed amateur, hope to make
Roger clear to you if you are determined to misjudge him?
I find myself still a little sore on this point: unnecessarily so, you
may be thinking. But you never had to explain it to the family in
Boston, you see--and Sarah. I had. I can see her cold, grey-green eyes
to this hour, her white starched shirt and her sharp steel belt
buckle--ugh! It should be illegal, in a Republic where there are so
many less sensible laws, for any woman to be so ostentatiously
unattractive....
"Margarita," I said once, very soon after I had met her, "were you
ever caught by the tide on those first rocks? See how it has crept up
and cut them off."
"Oh yes, often," she answered, "the first night Roger ever came here,
for once. Do you not remember, I told you how he carried the blueberry
pie and the milk out there and we ate them? He was so hungry! It was
then that he looked at me so----"
"Blueberry pie," I said hastily, "is very messy, I think, though
undoubtedly good. It makes one's mouth so black."
"I know," she murmured reminiscently, "I told Roger that his mouth was
stained and I laughed at him. And then he said that mine was worse,
because there was some on my chin--why do you scowl so, Jerry? Is that
a wrong thing to tell?"
"No, no," I assured her, "of course not."
"I am glad," she said comfortably, "it is very strange that I cannot
see the difference, myself. How do you see, Jerry? But I was telling
you about the tide, was I not? When Roger said that about my mouth I
tried to get the stain off, but I could not, and then Roger said it
was no use trying any more and he kissed me."
Here Margarita paused and patted my hand, tapping each finger nail
lightly with her own finger-tips.
"You need not be afraid, Jerry," she added encouragingly, "I shall not
tell any more things about that."
I drew away my hand irritably. "Well, well, what about the tide?" I
said.
Margarita's repulsed fingers lay loosely upcurled on her knees, which
she hunched in front of her, like a boy.
"Oh, it was only what you asked me, dear Jerry," she answered softly,
"while Roger was kissing me that kiss, the tide _did_ come in!"