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Cornell University Library

PS 1042.G6 1908

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Conqueror

A Few of Hamilton's Letters

Senator North

His Fortunate Grace

Patience Sparhawk and Her Times

Rulers of Kings

The Travelling Thirds

(CALIFORNIA SERIES)
Rezanov

The Doomswoman
The Splendid Idle Forties
A Daughter of the Vine
The CaUfomians

American Wives and English Husbands
Ancestors

The original of tliis book is in
tlie Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022113496

But what o. joy to see you in colour. How does it happen?'

The Gorgeous Isle

By

GERTRUDE ATHERTON

A ROMANCE
Scene: Nevis, B. W. I., 1842

TLI.rsTTtATKf) ISY C COLKS I'HILLIPS

NEW YOKK

])<! II 1)1 f (lay , Page iS: Company

908

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COPYRIGHT, IQOS, BY
THE ESS ESS PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, TQCS, BY GERTRUDE ATHKRTON
PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, igoS

ALL RIGHTS- RESERVED. INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

TO
MBS. SPENCEH WIGLET, OF BT. KITTS, B. W. I.

"We axe all souls of fire and children of the sun."

—HelmhoUz.

ILLUSTRATIONS

" ' But what a joy to see you in colour.

How does it happen ? ' " frontispiece

"At this point she became aware that

Warner was standing beside her" 74

" ' I never wish to see you again' " . 174

" Then she left the room again " . 216

NOTES

Bath House. This hotel was erected in 1804 at a
cost of £40,000, although built entirely by slaves. Its
Taried and brilliant career came to an end some time in the
forties. The tide of fashion turned, and as it was too large
for a private residence, it was left to the elements. Earth-
quakes have riven it, hurricanes unroofed it, and time
devoured it, but it is still magnificent in its ruin.

Atlantis. Bacon, in " The New Atlantis," assumes
America to be the fabled continent of Atlantis, which,
according to his theory, was not submerged, but flooded to
such an extent that all the inhabitants perished except the
few that fled to the highest mountain tops. I have, how-
ever, preferred to adopt the Platonic theory, as at once
more plausible and interesting.

Queen Elizabeth's Ring. West Indian tradition gives
this historic ring to the Warner family, as related in the
story. It descended in the direct line to Colonel Edward
Warner, who bequeathed it by will to his brother, Ashton
Warner, as " a diamond ring in shape of a heart, given by
Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex." This wiU, dated
27th of December, 1732, was proved in the Probate Court
of Canterbury, England, on the 21st of February following.
From Ashton Warner it descended to his son Joseph, and at
the date of the story was in the possession of Charles
Warner, Esq., Solicitor-General of Trinidad, B. W. I.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

The Gorgeous Isle

CHAPTER I

"D ATH HOUSE, the most ambitious struc-
ture ever erected in the West Indies,
and perhaps the most beautiful hotel the
world has ever seen, was the popular winter
refuge of English people of fashion in the
earlier half of the nineteenth century. This
immense irregular pile of masonry stood on
a terraced eminence rising from the flat border
of Nevis, a volcano whose fires had migrated
to less fortunate isles and covered with
some fifty square miles of soil that yielded
every luxury of the Antilles. There was
game in the jungles, fish in the sea, did the
men desire sport; there were groves of palm
and cocoanut for picnics, a town like a bazaar,
a drive of twenty-four miles round the base
of the ever-beautiful ever-changing mountain;
and a sloop always ready to convey the guests
to St, Kitts, Montserrat, or Antigua, where
they were sure of entertainment from the

3

THE (^ORGEOUS ISLE

hospitable planters. There were sea baths
and sulphur baths ; above all, the air was light
and stimulating on the hottest days, for the
trade winds rarely deserted Nevis and St.
Kitts, no matter what the fate of the rest of
that blooming archipelago.
. Bath House was surrounded by wide gar-
dens of tropical trees, ferns, and flowers of
gay and delicate hues. Its several terraces
flamed with colour, as well as its nu-
merous little balconies and galleries, and
the flat surfaces of the roof: the whole
effect being that of an Eastern palace
with hanging gardens, a vast pleasure
house, designed for some extravagant and
voluptuous potentate. Anything less like an
hotel had never been erected; and the interior,
with its lofty pillared rooms, its costly mahog-
any furniture, its panels and hangings of rich
brocades," the thick rugs on the polished
floors, if more European than Oriental, equally
resembled a palace; an effect in no wise
diminished by the brilliant plumage of the
guests. If the climate compelled them to
forswear velvet and satin, their "muslins were
from Bengal and their silks from Benares";
and as the daughters of the planters emulated

'{

: THE GORGEOUS ISLE

these birds of fashion in all things, Nevis in
winter would have been independent of its
gorgeous birds and flowers: the bonnets
were miracles of posies and plumes, and the
crinoline set off the costly materials, the
flounces and fringes, the streamers and
rosettes, the frills of lace old and new. And
as the English Creoles with their skin like
porcelain, and their small dainty figures,
imitated their more rosy and well-grown
sisters of the North, the handsome strapping
coloured wenches copied their island betters
in materials which if flimsy were no less
bright; so it is no matter for wonder that the
young bloods came from London to admire
and loiter and flirt in an enchanted clime
that seemed made for naught else, that the
sons of the planters sent to London for their
own finery, and the young coloured bucks
strutted about like peacocks on such days as
they were not grinding cane or serving the
reckless guests of Bath House in the shops of
Charlestown.

That was the heyday of Nevis, a time of
luxury and splendour and gaiety unknown
on even the most fertile of the other islands,
for none other was ever bold enough to ven-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

ture such an hotel; and if the bold adventurer
came to grief, as was inevitable, still all
honour to him for his spirit, and the brief
glory he gave to the loveliest island of the
Caribbees.

