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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
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RGL e-Book Cover
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"WHEN I look at this—" Charlotte pointed to the islets, floating like mauve and turquoise petals upon the jade sea—"I always think hard of Piccadilly Circus and mud."
"Why?" asked Lord Chard's eyebrows.
"It's too beautiful," went on Charlotte. "It's like a fairy tale. And when you're a real person, you've got to remind yourself that you live in a real world."
"What is reality but the income tax?" murmured Chard.
"It means that you're alive. Here—in this fairy tale—we live on sugar plums and dreams. Real life means work and bread."
Lord Chard said nothing. He was naturally of indolent disposition, and he had been on the island for six years.
Charlotte sat bolt upright, as she scooped up handfuls of the snow-white beach. She was very young and the last word in modernity. Her swimming suit was little sister to that of Chard. Her hair—gold as a guinea—was not much longer than his.
She sniffed the warm breezes, which seem to bear spicy fragrance from distant Ternate and Tidore, as she studied Lord Chard's handsome impassive face.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. He said nothing, which was the right answer.
"The men who plant things belong here," continued Charlotte. "So do their wives and little etceteras, so does the native population and rare floaters, like me. But where do you come in?"
"Just drifted here. In a ship—or some thing. Thought I'd stop here a day."
"And then," dared Charlotte, "you met Mrs. Gloria Sims?"
"No. She met me."
"And since then, you've been lying round, like something that's been washed up by the tide."
Lord Chard raised his indolent eyebrows. "Why do you hate her so?" he asked.
"Hate—whom?"
"Gloria. Or if you prefer it, Mrs. William John Sims."
Charlotte crushed a fragile pink shell viciously in an effort to be honest. She knew that she was jealous of the elder woman's beauty and power. But there were other things.
"I can't stick her," she said. "She pulls such old stuff—all the things we've cut out. She'll never let you forget she's a woman, Doesn't her hair come down regularly, by accident, at every picnic?"
"Wonderful hair,"
"That's the only sort that comes down. And doesn't she display an inch of ankle as much as to say, 'Boys, there's a treat for you'?"
"Eve."
"With a jolly sight too many fig leaves." Charlotte kicked a tanned leg impatiently. "And I'll bet her name is Gertie. Can't you see? If she were an out-and-out bad lot, she'd have the good points that go with her type. And if she were really good, you'd respect her. But she's neither black nor white. She's dirty grey—a bad-good woman. She'd never care enough for a man to come a cropper. But she makes men mad about her and then they may go hang. And her husband is just there to pay the bills."
"Decent little chap—Sims."
Charlotte flushed slightly, checked by Chard's air of glacial experience.
"Still, Tops," she persisted, "one day, you'll be a marquis, won't you?"
"My people would consider this conversation tactless."
"But when they die you will be. It means a lot... you do the job thoroughly. And because of that you shouldn't be here. It's gorgeous for a holiday. But it's moral mush. Every one turns soft, and then they rot."
"Rot!"
"Truth. Tops, you're too—too worthwhile to rot. Go back. Do, do go back!"
Chard let his cigarette die out as he stared at the sea which gleamed like a sheet of pale green metal.
"You're right, Charlie," he said. "I am living in a fairy tale. Do you remember Hans Anderson's fairy tale of 'The Snow Queen?'"
"Yes." Charlotte looked surprised. "I think go."
Chard sank hack on the sand. "Tell it," he said.
"I can't remember the lot. But a little girl, Gerda, went to rescue her foster brother from the Snow Queen, and on her way she met a friendly witch, who wanted to keep her. So she magicked away her memory. And because she knew that roses would make Gerda remember her quest, she made every rose in her garden sink into the earth."
"Go on!" said Chard in a low voice.
"But she forgot about the roses painted on her own tall hat. One day, Gerda saw those, and then, of course, she remembered—"
"That's all?"
Charlotte glanced at Lord Chard and then looked quickly away at the floating sun had spread a golden pathway over the islets. They seemed on the point of dissolving into the deep azure sky. The sea. It seemed a land where it was always afternoon.
