Lord of the Far Island (31 page)

ho wants to write when one is happy? He loves me. He said he does. It is all so exciting. He says we shall be together and everything is going to be different. I talked to him about my father and life at the castle.

ife is wonderful.

There was a further gap. Then I read:

he artist was on the mainland today. He asked us to Blue Rock and he was very kind and hospitable. He showed us his studio full of his paintings of birds and pictures of the sea and the islands. He said he hoped we come again.

t was a lovely day. It always is when we are together.

Another gap. Then:

wish I hadn started writing all this now. It seems pointless, I think that before I was just brooding on my unhappiness, enjoying my misery if that not a contradiction, but it fits the case. Now it all over. I so happy I just love everybody.

oday I looked up at my father window and he was there. He looked very ill and I thought: hall I tell him?But I was afraid to go up. I remembered Fenwick saying that it would just about finish him off. I wouldn want that on my consciencenow.

There was no more writing in the book.

Although I felt I had come closer to Silva, what had happened on that fateful night of the storm was more than ever a mystery. Why had she taken a boat out when she had known she was risking her life?

There seemed one answer. She had been desperate. Could it possibly have been that after all that sudden and new-found happiness she had been bitterly disillusioned and she had made up her mind to embark onto the sea and let that fierce and entirely indifferent element do what it could with her?

My sad little sister! How I wished I could have been with her to listen to her story of joy and sorrow. I was certain that I should have been able to help her.

I put the exercise books into a drawer and locked it, for I did not want anyone else to read them.

Then I tried to piece together what I had read and ask myself why Slack, who must have known something of her story, had given them to me.

Was it some sort of warning? He was a strange boy. Sometimes I thought he was merely simple as most people believed him to be; at others I thought he was unusually perceptive.

Silva had disappeared on the night of the storm. Was he drawing some comparison between us? Silva went out in a boat presumably and the boat came back without her. One day perhaps another boat would be washed up. On its side would be painted the name Ellen.

She had gone to the mainland and he whose name she did not mention had been kind to her. He loved her. she had written. He had told her so. She was not the kind to imagine that someone loved her. In fact, I think it would be rather difficult for a man to convince her that he did. They had met; they had gone to the Corn Dolly together and he must have told her he loved her then. And yet she had gone out in a boat to face almost certain death.

Why?

In desperation? Had she, the child who had never felt wanted and suddenly found someone whom she believed loved her at last, discovered that she had been deceived. Had the discovery been beyond endurance? Or had someone lured her in some way to go out and risk her life?

A vision of Jenifry face when she had seen me saying goodbye to Michael Hydrock after he had brought me home to the Island, rose before me.

Gwennol was in love with him; Jenifry wanted the most eligible bachelor in the neighborhood for her daughter. How strange that Silva boat should have come back without her and that I should be caught in a leaking boat and fancy I saw dissolving sugar there.

I was beginning to feel very uneasy.

Jago rowed me over to Sanctuary Island.

ou haven been on the sea since the accident,he said. e noticed that.

still remember it vividly. There were some moments of sheer terror when I thought it was the end of me.

y poor Ellen! But you don feel afraid with me.

e no doubt,I told him, hat if we overturned you bring me safely in.

only hope, Ellen,he said very seriously, hat whenever you need me I shall be at hand.

We came to the island and he helped me out of the boat. o you remember when we came here before?he asked.

es, it was then that we met the artist from Blue Rock.

o we did.

eseen some of his pictures since in shop windows on the mainland. I thought them rather fine. Do you like them?

hy yes. He quite a good artist, I believe. Ellen, tell me, are you really settling into the life of the Island? Am I right in thinking you are getting rather fond of it?

am very interested, particularly now that I getting to know the people. They talk to me and I find that appealing. I suppose it because it makes me feel I belong.

ou do belong.

es, I suppose so, but Ie only just come here and having never known my father I frowned. e doesn seem to have been a very popular person.

oue thinking of your mother leaving him as she did. As a matter of fact, I knew as soon as I saw her that she would never fit into our way of life. She wanted more gaiety and a more lively existence.

he didn get much of that with my grandmother. My father didn seem to care much for his children and that seems unnatural.

e was a very sick man.

know he had a stroke, but before he was sick he didn seem very fond of them.

e was sick for a long time. He was never the same after your mother went, taking you with her.

e still had my half sister.

ilva was an odd girl and he never liked her.

hy not?

I didn want to tell him that I had seen the notebooks. That was a secret between Slack and myself, and not knowing that, he could not understand why I had such a clear picture of my father.

He shrugged his shoulders.

ilva was a difficult child. None of the governesses stayed. She was morose and liked to be left alone. She would go off for a whole day and no one would know where she was. But what the good of going back over all that? It the future I want to talk about.

our future?

nd yours. In fact I hope they will be intermingled.

I looked startled and he moved nearer to me.

verything has been different since you came here. Even the Island has taken on a new meaning for me. Ie always loved it, always been devoted to furthering its interests and making it prosperous, but now everything seems so much more important.

My heart started to beat very fast. I had seen the implication in his manner towards me but I had not thought he would express his feelings so soon.

ou can mean,I began, knowing very well that he did.

He put his arm about me and drew me to him. Then he took my chin in his hand and looked intently into my face.

llen, I can believe youe indifferent to me.

obody could be indifferent to you, Jago. I sure of that.

ou mean they must either hate or love me. Which do you, Ellen?

f course I don hate you.

hen you must love me.

t was you who said that people must either love or hate. There can be a halfway feeling.

have no patience with halfway feelings.

hat is not to say they don exist.

love you, Ellen. I want you to marry me, and I don want any delay. I want to go straight back to the church and put up the banns. I think it has to be three weeks before a wedding. Come, wel go right away.

