Part 12

“Yes, let me stay dead. Everybody believes it, let them go on believing. It _was_ death, my life since that night when Jim disappeared. It wasn’t worth going on with. Now I can go to him, be with him, there’ll be no one watching Sybil Saunders any more. Even if I looked like myself it would be only the chance resemblance to a murdered woman. And do I look like myself?”

She turned her face to the light, bright now with the coming of the sun. Below the smooth sweep of hair across her forehead it was so changed in its pallor and thinness, so bereft of its rounded curves and delicate freshness that it was only a dim reflection of Sybil’s--the face of a way-worn lad in whom the same blood ran.

The havoc worked by the suffering that had so transfigured it drove like a knife to Anne’s heart. She felt the prick of tears under her eyelids and lowered her head--Sybil gripping at her happiness with the fierce courage of despair, and now Sybil going, breaking all ties, going forever. For a moment she could not speak and the other, thinking her silence meant reluctance to agree, caught at her hands, pleading, with breathless urgence:

“They’ve accepted everything--it’s all explained and ended. Joe has gone, dropped out of sight. Boys of his kind do that, do something they’re ashamed of and disappear. What good would it do Stokes or Bassett or the police to know it was Joe who was killed? It’s not lies, it’s not being false to any one, it’s only to keep silent and let me go. Oh, Anne, we’ve been real friends, we’ve loved each other-- Love me enough to let me be happy.”

The rim of the sun slipped above the distant sea line and sent a ray of brilliant light through the window. It touched their seated figures and lay rosy on Anne’s face as she raised it.

“Go,” she said softly. “Go. I’ll never tell--I’ll keep that promise as long as I live.”

She could stay no longer, the house would be waking soon. There was a rapid interchange of last injunctions, information for Sybil’s safety. To-night at low tide she would cross on the causeway. Every evidence of her occupation would be removed and with this in mind she took her Viola dress from its hiding-place and gave it to Anne. No one, ransacking the top floor at Gull Island would ever find a trace of her.

At the head of the stairs they clung together for a moment--a life-long good-by. There was no time for last words and they had no need of any. It was too solemn a farewell for speech. They were like shipwrecked comrades parted by tempest, Anne to find a haven, Sybil to ride forth on unknown seas, rapt and dauntless, following her star.

That night was cloudy--great black banks passing across the heavens. At times they broke and through serene open spaces the moon rode, silvering the sea, turning the pools and streamlets of the channel bed to a shining tracery. A boy’s figure that had started across the causeway in the dark, was caught in one of these transitory gleams, a flitting shadow on the straight bright path. It stood out in sharp silhouette, running on the slippery stones, then clouds swept across the moon and in the darkness it gained the shore and the sheltering trees. Padding light-footed on the wayside grass, it skirted the edge of the village.

Dogs scented its passage and broke out barking; the sound following its progress till the houses were passed and the road stretched on between quiet fields to the railway.

Some people heard the dogs--light-sleeping villagers who turned and wondered if a tramp was about and lapsed into comfortable slumber. In the stillness of the room where Stokes lay unconscious, drawing toward the hour of deliverance, the barking sounded loud and insistent. The nurse was disturbed by it and went to the window and looked out, but Flora never heard it. Anne did and sat up in bed following it along the edge of the village till it died on the outskirts.

_EPILOGUE_

THREE years later Bassett and Anne had a friend at dinner. He was a writer who had just returned from a successful lecture tour in Australia. On his way back he had ranged through the pleasant reaches of the South Seas and had fallen under their spell--a little more money in his pocket and for him it would be a plantation on some isle of enchantment. Not the accessible places, they were already spoiled, steamers had come, jazz music, and tourists in pith helmets with red guidebooks were under your feet. It was the remoter islands, still out of the line of travel, where a trading schooner was the sole link with the world.

He had made a point of visiting some of these--hired an old tub with a native crew and gone batting about and had a glimpse of the real thing that Stevenson saw. And he enlarged on a particular island, the endmost of a scattered group, where he had found an American and his wife running a copra plantation. Delightful people called Whittier, he’d stayed several days with them in a long bamboo house on the edge of a lagoon--you couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful.

Anne smiled at his enthusiasm and said she thought such a life might pall, especially on the lady. But he was convinced of the contrary, in fact Mrs. Whittier had told him she never wanted to come back, she couldn’t stand the futile strain and bustle of the world. And it was not as if she were a person unused to the refinements of life, she was a pretty intelligent woman, cultivated and fond of the arts, especially the theater. She had asked him any amount of questions about plays and players--said it had been the thing she loved most in the old days. But she didn’t regret it; she had told him she regretted nothing but the separation from her friends.

After dinner, moving about in the sitting-room, the guest had stopped before a photograph standing on a side-table, picked it up and asked whose it was. Bassett had answered--a friend of his wife, now dead. But he would remember--it was Sybil Saunders who had met with such a tragic death some years ago. The guest nodded; of course he remembered, a horrible affair. Then after a last look at the photograph he turned to Anne:

“It’s like that Mrs. Whittier I was telling you about. Just the same eyes--quite remarkably like, only she’s a bit stouter and more mature. It might have been her picture when she was a girl.”

When the evening was over Bassett escorted the guest to the door. On his way back to the sitting-room he thought he would suggest to Anne that she put away the photograph--people noticed it and the subject kept coming up. It was evidently unbearably painful to her for she rarely spoke of it; that dark chapter in her life was a thing closed and sealed. He had the words on his lips as he entered the room and then saw that she held the picture in her hands and was looking intently at it, softly smiling, her expression tranquil, even happy. That was good--the wound had healed--so he said nothing.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

On page 12, fianceé has been changed to fiancée.

On page 47, head-lands has been changed to headlands.

On page 73, fishing rod has been changed to fishing-rod.

On page 79, dispell has been changed to dispel.

On page 157, contanied has been changed to contained.

On page 179, ejactulated has been changed to ejaculated.

On pages 247, 250, 251, 254 and 291, flash-light has been changed to flashlight.