Margarita's Soul Part 4

CHAPTER V

ROGER FINDS THE ISLAND

It goes without saying that I have a retentive memory. Of course I depend very largely upon it for all the small details that Roger has from time to time vouchsafed me in regard to his relations with Margarita, or I could not very well be writing these idle memories, but Roger was always a poor writer--that is to say, so far as comment and amplification and variety of manner may be supposed to make a good one. Witness the following letter, which I received in answer to my plea for details of that strange night journey from New York to Margarita's town. It left a gap in my story of which I never happened to receive any account, and it seemed to me a fairly important gap, though you will see that this was not Roger's view of it.

DEAR JERRY:

It is rather late in the day to ask me about that trip to ----. We hardly spoke for a long time, as I am sure I have told you before--either of us. There was no berth to be had for her and no drawing-room car on, so we rode all night in the day coach with a rather mixed lot. I remember they snored and it amused her. She wanted to wake them up and I had to speak sharply to prevent her. The air got very bad and I took her out on the platform for a while. I remember there were any amount of stars and the moon out, too. You know she never talked much. About one o'clock we got to S---- and changed cars for a few minutes' wait.... I think it was then that she asked me abruptly what I meant by a "convent." She said it in French and I saw that she spoke and understood the language, but only in a simple, childish sort of way. I told her it was a big school. "What is that?"

she said.... There were a number of Italians on the train, and they were chattering like magpies, but she paid no attention to them, and I was sure she did not understand them. At ---- we got out and I asked her if there would be any livery stable open at that hour, for it was not more than four o'clock. She did not know, of course, what a livery stable was and told me that we must either go in a boat or walk. So we walked. The sun rose while we were walking. I think this is all you wanted.

There you have it! Could anything be simpler? "I remember there were any amount of stars ... You know she never talked much."--Oh, Roger, Roger! Must you always have the doing and I the telling? Even to this day, though I would cut off this hand for you, I am jealous of you.

"The sun rose while we were walking"! Ah me, to walk with Margarita through the dawn! She was the very dawn of life herself, untarnished, unfatigued, unashamed. To me who have known her, other women are as pictures in a gallery--lovely pictures, many of them, but a little faded and fingermarked, somehow.

We shall have to take that walk for granted. I know that it consisted of a quarter-mile of sleeping village, three quarters of a mile of scattered houses, two miles of widely separated farms and then two last miles of bayberry, salt meadow, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, rocky sand and blue, inrolling seas. I know how the salty, strengthening air blew Roger's lungs clean of the frightful murk of the car, how the strange, stunted windrocked trees gave an odd, unreal air of j.a.pan to that bleak sh.o.r.e; I can half close my eyes now and lo, Atami and her thundering, surf-swept beach broadens out before me, and the breakers as they come pounding in, chase--not the withered, monkeylike old priest who searches endlessly for something in the sea-weed, girding his clean, faded robe above his bare sticks of legs--but Margarita and me. The camphor trees lose their lacquered green and turn to distant chestnut; the scarlet lily fades to a dull rose marsh flower; the lines of the temple are only quaintly-eaved rocks and ledges, and I am over seas again. I wonder if that is the reason I love this place so? But there were no geyser baths there and I had no rheumatism then!

_Tout la.s.se, tout ca.s.se, tout pa.s.se_--even the sciatic nerve, we will hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TALL, GAUNT, SILENT WOMAN ... STRIDING THROUGH THE PASTURES]

Well, then, after they had made what Roger with his usual accuracy in such matters took for nearly five miles, it occurred to him to ask Margarita how it was that she knew her way so well, for she went through pastures, broken walls, here and there a bit of the country road, with the air of long practice. At first she would not tell him.

I can imagine that slanting school-boy look, that quietly malicious indrawing of the corners of the mouth: the most enchanting obstinacy conceivable. They were following at the time a narrow beaten path, perhaps a cattle track, but that was not her guide, for often such a path curved and returned aimlessly on itself or branched off quite widely from the direction she took. At first, as I say, she was deaf to his question, but when he repeated it, patiently, I have no doubt, but evidently determined upon an answer, she yielded, as we all yield to Roger in the end, and confessed that she had once followed Hester to the village and back by this road. Hester had never guessed it, never in fact turned her back when once started, and it had been easy to keep her in sight. At the edge of the town Margarita had felt a little shy and apprehensive of her fate if discovered, so she had sat by the wood-side till Hester appeared again and followed her meekly home.