He had sprung to his feet but I remained seated.

ou go too fast, Jago,I said. emember, it is only a short while ago that I was engaged to be married. I can make a decision just like that. Besides, I not at all sure that marriage would be a good thing.

He stared at me in amazement. ot a good thing! Between us! My dear Ellen, you can mean that!

do mean it. Everything has happened too soon for me. This time last year I had not thought of marrying anyone. Then I became engaged and my fiance was shot. And now you are suggesting that I marry you in three weekstime.

hat has this calculation of a year and weeks to do with it? I love you. You love me. Why should we wait?

ecause I unsure.

ou unsure! You know where youe going, Ellen. Youe not some silly simpering female to be pushed in any direction the wind blows her.

hat exactly so. I wasn in love with Philip.

f course you weren. You know that now because you realize what it means to love.

lease listen to me, Jago. I will not be hurried into anything. I fascinated by the Island. I becoming more and more interested, but I have not thought of marriage and I don want to hurry into anything. You must understand that.

He knelt on the traveling rug.

ou disappoint me, Ellen,he said.

sorry, but I must tell you what I feel.

hat do you feel for me?

enjoy being in your company. I like to learn about the Island. In fact I find things here intriguing.

ncluding me?

es, Jago, including you.

ut you don love me enough to marry me?

don know you enough.

ou don know me! After all this time!

t isn very long.

ut I thought you knew all you wanted to know about me.

don think one ever knows all one wants to about another person.

ow youe being profound. I know enough for both of us. I know I love you. I know that nobody ever meant to me what you do, and I know that I wasn really living until you came. Isn that enough, and don you see that our marriage would be the best thing that could happen to either of us?

hy?I asked.

He looked at me incredulously. ou and I together for the rest of our lives on the Island. Together we make it into a paradise.

urely if two people are in love where they live is not important.

f course it isn. But there happens to be the Island.

ago,I said, rising, hank you for asking me but

hat do you mean? Thank you for asking me but! Why thank me for what you must know has been uppermost in my mind for weeks?

He was standing beside me and he caught me and held me fast. Our faces were close and I could see the heavy lids had come down over his eyes as though he did not want me to see all that was there.

He kissed my lips then and I felt an immediate response to the passion which I sensed in him. It had never been like that with Philip.

I was aware of the screech of a gull overheadeering in a way.

I broke free. o, Jago,I said, must think about everything. There so much to consider. This has brought back what happened in London and I can forget it.

hat was a fortunate release, my darling. That how you are going to see it.

t was not very fortunate for Philip.

e dead. Let the past bury itself. You are not going to mourn over that forever?

o, I suppose not. When I am sure, I shall be happy. All that will recede, but I must be sure first. Let me explain to you a little, Jago. When Philip asked me to marry him, a bleak future lay before me. I could have been very frightened if I had let myself contemplate it too clearly, but I always pretended to myself that it wouldn happen. When Philip proposed it was like a miracle too wonderful to be true. It was only afterwards yes, before he died, that I began to have doubts and my childish belief in the future was considerably dimmed. Now I am here. I love the Islandes, I do and I have so much enjoyed being with you and if we were to leave each other and never meet again, I should be unhappy. But I not sure if that enough. Give me time to think, Jago. Whether you will give it or not I must have it. Let us go on for a little longer as we have been. Do this for me, Jago. When I with you I think I love you, but I have to be sure.

We were standing very close and he held my hands tightly.

earest Ellen,he said. will do anything you want.

hank you, Jago. Take me back to the Island now. I want to think.

He picked up the rug and slung it over one arm, the other he slipped through mine.

As we went down to the boat the gulls shrieked their melancholy chorus.

He rowed me back in silence and when we entered the castle he said: llen, come to the parlor. There is something I want to give you.

I went with him and from a drawer of his bureau he took out a necklace made of roughly hewn stones strung together on a golden chain.

He held it up. t been in the family for three hundred years,he said. t the Kellaway Island necklace. Look at these stonesopaz, amethyst, cornelian and agate. They have all been found on the Island. If you go down the shore at the right time you can pick up such stones. Mind you, they have to be looked for.

I took the necklace in my hands.

t has been worn by Kellaway women through the centuries,he said. ou will give it to our daughter and she will give it to hers, and so it goes on link through the ages. And it significant because it means the wearer belongs to the Island.

think it is too soon for me to accept the necklace.

hat not so.He took it from me and fastened it about my neck. His hands lingered there and when I put up mine to touch the necklace his closed over it. here. It becomes you. It looks as though that is the rightful place for it. Wear it, Ellen. To please me, wear it.

I hesitated, for I felt it was like a betrothal ring. I couldn understand myself, for on most matters I made up my mind very quickly. What did I feel about Jago? If I went away I would think of him constantly. I would be sad and there would be a yearning within me for his company. I wanted to be with Jago more than anyone I knewnd yet I was not sure that I really knew Jago.

I left him and went to my room and the first thing I did was to open my mother sketchbook at the pages on which she had painted his portrait. There were two people there. I had seen the kindly protective Jago often, the guardian who had welcomed me so warmly. What of the other one?

I turned to Silva picture and I thought: Oh Silva, what a lot you could tell me if you were here!

I turned the pages. The book opened easily at the one I wanted. The roomhe homely, pleasant room; and even as I looked at it depicted so accurately there on paper, the feeling of doom which I remembered so well from the dream crept over me.

My eyes went to my reflection in the mirror and I saw about my neck the chain of Island stones.