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Four Stragglers

<h3> BOOK II: THE ISLE OF PREY </h3> <h3> —I— </h3> <h4> THE SPELL OF THE MOONBEAMS </h4> It was a night of white moonlight; a languorous night. It was a night of impenetrable shadows, deep and black; and, where light and shadow met and merged, the treetops were fringed against the sky in tracery as delicate as a cameo. And there was fragrance in the air, exotic, exquisite, the fragrance of growing things, of semi-tropical flowers and trees and shrubs. And very faint and soft there fell upon the ear the gentle lapping of the water on the shore, as though in her mother tenderness nature were breathing a lullaby over her sea-cradled isle. On a verandah of great length and spacious width, moon-streaked where the light stole in through the row of ornamental columns that supported the roof and through the interstices of vine-covered lattice work, checkering the flooring in fanciful designs, a girl raised herself suddenly on her elbow from a reclining chair, and, reaching out her hand, laid it impulsively on that of another girl who sat in a chair beside her. "Oh, Dora," she breathed, "it's just like fairyland!" Dora Marlin smiled quietly. "What a queer little creature you are, Polly!" she said. "You like it here, don't you?" "I love it!" said Polly Wickes. "Fairyland!" Dora Marlin repeated the word. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a real fairyland just like the stories they used to read to us as children?" Polly Wickes nodded her head slowly. "I suppose so," she said; "but I never had any fairy stories read to me when I was a child, and so my fairyland has always been one of my own—one of dreams. And this is fairyland because it's so beautiful, and because being here doesn't seem as though one were living in the same world one was born in at all." "You poor child!" said Dora Marlin softly. "A land of dreams, then! Yes; I know. These nights are like that sometimes, aren't they? They make you dream any dream you want to have come true, and, while you dream wide awake, you almost actually experience its fulfilment then and there. And so it is nearly as good as a real fairyland, isn't it? And anyway, Polly, you look like a really, truly fairy yourself to-night." "No," said Polly Wickes. "You are the fairy. Fairies aren't supposed to be dark; they have golden hair, and blue eyes, and—" "A wand," interrupted Dora Marlin, with a mischievous little laugh. "And if it weren't all just make-believe, and I was the fairy, I'd wave my wand and have him appear instantly on the scene; but, as it is, I'm afraid he won't come to-night after all, and it's getting late, and I think we'd better go to bed." "And I'm sure he will come, and anyway I couldn't go to bed," said Polly Wickes earnestly. "And anyway I couldn't go to sleep. Just think, Dora, I haven't seen him for nearly four years, and I'll have all the news, and hear everything I want to know about mother. He said they'd leave the mainland to-day, and it's only five hours across. I'm sure he'll still come. And, besides, I'm certain I heard a motor boat a few minutes ago." "Very likely," agreed Dora Marlin; "but that was probably one of our own men out somewhere around the island. It's very late now, and in half an hour it will be low tide, and they would hardly start at all if they knew they wouldn't make Manwa by daylight. There are the reefs, and—" "The reefs are charted," said Polly Wickes decisively. "I know he'll come." A little ripple of laughter came from Dora Marlin's chair. "How old is Captain Newcombe, dear?" she inquired naïvely. "Don't be a beast, Dora," said Polly Wickes severely. "He's very, very old—at least he was when I saw him last." "When you weren't much more than fourteen," observed Dora Marlin judicially. "And when you're fourteen anybody over thirty is a regular Methuselah. I know I used to think when I was a child that father was terribly, terribly old, much older than he seems to-day when he really is an old man; and I used to wonder then how he lived so long." Polly Wickes' dark eyes grew serious. "It doesn't apply to me," she said in a low tone. "I wasn't ever a child. I was old when I was ten. I've told you all about myself, because I couldn't have come here with you if I hadn't; and you know why I am so eager and excited and so happy that guardy is coming. I owe him everything in the world I've got; and he's been so good to mother. I—I don't know why. He said when I was older I would understand. And he's such a wonderful man himself, with such a splendid war record." Dora Marlin rose from her chair, and placed her arm affectionately around her companion's shoulders. "Yes, dear," she said gently. "I know. I was only teasing. And you wouldn't be Polly Wickes if you wanted to do anything else than just sit here and wait until you were quite, quite sure that he wouldn't come to-night. But as I'm already sure he won't because it's so late, I'm going to bed. You don't mind, do you, dear? I want to see if father's all right, too. Poor old dad!" "Dora!" Polly Wickes was on her feet. "Oh, Dora, I'm so selfish! I—I wish I could help. But I'm sure it's going to be all right. I don't think that specialist was right at all. How could he be? Mr. Marlin is such a dear!" Dora Marlin turned her head away, and for a moment she did not speak. When she looked around again there was a bright, quick smile on her lips. "I am counting a lot