The Nymph and the Lamp (48 page)

CHAPTER 34

Isabel broke her rigid pose and walked to the empty fireplace, looking down at the polished brass knobs of the andirons. With her left hand she plucked off her tam and let the arm drop full length at her side. She rested the other hand on the mantel.

“Suppose it was,” she murmured.

“I knew you hated the island, and I felt sure you'd be writing Carney to say you weren't coming back. All I required was one look at the postmark on any letter in your hand. Simple, wasn't it?”

“But there was no letter, I've written nothing!” Isabel cried.

“So I found,” he smiled. “I got a quaint reception from Hurd. I expected him to be peeved. You know how he hates losing useful personnel. When he read my quitting notice I could feel his anguish all the way up there in Montreal. Well, he was a bit stuffy all right, but when I told him what I was quitting for his face lit up like a Chinese lantern. He went right into one of his long spiels on the future of radio broadcasting and at the end of it he told me something that absolutely flabbergasted me. ‘I'm quitting myself in a month,” he said, like a pleased kid. ‘For some time I've had the standing offer of a very good job in the States, in the technical end of a radio business, and by Jove I've decided to take it!' Grinning all over his face, imagine that! Hurd! He's leaving for New York at the end of November and can hardly wait. Shook hands with me and slapped me on the back as if we'd both struck oil right under the office floor. I was still a bit dazed when I shut the door and bumped into his secretary, the blonde.”

“Miss Benson.”

“Right. She told me her name. In fact she told me a lot about herself before I was through. I was still playing my hunch and she swam right into it. She had that chase-me-Charlie look so I invited her out to dinner and a show. You may not believe this, but she told me in the course of the evening that I was a fascinating man, and that she couldn't help hearing what I'd said to Mr. Hurd. She said I was smart to be getting into business. ‘After all,' she said ‘what future has an operator got?'—and she thought it must be wonderful to live in Montreal. She'd been seriously thinking of going there herself, because Halifax seemed dead now that the shipping slump had set in, and after all a girl had her future to consider. And what was my advice?”

Isabel smiled faintly. She could hear Miss Benson saying it, and she could see the wide-eyed look and the careless crossing of Miss Benson's luscious legs.

“Well,” Skane went on, “there was quite a bit of that. It took me a long time and some very careful conversation to get around to you. I said it was rather urgent that I know Mrs. Carney's whereabouts, because I had to convey that important message before I went back to Montreal. ‘Look here,' I said, ‘Mrs. Carney must have received a check from Hurd after she got ashore from Marina. She wouldn't cash it while she was in hospital because Hurd was looking after everything and charging the bills to Carney's pay account. Now where was that check cashed?' Miss Benson said she didn't know, but she'd find out.”

“It was cashed in Halifax right after I left the hospital,” Isabel said tartly.

“True, my dear. But in going over the canceled checks in the office next morning La Benson discovered another, an old one for seventy dollars dated in August last year. She'd noticed that it was outstanding every month when she made up the bank reconciliation statement, and then suddenly last June or late in May it had been cashed. She dug the thing out and phoned my hotel. I went down at once. Fortunately Hurd was out. She showed me the check and when I looked at the endorsements…”

“Ah! How very clever!”

“Elementary, my dear, quite elementary. There was your signature under my hand—it was like touching you—and there was the rubber stamp of the bank branch in Kingsbridge. I caught the morning train and took a room at the Boston House. The bank was closed for the Saturday half holiday and everybody seemed to be going to the fair. I got somebody to point out one of the bank clerks in the street and I asked the chap if a Mrs. Matthew Carney did any business at his place. He thought a minute and said No. But you can't fool old Sherlock Skane. I asked if by any chance there was a Miss Isabel Jardine—and of course there was. I gathered that you're the right hand and both feet of the local Rockefeller. Monna Pomona! I might have known I'd find you right in the middle of the apple belt!”

He laughed. In the downcast glow of the lamp his teeth gleamed in the keen dark face.

“I wish you didn't sound so—satisfied,” she said resentfully. It was very easy to picture him with Miss Benson. Skane arose from the pool of yellow light and came to the fireplace, leaning his tall figure against it, with one hand thrust in a trousers pocket and the other stretched along the mantel, almost but not quite touching hers. Isabel's head remained bent, staring thoughtfully at the hearth, but she did not miss the delicacy of that inch between their finger tips. She thought again of the old snapshot album and those torn-out chapters in his life when he had learned the art of estimating women.

“You're very sure of me, aren't you?” she added in the same tone.

“No,” he replied quickly. “I wish I were. You're a strange creature, Isabel. Do you know what you really want, yourself?”

She did not reply. She remained absorbed in her study of the hearth, and there was a certain melancholy in the drooping pose of the slender figure in the dusk thrown by the lampshade. From the westward came a sharp hiss and a report high over the town, and the night outside was lit by a cascade of falling stars. They heard the distant drawn-out
ahhh
of the crowd enjoying the first of the evening's fireworks.

“Do you?” Skane demanded.

“Tell me about Marina—about Matthew,” she said in a subdued voice.

Skane turned away and walked across the room. He remained there, staring out of a window, “What is there to tell?” he said over his shoulder.

“Did he know about—about us?”

He turned and came several steps towards her. “Who can say? Matt's not a suspicious sort of man. In any case he wouldn't say anything. Matt and I were very close, we were like brothers in those days before you came. And you know how he felt about you. It was a mistake to bring you there. He came to realize that and so did you. In his own way and for his own reasons he became just as unhappy as you were in yours. If he suspected what was passing between you and me, that we'd found happiness together there in that desolate hole, he must have decided that silence was his only course. In any case he said nothing. He was always very reserved and I saw no change whatever in his manner. When I told him early in August that I was putting in for leave in time to catch the August boat he accepted it almost with indifference. Murmured something about three years being a long time, and that I was young.”