CHAPTER II

'1^7'HEN Anne Percy smiled her mouth
^ ^ looked ripe and eager for pleasure,
her eyes sparkled with youth and gaiety,
but when shy or thoughtful or impatient her
mouth was too large and closely set, her low
thick brows made her eyes look sullen and
opaque, their blue too dark even for beauty.
It was a day when "pencilled" eyebrows
inspired the sonnet, when mouths were rose-
buds, or should be for fashion's sake, when
forms were slight and languid, and a freckle
was a blemish on the pink and white com-
plexions of England's high-born maidens.
Anne was tanned by the winds of moor and
sea, she had a superb majestic figure, and
strode when she took her exercise in a thor-
oughly unladylike manner. She had not an
attribute, not even an afiFectation, in common
with the beauties of Bath House; and the
reigning novelists of the day, Disraeli, Bulwer,
Dickens, Lady Blessington, Mrs. Norton,
would never have modelled a heroine of

7

8 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

romance on her. There were plenty of fine
women in England even then, but they were
not in fashion, and when fate took them to
court they soon learned to reduce their pro-
portions, mitice their gait, and bleach their
complexions.

But Anne had not yet been to court and
had arrived that day at Bath House. She
drew down her heavy brows and looked as
haughty as she felt shy and impatient, staring
at the dark oblongs of open window, beyond
which, effaced by the glare about her, was
the warm perfumed tropic night. But in the
early Victorian era it would not have been
thought becoming for a girl to step out upon
a terrace alone, nor, indeed, to leave the wing
of her chaperon, save briefly for the dance.
Anne did not dance, and had remained in
the great saloon after dinner watching with
deep interest, for a time, the groups of men
and women in evening dress, playing whist
or loo, the affected young ladies and their
gallants, strolling in from the music room, to
show themselves off in the long lane between
the tables. But the sight, the most splendid
she had ever seen, had palled, the glare of the
innumerable candles, reflected in the mirrors,

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

and even the crimson brocade of the walls,
dazzled her eyes. She had her reasons, more-
over, for wishing to be alone, a condition she
had not realised since she had left England,
now nearly a month since, and she fairly
sprang to her feet as her aunt laid down her
. cards and signified that it was her pleasure
to retire. Anne rearranged Mrs. Nunn's
lace shawl, which had fallen to her waist in
the ardour of the game, gathered up her fan,
smelling-salts, and winnings, then, with a
slight drop in her spirit, steeled herself to
walk the great length of the saloon to the
thrice blessed exit. Mrs. Nunn, who had been
a beauty, and always a woman of fashion,
sailed along like a light sloop on a mild after-
noon, her curves of time and crinoline not
unlike sails filled by a gentle breeze; affectedly
unconscious but quite aware that many a
card was laid down as she rustled by, and that
all the winter world of Nevis already knew
that the fashionable Mrs. Nunn, sister of one
of the ladies of the bed-chamber, had arrived
by the afternoon packet, and eagerly antici-
pated the intimate bits of court gossip with
which she might condescend to regale them.
But Miss Percy knew naught of courts and

10 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

little of drawing-rooms, and although pride
held up her chin, and she tried to reflect that
the moors had given her a finer, freer carriage
than any of these languishing girls could
boast, she followed her imposing chaperon
with a furious beating of the heart; a condition
which gave her, as the elegant Miss Bargarny
remarked to the elegant Mr. Abergenny,
the colour of a milkmaid. But although the
blood of the girl bred in a remote corner of
England was warm and rich in her veins,
and her skin was tanned, it would take more
than colour to coarsen her features, and
perhaps it was the straight nose of the Percys
which enabled her to step calmly along in the
wake of her aunt whilst wishing that she might
fly through one of the windows. (A good nose
is the backbone of moral fortitude.) Although
there were arches leading into drawing-
rooms, and morning-rooms, there was but one
exit to the staircase, and in spite of the gran-
deur and the masses of palms and tropic
flowers everywhere, the hotel had ceased to
look like a fairy palace to the girl who had
only paused long enough in her journey from
her old manor to furnish her wardrobe in
the darkest and dirtiest of winter cities. She

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 11

had felt like the enchanted princess in the
fairy tale for a few hours, but now she longed
for nothing but her balcony upstairs.

She had begun to wonder if she might beg
her aunt to accelerate her lady-like gait,
when, to her horror, Mrs. Nunn was signalled
by an acquaintance, as yet unseen, and
promptly sat down at her table; announcing
that she tarried but a moment. There was
no other vacant chair; all near by were
occupied by dames as imposing as Mrs. Nunn
or by elderly gentlemen who bent the more
attentively over their cards. There was
nothing for Anne to do but draw herself up
to her full height, and look quite indifferent
to being the only woman in the room to stand
and invite the critical eye. In the early
forties "young females" were expected to be
retiring, modest, and although they were as
often not, by the grace of that human nature
which has changed little in its progress down
the centuries, they maintained a decent pre-
tence. There were a number of belles in the
room, with their attendant swains, and no
doubt each thought herself a great beauty;
but not one of them would have stood up
alone in the central promenade of Bath House.

12 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Several of the men stared in disapproval;
which emboldened their fair partners to make
disparaging remarks, until it wars observed
that Lord Hunsdon, the greatest parti in the
matrimonial market, had gone in search of
a chair.

Anne longed to fold the arms she knew not
what to do with, but apprehending open
laughter, held them rigidly to her sides,
shooting anxious glances at the opposite
mirror. She encountered a battery of eyes.
At the same time she heard a suppressed
titter. It was only by an eflFort of will that
she refrained from running out of the room,
and she felt as if she had been dipped in the
hot springs of Nevis. It was at this agonising
moment that the amiable Lord Hunsdon
presented the chair, with the murmured
hope that he was not taking a liberty and that
she recalled his having had the good for-
tune to be presented to her by his friend Mrs.
Nunn earlier in the day. Anne, muttering
her gratitude, accepted the chair without
looking at him, although after he had retired
her conscience smote her and she would have
made an effort to be agreeable had he lingered.
But immediately she caught the drift of a

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 13

dialogue between two women at a neighbour-
ing table, where the play had stopped, that
had beaten faintly upon her ears before she
sank out of sight; and in a moment she was
conscious of nothing else.