on Captain Newcombe's and Mr. Locke's visit," she said. "I'm sure it will do father good. Good-night, dear—and if they do come, telephone up to my room and I'll be down in a jiffy. Their rooms are all ready for them, but they're sure to be famished, and—" "I'll do nothing of the sort!" announced Polly Wickes. "The idea of upsetting a household in the middle of the night! I'll send them back to their yacht." "You won't do anything of the kind!" said Dora Marlin. "Yes, I will," said Polly Wickes. "Well, he won't come anyway," said Dora Marlin. "Yes, he will!" "No, he won't!" They both began to laugh. "But I'll tell you what I'll do," said Polly Wickes. "After he's gone I'll creep into bed with you and tell you all about it. Good-night, dear." "Good-night, Polly fairy," said Dora Marlin. Polly Wickes watched the white form weave itself in and out of the checkered spots of moonlight along the verandah, and finally disappear inside the house; then she threw herself down upon the reclining chair again, her hands clasped behind her head, and lay there, strangely alert, wide-eyed, staring out on the lawn. She was quite sure he would come—even yet—because when they had sent over to the mainland for the mail yesterday there had been a letter from him saying he would arrive some time to-day. How soft the night was! Would he be changed; would he seem very different? Had what Dora had said about the viewpoint from which age measures age been really true? And if it were? She was the one who would seem changed—from a little girl in pigtails to a woman, not a very old woman, but a woman. Would he know her, recognise her again? What a wonderful, glorious, dreamy night it was! Dreams! Was she dreaming even now, dreaming wide awake, that she was here; a dream that supplanted the squalour of narrow, ill-lighted streets, of dark, creaking staircases, of lurking, hungry shapes, of stalking vice, of homes that were single, airless rooms gaunt with poverty—a dream that supplanted all that for this, where there was only a world of beautiful things, and where even the airs that whispered through the trees were balmy with some rare perfume that intoxicated the senses with untold joy? She startled herself with a sharp little cry. Pictures, memories, vivid, swift in succession, were flashing, unbidden, through her mind—a girl in ragged clothes who sold flowers on the street corners, in the parks, a gutter-snipe the London "bobbies" had called her so often that the term had lost any personal meaning save that it classified the particular species of outcasts to which she had belonged; a room that was reached through the climbing of a smutty, dirty staircase in a tenement that moaned in its bitter fight against dissolution in common with its human occupants, a room that was scanty in its furnishings, where a single cot bed did service for two, and a stagnant odour of salt fish was never absent; a woman that was grey-haired, sharp-faced, of language and actions at times that challenged even the license of Whitechapel, but one who loved, too; the smells from the doors of pastry shops on the better streets that had made her cry because they had made her more hungry than ever; the leer of men when she had grown a few years older who thought a gutter-snipe both defenceless and fair game. She had never been a child. Polly Wickes had turned in the reclining chair, and her face now was buried in the cushion. And then into her life had come—had come—this "guardy." He did not leer at her; he was kind and courtly—like—like what she had thought a good father might have been. But she had not understood the cataclysmic, bewildering and stupendous change that had then taken place in her life, and so she had asked her mother. She had always remembered the answer; she always would. "Never you mind, dearie," Mrs. Wickes had said. "Wot's wot is wot. 'E's a gentleman is Captain Newcombe, a kind, rich gentleman, top 'ole 'e is. An' if 'e's a-goin' to adopt yer, I ain't goin' to 'ave to worry any more abaht wot's goin' into my mouth; an' though I ain't got religion, I says, as I says to 'im when 'e asks me, thank Gawd, I says. An' if we're a-goin' to be separated for a few years, dearie, wye it's a sacrifice as both of us 'as got to myke for each other." They had been separated for nearly four years. As fourteen understood it, she had understood that she was to be taught to live in a different world, to acquire the viewpoints of a different station in life, in order that she might fit herself to take her place in that world and that station where her guardian lived and moved. To-day she understood this in a much more mature way. And she had tried to do her best—but she could never forget the old life no matter how completely severed she might be from it, or how far from it she might be removed even in a physical sense; though gradually, she was conscious, the past had become less real, less poignant, and more like some dream that came at times, and lingered hauntingly in her memory. The hardest part of it all had been the separation from her mother, but she would see her mother soon now, for Captain Newcombe had promised that she should go back to England when her education was finished in America. And her education was finished now—the last term was behind her. Four years—her mother! Even if that separation had seemed necessary and essential to her guardian, how wonderful and dear he had been even in that respect. How