Since then I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's appearance from various sources, and I own that the situation has always seemed to me picturesque in the extreme: the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her severe, dull dress striding through the pastures, and behind her, stealthily as an Indian--or an Italian avenger--the dark, lovely child, now crouching amongst the bayberry, now defiantly erect, but always graceful as a panther, her hair loose on her slender shoulders. I cannot forbear to add that in this picture of mine, a great vivid letter burns on the woman's breast, inseparable from her name, of course. But this only adds to the sombre power of the picture. It is a thing for Vedder to paint, in witchlike browns and greys.

Margarita had never made this journey but once, but she followed her old trail with the precision of a savage. I myself have gone that way once only: and then but half of the distance, or a little less. It was not in bayberry time, but through a land smooth and blue-white with snow and with a terror pulling my heart out that I am sure I could never endure again. How we flew over the snow! It was all a ghastly glare, a dancing sun in a turquoise sky ... No, no, one does not live through such things twice and I hate even the memory of it. Even with the boiling geyser rumbling behind me, filling the baths with comfort and oblivion, I shiver to my very marrow.

After they had followed a certain marshy band of vivid green for several pasture-lengths, Margarita shook her head slightly, retraced her steps and stopped at a point where three or four great flat stones made a sort of causeway across the glistening, muddy strip, and Roger, following her as she jumped lightly over, saw that they stood upon a little rocky promontory joined only by this strange bit of marsh to the mainland. The strip was here not a hundred feet wide, and winding in on either side of this two little inlets crept sluggishly along and lost themselves in the marsh. The promontory was there very barren and it seemed to Roger that the girl was going to lead him out into the shallow cove that faced them, but a few more steps showed him that just here the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of meadow-hay dotted with spa.r.s.e, stunted cedars.

Directly before him lay a wet, shining beach, for the tide was half gone, and a hundred yards out, the tops of what might almost have been a built wall of nasty pointed rocks formed a perfect lagoon across the face of the promontory. At high tide these would not show, but they were there, always guarding, always bare-toothed, and as far again beyond them a bell-buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to point to the existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome bay of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly, as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long, quavering bellow came from behind him.

"It is the cow," said Margarita rea.s.suringly, as he whirled around, "she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose."

Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and Roger perceived that what he had carelessly pa.s.sed over as a great sand dune was in reality a square cottage built of sand, apparently, for it was precisely the colour and texture of sand, sloping off in a succession of outbuildings, just as the cliffs and dunes slope, windowless, nearly, from that side at least, and offering only the anxious cow, peering from the furthest outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to it on one side, the right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up and ran like a wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the sand of the beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was perched on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the straggling gra.s.s began. They moved on toward this house, then, and as they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the cow's lament, a howl with a baying, mellow undertone that lingered on the morning air. For it was honest morning now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes and sea sand and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the house a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying monotonously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her, arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beautifully brindled and very ma.s.sive. She fondled him quietly, smiling as he clumsily threw his great paws about her waist, and pushed him down.

"I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think I will have Caliban bring me some warm milk."

She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow stall, and as he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the internal structure of the building might be, it was certainly covered with rough sand.

"Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking fellow, small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared to rise out of the ground before them, dangling a milk pail on his arm. At sight of Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while.

Plainly he had thought her gone for good and this was his thanksgiving.

"Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita impatiently, after a moment of this, "and get me some bread. Make haste with it."

He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow stall and appeared almost immediately with a large silver mug and a huge piece torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the cow he balanced the mug between his knees and deftly milked it full. She seized it, drained it thirstily and began munching her bread, holding the mug out to him again to be filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the loaf, like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused, half irritated.

"You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality, I see," he said finally, and as she looked at him over the silver mug inquiringly, he explained.

