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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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She wanted wild nature—not this fashionable
farce of playing on the fringe of a tame ocean.
IF you would conjure up the devil, you must eat an apple before the looking glass, while you comb your heir, at midnight, on All Halloween. Although it was not October, Carol Storm tried to work the spell out of sheer boredom. In her bedroom at the Ocean hotel.
Her surroundings were not conducive to superstitious rites. The electric light fell on the usual drift of a society woman who is living beyond her means. On the toilet table was a litter of trifles—tortoise-shell, crystal, and gold. Cast garments—fragile as a butterfly's wing—lay strewn on the carpet, thick as autumn leaves.
Yet in spite of the smother of luxury, there was a dominant vital quality in Carol, suggesting a force which stretched beyond stuffy scented rooms and was rooted in the cool depths of dew-drenched woods.
In her eyes was a look which was older than Eve and freer than the wind, as she bit her apple with strong white teeth.
A clock began to strike.
"Eleven, twelve."
The devil is a gentleman—so he was punctual to the minute.
Carol gave a gasp, as in the pool of her mirror she had a snapshot vision of a white face with blurred features and black-ringed eyes.
"Oh!"
Her fright turned to amusement at the sound of a slam. Laughing, she crossed to the door which she had forgotten to shut.
"Only some one who's mistaken his number. Just my luck. Even the devil turns me down."
Carol was wrong. For the devil had seen her and marked her for his own.
Carol saw the devil again, next noon. In the restaurant. He was a shy little man, with a pale puffy face and scared eyes. He seemed anxious to avoid the attention of the waiter during the progress of his solitary meal.
Carol's eyes danced as she spoke to her husband, who was eating his lunch in moody silence.
"Chris! Do you know who that man is?"
"That?" Chris wrinkled his handsome nose. "Yes, by sight. From the provinces. Very uncommon name. Brown."
"Brown? Thrilling. He's incognito."
Christopher looked at her, the dawn of suspicion in his glance. Yet no man had less cause to be distrustful of a beautiful wife.
"Look here, Carol! Do you know anything of this man?"
"Not me. I want to know. I'm interested. Tell me lots. Is he red or black? Odd or even?"
"He's unmarried, if that's what you're driving at. But he's rich enough to afford to keep a harem of wives. Or, even you."
"Am I so specialized?" asked Carol
Her eyes grew misty as she wondered for the thousandth time exactly where she and Chris had gone wrong.
The first months of their marriage had been a glorious barefoot scamper—now it was a hobble in corn plasters. There was the perennial friction about money which she was totally unable to understand—since she had been educated on the principle that debt is merely rather amusing.
Carol had not begun too well. She was brought up in a rose-lined bandbox—termed an apartment—where her mother flirted everlastingly, under pink candle shades, and all the candles were burned at both ends.
Christopher's friends had warned him that no good could come out of that rose-flushed flat. So when Carol—lavish with her new happiness—spilled it royally about her, smiling on every man where she saw only Chris—she aroused the jealousy of the possessive male.
Life became a vicious circle. Because Carol had nothing to do, she did so many things. All these things cost money, which Chris tried to make. And when he tried to make money, be always lost more.
Adamlike, he blamed her for it all.
Carol noticed the fine lines spraying around his eyes and her heart ached at recognition of his defeat. She longed to kiss away the worry—regardless of the crowd.
She loved him so much, yet she could never tell him so—chilled by the resentful granite of his eyes.
She forced herself to speak lightly; since sympathy was an insult to his manhood.
"Been making a lot of money in the city, this morning. Chris?"
"No. But I've been losing a lot."
"Poor boy. How?"
"Tried to take something for a walk. It wouldn't interest you. And you wouldn't understand."
"Thank you for your confidence. I'm touched."
Bitterly she wondered if the end would find them like this—ever apart. Would she go into the darkness still inarticulate—while their souls winged to opposite poles?
She toyed with her lipstick, to hide the quiver of her lips. It was one of her mother's tricks, which Chris detested.
He noticed that her eyes were still absently lined upon the rich provincial—John Brown.
