The Nymph and the Lamp (16 page)

Her head ached violently and there was still a miserable sensation in her stomach. She made her way to the deck on trembling legs. When Matthew greeted her she answered him curtly and gripped the rail for support. He stretched an arm eagerly towards the shore. There was not much to be seen. The
Lord Elgin
lay a mile off the beach, and far in the sunshine a line of white surf flickered across Isabel's view, extending far towards the east. Behind this a background of low bleache yellow dunes writhed and shimmered in the mirage thrown up by their own heat. A lighthouse stood bold in the sun at the west tip of the island and far towards the east she could see the mirage-twisted pillar of another.

Carney's big finger stabbed the scene. “This is where we'll land—where you see the red watchtower on the dune. It's the only part of the main lifesaving station that shows from seaward. A mile to the left you may be able to make out a tall mast—ours, of course. Four miles to the east of that is Number Two, a beach patrol station, just a man and his wife and a house, shut in by the dunes—all the buildings on Marina are like that except the watchtower and the lighthouses. Shelter, you know. Four miles farther east you come to Number Three—about there, say—another patrol station, chap with a big family, has a garden, grows the biggest potatoes and turnips you ever saw in your life, mixture of sand and pony manure—amazing! Another four or five miles beyond that is Number Four—same story, barring the turnips. Finally there's East Light—the farthest from us. Forty-five men, women and children altogether—all on the government establishment. Not another soul. The kids have never seen a train or a motorcar—for that matter they've never seen a tree. But they saw planes during the war, and of course the wireless station's an old story on Marina now. It's a bit odd when you stop to think of it.”

Isabel ignored this talk of trains and turnips. She could see only that low wavering illusion along the horizon, and her mind called up a vision of small dwellings withdrawn one from another amongst the miles of dunes, and in each a little group of humans living secret lives as if afraid of this immensity of sea and sky. Her silence disturbed him. He murmured, “What do you think of it?”

“It's not what I'd expected.”

“You're not disappointed?”

“I'd pictured quite big hills of sand, and everybody living together in a sort of village by the shore.

Where is the lagoon?”

“On the other side. The dunes will look bigger when you're on the beach, but of course they're not much. The highest I suppose is about a hundred and fifty feet above sea level. Most of them are much less. Marina's only a glorified sand bar, after all. Hardly a mile wide anywhere, and towards the ends you could pretty well toss a ball from one side to the other.”

He laughed and threw out his arms in a gesture that embraced the whole sweep of Marina. “Plenty of room this way, mind you. Two-and-twenty miles!”

“The wrecks you talked about—where are they?”

“Ah, that's what everybody asks. Well, the wooden ships break up very quickly and the sea pitches the wreckage up the beach and into the dunes—especially in the winter storms. The sand soon covers most of it. The iron hulls break up completely too, after a time—you'd be amazed at what the sea can do—and of course all that sinks out of sight. Here and there you'll see an iron stem or stern post sticking up, or a pair of old boilers still fastened to the keel, but that's all. Newspaper chaps come out in the
Elgin
sometimes and the young lifesavers fill them full of yarns about wrecks and all that. They like to swing the lead a bit. Some of their leg pulling gets into the papers and people ashore take it all for cold fact. It makes you wonder about history.”

“When are we going ashore?”

“We could go now, if you like. There's still a bit of surf on the beach but it's all right.”

“If you have any feeling for me, get me there as quickly as you can.”

Her words conveyed exactly what she thought—that she must get her feet on something firm very quickly, or collapse in a wretched heap on the deck under the staring eyes of O'Dell and his crew. But Carney was startled by the cold passion in her voice.

The
Lord Elgin's
launch skittered back and forth towing laden boats as far as the outer shoals, and towing empty ones back to the ship. Carney hailed an island boat just coming alongside. Five men in faded shirts and trousers and rubber sea boots looked up and shouted. Their teeth flashed in the brown faces upturned to the sun. They were young and lean, but they cried up to him “Carney boy!” as if he were one of them; and Matthew answered in kind, singing out nicknames in his strong voice and smiling on them like an older brother returned from the wars. His blue eyes shone.

