The Gorgeous Isle Part 13

The great banana tree was whipping about like an alive creature in agony. She could hardly keep her breath, and the salt spray flew over the roof and touched her lips. The elements roared and shrieked and whistled in a colossal orchestra, and above them she could hear that most uncanny of all sounds in a West Indian storm, the rattling of the hard seeds of the giant tree in their brittle pods.

But the noise inflamed rather than benumbed the tumult in her soul.

Little as her husband suspected it, the gossip of Bath House and her own imagination had enabled her to realise the being he was and the life he led when transformed by drink. She had long since put those images from her, but they peopled the gallery to-night. And they were hideous, loathsome. She felt old and dry and wrecked and polluted in the mere contemplation of them. Could even her love survive such an ordeal? Or life? She had experienced mortal happiness to an extraordinary degree. Were she firm now, she might know it again--not to the same degree--doubtless not--but all that a mere mortal had any right to expect after that one foretaste of immortality. She had her rights. Her life could be made monstrous for a time; then she would go back and live on through countless years by the North Sea. For did Warner return to the habits of the years that had preceded their marriage his extinction would be a mere question of time. He might survive this work, and another; for he would never return to this battle between his love for her and for a love older still and far more deeply ingrained. A year or two and he would be under the island.

And in any case he must suffer. As far as he was concerned it was a question which was the less of the evils. If he returned from a long disgrace in Charlestown to face her again, not even the great work he had accomplished would make him hate himself the less, atone for the final ruin of his self-respect. If he conquered he would be a maimed and blighted being for the rest of his days.

And then the grinning images disappeared and she had another vision.

She saw Warner ten years hence, a sleek and prosperous planter, taking an occasional recreation in the great capital with his handsome wife, and smirking at the reminders of its prostration before his glorious youth; congratulating himself and her at his escape; that his soul, not his body, was rotting under Nevis.

Anne turned her face to the wall and pressed her hands to her eyes.

The noise of the storm she no longer heard, but the picture filled her with terror. What right had either he or she to consider so insignificant and transient a thing as human happiness, the welfare of the body that began its decay with its birth? Genius of mental creation was the most mysterious, the most G.o.d-like of all gifts, as well as the rarest; the herd of small composers counted no more than the idle gossip that filled up awkward pauses. Great gifts were not without purpose bestowed; and as they should be exercised for the good of the inarticulate millions so should they be carefully tended until Time alone extinguished them. In Warner this great gift of poetic imagination combined with a lyric melody never excelled, was to his nature what religion was to common mortals. It had kept the white flame of his inner life burning undimned when men whose lives were creditable had long since forgotten that souls, except as mere religious furniture, were to be taken into account.

Warner had been singled out to enrich the world of letters. That was his mission on earth; all, no doubt, that he had been born for.

Youthful training exercised hardly more influence upon the development of the race than literature. If it had no mission it would never have tracked through the infinite variety of interests in the mundane mind to become one of the earthly viceroys of G.o.d. And the chosen were few.

Nor had Warner, consciously or not, been indifferent to the sacredness of his wards.h.i.+p. Never for a moment had it felt the blight of his wild and often gross and sordid life. He had been pa.s.sionate but never sensual, romantic and primal, but never immoral. He had consoled thousands for the penance of living, and he had written much that would perish only with the English language. All this might be as nothing to what strove for delivery now. And this he was desperately engaged in stifling to death; and not the beauty of his mind alone but of his nature, for beyond all doubt his gentleness and sweetness and refinement were as much a part of his genius as irritability and violence were fellows to the genius of other men.

Anne was tempted to wish that he had died before she met him, taken body and unmaimed gifts out of life before she was burdened with their keep. But she was a strong women and the wish pa.s.sed. The wild ebullition of self had gone before. She did not recall her promises to Hunsdon but she remembered her solemn acknowledgment of her responsibilities the night before her marriage and her silent vows at the altar.

Suddenly she became aware that she was soaked to the skin. She went hastily within and changed her clothes, wrung out her hair and twisted it up. Then she went to the library and opened the door softly. Warner was sitting at the table with his face pressed to the wood, his arms flung outward among the scattered white blank sheets. Anne longed to go forward and take his head into the shelter of her deep maternal bosom. But it was not the time for sentiment, maternal or connubial.

To reach his plane and solve his problem she must leave her s.e.x behind her, and treat him as a man and a comrade. She left the room, and returning a moment later placed the decanter of brandy and a tumbler on the table beside him. Then she left the room again.