Part 2

The fleet of boats, rocking gently on the narrow channel that separated Gull Island from the mainland, took on their freight and darted off. They started in groups then broke apart. Speed boats that had come from points afar, whizzed away with a seething rush and a crumple of crystal foam at the bow. The launches skimmed, light-winged, the white flurry of their wakes like threads that stretched back to the island.

People turned and looked at it--sun-gilded in an encircling girdle of Prussian blue sea. The rocks about its base, the headlands that rose above, were dyed to an orange red and against this brilliancy of primary colors the pines stood out darkly silhouetted. On the rise above the wharf the long brown structure of the house spread, rambling and irregular, built, it was said, to suggest an outgrowth of the rocky foundation. The watchers could see in the open place beyond the side balcony the actors standing motionless, spaced in a group. Yes, having their photographs taken; there was the camera man who’d been taking pictures during the performance. And they craned their necks for a last look at the lovely scene and the picturesque assemblage of players.

Part of the flotilla carried the Hayworth villagers--all-year residents of the little town on the mainland. Some of the more solid citizens were in the launch that old Gabriel Harvey owned, which had been used by the actors in their week’s stay. Hayworth had gathered a great deal of information about these spectacular visitors, some from Gabriel and some from Sara Pinkney who was Mr. Driscoll’s housekeeper, living in Hayworth all winter and in summer reigning in the Gull Island kitchen. Mr. Driscoll had wired Sara to go over and open up and take charge while they were there--spare nothing, those were his orders. And Sara had done it, not wanting to, but apart from its being Mr. Driscoll’s wishes which she had followed for the last ten years, she had felt it her duty to keep an eye on the property. Every day she came over to Hayworth for supplies and had to appease the local curiosity, which she did grudgingly, feeling her power.

Now at last the Hayworth people had had a first-hand view of the actors--the whole company, dressed up and performing--and they fitted Sara Pinkney’s description to them. Olivia, that was Miss Tracy, the one she said was so refined and pleasant-spoken. And the Duke was Alexander Stokes. He was the feller that had come after the others because the first man took sick--wonderful the way he did it considering, didn’t miss a word. And the woman who stood round and “tended on” Olivia was his wife. Sara hadn’t said much about her. Well, she wasn’t of much importance anyhow or she’d have had more acting to do. But that boy who was Viola’s twin, he was Miss Tracy’s brother, and Sara had said he and Miss Saunders didn’t get on well, _she_ could see it though they didn’t say much. And here piped up the butcher’s wife who was more interested in the play than in personalities:

“I don’t see how Olivia took him for the page she was in love with. He didn’t look like Viola in the face. She was real pretty, but he’d a queer sly mug on him, that boy.”

“Aw, you can’t be too particular. You don’t need to have it so real.”

“I guess she was meant to be blinded by love. And him dressed the same, hair and all, might lead her astray.”

“I don’t see how you could have ’em look just alike unless they’d get an actress who had a real twin brother, and maybe you’d go the whole country over and not find that.”

“He ain’t like her no way,” growled old Gabriel from the wheel, “I seen ’em both when they wasn’t acting and he’s an ugly pup, that one.”

Then the boat grating on the Hayworth wharf, Gabriel urged them off. He hadn’t got through yet, got to go back for part of the company who were calculating to get the main line at Spencer, and after that back again for the Tracy boy. He muttered on as they climbed out, grumbling to himself, which nobody noticed as it had been his mode of expression for the last thirty years.

The swaying throng of boats emptied their cargoes and the thick-pressed crowd, moving to the end of the wharf, separated into streams and groups. Farewells, last commending comments, rose on the limpid sea-scented air. Everybody was a little tired. The villagers, dragging their feet, passed along the board walks to their vine-draped piazzas. They would find their kitchens hot and dull that night after two hours in the enchanted land of Illyria. The waiting line of motors absorbed the summer visitors, wheeled off and purred away past the white cottages under the New England elms. The matrons sank gratefully upon the yielding cushions, rolling by the dusty buggies, the battered Fords, the lines of bicycle riders, into the quiet serene country where the shadows were lying long and clear. Yes, it had been a great success; from first to last there hadn’t been a hitch.