He belongs to all this,
Isabel thought,
he's theirs, not mine.
No jealousy now. The cruel humor of the sea had plucked that away with her other notions and illusions; and now these lively voices confirmed what she had decided in the night. She and Matthew were creatures apart, of different worlds; and already his world had sickened and humiliated her beyond any power of his to redeem. She watched their shallow but broad-beamed surfboat being loaded with what seemed to her a dangerous amount of boxes and packages, and saw with a chill dismay the cargo net go down at last with Carney's shabby suitcases and her own smart things. Matthew took her arm and moved towards the forward deck where the rope ladder hung down the side.

“Now, my dear, hold tight to the ropes as you go down, and feel for each step with your foot. I'll be just below you, so don't be afraid. It's nothing, really.” He swung himself over the bulwark. Looking down, Isabel saw the ladder swaying with his weight and the wallow of the ship. It seemed a frightful distance down to the boat and its sunburned crew, rising and falling on the swell as if gripped by some infuriated giant in the depths. Panic seized her. For several moments she could not breathe and the nausea of the past twenty hours was replaced with a surge of utter fear. She clenched her teeth and fought it down. Nothing mattered—nothing but the shore. A sailor helped her over the side. Captain O'Dell, leaning over the bridge screen, saw the young woman descend towards the boat, and caught one glimpse of an upturned face, white and resolute, before she passed from his sight.

In the boat the steersman with a mute gesture offered Carney the long stern oar. He took it and stood with his feet braced, gazing towards the shore and the breakers leaping white in the flat sunshine of the afternoon. His new gray suit, wrinkled by that long vigil on the cabin couch, had an incongruous look beside the rough clothing of the islanders; but his head was bare, the bleached-hemp locks blew about his forehead, and with his clipped beard, his sachem nose, his steady blue eyes oblivious of the sun's blaze on the water, he seemed to Isabel the spirit incarnate of this wilderness.

The launch towed them to the milky backwash of the outer shoals and then swung away. The boatmen slid out their oars. For a time they rowed in silence. Then Carney spoke. “Easy all!” Isabel noticed a new intentness in his eyes, and she sensed in the island men a sudden urgency. They rested with raised oars while Carney kept the boat's stern to the sea with powerful movements of the sweep. What was he waiting for? One, two, three ponderous swells in the endless succession lifted the boat, dropped it, and passed on. The
Lord Elgin
had become a child's toy in the distance, to be seen for a moment as the boat rose to each crest, and lost at once as it sank into the trough. In these deep green valleys, where the boat seemed to be shut in from everything but the sky, Isabel was conscious no longer of sickness or even of fear so much as of a terrible loneliness. The voice within, more insistent than ever, cried
Fool! Fool! Fool!
And something else within her whimpered in self-pity. With a bitter wonder she thought upon the office, the room at Mrs. Paradee's, the meals at Feder's Grill, the old life that had seemed so dull and meaningless and now was like a peaceful dream.

Another swell advanced upon them, overtook them; a rolling hill of green marble veined with white, ponderous, glistening and alive; and as the boat's stern rose and tossed Carney's big figure towards the sky he spoke again.

“Ready all!” And when the bow came up, “Now!” in a ringing shout.

The men dipped their oars and pulled with sudden energy. Perched on the shoulder of the sea the boat rushed on towards the shore. The sound of the breakers, dim at first, soon filled Isabel's ears, and all about her the sea went mad, toppling, bouncing, tossing up in wild white spouts that seemed to have no direction and no purpose except to drown them all. Sitting with white knuckles clenched on the aftermost thwart, with her back towards the rowers and the shore, she fixed her gaze on Carney's impassive face, the one thing known and assured in all this chaos. The length of the boat, the stores and baggage, the straining men at the oars, all were behind her and invisible. There was a peculiar terror in being hurled thus, backward, into oblivion.

An eternity passed. Then, abruptly, she felt the boat's rush checked as if a great hand had seized the keel. Human figures appeared by magic, thigh-deep in the broken sea, grinning, shouting “Carney boy!” grasping the gunwales, dragging the boat from the clutch of the backwash. Carney's stern mouth relaxed. He slid the sweep inboard and, stooping quickly, lifted his wife from the thwart. Operator Skane, turning for a moment from his efforts at the gunwale, saw his chief step into the sea and walk up the beach carrying a tall girl in his arms, like a Viking returning from a far raid with the captive of his choice.