"My son insists that it is my duty to help
him, and I am inclined to agree with him,"
a clear decided voice announced. "And
after all he is a gentleman, to say nothing of
the fact that time was when he had to hide
himself from the importunities of Bath House.
But since that unhappy affair — I fear our
sex had much to answer for — but he has
suffered enough "

"No doubt!" broke in a caustic voice,
"but that is hardly the point. He has taken
to ways of relieving his sufferings which make
him quite unfit for decent society "

"He can be reformed."

"Fiddlesticks. No one ever reforms. He
merely changes his vice. And he! Mr. Mort-
lake, who is fond of what he calls the pictur-
esqueness of Charlestown by night, has seen
him — well, it is enough that I should have
heard. You have been too intimate with the
little Queen lately. You never could stand
it! Suffice it to say, that brandy, or rum.

14 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

or whatever he takes by the barrel, makes a
madman of him."

"I have heard these stories, but I also
know that he only drinks by fits and
starts "

"Worse and worse."

"Well!" in tones of great decision, "since
a woman, and a woman of our own class
ruined him, Constance Mortlake, I believe
it to be the duty of our sex and rank to redeem
him. Do you," with high and increasing
impatience, "realise that the man is a genius,
the poet of the age.?"

"Have n't I always doted on poetry since I
was in love with Byron? But we can buy
this young man's poetry for a guinea a
volume — ten guineas for special editions
at Christmas. I hear that Lady Blessington
paid him a hundred pounds for three pages
in last year's 'Book of Beauty.' I am glad
he is in no danger of starving, and am quite
willing to do my little share toward keeping
him off the parish; but I prefer to enjoy his
genius without being inflicted by the horrid
tenement in which that genius has taken up
its abode. Most undiscriminating faculty
genius seems to be. Besides, I have no

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 15

respect for a man who lets his life be ruined
by a woman. Heavens, supposing we — we
women "

"You can't have everything, and a man
who can write like By am Warner "

"Don't believe you ever read a line of him.
What on earth has a leader of ton to do with
poetry, unless, to be sure, to read up a bit
before caging the lion for a dinner where
everybody will bore the poor wretch to death
by quoting his worst lines at him. As for
Warner there is no question that he writes
even better than before he went to the dogs,
and that, to my mind, is proof that he holds
his gifts in fief from the devil not from
Almighty God "

" Out upon you for a bigot. I should think
you had lived in this world long enough "

"Was there ever on this earth a more
virtuous court than our young Queen's,
Maria Hunsdon?"

"It is too good to last. And it is not so
long ago "

"Let us be permitted to forget the court of
that iniquitous man" — Anne could see a
large-veined hand wave in the direction of a
long portrait of George IV. — "since we are

16 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

mercifully and at last permitted so to do.
Besides," changing the subject hastily, "I
believe in predestination. You forget that
although married these thousand years to an
Englishman I am a Scot by birth "

But Anne heard no more, although her ears
were thirsty. Mrs. Nunn brought her amiable
nothings to a close, and a moment later they
were ascending the great staircase, where the
pretty little Queen and her stately husband
smiled alike on the just and the unjust.

Mrs. Nunn entered Anne's room before
passing on to her own. As hostess to her
young relative whose income would not have
permitted her to visit this most fashionable
of winter cities uninvited, it behooved her
to see that the guest lacked no comfort. She
was a selfish old woman, but she rarely forgot
her manners.

"These coloured servants are so inefficient,"
she remarked as she peered into the water jars
and shook the mosquito netting. "This is
my third visit here, so they are as disposed to
respect my orders as their limited intelligence
and careless habits will permit. I should
always advise you to look in and under the
bed — not for bad characters, but for cater-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 17

pillars as long as your two hands, to say
nothing of ants. There are no snakes on the
island, but I believe land crabs have been seen
on the stairs, and I am sure I never should
recover if I got into bed with one. The maid
will bring your coffee about six. I shall not
appear till the half-after-nine breakfast."

"Then you will not mind if I go out for a
walk?"

"Dear me, no. This is not London. But
of course you will not permit a gentleman to
attend you."

"As I do not know any "

"But you will," said Mrs. Nunn amiably.
"You are handsome, my dear, if not quite
a la mode. I am glad you must wear white in
this climate. It becomes you far better than
black. Good night."

She was gone at last. Anne locked the
door that she might know to the full the joy
of being alone. She shook down her hair
impatiently. In spite of her twenty-two years,
she had worn it in pendant braids, save at
the dinner hour, until her capture by Mrs.
Nunn. It was rich, heavy, dark hair, bright
with much gold, worn in a bunch of curls
on either side of the face and coiled low on

18 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

the neck. Anne made a little face at herself
in the glass. She knew that she possessed
a noble, straight, full figure, but she saw no
beauty in the sunburnt skin, the square jaw,
the eyebrows as wide as her finger. Her
mouth was also too large, her eyelashes too
short. She had her ideals of beauty, and,
having read many romances, they were the
conventional ideals of the day. She smiled
at her aunt's hint that she might find favour
in the eyes of the beaux of Bath House. She
knew nothing of the jargon of "the world,"
nothing of men. Nor did she desire knowl-
edge of either. Even had her father shown
any disposition to part with his only com-
panion, she would have refused Mrs. Nunn's
invitations to pass a season in London, for
she lived an inner life which gave her an
increasing distaste for realities. It was before
the day when women, unimpelled by poverty
or genius, flew to the ink-pot with their over-
burdened imaginations. To write a book
had never occurred to Anne, although she had
led a lonely life in a forgotten corner of
England where even her duties were few;
the old servants knew their tasks before she
was born, and her father preferred his pen

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 19

and his laboratory to the society of his daugh-
ter. She must preside at his table, but between
whiles she could spend her time on the sea or
the moors, in the library or with her needle-
work — the era of governesses passing — as
she listed.