"Have you met this Brown?" he insisted.
"Of course." She laughed. "He came to my room last night. I invited him.... Chris, don't be so childish! A mistake, of course, and I'm only joking. Let me tell you who he really is!"
Christopher paid no heed to her protest. His lips bitten to a line, he arose from his unfinished meal and strode from the restaurant. As he passed John Brown, who was counting his cherry stones, he muttered under his breath.
"The devil!"
THAT afternoon Carol felt a strong reluctance to
join the baskers who displayed the latest fashions in
pyjamas and beach suits, as they grilled on the
scorching golden sand.
The pale green mirror of the sea was unbroken save for one long glassy emerald roller. As she gazed at it, Carol was rent with almost overpowering nostalgia for the mountain cool of sunlit pine woods and the amber chute of a river in flood.
She wanted wild nature—not this fashionable farce of playing on the fringe of a tame ocean. All her crowd were staying at the Ocean hotel—whose guests were millionaires only—and the Storms. There was eternal slacking, eternal dancing, eternal flirtation: every minute was time for cocktails or Charleston.
Carol clenched her hands. All she wanted was her own man. And, while Chris sat at her elbow, he was a million miles away, while every man in the crowd offered himself as substitute.
She did not change into her beach suit after lunch, to the dismay of the sun bathers.
"No." She shook her head at their entreaties. "I'm going for a walk by myself."
"Why—on earth?" they asked.
"I want to find out if I still have a shadow." said Carol. "There's always such a crowd that I've not seen mine for years."
They all laughed. Remembering the pink-shaded flat, no one accepted her explanation.
"Where's your husband?" asked some one.
"Gone back to the city to make some money. That's all men care for—money."
Carol's lips were bitter as her voice.
"Yet she's some gold-digger, herself!" murmured a sunburnt beauty in an undertone.
"And she can spend," agreed her neighbor; for still the pink standard persisted.
As Carol walked by the fringe of the ocean, insensibly the discontent was smoothed from her face. She took off her hat to receive twin kisses from Cancer and Capricorn, which the north wind had borne in his mouth, to cook.
Once the huddle of striped bathing tents was passed, the beach was deserted, save for a small boy who was dazzling a smaller girl with the display of grubby treasures in his pockets.
Something in his bullet head and resolute lips reminded her of Chris. Her heart softened as she saw him in the guise of a small boy trying to impress her with his wealth of candy and birds' eggs.
"I understand." She nodded to the dimpling sea. "It must make a man feel sore when he's nothing to offer his woman. But, Chris, darling idiot, all I want is you."
She approached the rocks of the headland and rounded the horn of the bay. Her shadow which had been a black, distorted dwarf, now stretched ahead and grew taller as though it were the visible symbol of her released spirit.
On this side of the cape, nature appealed to her elemental savagery. Black cliffs shadowed a chopped peacock-blue sea. Gulls mewed above the thunder of the surf.
Then she caught her breath at the sight of the indigo hump of a lone islet rising from the plain of the ocean. According to her mother, who should know—and probably knew better—Carol was nineteen. She presented the appearance of the early twenties. But at sight of the island, she looked her true age, which was about four thousand years old.
In spite of her French heels, her short orange georgette frock, her vanishing-cream and sunburn powder—she was a cave-woman who saw before her the sandy bottom of her own home cave.
Her eyes shone, her cheeks burned. On that island she and Chris might find each other again.
In her eagerness to tell her husband of her wish to rent the island, Carol ran all the way back to the hotel, taking off her shoes and stockings, so that the warm sand sprayed under her flying feet.
When they told her at the bureau that Chris had not returned, she made her own inquiries about the island. It was for sale; and might be rented for a term. It offered no attractions or any kind for visitors.
She ate her dinner alone—with a couple of men—a glass in her hand and a dream in her eyes.
Her husband had not come, when, weary from dancing, Carol went to her room. The night was too hot to sleep and she tossed in miserable suspense, sick with worry over Christopher.
Their lives seemed dangling on the lip of disaster.