Matthew set her down carefully above tidemark, in the scuffled sand where the stores were being piled. A group of women and children stood there watching. They greeted Carney with quick familiar smiles but their eyes were not for him. At once Isabel felt the concentrated gaze of Marina like the rays of a burning glass. Her trim new boots were planted firmly in the sand but her head still reeled and ached. The island seemed to have no more stability than the
Lord
Elgin's
deck. She was glad that Matthew kept his arm about her.

He cried to the women, “Come and meet my wife!” in the joyous tones of a man who has indeed brought home a prize; and they came, slowly, shyly, with what seemed to her an intolerable curiosity in all their faces. They were gaunt and brown like their men, and they wore costumes obviously put away, year in, year out, for these occasions which were the only holidays in their lives. The styles were of prewar days, the heavy stuff of the skirts hung limp and full about their ankles, the jackets had padded shoulders and leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the blouses had high collars of lace stiffened with strips of whalebone, the hats were ludicrous; they belonged to a time that seemed to Isabel as remote as the moon.

For their part the island women stared as if Carney's wife herself had dropped from the moon. She was sharply aware of a modish skirt that barely covered her knees, of the high laced gray-kid boots, and of the curved inches of silken leg so boldly revealed between the boot tops and the skirt. She forgot that only a short time back she had considered the postwar styles ugly and immodest, as well as expensive, and refused to wear them; and now she resented the astonishment of these women for whom the war had been a disturbance in another world whose minds, like their clothes, remained molded in the fashion of 1910.

“My dear, meet the ladies of Marina…Mrs. Jim Kahn of West Light…Mrs. Lermont of Number Two…Mrs. Giswell…Mrs. Nightingale…Mrs. Shelman…” The names were lost at once. Their hands touched hers and fell away, their lips murmured and were still; and having made these polite sounds and gestures they withdrew a little and with one accord turned their stares upon the active figures of their men. The children remained close by, absorbed in contemplation of the strange woman with the face of death; and they followed in a brown troop, leaping about in the sand, wild as hawks, and watching with the bright unwinking eyes of hawks as Matthew, with his arm still about her waist, drew Isabel towards a trampled gap in the dunes. There a pair of shaggy ponies stood harnessed to a buggy.

At this point they were overtaken by a lean blue-jawed man whom Carney greeted cheerfully. “Skane! It's good to see you again! Isabel, my dear, this is Greg Skane—you know, the chap who's been running the show since I went off to the main.” Isabel put out a languid hand, and the newcomer gripped it briefly and turned to answer Carney's eager questions. Isabel had caught a glimpse of Skane in the rush of wet figures about the boat, and now she inspected in profile a rather tall man in sea boots, stained duck trousers, and the shabby and patched jacket of a radio officer in the Canadian merchant marine, with the brass buttons encrusted in verdigris and the entwined gold bands on the cuffs worn down to ragged gilt threads.

He had no cap. His hair blew long and black in the wind. His eyes were of a dark blue, piercing when his gaze was direct. She guessed his age at thirty-five. He looked competent but she disliked him at once. The somewhat gaunt features, from which a heavy growth of beard had been shaved only recently, wore a cynical expression that did not change when he glanced from Matthew to herself. He did not smile, even when greeting his chief, and in his compressed lips she sensed a determination that struck her as rather cruel.

She thought,
He's sorry to see Matthew back.
Her years of intimate acquaintance with radio station politics up and down the seaboard told her that Skane must have hoped to continue permanently as Operator-in-Charge. No doubt it had seemed to him reasonable to suppose that Carney, after his long service on this lonely spot, had gone to the mainland looking for a post in civilization. That was the dream of every outpost O-in-C, even those who had wives to content them in the wilds. And now, instead, Carney had come back, and with a wife of all things! It must have been a blow. But she did not feel sorry for Skane. She felt only the man's hostility, and on a sudden impulse she pressed herself against Matthew's side.