Presently, Charlotte broke the silence. "I think I understand. You came here to forget something?"
"Yes."
"Have you forgotten?"
"Utterly."
Suddenly to Charlotte's surprise, Lord Chard's hand was laid over her own.
"There's always something," he said. "Here, there seems nothing to remind me of the past. But there's always the thing one overlooks. I dread every fresh arrival to the island. I dreaded—you. For, one day. I'll see the roses painted on the witch's hat. That day I shall remember. That day I'll have to go back!"
"Go back to—hard things?"
"Damnable."
Charlotte sprang to her feet. Her common sense told her that Lord Chard was no good. At least, not to her. When the patch on her lung was healed, she was going back to England. She wanted to be a doctor. She hoped she would marry some one of her own profession, for the sake of mutual interest. A match with a future marquis was all right inside a fairy tale, but nowhere else.
"I wish I knew what are the special roses which would make you remember," she said. "I'd paint the blessed island with them."
"Pleasant child."
"I would. I'd make you go back and face the music, whatever you'd suffer. That's the only way you'll save your soul alive."
Lord Chard's flicker of self-revelation had died out. He smiled in his old enigmatic manner as he watched Charlotte striding up the beach, the sun gliding her golden tanned limbs and golden hair, until she looked like some godlet arisen from the sea.
AS Charlotte approached a dark carven bungalow, bound with scarlet creeper, a white-clad woman languidly arose from her seat on the verandah.
It was the island queen—Mrs. William John Sims.
The woman and girl regarded each other, much as a horse might wonder at a unicorn. The other was the unicorn. Centuries yawned between their points of view.
Gloria, whose real name was Grace, had come to the island when she was little more than a child. She still belonged to the nineties, when there was a handful of notable beauties standing out from the regiment of ordinary women.
Her features and figure were perfect—her eyes blue as violets. Every gesture and glance was studied with a view to fascination.
Charlotte involuntarily thought of the tales connected with Gloria—unreal, fantastic tales which belonged to the three-decker yellowback.
Less than three months ago a bank clerk had paid tribute to Gloria by spattering her verandah with his brains.
Gloria, in her turn, viewed Charlotte with amusement, blent with contempt. Illustrated papers came to this remote fairy islet, which portrayed the modern Eve as a flat-chested, cropped being, dressed in the short skirts of childhood.
Gloria had ridiculed them in the company of her enslaved admirers.
"Mercy! what are they? Not women!" Gloria looked past Charlotte.
"I am expecting Lord Chard."
"He's on the beach, gradually coming to life after swimming."
"Amazing energy on his part."
"On mine. I dug him out." Charlotte glanced at the tea table. "And I'm going on with the good work, so don't wait tea for him. Directly we've changed, we're going for a ride."
Gloria's famous violet eyes grew darker. This was interference of a new order. She, herself, never beckoned her admirers where a single glance sufficed. This boy-girl, who had no dignity to lose, and no manners, descended to cave-tactics.
"Interested in him?" she asked sweetly.
"A bit."
"Don't be. It's dangerous."
"Dangerous? For whom?"
"You."
"But not for you? Hasn't he been coming to see you for six years?"
Gloria merely smiled. The island saw Lord Chard as her shadow; it was her own secret that she could not be certain whether he were enslaved.
"Well, don't worry," said Charlotte. "My interest in Tops is localized. I'm doing my best to get him to leave this blighted island."
Gloria stared after her retreating figure, partially draped in a bathing cloak of faded orange towelling. Into her eyes had stolen the first suggestion of panic.
ALTHOUGH there seemed no time upon the island—one scented day slipping into the next—it was a forcing bed of fruition. A bud became overblown in a day. An introduction blossomed into romance inside a week.
Before the new moon rose into the sky as a tiny nail-paring of silver, the Island Club had a new topic of gossip.