II

THAT was how the audience saw it, but they were outsiders. There was one outsider left on the island, Wally Shine, the photographer sent by the Universal Syndicate to take pictures of what was a “notable society event” in a place of which the public had heard much and seen nothing. He had arrived that morning with two cameras and a delighted appreciation of the beauty he was to record. But, unlike the other outsiders, his impressions extending over a longer period had not been so agreeable. He had seen the actors at close range, in their habits as they lived, lunched with them, watched the last rehearsal, taken a lot of pictures of Miss Saunders in the house and garden. And he had sensed an electric disturbance in the atmosphere, and come upon evidences of internal discord.

That was at the last rehearsal, when the poetic Viola had lost her temper like an ordinary woman and jumped on the Tracy boy--something about the place he stood in--nothing, as far as Shine could see, to get mad about. And the boy had answered in kind like the spitting of an angry cat. An ugly scene that the director had to stop.

Then the man Stokes who played the Duke, a handsome, romantic-looking chap--something was the matter with him. “Eating him” was the phrase Shine used to himself and it wasn’t a bad one. He had a haunted sort of look, as if his mind was disturbed, especially when he’d turn his eyes on Miss Saunders. Shine had noticed him particularly when they gathered for the group pictures; his hands were unsteady and the perspiration was out on his forehead though the air was cool from the sea. His wife--the woman they called Flora--was on to him. Shine saw her watching him, sidelong from under her eyelids, the way you watch a person when you don’t want them to see it.

The photographer was a fat easy-going man, inured to the vagaries of those who follow the arts. But he was sensitive to emotional stress and he felt it here--below the surface--and was moved to curiosity.

The photographs were finished and the group broke up. Part of the company were going and they ran toward the house--a medieval route--the big Sir Toby with a rolling amble, Sir Andrew, long and lank, cavorting like a mettlesome steed. Their antic shadows fled before them over the dried sea grass, and their voices, shouting absurdities, rang rich and deep-throated on the crystal atmosphere.

Miss Saunders and Miss Tracy linked arms and moved off toward the headlands. Receding in the amber light they were like a picture from some antique romance--the noble lady and her page. One in narrow casings of crimson brocade, the other in short swinging kilt and braided jacket of more sober gray. Shine, fascinated, watched them pacing slowly over the burnished grass. Flocks of sea-gulls, roused by their voices, rose into the air, poised and wheeled, one moment dark, the next floating shapes of gold. He turned to go and saw that Stokes was watching them too, intent like a hungry dog, the hand that held a stalk of feathered grass against his lips, trembling.

The photographer shouldered his camera and went toward the house. A jeweled brightness of garden extended along its seaward front. Beyond this was the one stretch of cultivated turf on the island, an emerald slope leading to the cuplike hollow that held the amphitheater. He skirted the side balcony, the wide-flung doors giving a glimpse of an entrance hall, and turning the corner emerged upon the land front of the long capacious building. The surroundings on this side had been left as nature made them--rock shelves and ledges, devoid of vegetation, a path winding round them from the entrance to the wharf. Hayworth showed across the channel in a clustering of gray roofs from which smoke skeins rose straight into the suave rose-washed sky. The water rushed between, a swollen tide, threads of white dimpled eddies, telling of its racing speed.

The door on this side of the house opened directly into the living-room. No hall within or porch without interfered with the view; the path ended unceremoniously at the foot of two broad steps that led to the threshold. On the lower of these steps Shine found a lady sitting smoking a cigarette. This was the Maria of the cast, Mrs. Cornell in private life. She was still in her costume, her redundant figure swelling over the traditional laced bodice, the rouge on her cheeks hardly showing against the coat of sunburn a week at Gull Island had laid on. He had found her as easy as himself, good-humoredly loquacious and not involved in the prevailing discord. An admirable person to clear up mysteries. He sank down beside her on the step and took the cigarette box she flipped toward him.

