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

Hands in his pockets, Miller gazed across the rolling sands. He moved once or twice, seeking a less obstructed view, hoping to see the girl’s graceful figure again. At last he filled his pipe and smoked thoughtfully, questioning the whole extraordinary encounter until a sense of its unreality swept him. But this he fought back. It was not what he wished. Granted that his pursuit had been arbitrary and inexplicable even to himself, he desired it to remain a thing accomplished, a corner stone. Yet was it possible he had thrown a command in his last words to her, and, looking into her eyes, had read obedience?

Certainly he had dealt with no ghost, but a ghost, he felt, might have puzzled him less than this “queer” girl of whom Anderson had spoken with such reserve.

Queer, she undoubtedly was, and he was by no means sure that in some obscure way his own queer attitude towards her might not be laid at her door. But he was convinced that he had shot wide of the mark when he had asked Anderson if she was off her head.

He walked back towards the inlet. All at once he realised he had not asked her her name. The last he knew, but it would have been pleasant to have heard her reply, to have known her first name, to have judged whether it fitted her unconformable personality.

Suddenly he laughed. He saw a wet, bedraggled figure skulking among the dunes in his direction.

“Stand up, my valiant Tony,” he called. “Your rescue party’s superfluous.”

Still he appreciated the man’s devotion in swimming from the Dart to bring him aid against the unknown. When he padded up, wringing the water from his shirt, Miller tapped his shoulder.

“I assure you, Tony, that ghost is flesh and blood; flesh and—”

The fact needed no iteration. The soft yielding of her arms beneath his grasp had come back to him. The last vestige of unreality fled from the adventure.

He led Tony to the dingy, whistling cheerily. He breakfasted later with a huge appetite. He realised he was glad Captain’s Island was what it was rather than what he had fancied it before receiving Anderson’s letter.

His happy humour lasted all morning. Had he tried he could not have disguised its cause, for all morning the strange girl, strangely met, lingered in his mind and tantalised. At times he even forgot his set purpose of watching the fisherman’s tub, which, at least when his eyes were on it, showed no signs of habitation.

After luncheon he anxiously awaited Molly and Anderson, but it was four o’clock before he saw a row boat put out from shore. Even at that distance he recognised his friends and the man, Jake, at the oars. He stood at the rail until Tony had grasped the painter and helped them to the deck.

Molly’s appearance shocked Miller more than Anderson’s had done the day before. She was scarcely thirty, and he had always known her as a level-headed, light-hearted woman, unacquainted with life’s darker aspects, and determined, as far as possible, to hold them at arm’s length. Yet to-day she looked old. There were grey lines in her hair. Her manner was nervous. She appeared too slender for her clothes.

The same constraint that had come to him at his first glimpse of Anderson spoiled his meeting with this other old friend. He tried to throw the feeling off. But Jake, when he spoke to him, added to it. In response to his cheery greeting, Jake whispered:

“Thank God, you’re here, Mr. Miller. Make them go away. There’s death on the island. You feel it. If we don’t leave it’s going to find some of us.”

Miller couldn’t smile in the face of this tragic conviction.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting old and fanciful, Jake.”

He turned away brusquely. He led Anderson and Molly below to display his comforts. But when, with the air of a museum guide, he pointed out the four French prints, Molly sank on one of the tapestry cushions, hid her face, and began to cry. Anderson put his hand on her shoulder, while Miller looked on helplessly, his morning’s cheerfulness evaporating.

Anderson cleared his throat.

“I say, Molly—”

She checked her outburst.

“Don’t laugh at me, Jim. Wait until you’ve been in our house—until you’ve slept there just one night.”

“I’ll angle for an invitation in a few days.”

“That’s wiser, I suppose,” Anderson said. “But return our call tomorrow.”

Molly sighed.

“If we could only have Jim in the house. Some one normal, with a will, and no nerves to speak of.”

“We’ll let Jim do as he thinks best,” Anderson answered.

“Molly,” Miller said, “did either Andy or you know you had nerves before you came to Captain’s Island? When it hits back at you this way stubbornness is a vice.”

“You’re the last one to say that,” she answered. “You of all people! You would have stayed.”

“I have no belief in the supernatural.”

“Neither have we,” she said. “Or we didn’t have—One is sure of nothing here. Wait until you’ve stayed a few days, then repeat that with conviction.”

“I’ll try, and remember this is medicine, so you must swallow it like good children—I find the place attractive, cheerful.”

“As we did,” Anderson said, “when we saw it at first on a bright day like this.”

“You forget,” Miller replied, “I came in at dusk last night, and it stormed.”

“And last night!” Molly cried. “You felt nothing last night? You were satisfied? You were glad to be here?”

Miller stared back without answering. His morning’s cheerfulness was completely routed.

“You were not,” she said with conviction. “and soon even the sweetest days will be coloured for you like that.”

“I wonder,” he said softly.

He suggested that they have their tea on deck, but Molly was anxious to remain in the saloon. There, she explained, she saw for the first time in two months no reminders of Captain’s Island.

Miller fostered her illusion by leading the conversation to friends in New York, to happy experiences they had shared there.

Afterwards they prepared to leave with a reluctance that touched him.

When they had reached the deck Miller glanced at Tony and Jake forward. He realised immediately his mistake in leaving the two alone together. They sat there, staring at the island. Their faces were pale. When he called sharply Jake arose and stepped into the boat with the air of a somnambulist, while Tony indifferently, almost clumsily, approached the task of loosing the painter.

After Molly had entered the rowboat Miller yielded to his curiosity. He overcame his embarrassment. He drew Anderson to the opposite rail.

“There’s some truth,” he confessed, “in what Molly said down there. I did experience some discomfort last night during the storm, but of course it was the loneliness, the oppressive atmosphere, this vicious tide.”

“I was afraid you might feel it,” Anderson answered, ” although I’d hoped you’d keep above it.”

“Nothing has developed since we talked yesterday!” Miller asked.

“Nothing—the night at the coquina house was more than usually disturbed. That’s all.”

“Well—diet’s see—that girl of whom you spoke—you called