Just before dawn she went to her window and looked out over the sea. A thin white line seemed to crawl eternally over a sheet or black enamel. The sky sagged down, darkly purple as an overripe fig. There was a throbbing, universal mutter of distant thunder.
Suddenly Carol felt an uncontrollable urge to cut her way through the cool of the ocean under the low hanging sky, the stars tangled in her hair.
She yielded to the impulse with the same elemental passion with which she had recognized the island. Although she had no clear recollection of stealing from the hotel, she awoke to the fact that some one—barefoot and exultant—was flying over the tingling sand.
That some one was not Carol Storm, but her own shadow, slipped away to frolic in the darkness out of which it was created.
On the edge of the sea, she nearly collided with a man. It was her husband. As she recognized him, she quivered with shame of her mad adventure. But, to her astonishment, he expressed no surprise.
The normal order of things was swamped in a sense of unreality as he gripped her in his arms.
"Chris!" she cried in alarm. "What are you doing here?"
"Going for a swim."
He spoke thickly as he pushed her from him.
"Good-by, old girl. Good luck!"
In an agony, she clung to him.
"Chris! You're not. You're not!"
"Let me go!" He fought with her. "You don't understand. It's the end. I'm broke."
Her arms tightened around him.
"I do understand," she cried. "And, if you go. I'm coming, too. If there's land the other side, we'll make it—together."
"Don't be a fool, Carol. I tell you. I'm finished. But there are plenty of man to marry you. Men with money."
"Chris! You must listen to me!"
She pressed her hands upon his shoulders, forcing him to meet her eyes. She knew that, when day dawned, this scene would seem an incredible dream.
"You must listen," she implored. "I love no one. No one but you!"
He was arrested more by the passion in her voice than by her words.
"I—I believe you do care a bit, kid," ha said brokenly. "But it's so darn hard to believe!"
"Then I'll make you." Carol felt strong and confident, now that the silence was broken. Unconsciously, she drew him away from the line of crawling foam.
"You think," she said, "that I care only for luxury and—other people. It's not true and I want to prove it to you. Listen! We're going to camp out on an island. Just you and I."
The stars were dawning in the lightening east as she told him of the island.
"See!" she pleaded, "how bumble I am. I only ask you to put me to the test."
Suddenly Chris gave a boyish laugh of adventure.
"Right. We'll try the island!"
The dawn wind stirred their hair. Those who had tossed wakeful, turned on their pillows and slept. Some who lay sick to death rested even better.
The darkest hour was past.
THE Storms rented the island for a problematical
fortnight. They brought with them a sophisticated
camping outfit, a stove, and a store of tinned
luxuries.
On their first evening they dressed for dinner and made continuous conversation. Chris was bored and uneasy, as be still listened for the shrilling of the telephone bell. For weeks he ad lived at the end of a wire.
But when he was sleeping Carol came into her own. She stole from the tent and climbed to the highest peak of the island, whence she could faintly see the lights of the Ocean hotel like a swarm of golden bees.
She taunted them with exultant freedom, until the sun clove the skyline like an angel with a flaming sword, cutting them off from the mainland.
Singing with joy, Carol dived into the mist-feathered ocean.
On the third day, Chris caught a fish. It was a very small fish, but as he possessed no scales, he was obliged to estimate its weight.
As the fish grew daily heavier, so his zest in life returned, until the inspired morning, when Carol engineered a criminal accident with their oil and called upon Chris to make a fire out of sea-drift.
In his first pungent whiff of smoke, Chris was healed of the smart of his financial cropper.
After the rite of the fire, they both had the freedom of the island. Days slipped into weeks imperceptibly as an incredible dream. There was no yesterday and no tomorrow.
Each dawn, Carol—awakening to fresh rapture—sighed. "This can't last a minute longer!" Yet every night found them sleeping under the stars.
The weather remained perfect and their efforts to adapt themselves to their primitive conditions were crowned with almost miraculous success. They imported poultry and planted vegetables—and everything thrived. They even talked of getting a cow.