“Wouldn’t you think,” she said, “a man as rich as this Mr. Driscoll would fix up round here better?”

Shine, who had artistic responses, had long learned not to intrude them on the uninitiated.

“I guess he liked it wild,” he suggested, and lit a cigarette.

“But it looks so rough, not a flower bed or a vase--just paths. That one there,” she pointed to a path that skirted the side of the house and dipped to a small grove of pines below, “goes through those pines and up to that summer-house. Nothing on the way and what’s the summer-house when you get there? Old style rustic work with vines. You’d suppose he’d build a temple and have some marble benches round. The way the rich spend their money always gets me.”

Shine had been in the grove of pines, a growth of stunted trees filling in a hollow. He had followed the path through it, up the slope to the summer-house and beyond to where the bluff dropped away in a sheer cliff to the channel. They called the place “The Point” as it projected beyond the shore line in a rocky outthrust shoulder, gulls circling about it, water seething below. He looked there now, let his glance slip along the curve of headlands till it reached the two girls, perched on a boulder like a pair of bright-plumaged birds. He was thinking how to approach the matter in his mind, when Mrs. Cornell went on:

“I don’t see what any one wanted to build a house here for--cut off this way. It’s too lonesome. With the tide at the full as it is now you can’t get ashore without a motor-boat. You know that current’s something fierce.”

He looked down at it, its rushing corded surface purple dark:

“Looks to be some current.”

“It would carry you out and ‘Good night’ to you. Gabriel who runs the launch told me. Set’s right out to sea someway. And the rise and fall to it--I couldn’t tell you how many feet it is, but you’ll see for yourself to-night if you’re awake--all the channel bare, nothing but rocks and mud. And across the middle of it to Hayworth, a causeway. That’s the only way you can get ashore at _low_ tide. High or low you’re pretty well marooned. It’s seclusion all right if that’s what you’re after.”

Shine was after information and with the talk running on tides and causeways he saw no chance of getting it. So he tried to divert the garrulous lady:

“That’s Miss Saunders and Miss Tracy out there looking at the sunset.”

Mrs. Cornell answered with emphasis:

“Yes, _they’re_ friends.”

“Aren’t you all?”

“Some of us knew each other before we came here,” was her cryptic reply. Then she added pensively: “Six months ago you’d never have found Sybil Saunders looking at a sunset. She was the _brightest_ thing!”

“Awful misfortune that what happened to her.”

She gave a derisive sound at the inadequacy of the word:

“Hah--awful! Took the heart right out of her. If you ever saw a girl in love it was she--bound up in him. Everything ready, the wedding day set, the trousseau made.” Tears rose in her eyes and she dove into her tight bodice for a handkerchief. “Never to be worn, Mr. Shine--that’s life.”

Shine gave forth sympathetic murmurs and Mrs. Cornell, dabbing at her eyes, furnished data between the dabs:

“Two men drinking too much and then a fight, and before anybody knew, murder! If there hadn’t been a brass candlestick near Jim Dallas’ hand it would never have happened. Honest to God, Mr. Shine, there was nothing evil in that young man. But the Parkinson family are camped on his trail. The evil’s in them, if you ask me, with their rewards and detectives.”

“I wonder if she knows where he is.”

“I guess there’s more than one wondering that,” the lady murmured.

“Terribly hard position for her if she does know--or if she doesn’t.”

Shine looked at the page’s figure on the rock. She carried the thing stamped on her face. He had noticed it particularly where he had taken the photographs of her in the living-room. They were time exposures with his small camera, attempts to catch her fragile prettiness in artistic combinations of light and shade. Once or twice the mask had been dropped and he had seen the drooping lines, the weariness, and something like fear on the delicate features.

For a space they smoked in silence. Round the corner of the house the tall figure of Stokes strolled into view. He looked at the seated girls, then turned and glanced behind him with a quick and furtive sweep of the eyes. At the sight of them he nodded, walked down to the wharf and dropped on a bench.

Shine lowered his voice:

“What’s the matter with him?”

Mrs. Cornell met his eyes; her own were narrowed and sharp.

“What makes you think anything is?”