And the wild North Sea, the moors and her
books, above all, her dreams, had suflSced,
Her vivid and intense imagination had trans-
lated her surroundings into the past, into far-
ofiF countries of which she knew as much as
any traveller, oftener and still oftener to the
tropics, to this very island of Nevis. Then,
suddenly, her father had died, leaving her,
until she reached the age of j&ve-and-twenty,
in the guardianship of his sister, Mrs. Nunn,
who purposed making her favourite pilgrimage
the following winter, insisted that Anne accom-
pany her, and finally rented the manor over
her head that she be forced to comply. The
truth was she intended to marry the girl as
soon as possible and had no mind that she
should squander any more of her youth unseen
by man. The shrewd old woman knew the
value of that very ignorance of convention,
that lack of feminine arts and wiles, so assidu-
ously cultivated by young ladies in the matri-

20 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

monial market, that suggestion of untrammelled
nature, so humbly deprecated by Anne,
Moreover, concluded Mrs. Nunn, ruffling
herself, she was a Percy and could not but
look well-bred, no matter how ill she managed
her hoop or curled her hair.

But although Mrs. Nunn could appraise the
market value of a comely exterior and the
more primitive charms of nature, of Anne
Percy she knew nothing. She had puzzled
for a moment at the vehement refusal of the
young recluse to visit the West Indies, and
even more at her ill-suppressed exultation
when she realised that the migration was
settled. But, she concluded, there was no
accounting for the vagaries of the girl-brain,
and dismissed the subject. Of the deep and
passionate maturity of Anne Percy's brain,
of the reasons for the alternate terror and
delight at the prospect of visiting Nevis, she
had not a suspicion. If she had she would
have hastened to leave her to the roar of the
North Sea and the wild voices of the moor.

CHAPTER III

A NNE, free of the tight gown in which
she had encased her rebellious form
for the benefit of the fine folk of Bath House,
wrapped herself in a long black mantle, drew
down the curving glass globes that protected
the candles from draught and insects, and
stepped out upon her balcony. She even
closed the window behind her; and then at
last she felt that she was indeed on Nevis —
and alone. Before her rose the dark cone of
the old volcano, its graceful sweep dim
against the background of stars ; and the white
cloud that ever floated about its summit like
the ghost of dead fires was crawling down the
slopes to the little town at its base. From
this small but teeming capital came fitful
sounds of music and of less decorous revelry,
and its lights seemed to flit through the
groves of palm and cocoanut trees, gently
moving in the night breeze.

Below the hotel, no man stirred. Anne
stood with suspended breath and half closed

21

22 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

eyes. At this end of the island it was as still
as death and almost as dark. There was no
moon, and the great crystal stars barely
defined the mountain and the tall slender
shafts and high verdure of the royal palm.
Far away she saw a double row of lights on
St. Kitts, the open windows doubtless of
Government House in the capital, Basseterre,
where a ball that had taken half the guests
of Bath House was in progress.

In a few moments she became aware of other
impressions besides the silence and the dark.
The air was so warm, so caressing, so soft, that
she swayed slightly as if to meet it. The deep
delicious perfumes of tropical blooms, even
of tree and shrub, would have been over-
powering had it not been for the lightness of
the air and the constant though gentle wind.
Bred upon harsh salt winds, living a life of
Spartan simplicity, where the sprigs of
lavender in the linen closet wafted all
she knew of scent to her eager nostrils,
this first moment of tropical pleasure con-
fused itself with the dreams of years, and
she hardly dared open her eyes lest Nevis
vanish and she find herself striding over the
moor, her head down, her hands clutching

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 23

her cape, while the North Sea thundered
in her ears.

She lifted her head suddenly, straining her
own throat. A bird poured forth a flood of
melody that seemed to give voice to the per-
fumes and the rich beauty of the night, with-
out troubling the silence. She had read of
this "nightingale of a tropic noon" but had
not imagined that a small brown bird, bred
below the equator, could rival in power and
dulcet tones the great songster of the North.
But it sang as if its throat had the compass of a
Mario's, and in a moment another philomel
pealed forth his desire, then another, and
another, until the whole island seemed to
swirl in a musical tide. Anne, with a sudden
unconscious gesture, opened her arms and
flung them out, as if to embrace and hold all
the enchantment of a Southern night before
it fled; and for the first time in her life she
found that realities could give the spirit a
deep intoxicating draught.

The nightingales trilled into silence. The
last sweet note seemed to drift out over the
water, and then Anne heard another sound,
the deep low murmur of the Caribbean Sea.
Her mind swung to Byam Warner, to the

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

extraordinary poem which ten years ago had
made his fame and interpreted this unceasing
melancholy of the sea's chant into a dirge over
the buried continent and its fate. With the
passionate energy of youthful genius abandon-
ing itself to the ecstasies of imagination, he
had sung the lament of Atlantis, compelled the
blue sepulchre to recede, and led a prosaic but
dazzled world through cities of such beauty
and splendour, such pleasant gardens and
opulent wilds as the rest of Earth had never
dreamed of. He peopled it still with an
arrogant and wanton race, masters of the lore
and the arts that had gone with them, awaiting
the great day when the enchantment should
lift and the most princely continent Earth
has borne should rise once more to the surface
of the sea, lifting these jewelled islands,
her mountain peaks, high among the clouds.

It had been Byam Warner's first epic poem,
and although he had won the critical public
with his songs of the Caribbean Sea and of
Nevis, the island of his birth, it was this
remarkable achievement, white-hot from first
to last with poetic fire, replete with fascinating
pictures and living tragedy, that gave him as
wide a popularity as any novelist of the day.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 25

He had visited London immediately after, and,
in spite of some good folk who thought his
poem shockingly immoral, was the lion of the
season, and a favourite at court. But he
had soon wearied of London, and although he
had returned several times with increasing
fame, he had always left as abruptly, declaring
that he could write nowhere above the equator;
and, notwithstanding revels where he shone
far more brilliantly than when in society,
where indeed he was shy and silent, that he
cared for nothing else.