Lord Chard had transferred his allegiance from Gloria to Charlotte.
Gloria remained unmoved by the rumours. Incredulity had much to do with her lack of jealousy. She had only to look in the mirror.
This feeling was dominant, one afternoon, when she—and her latest attachment—a man called Palfrey—met Chard and Charlotte on their ride. She posed consciously on her horse, as she glanced superciliously at Charlotte, who rode astride in shorts.
"She looks like a circus rider," commented Charlotte, turning to look after her.
"Rides like one," said Chard.
"Anyway, she's a bad piece of work.
"Who's the man?"
"Nutmegs."
"Well, I can't understand how any man can be such a fool as to dangle round her, when he knows about the rest."
"My child never studied a fly-paper?"
"But, Tops, it's awful. There was that boy who committed suicide the other day."
"Nasty mess, that,"
"And the planter who drank himself right through his plantation."
"But what a death!"
"And that married man who ran into debt to give her jewellery."
"And Chard, wasting his innocent youth and beauty—"
"Don't, Tops! I hate your island queen. If I thought you really had a crush on her, I'd try to cut her out myself!"
Charlotte's words were a challenge more to herself than to Chard. The weather had grown very hot and even her energy had grown torpid. Despite her warning commonsense, she felt herself drifting under the spell of the island.
"No," said Chard, "not you. You know I'm no good to you—or any other girl. Worse luck!"
In spite of the smart to her vanity, Charlotte felt almost glad of the rebuff. Life lay ahead of her; she would miss half of its wonder were she to be cheated of its struggle.
"I deserved that," she said, "for being soppy. Well, cheer up. I'm going home next week by the Empress of the East."
Chard's face clouded. He laid his hand on the bridle-rein of her horse and looked into her eyes.
"Don't go, Charlie! I can't spare you. You're like a pick-me-up after the night before. Stay here where nothing matters and no one's real and we're only part of the Bad King's Dream!"
"Not me. My life's cut out, Allah be praised! There's some biology, anatomy, and physical science, to begin with. And a fountain pen that leaks. And my self-respect."
"Yet even that could not sting him from his degraded sloth," murmured Chard.
Presently, his face cleared.
"I think I'm glad, after all, you're going, Charlie. This place is no good to you."
"Nor to you, Tops. If I could only find those roses on the witch's hat!"
Charlotte's grey-blue eyes were narrowed with perplexity. Lord Chard reminded her of a sound apple on a shelf filled with rotten fruit. Already there was a soft patch, which was the preliminary to decay.
Yet what was the reminder he dreaded? It was nowhere in this island, for here he had found oblivion. But, apart from its fairyland setting, the place was a miniature replica of the civilized world. Not a factor of social life was absent. The main difference was sugar plums for bread.
Chard's hand was still on Charlotte's arm, when Gloria and her cavalier turned at the end of the palm avenue.
The planter pointed to the tableau, with his whip.
"That's a case."
"Think so?" murmured Gloria languidly.
"You bet. It's the cat's camisole, or whatever the expression is. Club opinion, anyway."
Gloria's smile grew stiff. She never despised the barometer of the masculine island gossip.
"Lord Chard in love with—that?" she asked.
"Don't blast me utterly. It's not my taste. Far, very far from it." The planter cast her a glance of passionate, if slightly bloodshot devotion. "Granted, Chard is not exactly ardent. But has any one seen him even half-awake before?"
Gloria stared fixedly at a clump of finest asparagus fern. It reminded her of green smoke. She pulled herself up to listen to the planter.
He was saying an incredible thing.
"It's club betting that when she goes home, next week, Chard goes as well."
Gloria could not reply. For the first time she was suffering.
She had not believed it possible that any one could feel such pain. Quite suddenly, amid the green and golden glory, she had a vision of the red-haired bank clerk. She had looked with repulsion at his quivering rabbit-mouth—at the bloated face of the half-drunken planter—at the others, too.
She did not know that her eyes were even as theirs.