“His whole make-up--something’s wearing on him.”

She blew out a long shoot of smoke and, watching it, murmured:

“Yes, it’s out on him like a rash. He oughtn’t to have come, but the first man they had, Sylvanus Grey, took sick and Mr. Walberg engaged Stokes in a hurry and sent him up. It’s spoiled everything for the rest of us. He’s crazy about Sybil if you want to know what’s the matter with him.”

“Oh!” It came with an understanding inflection, the haggard glances rising on Shine’s memory.

“Can’t hide it, doesn’t want to hide it. There’s no shame in him, tracking after the girl. And it’s not as if he got any encouragement. She can’t bear him; that’s why she has Anne Tracy out there, afraid if she sits alone five minutes he’ll come loping up. You’d think if he didn’t have any pride he’d have some feeling for his wife. She’s half crazy with jealousy, burning up with it. These purple passions are all right in books, Mr. Shine, but believe me they’re not comfortable to live with.”

“I felt it.”

“I guess you would, it’s in the air. All of us cooped up in this place where you can’t get off. I thought it was going to be such a nice restful change. But lord! It’s about as restful as camping on the side of Vesuvius. Sybil and Joe Tracy ready to fight at the drop of the hat and Flora going round in circles and Stokes like one of those fireworks that starts sputtering and you don’t know whether they’re going to explode or die on you. I tell you I’ll be glad when we get out of here to-morrow morning.”

There was a footfall in the room behind them and Mrs. Cornell turned to see who was coming.

“Oh, Flora,” she said. “Come out and take a look at the sunset. It’s something grand.”

The woman stepped out and stood beside them. She had changed her costume and her narrow blue linen dress outlined her too slender figure. Shine thought she would have been pretty if she had not looked so worn and thin. He noticed the brightness of her dark eyes, brilliant and quick-moving as a bird’s. There was red on her cheek-bones, a flushed patch that was not rouge. Mrs. Cornell’s expression recurred to him, “burning up”--the meager body, the hot high color, the dry lips resolutely smiling, suggested inner fires.

“Yes,” she answered, “it’s a wonderful evening.”

“Take a cig.” Mrs. Cornell offered the box.

“Sit down, there’s plenty of room.” Shine moved up.

“No, I can’t sit down. There’s something about the air that makes you restless--too stimulating maybe.” She raised her voice and called to her husband, “Aleck, aren’t you coming in to change your clothes?”

Without moving the man called back:

“Not yet. There’s no hurry.”

She turned to Shine with a little condoning air of wifely tolerance:

“Mr. Stokes has been shut up so long in town he can’t get enough of the fresh air.”

“He’s enjoying the scenery, too,” Shine answered, and saw her eyes travel to the two figures on the rock.

“Oh, that of course--that’s the best part of it.” Then in a tone of bright discovery: “Why look where Anne and Sybil are! Have they been there long?”

“Ever since I’ve been here.” Mrs. Cornell’s voice was more than soothing, bluffly reassuring as the voice of one who tells a child there is no ghost. “And ever since Mr. Shine got through the pictures! Wallowing in the beauties of nature like the rest of us.”

“Won’t you wallow, too?” Shine indicated the long unoccupied space on the step.

She shook her head:

“I like moving about. Something in this place gets on my nerves, it’s like being in a jail.” On a deep breath she shot out, “I hate it,” and stepped back into the room.

“Going?” Mrs. Cornell veered round to follow her retreating figure.

“Yes. I enjoy the scenery better when it hasn’t got people in it.”

They looked at each other; a still minute of eye communication.

“She’s all worked up,” he murmured.

Her answer was to point to the two girls and then to Stokes:

“Now she’ll keep her eye on them from somewhere else--probably the side piazza. That’s the way you are when you’re jealous--the sight of it kills you and you can’t stop watching.”

“Lord!” whispered Shine into whose life no such gnawing passions had entered. And he thought of the girl in the page’s dress who was afraid to sit alone, and the man on the wharf brooding within sight of her, and the woman who was hovering round them like a helpless distracted bird.