And as the days passed they learned that wealth is merely a question of relative expenditure and income. Their small residue remained at the bank, untouched, as the interest sufficed for their needs. Carol, who never passed a week without a mannequin display, dressed like her husband. In sleeveless sweater and shorts.
Both bore signs of the change. They scaled heavier, although they wore in perfect physical trim. Carol's cheeks glowed like ripe apricots under her tan and Chris—a chocolate husk—looked her fitting mate.
Yet, although it was Eden, it was not perfect, while Christopher's jealousy persisted. He could not purge his heart of the old distrust. In the rosy canopy of sunset, he saw the remainder of the pink-shaded flat.
Every day be questioned his wife about the possibility of visitors from the mainland. He was suspicious of her during his absence; he had known her as a beautiful worldling and he found it impossible to credit her with content without a sentimental stimulus.
The injustice fired Carol to a growing flame of resentment. There were times when she had to clench her hands, lest she strike the unworthy doubts from his lips with a blow.
IT was Chris who first glimpsed the dangers of this
reversion to original type. One morning as he looked
affectionately at the second helpings of bacon
frizzling in the smoky pan, be made his complaint.
"Carol, do you remember we made a pact not to revert?"
"I do." Carol tossed her cropped hair, which shone like burnished feathers, guiltless of the trace of permanent wave. "We made a vow to look after our nails and not to drink with our mouths full. I know I'm the worst offender. What have I done now?"
"Something that must never happen again." Chris pointed an accusing finger at her. "Woman! You swam this morning with nothing on."
"Man! I'd the whole ocean on." Carol's laugh was shameless. "Besides, there was no one to see.... But, you're right. Promise to hit me if I revert again!"
"Hit you? No blooming fear. That's rather too natural to be safe. We've got too near the bone."
Carol stared at him in surprise.
"What on earth do you mean, Chris?"
"I mean we've got to guard against being too natural. All this time we've been slipping back. We've left the middle ages far behind us and are somewhere in the Saxon era, at the present moment. But, if ever we lapse into savages, we shall never be able to live down the beastly shame. See?"
"I suppose so. The fact is there was never anything between me and a cave-woman but a manicure set and afternoon tea. But in future I promise to be a perfect Victorian lady, what are you going to do today?"
Chris stopped in his occupation of tying food in a handkerchief.
"I'm off to the other aide of the island to break up that old boat. Firewood for the winter. Bully. Pity we shan't be here then."
"No, of course we shan't." They had to throw dust in the eyes of the jealous gods. "But we shall just go on living from day to day, until we wake up to find spring is here."
"Fathead. Say, Carol. I could built clinking winter quarters. My cave ancestor hadn't my advantages of trench warfare. Coming with me?"
Carol shook her head. "No, I've got other fish to fry. Will you be gone all day?"
"Yep."
For the first time he asked no questions. Of late he was deaf to his friends' warnings, because he was hearing the big voices—sea and wind—the call of the open.
Carol walked part of the way with her husband. Her eyes were filled with great content.
Rain had fallen in the night and the tea was a milky churn of gooseberry green. The wind blew from the pole.
"Perfect," she said.
The first signs of discontent showed in Christopher's face.
"We've made a scratch or two. Very tin-potty. I'd like to colonize on a big scale."
Carol went back, singing, to her work. Weeks ago she had sown seeds in a secret hollow. She intended, today, to bed out her plants on a natural terrace above the sea. When Chris returned in the evening she would greet him with the surprise of a flower garden.
But—even then—the shadow of the devil lay black across the island.
THE devil—whose other name was John
Brown—had made his money in chain grocery shops.
While he was conducting his business, he was confident
and pushing; but every social adventure plunged him
into his native timidity.
He lived quietly in a leafy eastern town, so that he was awed by the luxury Of the Ocean hotel, whenever he visited the coast.
On the occasion when he had entered a lady's bedroom, by accident, be bad suffered agonies of confusion. At lunch the following day he saw the beautiful lady into whose privacy he had blundered and he was certain that she recognized him.
Fearful of complaint, he left the hotel within an hour.