Little gossip had come to Warkworth Manor
but Anne had read "The Blue Sepulchre"
when she was seventeen, and after that her
allowance went for his books. When a new
volume appeared it was an event in her life
comparable only to marriage or birth in the
lives of other women. She abandoned her
soul to this young magician of Nevis; her
imagination, almost as powerful as his own,
gave her his living presence more bountifully
than had the real man, cursed with mor-
tal disenchantments, companioned her. So
strong was her power of realisation that there
were hours when she believed that her
thoughts girdled the globe and drew his own

26 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

into her mental heaven. In more practical
hours, when tramping the moor, or sailing
her boat, she dismissed this hope of intelligent
response, inferring, somewhat grimly, that the
young, handsome, and popular poet had
excited ardour in many a female breast besides
her own. Nevertheless, she permitted herself
to return again and again to the belief that
he loved her and dreamed of her; and certainly
one of his most poignant sonnets had been
addressed to the unknown mate whom he
had sought in vain.

Nor had he married. She had heard and
read references to his increasing dissipation,
caused by an unhappy love affair, but his
work, instead of degenerating with his morals,
showed increasing power and beauty. The
fire burned at times with so intense a radiance
that it would seem to have consumed his early
voluptuousness while decimating neither his
human nor his spiritual passion. Each new
volume sold many editions. The critics
declared that his lyrics were the finest of his
generation, and vowed the time could not be
far off when he would unite the imaginative
energy of his first long poems with the night-
ingale quality of his later, and produce one

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 27

of the greatest poetical dramas in the language.
But the man had been cast into outer darkness.
Society had dropped him, and the young
Queen would not permit his name to be men-
tioned in her presence. That gentle spirit,
the Countess of Blessington, indiflferent to the
world that shut its door in her own face, alone
received him in what was still the most brilliant
salon in England. But even Anne knew that
during a recent visit to London, when a few
faithful and distinguished men, including
Count d'Orsay, Disraeli, Barry Cornwall,
Monckton Milnes, and Crabb Robinson,
had given him a banquet at the Travellers'
Club, he had become so disgracefully drunk
that when he left England two days later,
announcing his intention never to return, not
one of those long suflfering gentlemen had
appeared at the dock to bid him farewell.

But Anne heard few of these horrid stories
in detail, and her imagination made no eflFort
to supply the lack. Her attitude was curiously
indifferent. She had never seen his picture.
He dwelt with her in the realm of fancy,
a creation of her own; and in spite of the teem-
ing incidents of that mental life, her common
sense had assured her long since that they

28 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

would never meet, that with, the real Byam
Warner she had naught to do. Her father
had been forty-five when he was taken oflf by
a niis-made gas in his laboratory; she had
expected to be still his silent companion when
herself was long past that age — an age for
caps and knitting needles, and memories laid
away in jars of old rose leaves.

It is possible that had Mrs. Nunn not
succeeded in letting Warkworth Manor she
would never have uprooted her niece, who,
face to face with the prospect of Nevis,
realised that she wished for nothing so little
as to meet Byam Warner, realised that the
end of dreams would be the finish of the best
in life. But circumstances were too strong
for Anne, and she found herself in London
fitting on excessively smart and uncomfortable
gowns, submitting to have her side locks cut
short and curled according to the latest mode,
and even to wear a fillet, which scraped her
hitherto untrammelled brow.

She had little time to think about Byam
Warner, but when the memory of him short-
ened her breath she hastilyassured^herself that
she was unlikely to meet an outcast even on an
island, that she should not know him if she

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 29

did, and that Bath House, whose doors were
closed upon him, was a world in itself. And
she should see Nevis, which had been as
much her home as Warkworth Manor, see
those other glowing bits of a vanished para-
dise. There are certain people born for the
tropics, even though bred within the empire
of the midnight sun, even when accident has
given their imagination no such impulse
as Anne Percy's had received from the works
of Byam Warner. Mind and body respond
the moment they enter that mysterious belt
which divides the moderate zones, upon whose
threshold the spirit of worldliness sinks inert,
and within whose charmed circle the principle
of life is king. Those of the North with the
call of the tropics in their blood have never a
moment of strangeness; they are content, at
home.

The pauses at the still more southern islands
on the way up from Barbadoes had been brief,
but Anne had had glimpses of great fields of
cane, set with the stately homes of planters,
the grace of palm-fringed shores and silver
sands; the awful majesty of volcanic islands,
torn and racked by earthquake, eaten by fire,
sometimes rising so abruptly from the sea as

30 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

to imply a second half split to its base and
hurled to the depths. But although there had
been much to delight and awe, the wine in her
cup had not risen to the brim until she came
in sight of Nevis, whose perfection of form
and colour, added to the interest her gifted
and unhappy son had inspired, made her
seem to eager romantic eyes the incarnation of
all the loveliness of all the tropics. To-night
Anne could forget even Byam Warner, who
indeed had never seemed so far away, and
she only went within when the cloud rolled
down Nevis and enveloped her, as if in rebuke
of those that would gaze upon her beauty
too long.

CHAPTER IV

A NNE started from the sound unhaunted
■^^ sleep of youth conscious that some one
had entered her room and stood by her bed.
It proved to be a grinning barefoot coloured
maid with coffee, rolls, and a plate of luscious
fruit. Anne 's untuned ear could make little of
the girl's voluble replies to her questions, for
the West Indian negroes used one gender only,
and made a limited vocabulary cover all
demands. But she gathered that it was about
half-past-five o'clock, and that the loud bell
ringing in the distance informed the world of
Nevis that it was market day in Charlestown.
She had been shown the baths the day before
and ran down-stairs to the great stone tanks,
enjoyed her swim in the sea water quite alone,
and returned to her room happy and normal,
not a dream lingering in her brain. As she
dressed herself she longed for one of those old
frocks in which she had taken comfort at
Warkworth, but even had not all her ancient
wardrobe been diplomatically presented by

32 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Mrs. Nunn to the servants of their London
lodging, she knew that it was due to her aunt
that she present herself at breakfast attired as
a young lady of the first fashion. She therefore
accommodated herself to a white Indian
muslin ruffled to the waist and sweeping the
ground all round. The bodice was long and
tight, exposing the neck, which Anne covered
with a white silk scarf. She put on her second
best bonnet, trimmed with lilac flowers instead
of feathers, the scoop filled with blonde and
mull, and tied under the chin with lilac
ribbons. Her waist, encircled by a lilac sash
of soft India silk looked no more than eighteen
inches round, and she surveyed herself with
some complacency, feeling even reconciled
to the curls, as they modified the severity of
her brow and profile, bringing both into
closer harmony with her full mouth and
throat.