III

THE launch was on its way back for those of the actors who were leaving. Gabriel, squatting by the engine, calculated the distribution of his time. After he’d taken them across he’d have his supper and then go back for Joe Tracy, who was leaving on the seven fifteen for his vacation. When Joe was disposed of, Gabriel was to meet two Boston sports who had engaged him for a week’s deep-sea fishing at White Beach, twenty-five miles down the coast. It was a strenuous program for the old man and he grumbled to himself about it, the grumbling gaining zest by anticipations that some of them would be late. If it was any of the actors, by gum, he wouldn’t wait for them, with the sports ready to take him along in their car at seven. By the time he drew near the island he had grumbled himself into a state of irascible defiance against any one who would dare upset his plans.

To warn them of his coming he sounded the whistle and its shrill toot acted like a magic summons. A group of men, bearing suit-cases and bags, emerged from the entrance and ran down the path, Bassett following. Miss Pinkney’s helper, a native of Hayworth, hurried from the kitchen wing, a suit-case in her hand, and even the august Sara herself appeared in the doorway of her domain.

Gabriel quieted down--they were all ready and waiting--and then saw Joe Tracy come round the corner of the house in his Sebastian dress. The old man muttered profanely--why wasn’t the d----d cub getting ready? And as the boat made its landing, he called out:

“Say, you’d better be gettin’ them togs off. I’ll be back here for you at a quarter to seven.”

The boy, leaping lightly from rock to rock, grinned without answering. The picturesque dress suited him, he looked almost handsome, and with the feathered cap on his golden wig set rakishly aslant, he moved downward with a taunting debonair swagger. Gabriel didn’t like him anyway and now his impudent face, framed by the drooping blond curls, looked to the launch man malignantly spiteful.

Gabriel could say no more then for the confusion of good-bys possessed the wharf. The actors shouted them out even to Miss Pinkney, flattering assurances of their inability to forget her and her cooking. She waved a condescending hand and permitted herself a smile, for she was very glad to get rid of them.

But Gabriel wasn’t going to go till he’d made things clear. He appealed to Bassett whom he had privately sized up as the only one of the outfit who was like the rational human males of his experience. Besides he had seen that Joe Tracy respected, if not feared, the director:

“I’ll be back here at quarter to seven for the Tracy boy, and I’m tellin’ him he’s got to be ready. I can’t waste no time settin’ round waitin’ and if he’s not here on the dot--”

“That’s all right,” Bassett put a comforting hand on his shoulder and turned to Joe. “You heard that, Joe?”

The boy answered with his sneering grin:

“What’s got the old geezer? Does he think I’m as deaf as he is?”

Gabriel’s weather-beaten visage reddened. He was not in the habit of being called an “old geezer” and he was not deaf. But the actors, all in the boat, were clamoring to start. They had a train to make--get in ancient servitor, and turn on the current. Miss Pinkney’s helper, with her hat on one side and her face crimson, giggled hysterically, and in a chorus of farewells the boat chugged off.

The three men left on the wharf went up the path to the doorway where Shine and Mrs. Cornell had resumed their seats. Shine was struck by their difference of type,--if you went the world over you couldn’t find three more varied specimens. The only one he liked was Bassett, something square and solid about him and a good straight look in his eyes. The kind of chap, Shine thought, you’d ask directions of in the street and who’d give ’em to you no matter what hurry he was in. And he’d a lot of authority--the way he managed this wild-eyed bunch showed that. Shine had noticed, too, a sort of exuberant quality of good will about him--like a light within shining out--and set it down to relief at having got through without any one blowing the lid off.

They stopped at the steps and Joe Tracy made his good-bys. He was going camping in the woods with his friend Jimmy Travers, who was to meet him at Bangor to-night. They’d stay there twenty-four hours getting their stuff together, then be off for the northern solitudes--no beaten tracks for them. He left, jauntily swinging his kilted skirts, a whistled tune on his lips. Soon after, Stokes departed, saying he was going to change his clothes. His air was nonchalant, lounging up the steps and crossing the living-room with a lazy padding stride.