"I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry, too, Miss Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me anything to eat and drink?"

She shook her head doubtfully.

"I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks from this cup but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will get you another ..."

"Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested mildly.

"Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has finished milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding, "I do not think he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did that when the doctor came to see my father."

I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for me how she first entertained Roger: I had already a good idea of his initial hospitality to her in the French restaurant. Here is her letter.

DEAREST JERRY:

What an odd thing to ask me to tell you--my first hospitality to Roger! But I remember it very well. Only it was not very hospitable, because, of course, I did not know anything about that sort of thing. One has to learn that, like finger bowls and asking people if they slept well. You know I called for some bread and milk and ate them very greedily, standing by the cow so that I could get more when I should want it. By the time I had finished, Caliban had finished milking and then Roger asked me quite politely if I thought he might have something to eat now. You know, dear Jerry, I had never been used to eating with people. All the people I knew ate their meals separately and it never occurred to me that I ought to be there when he ate. And then, I was so sleepy--oh, so sleepy! You know I have always felt sleepy and hungry and angry and things like that so much more than other people seem to. I have to sleep and eat when I feel like sleeping and eating. So I only said, "You had better ask Hester to get you a breakfast. I must go to sleep now," and flung myself down on some fresh hay just beside the cow stall, in the sun, and went to sleep! Was not that a dreadful thing to do? But I did it. I do not know how long I slept, nor how Roger looked when I turned my back on him, but when I opened my eyes he was sitting beside me, smoking a cigar and staring at me. He had been there all the time.

"Did Hester get you a breakfast?" I asked him, stretching myself like a big baby.

"I have not asked her," he said very quietly, "suppose we go in now and see about it, if you are rested."

So we went in, but Hester was not in the kitchen, and when I went up to her room and knocked there was no answer, so I supposed she had gone out for the roots and herbs she used to hunt so much.

"You will have to get it yourself," I told him, "unless Caliban will."

"Are you not willing to do that much for me, then?" he said, and I felt very strange, though I could not explain why. I think now it was because I began to understand that I ought to have done something I had not.

"I would get it for you if I could," I said, "but _I_ do not know how to make a breakfast, nor where Hester keeps her things. Why do you not ask Caliban?"

So then he asked Caliban if he could manage some breakfast for him, but Caliban only stared and walked away.

"Does he understand?" Roger asked me, and I felt that his voice was not the same as it had been.

"I am sure he does," I said. "Will you not do as this man asks you, Caliban?" But he only scowled and turned away.

"You see," I said, "there is nothing to be done until Hester comes." But Roger shook his head and walked over to Caliban.

I am sure he knew it was not that I grudged him food, but that I had no idea at all of how to set about getting it ready. People always have known that what I say is truth, though much of what I say seems to surprise them.

"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will try a slightly different method," and I knew he was very angry. He lifted Caliban in the air by the collar of his coat and gave him several sharp blows on each ear and shook him. Then he threw him away on the floor. Caliban cried like a young dog and sat upon his knees and covered his face. He meant for Roger to excuse him. I was surprised, for I had always been a little afraid of Caliban.

"Get up," said Roger, very quietly, "and make me some coffee and whatever else you have. And see that you obey me in future."

Caliban hurried about and looked here and there and made some coffee and broke eggs in a black pan and cut pieces of bacon. He set a place at the kitchen table and made some biscuits warm in the oven. Roger ate five eggs and a great many pieces of bacon and six biscuits. He gave me some coffee. When he had finished he drew a long breath and gave Caliban a piece of silver money and Caliban kissed it. Then Roger took another cigar and told Caliban to fetch a match and then he asked me if I would like to walk by the sea for a little.

"I ought to find this Hester of yours," he said, "but I won't just yet. I am too comfortable. Will you come out with me?"

So I said I would, and that was all my hospitality, dear Jerry. I had learned better when you came, had I not? This letter has been so long that I cannot write any more.

Your MARGARITA.

My Margarita! The very words are not like any other two words. I think no woman's name is so purely sweet to the ear, so grateful on the tongue. My Margarita! Alas, alas....