She could not sleep that night. Her mind was oppressed with a great dread.
Chard was going away. She saw miles and miles of green tropical ocean rising in mounds between herself and Chard. She listened to the beating of the far-away surf against the reef, until the whole island throbbed like a gigantic heart.
With morning came courage and resolution. She faced her problem with a clear mind. She told herself that personal appeal to Chard would be a blunder. Charlotte's triumph was the result of novelty. Chard had had six years in which to grow accustomed to her own beauty.
She had to make his see her again—for the first time
Her opportunity lay in the club fancy dress ball, which was to be given on the occasion of the visit of The Empress of the East.
For hours she pondered over theatrical papers, seeking inspiration for her costume. One portrait—that of a celebrated Parisian dancer—drew her eyes again and again. Each time she laid it down more reluctantly.
To conquer—she had to dare.
THE island never seemed more beautiful to Charlotte than on her last night. As she motored to the clubhouse, she seemed to be brushing her way through the scented heart of a dark pansy, starred with fireflies.
Yet, already, it had lost some of its fairyland quality, for, from the Marine Drive, she could see the lights of The Empress of the East riding in the harbour.
They linked her with the prosaic world of bread.
The ladies' cloakroom was filled with an excited mob, all struggling for the mirror and the powder-puff. Charlotte stood aloof in the complete transformation of a Puritan maid.
Her dress fell in dove-grey folds to her ankles. Only little golden feathers of hair showed under her stiff lawn cap. But her smile was that of sinner rather than saint.
Since she had practically lived in shorts during her stay, masculine dress was no novelty to her. But, as she had foreseen, most of the island belles had taken the opportunity to appear as pierrots or jockeys.
"My score," she reflected. "Wonder what Gloria will wear!"
She was certain that Gloria, too, would appear in skirts—hooped, or trailing cloth-of-gold, or silver tissue. She would be both beautiful and magnificent—with the wonderful hair well on view.
As Charlotte entered the ballroom she admitted to herself a second motive for her choice of costume—a desire that Lord Chard's last memory of her should be, not that of a boy-chum, but of a woman.
"I'm on Gloria's ground," she told herself with an excited thrill of coming combat.
As she looked around eagerly for her rival, she met the appraising gaze of Lord Chard. His face could never be deemed expressive; but she read admiration in his weary eyes.
"Why, you've grown up," he said.
"Wonderful, isn't it? And all done on sugar-plums."
He took her programme.
"Suppose, just to save ourselves trouble we take each other on for the evening?"
Charlotte looked thoughtful. This arrangement would exclude Gloria from the entire programme. It would be complete triumph.
"Done," she said, "on one condition. Will you promise to come home?"
Chard sighed as he began to pencil his name on her card.
"That is impossible. Sorry. So sorry."
Charlotte bit her lip. What was the good of trying to do the decent thing in a fairy tale? She had only been a prig and spoilt her last evening.
She turned at the sound of a smothered gasp. As though a wind bad swept through the ballroom, all heads turned in one direction.
Gloria had entered.
The gasp was succeeded by a silence which was electric.
Gloria appeared as a Bacchante—utterly beautiful—utterly alluring. She was dressed in autumn leaves, and not too many of them. Grapes wreathed her wonderful hair which fell over her bare back in a rippling copper cloud. As a classical picture, she was sheer joy and perfection.
The island allowed widest latitude in the matter of fancy dress. Gloria had strayed just beyond the limit.
For her costume was the replica of that rendered famous by the Parisian dancer—Bijou-Celeste.
Charlotte glanced involuntarily at Lord Chard. She started back at the sight of his face.
It was that of a stranger—alive in every nerve, hungry, suffering. In his eyes was a light that carried her right back to the Garden, when the Serpent walked upright like a man.
Then she became conscious of a buzz of comments.
"Bit too thick," murmured one man.
"Bit too thin, you mean."
At the second man's snigger Charlotte turned on him in a sudden fury. He was dressed as a hideous travesty of a woman.
