Sinister Island by Charles Wadsworth Camp (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

this brilliant light he had had to look closely to detect that which fifteen minutes back had struck him like a blow in the uncertain glimmer of a lantern.

He questioned Tony. He went over the entire experience once more, but Tony could tell him nothing further. It was all vague in his mind. The thing that was clearest, that persisted, whose memory still terrified, was the fact that he had stood in the darkness, off the path, unable to move, held apparently by an immaterial but plenary force, while the snake had approached.

When Miller had finished Tony bent his head.

“Now,” he asked in that thick voice which always gave the impression of a thing disused, “can’t we go from Captain’s Island?”

Miller thought for a moment, knowing he would stay, yet striving to be honest with himself. He admitted that he craved cheerful surroundings and experiences ranging within his own comprehension. He did not deny that a feeling of inadequacy to combat the atmosphere of Captain’s Island had grown, had tonight assumed disconcerting proportions. But he was aware of no bending of his will. He understood more clearly than ever why Anderson and Molly had stayed on at the coquina house in the face of nervous and physical breakdown. Any other course would have confessed their weakness, would have earned his contempt. He found himself looking forward impatiently to tomorrow night which he would spend there, perhaps in the room where Noyer had committed the murder on which so much of the island’s superstition was based. In other words he wanted to bring matters to a focus in order to persuade Molly, Anderson, Tony, and himself that they were the victims of nerves, or of some subtle material fact to which at present no clue appeared. For he would not harbour the possibility of the supernatural’s convincing him at the end.

Underneath this healthy, combative instinct, moreover, lay a stronger force which held him to the place—one whose birth and growth and expression troubled him scarcely less than the graver problem. When, yielding incredibly to his impulse, he had held the girl, according to his will and against hers, in his arms; when, her resistance swept aside, he had placed his lips on her elfin ones, he had accepted from Captain’s Island a personal problem on whose solution, he realised, his happiness depended precariously. Molly and the others eliminated, he could not leave the inlet now. So he faced Tony with a certain pity, because he understood the man’s devotion.

“No, Tony, we can not go from Captain’s Island yet. I shall stay until all the cards are on the table,”

Under his breath Tony muttered one word :

“Death!”

“What’s that?” Miller demanded sharply.

“Can’t fight what you can’t see. Captain’s Island’s full of it. It’s always meant death. The other night—”

“Your stories!” Miller said. “All right, Tony. After your experience this evening on top of Jake’s death I can’t keep you. I can’t expect to convince you by laughing at your stories again. In the morning you can go to Sandport, and, understand, I don’t blame you. We part amicably.”

Tony opened his arms in a gesture of despair. He went back to the kitchen.

“That means, Tony?” Miller called.

An angry rattling of pans came to him. But he knew what it meant. If they got through here with whole skins he would take the fellow North with him.

He slept very little that night. The wearier his brain grew with the puzzle the wider awake it held him. He placed the mystery in the scales with logic and commonsense, but the scales would not balance. The few facts that presented themselves only increased the fantasy of the unknown. From the cases of Jake and Tony an alliance appeared to exist between the island’s two radical attributes—its commonly accepted supernatural atmosphere and its poisonous snakes. Both of these unaccountable adventures, one of which had ended fatally, had occurred in the same place—that piece of forest between the shore of the inlet and the ruins. What was the connection between the violent and fatal force that lurked there and the wearing manifestations of the coquina house, and, for that matter, with the oppressive air one breathed after dark at Morgan’s—even here on the Dart?

When, for relief from these questions to which no answer would come, he turned to his own problem, the girl, he only found more to trouble, more to mystify. From the first her presence had led him to answer to unexpected and, he felt, inexplicable impulses. And tonight she had come to him with a veiled warning that the piece of woods was unsafe. Had she actually known anything, or was her foreknowledge psychic? For she had given him an impression that that word would fit her better than any he knew. One fact lingered in his memory with triumphant clearness. He did not regret the question he had asked in the black shadows of the ruins. He was eager for the dawn to give him an opportunity to answer it in her presence.

When the dawn came, however, it did not bring its usual release from the fancies of the night. He rose, tired, depressed, irritable. His plunge in the swift waters of the inlet failed to arouse him. As he stood on deck afterwards, scanning the tangled shore of the island distastefully, almost with hatred, that significant sentence Molly had uttered so confidently down there in the saloon came back to him.

“By and by even the sweetest days will be coloured for you like that.”

He swung about impatiently. His eyes searched the dunes which were touched with a delicate mauve by the dawn. He felt that the girl would come this morning. Uncomformable as she was, what had happened last night would trouble her, would bring her to the sands. Moreover, he had told her to come, he remembered, and at the time had not questioned her obedience.