happy he had made them both! Indeed, her greatest happiness came from the knowledge that her mother, since those four years began, had removed from the squalour and distress that she had previously known all her life, and had lived since then in comfort and ease. Her mother could not read or write, of course, but— Polly Wickes caught her breath in a little, quick, half sob. Could not read or write! It seemed to mean so much, to visualise so sharply that other world, to—to bring the odour of salt fish, the nauseous smell of guttering tallow candles. No, no; that was all long gone now, gone forever, for both her mother and herself. What did it matter if her mother could not read or write? It had not mattered. Even here guardy had filled the breach—written the letters that her mother had dictated, and read to her mother the letters that she, Polly, sent in her guardian's care. And her mother had told her how happy she was, and how comfortable in a cosy little home on a pretty little street in the suburbs. Was it any wonder that she was beside herself with glad excitement to-night, when at any moment now the one person in all the world who had been so good to her, to whom she owed a debt of gratitude that she could never even be able to express, much less repay, would—would actually, really be here? For he would come! She was sure of it. After all, it wasn't so very late, and— She rose suddenly from the reclining chair, her heart pounding in quickened, excited throbs, and ran lightly to the edge of the verandah. He was here now. She had heard a footstep. She could not have been mistaken. It was as though some one had stepped on loose gravel. She peered over the balustrade, and her forehead puckered in a perplexed frown. There wasn't any one in sight; and there wasn't any gravel on which a footstep could have crunched. All around the house in this direction there was only the soft velvet sward of the beautifully kept lawn. The driveway was at the other side of the house. She had forgotten that. And yet it did not seem possible she could have been mistaken. Imagination, fancy, could hardly have reproduced so perfect an imitation of such a sound. It was very strange! It was very strange that she should have—No; she hadn't been mistaken! She had heard a footstep—but it had come from under the verandah, and some one was there now. She leaned farther out over the balustrade, and stared with widened eyes at a movement in the hedge of tall, flowering bush that grew below her along the verandah's length. A low rustle came now to her ears. Sheltered by the hedge, some one was creeping cautiously, stealthily along there under the verandah. Her hands tightened on the balustrade. What did it mean? No good, that was certain. She was afraid. And suddenly the peace and quietness and serenity of the night was gone. She was afraid. And it had always seemed so safe here on this wonderful little island, so free from intrusion. There was something snakelike in the way those bushes moved. She watched them now, fascinated. Something bade her run into the house and cry out an alarm; something held her there clinging to the balustrade, her eyes fixed on that spot below her just a few yards along from where she stood. She could make out a figure now, the figure of a man crawling warily out through the hedge toward the lawn. And then instinctively she caught her hand to her lips to smother an involuntary cry, and drew quickly back from the edge of the balustrade. The figure was in plain sight now on the lawn in the moonlight—a figure in a long dressing gown; a figure without hat, whose silver hair caught the sheen of the soft light and seemed somehow to give the suggestion of ghostlike whiteness to the thin, strained face beneath. It was Mr. Marlin. For a moment Polly watched the other as he made his way across the lawn in a diagonal direction toward the grove of trees that surrounded the house. Fear was gone now, supplanted by a wave of pity. Poor Mr. Marlin! The specialist had been right. Of course, he had been right! She had never doubted it—nor had Dora. What she had said to Dora had been said out of sympathy and love. They both understood that. It—it helped a little to keep up Dora's courage; it kept hope alive. Mr. Marlin was so kindly, so lovable and good. But he was an incurable monomaniac. And now he was out here on the lawn in the middle of the night in his dressing gown. What was it that he was after? Why had he stolen out from the house in such an extraordinarily surreptitious way? She turned and ran softly along the verandah, and down the steps to the lawn, and stood still again, watching. There was no need of getting Dora out of bed because in any case Mr. Marlin could certainly come to no harm; and, besides, she, Polly, could tell Dora all about it in the morning. But, that apart, she was not quite certain what she ought to do. The strange, draped figure of the old man had disappeared amongst the trees now, apparently having taken the path that led to the shore. Mechanically she started forward, half running—then slowed her pace almost immediately to a hesitating walk. Had she at all any right to spy on Mr. Marlin? It was not as though any harm could come to him, or that he— And then with a low, quick cry, her eyes wide, Polly Wickes stood motionless in the centre of the lawn. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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