"But what 's the use ? " she thought, with a
whimsical sigh. " I mean never to marry,
so men cannot interest me, and it would be
the very irony of fate to make a favourable
impression on a poet we wot of. So, it all
comes to this: I look my best to gratify the
vanity of my aunt. Well, let it pass."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 33

She drew on her gloves and ran down-
stairs, meeting no one. As she left the hotel
and stood for a few moments on the upper
terrace she forgot the discomforts of fashion.
The packet had arrived late in the afternoon,
there had been too much bustle to admit of
observing the island in detail, even had the
hour been favourable, but this morning it
burst upon her in all its beauty.

The mountain, bordered with a strip of
silver sands and trimmed with lofty palms,
rose in melting curves to the height of three
thousand feet and more, and although the most
majestic of the Caribbees, there was nothing
on any part of it to inspire either terror or
misgiving. The exceeding grace of the long
sweeping curves was enhanced by silvery
groves of lime trees and fields of yellow cane.
Green as spring earlier in the winter, at this
season of harvest Nevis looked like a gold
mine turned wrong side out. The "Great
Houses," set in groves of palm and cocoanut,
and approached by avenues of tropical trees
mixed with red and white cedars, the spires
of churches rising from romantic nooks, their
heavy tombs lost in a tangle of low feathery
palms, gave the human note without which the

34 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

most resplendent verdure must pall in time;
and yet seemed indestructibly a part of that
jewelled scene. High above, where cultiva-
tion ceased, a deep collar of evergreen trees
encircled the cone, its harsh stiff outlines in no
wise softened by the white cloud hovering
above the summit. Charlestown spread along
the shore of a curving bay, its many fine build-
ings and infinite number of huckster shops,
its stately houses and negro village alike
shaded by immense banana trees, the loftier
cocoanut, and every variety of palm.

Anne, as she gazed, concluded that if
choice were demanded, it must be given to the
royal palm and the cane fields. The former
rose, a splendid silvery shaft, to a great height,
where it spread out into a mass of long green
blades shining like metal in the sun. But
the cane fields ! They glittered a solid mass
of gold on all visible curves of the mountain.
When the dazzled eye, grown accustomed to
the sight which no cloud in the deep blue
tempered, separated it into parts, it was but
to admire the more. The cane, nearly eight
feet in height, waxed from gold to copper,
where the long blade-like leaves rose waving
from the stalk. From the centre of the tip

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 35

shot out a silver wand supporting a plume
of white feathers, shading into lilac. The
whole island, rising abruptly out of the rich
blue waters of the sea, looked like a colossal
jewel that might once have graced the diadem
of the buried continent.

The idea pleased Anne Percy at all events,
and she lingered a few moments half dazed by
the beauty about her and wholly happy. And
on the terraces and in the gardens were the
flowers and shrubs of the tropics, whose per-
fumes were as sweet as their colours were
unsurpassed; the flaming hydrangea, the rose-
shaped Arabian jasmine, the pink pluminia,
the bright yellow acacia, the scarlet trumpet
flower, the purple and white convolvulus, the
silvery white blossoms of the lime tree, framed
with dark green leaves.

Anne shook herself out of her dream,
descended the terraces, and walked down a
narrow avenue of royal palms to the town.
She could hear the "Oyez! Oyez!" of the
criers announcing the wares brought in from
the country, and, eager for the new picture,
walked as rapidly as her fine frock would
permit. She was obliged to hold up her long
and voluminous skirts, and her sleeves were

36 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

so tight that the effort cramped her arms.
To stride after her usual fashion was impos-
sible, and she ambled along anathematising
fashion and resolved to buy some cotton in the
town and privately make several short skirts
in which she could enjoy the less frequented
parts of Nevis while her aunt slept. Without
realising it, for nothing in her monotonous
life had touched her latent characteristics,
she was essentially a creature of action.
Even her day-dreams had been energetic, and
if they had filled her life it was because they
had the field to themselves. In earlier centu-
ries she would have defended one of the castles
of her ancestors with as much efficiency and
spirit as any man among them, and had she
been born thirty years later she would certainly
have entered one of the careers open to
women, and filled her life with active accom-
plishment. But she knew little of female
careers, save, to be sure, of those dedicated
to fashion, which did not interest her; and
less of self -analysis. But she felt and lived
in the present moment intensely. For twenty-
two years she had dwelt in the damp and
windy North, and now the dream of those
years was fulfilled and she was amidst the

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 37

warmth and glow of the tropics. It was the
greatest happiness that life had offered her
and she abandoned herself to it headlong.

As she entered the capital she suddenly
became aware that she was holding her skirts
high over her hoop in a most unladylike
manner. She blushed, shook them down,
and assumed a carriage and gait which would
have been approved by even the fastidious
Mrs. Nunn. But she was no less interested
in the animated scene about her. The long
street winding from the Court House to the
churchyard on the farther edge of the town
was a mass of moving colour and a babel of
sound. The women, ranging from ebony
through all the various shades of copper and
olive to that repulsive white where the dark
blood seems to flow just beneath the skin,
and bedecked in all the violence of blues and
greens, reds and yellows, some in country
costume, their heads covered with kerchiefs,
others in a travesty on the prevailing fashion,
stood in their shops or behind the long double
row of temporary stalls, vociferating at the
passers by as they called attention to fowl,
meats, hot soup, fruit, vegetables, wild birds,
fish, cigars, sugar cakes, castor oil, cloth.