His restlessness increased until he rowed to the dunes. He wandered among them while his certainty fell to a hope, and his hope began to dwindle.

At last he saw her far up the curving beach. She walked slowly. Her head was bowed. She wore a black gown which made her figure seem very slender, rather pitiful.

He hurried to meet her, but, instead of the exultation and the steely triumph of last night, he experienced a growth of his depression until it became sorrow. He wondered if this could be accounted for by her black dress and her downcast eyes.

He took her hand, which she permitted to rest passively in his, and led her to the first dune. There for some moments they sat in silence, their backs against the sand, gazing out to sea where the sun rose in an opal mist. When he spoke his voice was lifeless.

“There is so much to say—so much to ask. I am glad you have come.”

She did not meet his eyes.

“You shall not ask me to come again.”

“Yes,” he answered,” because—it is very curious. You would not tell me your first name. I’ve asked you. I do not know that, but I know I love you.”

“Hush!” she whispered. “You must not say that.”

“Even,” he asked, “if you—”

Now she looked into his eyes.

“Not even then.”

“Yet you have come as I asked.”

“To tell you that.”

“You have told me, and it alters nothing. There is something here—something I can’t explain, but it shall not intervene. In the end it shall be as I wish.”

“Don’t say those things—not even you.”

He looked at her dully. Where had his courage and his will of the other morning, of last night, fled? Impatient with himself he burst out :

“What is all this mystery?”

She was a little surprised.

“Mystery?”

“To begin with, about you?”

Her lips tightened.

“There is no mystery about me that you haven’t made yourself. Last evening, by the ruined quarters you kissed me against my will.”

“It was brutal,” he said, “but I am glad, for it made me know that I love you. At least it explains nothing. Yes, there is mystery—mystery about you—”

He turned and for the second time shook his fist towards Captain’s Island.

“And mystery there. Perhaps you can lighten it, for it shall be lightened. Last night there was a loathsome, death-dealing puzzle on that island, in that piece of forest. I don’t understand it. Tony, who was caught in its mazes, doesn’t either.”

“Yes,” she said, “that piece of woods is often unsafe. If I can help it I shall not go there again, nor must you.”

“You see?” he cried. ” There is mystery, and you must tell me what you know of it.”

“I? Nothing.”

“Nothing! Then why do you say it is dangerous! Why did you warn me last night! Why did you call me back! Why did you say that about the snakes—that their fangs were out!”

“Because I knew the path wasn’t safe last night.”

“And how—how did you know!”

She seemed to be trying to find words that would satisfy him. At last she shook her head, smiling wistfully.

“It is hard to tell you that. I only felt. Since I have been on the island I have felt these things about it. I can’t tell you how. I wish I could. I—it’s only that while I waited for you in the ruins it came to me that the forest was full of snakes and—and horrors, and that you must not go.”

“That explains nothing,” he said, disappointed.

She turned away.

“I am sorry. You will think I am—queer.”

“Queer!” he repeated. “You want me to believe there is a bond between you and those horrors.”

“I did not say that.”

“If that is all you can tell me it is absurd.”

“It is all I can tell you.”

“Remember,” he urged, “I love you, and, oh, my dear, you, I think—”

She put her hand in his. He stared at the quick moisture in her eyes.

“I have never known love,” she said, “but now, perhaps, you have made me feel that. We must never speak of it again. We must never see each other again.”

He drew her to him.

“Never!” he mocked. “You can say that now. There’s one mystery I can dissipate. I will speak to your father. I will tell him I love you.”

Pushing him back, she sprang to her feet.

“No. You will promise me not to do that.”

“Why? It is so natural. Can there be nothing normal here?”

“I have troubled him enough,” she said. “He is sweet and kind, and it would trouble him if you should speak of me.”

“Why does he dislike one to speak of you?” Miller asked. “Why are you kept so much to yourself!”

“I am not kept,” she answered. “I keep myself apart. People make me unhappy. Why must you make me unhappy, too! Why do you torture me with questions I don’t know how to answer, that I can’t answer! I have told you what I could. Don’t ask any more.”

“I want to ask you one thing. Did your father come here because of you?”

“No, but he has stayed because of me.”

“If you refuse to tell me why,” he said, “I shall go to him. I shall ask him, no matter whom it troubles.”

“You will end by hating me,” she answered, “yet I have done nothing wrong. Perhaps it is better, although—”

She hesitated.

“He could tell you about me no more than I have told you, than you have seen yourself; and I could never come here again in the early morning,”

“But you said—Then you will come after all?”

“When you have gone from Captain’s Island.” she answered.

He rose and grasped her hands.

“Understand, I shall not leave until I