“You are fond of him?”
“No! I can’t imagine any one being fond of him. He fascinates you. He’s queer. He is my age, yet his hair is white—even his eyebrows and his eyelashes are white. Fancy a young man with white eyelashes! There’s not a hint of color in his face. And his eyes—you can’t tell what they are; neither can you avoid them when they stop twitching and fix themselves on you. Did you ever see a human being jump out at you from a pair of eyes? It sounds foolish; but then, you’ve never seen Raoul! Love leaps out of your eyes, and all the beauty of trees and rivers. God made your eyes and put you in them just to help people. It was the devil who made Raoul’s eyes.”
They lingered at the far corner of the terraced garden where a low hedge of box overlooked a deep, silent grove of balsams. Beyond, at one side, the gray walls of Stoneleigh, the square tower bearing aloft a single ray of light, rose indistinctly against a background of firs. The familiar scene, softened by the twilight, dispelled their first feeling of uneasiness. Everything had changed. Once more the world was brightened by their love. The touch of Una’s hand, the fragrance of her hair, the joy of her quivering lips, were, for David, the only things that mattered.
Since their first meeting, a year ago on the Derwentwater, in England, love had grown with these two. On the night before that meeting, David had reached Keswick, where Una was staying. Skiddaw and Helvellyn, when first he saw those famous peaks, were dimly outlined behind the evening mists. Next morning the sky was cloudless, and although David was familiar with the scenery of Alps, Andes and Himalaya, the charm of this English landscape touched him deeply. The peaceful lake, surrounded by steep hills of living green, and holding on its breast thickly wooded islands, stirred a new longing within him. These hills, it is true, were not comparable in height or sweeping contour to the majestic altitudes of Southern Asia or Western South America. Neither was the Derwentwater equal, in certain scenic effects, to similar bodies of water that had won his admiration in distant countries. Here, nevertheless, Nature was revealed in her loveliest mood, and David yielded himself delightedly to her gracious influence.
As he floated dreamily in his skiff on the Derwentwater, the dip of his oars made the only visible ripple on the glassy surface of the lake, while the rugged outlines of the hills, drenched in sunlight, seemed to weave a fairy circle into which the world of ordinary experience might not enter. The scene reacted inevitably on his own emotions. For the first time in many months a feeling of complete restfulness possessed him, a mood ripe for dreams and all that hazy kind of speculation lying on the borderland of dreams. In this mental state he sought one of the islands whose sylvan shadows lengthened over the water’s sunny surface. The hollow echo from oar and rowlock, the grating of prow on pebbled beach, broke the silence that had surrounded him ever since he left the little wharf at Keswick. The lightest of summer breezes stirred the topmost branches above him. Invitation was in the air, rest beneath the trees. This was surely the morning of the world, and he was the discoverer of this nameless island. Strange that it should be here, unmarred, untouched, unknown, in populous England!
There was welcome in the crackle of twigs beneath his feet; a responsive thrill from the green moss upon which he threw himself. As he tried to catch the blue of the sky beyond the moving canopy of green, he idly wondered whether he was the first to pierce the island’s solitude, whether its secret had been kept for him.
Perhaps it was in answer to his unuttered query that the stillness was suddenly broken by the faintest echo of silvery laughter. He listened in surprise, for the island was far too small, he imagined, to screen either house or camp from the view of any one approaching it, and before he left his boat he had satisfied himself that no other summer idler was here before him. Nevertheless, there was that tantalizing laughter, coming from a portion of the island opposite the beach on which he had landed—and there was the shattering of his daydreams.
He parted the low-lying branches of some bushes growing between him and the shore, but could see nothing save the clear expanse of lake upon which there was neither sail nor rowboat. He perceived, however, judging by the distance of the water below him, that the shore of the island must here become a diminutive cliff, in the shelter of which, doubtless, was the being whose laughter he scarcely knew whether to welcome or shun. The fairy-like spot obviously had some prosaic owner who was there to enjoy what was his—or hers. The laughter was unmistakably a woman’s.
David rose hastily from his retreat beneath the trees, uncertain whether to apologize for his intrusion or to slip away unperceived. After all, the laughter chimed in pleasantly enough with his roving fancies. There had been wood-nymphs before, if one can believe the old romancers, who sang the carefree joys of the glens they inhabited—and perhaps this was a wood-nymph. His curiosity aroused, David peered again through the branches. This time he saw her.
She was not a wood-nymph of old mythology, but an incarnation of the spirit of youth that all morning had pursued him. She was clad in the simplest of sailor suits, the blouse of gray silk opening loosely about her delicately moulded throat and neck, her hair straying in tawny ringlets over her shoulders and reaching down to the book which she held in her lap. At her side sat an old man, of stalwart frame, white-haired, with the strongly lined face and sharpened features typical of the student. A wide-brimmed quaker hat lying at his feet emphasized his freedom from the conventionalities of dress and was in strict keeping with his long black coat and voluminous trousers.