38 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

handkerchiefs, and wood. Many of the early
buyers were negroes of the better class, others
servants of the white planters and of Bath
House, come early to secure the best bargains.
Anne was solicited incessantly, even her
skirts being pulled, for since emancipation, four
years before, the negro had lost his awe of
a white skin. It was some time before she
could separate the gibberish into words, but
finally she made out: "Bargain! Bargain!
Here 's yo' fine cowf ee ! Here 's yo' pickled
peppers! Come see! Come see! Only come
see! Make you buy. Want any jelly cocoa-
nut ? Any yams ? Nice grenadilla. Make
yo' mouth water. Lady! Lady! Buy here!
Very cheap! Very nice! Real!"

Anne paused before a stall spread with cot-
ton cloth and bought enough for several
skirts, the result of her complaisance being a
siege of itinerant vendors that nearly deafened
her. The big women were literally covered
with their young ("pic'nees"), who clung to
their skirts, waist, hips, bosoms; and these
mites, with the parrot proclivities of their
years and race added their shrill: "By'm,
lady, by'm!"

The proprietor of the cloth volubly promised

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 39

to deliver the purchase at Bath House and
Anne fled down the street until she was stopped
by a drove of sheep whose owner was crying:
"Oyez! Oyez! Come to the shambles of
Mr. Columbus Brown. Nice fat lambs and
big fat sheep. Very cheap! Very cheap!"

Anne retreated into a shop of some depth
to avoid the dust. When the drove had
passed she was rescued by Lord Hunsdon,
who lifted his broad panama without smiling.
He was a very serious looking young man,
with round staring anxious blue eyes under
pent white brows, an ascetic mouth and a
benevolent dome. He was immaculate in
white linen, and less pinched about the waist
than his fashionable contemporaries.

"I believe it is not considered quite de
rigueur for young ladies and young gentlemen
to walk unchaperoned," he said dijEdently;
" but in the circumstances I think I may come
to your relief and escort you back to the hotel."

"Not yet, please," Anne emerged and
walked rapidly toward the edge of the town.
"I cannot go back and sit in the hotel till
half past nine. I am accustomed to a long
walk before breakfast."

"But Mrs. Nunn "

40 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

" She must get used to my tramps. I should
fall ill if I gave them up. Indeed, she is sadly
aware that I am no fine lady, and no doubt
will shortly give me up. But if you are afraid
of her, pray go back. I recall, she said I was
not to be escorted "

"If you are determined to go on I shall
accompany you, particularly as I wish to talk
to you on a subject of great importance.
Have I your permission.?"

Quite lacking in vanity or worldliness, it
was impossible that he should be unaware of
his importance as a young, wealthy, and
unmarried peer, and he shrewdly suspected
that' Mrs. Nunn would make an exception in
his favour on market day in Charlestown.

Anne, wondering what he could have to
say to her, led the way past the church to
the open road that encircled the island. Then
she moderated her pace and looked up at him
from the deeps of her bonnet. Her gaze was
cooler and more impersonal than he was
wont to encounter, but it crossed his burdened
mind that a blooming face even if unfashion-
ably sunburnt, and a supple vigorous body
were somewhat attractive after a surfeit of
dolls with their languid fine-lady airs and

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 41

aflfectation of physical delicacy; which he, being
no fool, suspected of covering fine appetites
and stubborn selfishness. But while he was
young enough to admire the fresh beauty of
his companion, it was the strength and deci-
sion, the subtle suggestion of high-mindedness,
in this young lady's aspect, which had led
him to a resolution that he now proceeded
to arrange in words as politic as might be.

"It may seem presumptuous to speak after
so short an acquaintance "

"Not after your rescue last night, I had
like to have died of embarrassment. I am
not accustomed to have half a room gazing
at me."

"You will," he said gallantly. "But it
is kind of you to make it easier. This is it.
I have been — am — very unhappy about a
friend of mine here. Of course you know
the work of one, who, many believe, is our
greatest poet — Byam Warner .'' "

Anne drew her breath in and her eyelashes
together. "I have read his poems," she said
shortly.

" I see! Like many others you cannot dis-
sociate the genius from the man. Because a
fatal weakness "

42 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

"What have I said, pray, that you should
jump to such a conclusion?" She had
recovered her breath but not her poise. "No
one could admire him more than I. About
his private life I know little and care less.
He lives on this island, does he not ?"

"We shall pass his house presently, but God
knows if he is in it."

"He is a West Indian, is he not ?"

"A scion of two of its foremost families,
whose distinction by no means began with
their emigration to the Antilles. One of his
ancestors. Sir Thomas Warner, colonised
most of these islands for the crown — in the
seventeenth century. A descendant living
on Trinidad, has in his possession the ring
which Queen Elizabeth gave to Essex — you
recall my friend's poem and the magnificent
invective put into the frantic Queen's mouth
at the bedside of Lady Nottingham? The
ring was presented to Sir Thomas by Charles I.,
on the eve of his first expedition to these
islands. The Byams are almost equally
notable, descended as they are from the father of
Anne Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond."
The spirit of British democracy still slept in
the womb of the century, with board schools.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 43

the telegraph, and the penny press, and the
aristocrat frankly admitted his pride of birth
and demanded a corresponding distinction in
his friends. "I hope I have not bored you,"
continued the young nobleman anxiously;
"But I have given you some idea of Warner's
pedigree that you may see for yourself that
the theory of generations of gentle blood and
breeding, combined with exceptional advan-
tages, sometimes culminating in genius, finds
its illustration in him. Also, alas! that such
men are too often the prey of a highly wrought
nervous system that coarser natures and
duller brains are spared. When he was
younger — I knew him at Cambridge — nor,
indeed a few years since, he had not drained
that system; his youthful vigour immediately
rushing in to resupply exhausted conduits.
But even earlier he was always disposed to
drink more than was good for him, and when
a wretched woman made ducks and drakes
of his life some four or five years since, he
became — well — I shall not go into details.
This is his house. It has quite a history.
Alexander Hamilton, an American statesman,
was born in it. Have you ever heard of him ?"
"No — yes, of course I have read Warner's

44 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

beautiful poem to his mother — and — I
recall now — when one of the Hamiltons of
Cambuskeith, a relative of my mother, visited
us some years ago, he talked of this Alexander
Hamilton, a cousin of his father, who had
distinguished himself in the United States of
America."