He turned and walked to the window again, paused a moment and came back restlessly. He dropped upon the sofa and lit a cigarette. The blue fumes curled about the lamp. He studied the pensive figure at the fireplace.

“I don't think Matt realizes how the world's changed,” he said in his former conversational tone. “He caught a glimpse when he was ashore last year and fled from it. But he can't avoid seeing some of it, even on Marina. The radio traffic's falling off at a great rate. The big liners are all fitted with continuous-wave sets now, and they get off the old six-hundred-meter channel and buzz their stuff direct to New York. Even the tramps nowadays can raise the mainland direct instead of retransmitting through stations like Marina. The old system, the old stations—the whole outfit's obsolete. Do you realize that Matt's station was built in 1905? In the radio game that's as old as Noah.”

“What do you think will happen?” she asked.

“I don't think—I know. Hurd told me that within another year Marina is to cease handling commercial traffic altogether. That's why he's refused to install anything really new and ignored Matt's demands for a stand-by engine. The Marina station's quite good enough, just as it stands, for all future needs.”

“And what are they?”

“It will continue to exist merely for communication between the island and the mainland. That means the staff will be cut to one man—Matt himself. He doesn't know that yet. He won't know till the thing is done. What's more the whole setup on Marina is due for a change. That elaborate chain of lifesaving posts along the island was all right back in the days of sailing ships when there were wrecks galore. Nowadays they never see a wreck except an occasional fishing schooner taking a chance on the west bar, and then usually the crew put over their dories and row ashore. The old establishment's been going on since the days of Victoria and nobody's given it much thought; but the war's changed everything and now that a postwar slump is setting in there'll be some sharp economies in all the government services. Somebody's bound to take a cold look at that ancient setup. Of course there'll always have to be a boat's crew to handle stores and to do the odd job of rescue work. The two lighthouses naturally will be maintained. And there'll be Matt to operate the wireless outfit and to report barometer readings and so forth to the weather people. The rest will be washed up. You see what it means?”

“What?”

“It was lonely before. What'll it be like in a few more years?”

She considered his question gravely.

“'Why are you telling me all this?” she asked.

Skane drew in smoke and blew it out slowly. “You asked me about Matt. I'm telling you. And now it seems to me time you said, something about yourself, darling. And won't you sit down? That attitude is charming but it's awfully distant. You look like one of the brooding Fates.”

Obediently she came towards him. Skane arose and took the tam from her hand and laid it aside. He gestured towards a chair near the sofa.

“I promise!” he said ironically. She sank into the chair. Her eyes were no longer wary. She looked at Skane in the low broad cone of lamplight with a thoughtful gaze but she did not resemble Monna Pomona in the least. Rossetti's woman was too bloodless and her features too masculine and ascetic. Skane saw a face warm and golden-tanned and wholly feminine, even a little weak, with the appealing weakness of a woman dreaming of old loves.

“'Well?” he said. Isabel lowered her eyes and regarded the hands clasped in her lap.

“I wish you hadn't come,” she said in a disturbed tone. “'You bring everything back, all the things I wanted to forget. It was you who hurt me, you and Matthew, not the bullet, not that silly girl with the rifle. Oh I know you couldn't help it, either of you. I don't blame anyone but myself. You've always thought that Matthew seduced me in some way—got me on his island under false pretenses. Well, you're wrong. You should have known him better than that. It was the other way round. Does that shock you? It should. Because I didn't really love Matthew when I persuaded him to take me to Marina. I was lonely. I was nearly thirty and I had no one in the world. The only time I'd ever been in love I was jilted. And then one day something frightened me, I was desperate—and Matthew happened to be there. That was the way it came about. Within forty-eight hours I regretted it. But then it was too late. When I landed on Marina I was sick to death of Matthew, of myself, of everything.”

Skane sat motionless, as if he were afraid to disturb this low voiced confession. After a pause she went on, “I felt quite sure that Matthew was in love with me, and after a time I resolved to make the best of it. I made love to him. I gave myself to him absolutely. For a month or so we were happy together. It was perfect. I found that I really loved him and I was utterly content. And then—this is the irony of it—he began to draw away from me, in little ways, in the trifles that mean everything. I couldn't understand—I couldn't believe it. And when I taxed him with it and he said that nothing was changed I knew that he was only being kind. You see? Before the winter was half gone our positions were reversed—it was he who was sick of me. There was no explanation except that he wanted his old life back again. There was no quarrel, you understand? We simply drifted into a mental state as dreary as those long Marina nights, with the wind sobbing in the aerials, when there was no relief, not even sleep. We were haunted. I came to believe all the ghastly tales of the island in those winter nights. That air of mystery! Something melancholy, something heart-rending and very close. It seemed to affect us all, even you and Sargent. Surely you felt it?”

“Yes,” Skane said.

She leaned forward quickly.

“Then what was it? That mystery! You must know!”

It startled him, the abrupt question and the change in her from a woman in a mournful trance to this creature, tense and alive, her whole attitude one fierce demand. Her large gray eyes stared into his with a furious curiosity. Instinctively he drew back a little.

“Mystery?” he repeated. And then in a more assured tone, “Oh! Well, the mystery was simply that we three men were all in love with you in our separate ways and in various degrees. That was what you felt. How could you help it? Because it set us all apart from one another, each nursing his own emotions and wondering what the end was to be. For it had to come to a head before the winter passed. By Christmas we all knew that.”