"If you were men—not pigs—you would see she's just beautiful!"
It was her own salutation of the vanquished.
The next moment she was ashamed of her outburst.
"Ever so sorry," she said. "I'm sore because I'm going home to-morrow. Don't judge English girls by me."
Next minute she was gaily fox-trotting with the hideous travesty of a woman. Her eyes kept straying towards Chard, who was dancing with Gloria. She had her arms around his neck in approved island fashion, but there was no need of her possessive attitude to proclaim her conquest.
It was plain, from Chard's expression that he moved in a world of shadows where she was the reality.
He never claimed his dance with Charlotte. She made a grimace and tore up her programme.
"I'm going now," she told her partner. "I've still some packing to do, and I must keep that schoolgirl complexion."
THE island danced till daybreak. It rode, instead of going to bed, until it was time to witness the sailing of The Empress of the East.
Only Gloria lay dozing in the cool gloom of her room. The walls still revolved around her in a golden blur of lights. The music still heat in her head.
She awoke to the memory of Chard's parting words.
"Gloria! You little know what you've done to me!"
"I do!" she had answered. "You are awake—at last!"
The distant sounds from the harbour reminded her of the departure of the liner.
Her lips hardened as she thought of Charlotte. Last night the island had witnessed the downfall of her rival. Today's sailing would partake of the nature of a rout. She resolved to be present in order to add the final humiliation.
She arrived on the quay too late for the farewells. The gangway had been withdrawn and three yards or more of clear jade water separated her from the ship. The scores of coloured paper streamers which moored the Empress of the East to the island were still taut.
As she swept on the scene in queenly white Gloria was conscious of slight bewilderment. She had expected some new note of deference—some hint of homage—in her reception. Instead there were glances—curious, amused, and even compassionate.
She started as her eyes fell on Charlotte who was leaning over the rail. There was no sign of the wilted maiden in her cheerful grin. It even held friendship for herself.
"I want to take my hat off to you," called Charlotte, who was already bare headed. "You've succeeded where I've failed." As Gloria looked in the direction of her nod her heart gave a great leap and then seemed to stop beating.
Lord Chard stood on deck, gazing moodily towards the island.
"He's—going away!" she gasped.
"Yes." Charlotte regarded her with friendly eyes. "And he told me himself he had to thank you for it."
Gloria pressed her lips to stifle an elemental scream.
Next second, instinct reasserted itself. She knew that she had to remain on the island. If she left it, where would she go? Not to Lord Chard. She had to admit to herself that, during the six years of their friendship, he had spoken no word of love.
Instinctively, she slipped her hand into the arm of Mr. William John Sims—the man who paid the bills.
The siren blew a last blast. The band struck up a lively air. Amid cheers and farewells, the last fragile streamer was snapped.
Soon the Empress of the East would be lost behind the blue line of the horizon. Soon, too, the fairy island would sink, like a waterlogged mauve petal, into the ocean.
Gloria stared at the churning foam. She could not feel the gaping wound in her heart. Not yet. That was still to come.
Her mind was a blur of bewilderment. She, herself, had sent Lord Chard away. How? Last night was no illusion. The whole island had witnessed her triumph.
"What? What?"
There was no answer.
How was she to know that when she had entered the ballroom in the guise of a beautiful Bacchante, Lord Chard had never seen her at all. What he had seen was the colourless likeness of another Bacchante—ravishing, magnetic, shameless—who had swept him, on the gale of his infatuation, into a secret marriage.
He had met with storm, disaster, heartbreak. To escape slavery, he had fled, seeking oblivion—to find it in a fairy island where he had even forgotten the humiliation of his own shameful flight.
But last night he had seen the roses painted on the witch's hat. In every gleam of white skin and every flying lock of grape-bound hair he remembered.
And he had to return—return to the old enchantment—the old trouble—to take up his responsibilities and build afresh what he had broken down.
He had to return to his wife—the celebrated Parisian dancer—Bijou-Celeste.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.