THE ISLAND TOMB
But to go back to Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet Buxton who
had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as we had thought, only
stupid, and that his dumbness might yield to the methods then being so
successfully used with that afflicted child who has since triumphed so
brilliantly over more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet
pointed out, I have always felt that too much credit was given in that
case to the pupil and too little to the teacher. The distance between
English words of one syllable and Greek tragedy is only a matter of
time: the distance between blank chaos and those one-syllabled words
might well have seemed eternal!
Not that Miss Jencks had quite such a task ahead of her. Caliban had
been trained into habits of relentless cleanliness, and an almost
mechanical regularity of routine work. It was his clumsy hands that
had arranged the flaming nasturtiums in the silver bowl under the
Henner etching, his rude pantomime that purchased the bi-weekly bone
for the mysteriously named Rosy, his weather wisdom that was sought
when it was a question of an extended sailing party. In fact, I am
inclined to think, in view of his subsequent progress, that some of
his ignorance was feigned, as is often the case in these instances of
arrested mental development. However that may have been, on the
occasion of this visit I found him marvellously improved, his hair
cut, his nondescript garments evolved into a modest sort of livery,
his vocabulary no longer a series of grunts, his very pantomime more
elastic. Margarita never changed her old methods of communication with
him, but the rest of us, at Miss Jencks's earnest entreaty, fatigued
ourselves amiably in order to elicit the guttural "yes" and "no" and
"do not know" she had so laboriously taught him.
Best of all, his disposition had altered to a very considerable
extent, and this improvement on his old surliness was of the greatest
assistance to us on the occasion I must now narrate.
It was I--strangely fated to discover so many of the links in this
wonderfully twined chain of Margarita's life--who stumbled by the
merest chance on the last one really needed to complete the story.
Zealous for the perfection of our Island, I selected a deep gully,
filled with heavy boughs and loose unsightly rocks, as the next point
for improvement, and bespoke the services of Caliban for the purpose.
Greatly to my surprise, for he was attached to me, and always showed
pleasure at rowing me over for my visits, he refused point blank to
help me and even tried, in a series of clumsy ruses, to start me at
work elsewhere. Vexed, but quite unsuspicious, I set to work by myself
at pulling off the upper boughs, trusting to shame him into helping me
with the stones, which seemed to have been tossed there in a sort of
midden. When he found that I was persistent in my plan, he sat down at
the edge of the gully, buried his face in his clumsy hands and wept
silently, shuddering at every bough I lifted. Greatly interested now,
I called Roger, and we worked together, assisted by the good-natured
Italian retained now as gardener and assistant boatman (his name was
Rafaello, and he was a not-too-unhappy bachelor, for, as he said, a
girl who would run off with a man's rival a week before the wedding
would have made but a doubtful wife for the most patient of husbands!)
As we neared the bottom of the gully Caliban grew more and more
excited: now he would peer in fearfully, now run off a few yards, but
he could never get very far away, for great as was his terror and
sorrow, curiosity was stronger and he must be near, it seemed, at all
costs.
[Illustration: AH, FAITHFUL CALIBAN, WHAT HOURS OF TERRIBLE TUITION
MADE THY TASK CLEAR TO THEE!]
Suddenly, as the last rotting bough was lifted from one end of the
gully, my eye was caught by a series of stones wonderfully matched in
size, eight or ten of them arranged in a sort of rough cross, and when
with a quick thrill of apprehension I pushed aside the withered pine
tree that covered the rest of the stones, the foot of the cross
elongated, and the symbol of Calvary was seen to extend over a
slightly raised oblong mound of earth. There was no mistaking that
shape nor those dimensions; whoever has heard the rattle of that last
remorseless handful and struggled with that almost nauseating
rebellion at the sight of the raw clods, so unsightly in the smooth,
peaceful green, knows that mound for what it is, and we knew this.
Silently we cleared away the rest, and then the grave I had discerned
fell into its true and illuminating relation to two other and
evidently older crosses--at the feet of both and at right angles to
them. In her death as in her life that gaunt, austere Hester was
faithful, and like the stone hound at the ancient knight's bier she
guarded her master's last sleep.
We took off our caps reverently; we needed no monument, no epitaph to
name for us those exiled, unblessed graves. Prynne had made the first
cross, we knew, twenty-seven years ago; Hester had made the second a
few days before Roger visited the island. And the third? Ah, faithful
Caliban, what hours of terrible tuition made thy task clear to thee? I
shudder at the picture of that indefatigable New England woman
illustrating in terrible pantomime the duties that would devolve upon
her loutish servant at her death. But the lesson had been learned, the
third coffin taken from the boat-house, the body laid within it at the
graveside, carried swiftly from the house wrapped in a sheet, the lid
nailed down, the earth filled in.
Gaspingly he verified my quiet questions and surmises--I have enough
New England blood to know what ghastly forethought we are capable
of!--and slowly he calmed himself, seeing that we were neither
frightened nor angry ...
One end of the island repeats on a tiny scale the formation of the
original peninsula. Three quaint red cedars stand pointed and forever
green, more like the cypresses of Italy than anything in America;
around its rocky beach the waves beat incessantly, but its grass is
fresh and green, for there is a little spring there. Under the
cypresses lie three flat graves, two side by side, one across their
feet, and over each lies a flat carved table of marble--rich carvings
that once stretched under three heavy mullioned windows over the back
doors of an old Italian palace. There are only initials on these
tables, initials and the numerals of years, but they are not utterly
unblest. Good Parson Elder read the most beautiful burial service in
the world over them, broken by the tears of a trusty servant; the
children and the children's children of the crumbling bodies under two
of those tables stood over them hand in hand; and Nature, who bears no
grudge nor ever excommunicates the fruitful, brings to the sunlight
every year the yellow daffodils and white narcissus, the wild rose and
beach bayberry, the marigold and asters that love has planted there.
It may be that further clues, more detailed accounts of that secret
island life, were hidden in those coffins; we never tried if it was
so. Unknown and lonely they lived, unknown and lonely they had wished
to lie in death, and so we left them, safe even from ourselves, who
loved them for the wonderful child they had given us. And I like to
think that God is no less forgiving than the Nature through which he
tries to lead us to him.