However, during the summer he summoned up courage to pay many week-end visits to the Ocean hotel. He took simple pleasure in being recognized by the manager and in finding that waiters coveted his service and tips.
One morning, toward the end of summer, he indulged in the novel adventure of hiring a rowing boat. After hours of prodigious exertion be sighted a desert island which be explored with the boyish zest of Robinson Crusoe.
He was blissfully clambering over the slippery rocks—barefoot and with trousers rolled to the knee—when he saw an object which made his timid heart beat faster.
It was a notice board which read:
"PRIVATE. TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED."
As he mopped his brow, he heard the sound of a woman's singing. In desperate fright he slipped between two boulders and into a shallow pool of sea water.
Peering through the screen of seaweed, he watched the approach of the goddess of the island.
In spite of the change in her, be recognized her at once. She was more beautiful than ever, for she had sloughed the hard boredom of a woman of fashion like a cast skin. In her eyes glittered the jubilance of the morning star.
"Oh. lord." muttered the devil. "Here I've put my hoof in it again!"
When the sound of singing bad died away into the distance he managed, by much hazardous scrambling over the rocks, to reach his boat by a short cut. It Was not until his return to the hotel that he realized that the adventure had coat him dear.
He had lost his emerald ring. And since it might be anywhere in the pockets of seaweed which covered the rocks, or lying at the bottom of the sea, its recovery as hopeless.
THE ring might have lain, undiscovered for a
thousand years but for the fact that the devil was in
it all. Carol had conjured him up, so had to pay the
price.
She found the ring gleaming in the bottom of her husband's private bait pool. Its discovery was the perfect finish of a wonderful day.
A recollection of the bad old days was connected with an emerald ring. She had coveted one which was displayed in a shop window, but Christopher refused to buy it for her. She was cut to the quick, not by his refusal, but by his words.
"Ask some other fool!"
She never forgot that ha had played her so low.
Now this ring which glittered in Christopher's own treasury was testimony that he, too, remembered and wished to make amends. While she had been hugging her absurd little secret of the flower garden, be had planned a far more dramatic surprise.
She forgot her flowers and sat dreaming while the sun laid a golden pathway over the ocean. Presently she awoke to the fact that Chris would soon be home and find no dinner in the pot.
She did her best, but the devil was in it all. In her flurry she upset her pans and burned their contents. When Chris arrived—tired and hungry, thinking of the good meal which awaited him—he saw only a sketchy repast extracted from tins and smelt the odor of singed soup.
Carol almost choked him with the rapture of her greeting. His own response was but feeble, for he was still sad over the lost illusion of dinner.
"What's bitten you?" he asked "You're all up the pole."
"This!"
He stared at the emerald lying on her palm and then at her flushed, excited face.
His own grew black as thunder.
"What man has been here?" he shouted.
"Man? Chris! Your mad!"
"Not me. I smelt a rat when you wouldn't come with me this morning. Some chap's been here and given you that."
His words stung Carol to blind fury.
In a trice she slipped back to a time when the sun was young and the great lizards and prehistoric beasts wallowed and fought in their primeval slime.
With all her force she struck her husband in the face. The ring caught his mouth, cutting his lip.
At the taste of blood he saw red. He rushed at her. The fiery sun set on a dun sea boiling in foam over sunken rocks and on two figures locked in elemental combat....
It was over within two seconds. Sick with shame for their outraged code, they turned away, each unable to meet the other's eye. They shrank to lady and gentleman, products of an overcivilized generation, stranded by some strange chance on a barren rock.
For their own magic island had sunk into the sea.
THEY left the island next day. During the remainder
of their stay they manufactured perpetual conversation.
Once again the silence had fallen.
A few weeks after their return to the city they again met the devil. Business had called John Brown to the capital. As he entered the restaurant of his hotel, his eye fell on the couple at the next table.
The man was engrossed in his food—the woman concentrated on her cigarette. Both were married—for they hast nothing to say to each other.
At that moment the woman looked at the devil.
Her eyes, though brilliant and beautiful, to him were terrible. They were blasted. And he had seen them brimming with the glory of the dawn. As his eyes fell on the hand, ha noticed that she wore an emerald ring.
