Angel Island, Inez Haynes Gillmore [the two towers ebook txt] 📗

the most brilliant kind of man-talk. To

it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his

insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered

richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with

the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential

attitude of listener. But the events of these conversational orgies were

Honey Smith’s adventures and Pete Murphy’s romances. Honey’s narrative

was crisp, clear, quick, straight from the shoulder, colloquial, slangy.

He dealt often in the first person and the present tense. He told a

plain tale from its simple beginning to its simple end. But Pete - . His

language had all Honey’s simplicity lined terseness and, in addition, he

had the literary touch, both the dramatist’s instinct and the

fictionist’s insight. His stories always ran up to a psychological

climax; but this was always disguised by the best narratory tricks. He

was one of those men of whom people always say, “if he could only write

as he talks.” In point of fact, he wrote much better than he talked -

but he talked better than any one else. The unanalytic never allowed in

him for the spell of the spoken word, nor for the fiery quality of his

spirit.

 

As time went on, their talks grew more and ore confidential. Women’s

faces began to gleam here and there in narrative. They began to indulge

in long discussions of the despised sex; at times they ran into fierce

controversy. Occasionally Honey Smith re-told a story which, from the

introduction of a shadowy girl-figure, became mysteriously more

interesting and compelling. Once or twice they nearly went over the

border-line of legitimate confidence, so intimate had their talk become

- muffled as it was by the velvety, star-sown dark and interrupted only

by the unheeded thunders of the surf. They were always pulling

themselves up to debate openly whether they should go farther, always,

on consideration, turning narrative into a channel much less

confidential and much less, interesting, or as openly plugging straight

ahead, carefully disguising names and places.

 

After a week or two, the first fine careless rapture of their escape

from death disappeared. The lure of loot evaporated. They did not stop

their work on “the ship-duffle,” but it became aimless and undirected.

Their trips into the island seemed a little purposeless. Frank Merrill

had to scourge them to patrol the beach, to keep their signal sheets

flying, their signal fires burning. The effect upon their mental

condition of this loss of animus was immediate. They became perceptibly

more serious. Their first camp - it consisted only of five haphazard

piles of bedding - satisfied superficially the shiftless habits of their

womanless group; subconsciously, however, they all fell under the

depression of its discomfort and disorder. They bathed in the ocean

regularly but they did not shave. Their clothes grew ragged and torn,

and although there were scores of trunks packed with wearing apparel,

they did not bother to change them. Subconsciously they all responded to

these irregularities by a sudden change in spirit.

 

In the place of the gay talk-fests that filled their evenings, they

began to hold long pessimistic discussions about their future on the

island in case rescue were indefinitely delayed. Taciturn periods fell

upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy

Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became

subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved,

almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These were

followed by periods of an intense, bitter, black, Celtic melancholy.

Ralph Addington degenerated into what Honey described as “the human

sourball.” He spoke as seldom as possible and then only to snarl. He

showed a tendency to disobey the few orders that Frank Merrill, who

still held his position of leader, laid upon them. Once or twice he

grazed a quarrel with Merrill. Honey Smith developed an abnormality

equal to Ralph Addington’s, but in the opposite direction. His spirits

never flagged; he brimmed with joy-in-life, vitality, and optimism. It

was as if he had some secret mental solace.

 

“Damn you and your sunny-side-up dope!” Ralph Addington growled at him

again and again. “Shut up, will you!”

 

One day Frank Merrill proposed a hike across the island. Billy Fairfax

who, at the head, had set a brisk pace for the file, suddenly dropped

back to the rear and accosted Honey Smith who had lagged behind. Honey

was skipping stones over the lake from a pocketful of flat pebbles.

 

“Say, Honey,” Billy began. The other four men were far ahead, but Billy

kept his voice low. Do you remember that dream you had about the big

bird - the time we joshed you so?

 

“Sure do I,” Honey said cheerfully. “Only remember one thing, Billy.

That wasn’t a dream any more than this is.”

 

“All right,” Billy exclaimed. “You don’t have to show me. A funny thing

happened to me last night. I’m not telling the others. They won’t

believe it and - well, my nerves are all on end. I know I’d get mad if

they began to jolly. I was sleeping like the dickens - a

sure-for-certain Rip Van Winkle - when all of a sudden - Did you ever

have a pet cat, Honey?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Well, I’ve had lots of them. I like cats. I had one once that used to

wake me up at two minutes past seven every morning as regularly as two

minutes past seven came - not an instant before, not an instant after.

He turned the trick by jumping up on the bed and looking steadily into

my face. Never touched me, you understand. Well, l waked this morning

just after sunrise with a feeling that Kilo was there staring at me.

Somebody was - ” Billy paused. He swallowed rapidly and wet his lips.