A terrible doubt clouded his mind. He remembered his own ring which be had lost on the island and his sense of guilt at being an intruder in a private paradise.
If this were his property it had brought with it no blessing, but a curse. He felt apprehensive whenever he looked at the beautiful lady, as though the ruin of her happiness was his own handiwork.
He knew that he was fanciful, but the morbid dread throbbed like a festering wound: he felt he could not sleep unless his doubts were laid to rest.
Greatly daring, ha approached a casual acquaintance and asked for an introduction to the Storms.
In the impaired state of their finances the young couple was not averse to wealthy new acquaintances They were rather pathetic in their semi-isolation, for they were still too honest to command respect as splendid spendthrifts.
John Brown sat with Carol, in the lounge, lost with wonder at having netted this brilliant firefly as his companion She laughed as his eyes strayed furtively at her hand.
"You're looking at my ring. It's treasure trove. I found it in a pool on a desert island, Very wrong of me to freeze on to it, but how can it belong to any one but the devil?"
Her word suggested a fresh train of thought.
"I've a confession to make," she said. A few man the ago you came, by accident, into my room at the Ocean hotel, just as I was working a spell to call up his satanic majesty. And isn't it a shame? Ever since, I have called you 'The Devil'!"
John Brown licked his dry lips.
"I hope you've libeled me. One tries, in a small way, to do good. It must be terrible to be the Father of all Evil!"
He tried to think of the many charities to which he subscribed, especially those which did not publish the list of donors. But be drank in every word, as Carol flippantly related the story of their adventure on the island.
"A glorious rag," she said in conclusion, "but my complexion never got over it and never before have I inflicted this history on such a patient listener."
John Brown's throat was sanded as he put the dreaded question.
Carol's face clouded.
"That part of the story is not for publication. But it had to end. Winter was upon us."
"Yet," said John Brown, "everything may depend on the manner of the end. Had it, by any chance, to do with this?"
As he touched the emerald ring she gave a cry.
"How could you guess? Yes, it had everything to do with the end. I cannot tell you any more than that the devil himself must have dropped it in that pool. For it killed all the happiness of a perfect world and ruined two lives just as they were beginning again."
"Ah!"
John Brown seemed to shrink under his starched shirt-front.
Carol's voice changed.
"I can't think what possessed me to bore you with this," she said lightly.
"Your confidence is safe with me," remarked John Brown. "We're strangers. We may never meet again."
"I'm glad," she bit her lip, "for I've said too much."
"Then won't you say something more? Tell me, is there a chance of future happiness for you?"
"No."
"Not if your husband could be given a straight explanation of how you got the ring?"
Carol stared.
"You're uncanny with your guesses. But the ring's not the trouble now. He knows that he judged too hastily But we're divided by a memory. We're like prisoners in this rat-trap of society and debt—and we dare not be natural with each other."
The the first gleam broke through the dead eyes, as though she felt the heated air cooled by the current of the mountain breeze.
"If only we could begin all over again!" she sighed. "Another chance! Out in the open, with the wind sweeping through us, things might come right. But—it's impossible!"
There was scarcely a pause. But, in that moment, John Brown made a lightning decision. Not for nothing had he made a fortune in sugar and tea.
Because he had brought sin and sorrow into a brand new world, he had to make amends.
"That reminds me." he said. "I've an option on some land in Florida, Part of it is swamp and still has to be drained. Tremendous work, but excellent prospects—cotton, sugar cane, and so on. I want to put in a married man as manager because of the loneliness. Now, how does it strike you as a business proposition?"
Carol's face flushed deeply—her lips trembled.
"May—may I tell Chris?" was all she said.
Sunk in his corner seat, John Brown watched them meet. As they turned and advanced toward him, he saw that their faces were those of banished souls who have sighted Eden.
SO, now you know that the devil is a pleasant,
retiring individual, who eats the three hundred and
sixty-five breakfasts of bacon and eggs and goes to
church on Sunday. You had better beware! For all you
know, the devil may be your next door neighbor.
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.