“But it wasn’t Kilo.” Billy paused again.

 

“I’m listening, bo,” said Honey, shying another stone.

 

“It was a girl looking at me,” Billy said, simply as though it were

something to be expected. He paused. Then, “Get that? A girl! She was

bending over me - pretty close - I could almost touch her. I can see her

now as plainly as I see you. She was blonde. One of those pale-gold

blondes with hair like honey and features cut with a chisel. You know

the type. Some people think it’s cold. It’s a kind of beauty that’s

always appealed to me, though.” He stopped.

 

“Well,” Honey prodded him with a kind of non-committal calm, “what

happened?”

 

“Nothing. If you can believe me - nothing. I stared - oh, I guess I

stared for a quarter of a minute straight up into the most beautiful

pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them

and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as

gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes - ” For a moment

the quiet directness of Billy’s narrative was disturbed by a whiff of

inner tumult. “Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a

lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know

how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They

sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and - when I awoke it was broad

daylight. What do you think?”

 

“Well,” said Honey judicially, “I know just how you feel. I could have

killed the boys for joshing me the way they did. I was sure. I was

certain I heard a woman laugh that night. And, by God, I did hear it.

Whenever I contradict myself, something rises up and tells me I lie. But

- .” His radiant brown smile crumpled his brown face. “Of course, I

didn’t hear it. I couldn’t have heard it. And so I guess you didn’t see

the peroxide you speak of. And yet if you Punch me in the jaw, I’ll know

exactly how you feel.” His face uncrumpled, smoothed itself out to his

rare look of seriousness.” The point of it is that we’re all a little

touched in the bean. I figure that you and I are alike in some things.

That’s why we’ve always hung together. And all this queer stuff takes us

two the same way. Remember that psychology dope old Rand used to pump

into us at college? Well, our psychologies have got all twisted up by a

recent event in nautical circles and we’re seeing things that aren’t

there and not seeing things that are there.”

 

“Honey,” said Billy, “that’s all right. But I want you to understand me

and I don’t want you, to make any mistake. I saw a girl.”

 

“And don’t forget this,” answered Honey. “I heard one.”

 

Billy made no allusion to any of this with the other three men. But for

the rest of the day, he had a return of his gentle good humor. Honey’s

spirits fairly sizzled.

 

That night Frank Merrill suddenly started out of sleep with a yelled,

“What was that?”

 

“What was what?” everybody demanded, waking immediately to the panic in

his voice.

 

“That cry,” he explained breathlessly, “didn’t you hear it?” Frank’s

eyes were brilliant with excitement; he was pale.

 

Nobody had heard it. And Ralph Addington and Pete Murphy, cursing

lustily, turned over and promptly fell asleep again. But Billy Fairfax

grew rapidly more and more awake. “What sort of a cry?” he asked. Honey

Smith said nothing, but he stirred the fire into a blaze in preparation

for a talk.

 

“The strangest cry I ever heard, long-drawn-out, wild - eerie’s the word

for it, I guess,” Frank Merrill said. As he spoke, he peered off into

the darkness. “If it were possible, I should say it was a woman’s

voice.”

 

The three men walked away from the camp, looked off into every direction

of the starlit night. Nowhere was there sign or sound of life.

 

“It must have been gulls,” said Honey Smith.

 

“It didn’t sound like gulls,” answered Frank Merrill. For an instant he

fell into meditation so deep that he virtually forgot the presence of

the other two. “I don’t know what it was,” he said finally in an

exasperated tone. “I’m going to sleep.”

 

They walked back to camp. Frank Merrill rolled himself up in a blanket,

lay down. Soon there came from his direction only the sound of regular,

deep breathing.

 

“Well, Honey,” Billy Fairfax asked, a note of triumph in his voice, “how

about it?”

 

“Well, Billy,” Honey Smith said in a baffled tone, “when you get the

answer, give it to me.”

 

Nobody mentioned the night’s experience the next day. But a dozen times

Frank Merrill stopped his work to gaze out to sea, an expression of

perplexity on his face.

 

The next night, however, they were all waked again, waked twice. It was

Ralph Addington who spoke first; a kind of hoarse grunt and a “What the

devil was that?”

 

“What?” the others called.

 

“Damned if I know,” Ralph answered. “If you wouldn’t think I was off my

conch, I’d say it was a gang of women laughing.”

 

Pete Murphy, who always woke in high spirits, began to joke Ralph

Addington. The other three were silent. In fifteen minutes they were all

asleep; sixty, they were all awake again.

 

It was Pete Murphy who sounded the alarm this time. “Say, something

spoke to me,” he said. “Or else I’m a nut. Or else I have had the most

vivid dream I’ve ever had.” Evidently he did not believe that it was a

dream. He sat up and listened; the others listened, too. There was no

sound in