Hunsdon nodded. "Great pity he did not
carry his talents to England where they
belonged. But this is the house where his
parents lived when he was born. It used to
be surrounded by a high wall, but I believe
an earthquake flung that down before my
friend's father bought the place. Warner
was also born here."

The old house, a fine piece of masonry, was
built about three sides of a court, in the centre
of which was an immense banana tree whose
lower branches, as close as a thatched roof,
curved but a few feet above the ground.
The front wall contained a wide gateway,
which was flanked by two royal palms quite
a hundred feet in height. The large unkempt
garden at the side looked like a jungle in the
hills, but was rich in colour and perfume.
The gates were open and they could see the
slatternly negro servants moving languidly

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 45

about the rooms on the ground floor, while two
slept under the banana tree. A gallery-
traversed the second story, its pillars covered
with dusty vines. All of the rooms of this story
evidently opened upon the gallery, but every
door was closed. The general air of neglect
and decay was more pathetic to Anne, accus-
tomed to exemplary housekeeping, than any-
thing she had yet heard of the poet. He was
uncomfortable and ill-cared for, no doubt of
that. The humming birds were darting about
like living bits of enamel set with jewels.
The stately palms glittered like burnished
metal. Before the house, on the deep blue
waters of the bay, was a flotilla of white-sailed
fishLag-boats, and opposite was the green and
gold mass of St. Kitts, an isolated mountain
chain rising as mysteriously from the deep as
the solitary cone of Nevis. She could con-
ceive of no more inspiring spot for a poet,
but she sighed again as she thought of the
slatterns that miscared for him.

Lord Hunsdon echoed her sigh as they
walked on. "Even here he disappears for
days at a time," he resumed. "Of course he
does not drink steadily. No man could do
that in the tropics and live. But spirits make

46 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

a madman of him, and even when sober he
now shuns the vicinity of respectable people,
knowing that they regard him as a pariah. Of
course his associates — well, I cannot go into
particulars. For a time I did not believe these
stories, for each year brought a volume from
his pen, which showed a steady increase of
power, and a divine sense of beauty. Besides
I have been much absorbed these last few
years. There seemed no loosening the hold
of the Whigs upon the destinies of England
and it was every patriot's duty to work with
all his strength. You followed, of course,
the tremendous battle that ended in last
year's victory. I was almost worn out with
the struggle, and when I found that these
stories about Warner were persistent I came
out to investigate for myself. Alas! I had
not heard the half. I spent three months with
him in that house. I used every argument,
every more subtle method I could command,
to bring him to see the folly and the wickedness
of his course. I might as well have addressed
the hurricane. He did not even hate life.
He was merely sick of it. He was happy only
when at work upon a new poem — intoxi-
cated, of course. When it was over he went

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 47

upon a horrible bout and then sank into an
apathy from which no art of mine could rouse
him; although I am bound to add, in justice
to one of the gentlest and most courteous
souls I have ever known, his civility as a host
never deserted him. I was, alas! obliged to
return to England with nothing accomplished,
but I have come this year with quite another
plan. Will you listen to it. Miss Percy?"

"I am vastly interested." But she had
little hope, and could well conceive that
three months of this good young man might
have confirmed the poet in his desire for
oblivion.

"I persuaded my mother to come with me,
although without avowing my object. I
merely expatiated upon the beauty and
salubrity of Nevis, and the elegant comforts
of Bath House. Women often demand much
subtlety in the handling. We arrived by the
packet that preceded yours — two weeks ago,
but I only yesterday broached my plan to her;
she stood the trip so ill, and then seemed to
find so much delight in long gossips with her
old friends — a luxury denied her at home,
where politics and society absorb her. But
yesterday I had a talk with her, and this is

48 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

my plan — that she should persuade herself
and a number of the other ladies that it is their
duty to restore to Warner his lost self-respect.
For that I believe to be the root of the trouble,
not any real inclination to dissipation and low
society. This restoration can be accomplished
only by making him believe that people of
the highest respectability and fashion desire,
nay demand, his company. As my mother
knew him well in England it will be quite
natural she should write him a note asking
him to take a dish of tea with her and compli-
menting his latest volume — I brought it
with me. If he hesitates, as he well may
do, she can call upon him with me, and, while
ignoring the cause, vow he has been a recluse
long enough, and that the ladies of Bath House
are determined to have much of him. Such
a course must succeed, for, naturally the most
refined of men, he must long bitterly, when
himself, for the society of his own kind.
Then, when the ice is broken, we will ask

others to meet him "

"And has your mother consented?"
"Practically. I have no doubt that she will.
She is a woman who needs a cause for her
energies, and she never had a better one.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 49

not even the restoration of the Tories and
Sir Robert."

"And you wish me to meet him ?"

"Particularly, dear Miss Percy. I feel sure
he would not care for any of these other young
ladies. I happen to know what he thinks
of young ladies. But you — you are so dif-
ferent! I do not wish to be a flatterer, like
so many of my shallow kind, but I am sure
that he would appreciate the privilege of
knowing you, would feel at his ease with you.
But of course it all depends upon Mrs. Nunn.
She may disapprove of your meeting one with
so bad a name."

"Oh, she will follow Lady Hunsdon's cue,
I fancy," said Anne, repressing a smile.
"They all do, do they not, even here ? I hope
the poet does not wear Hyperion locks and a
velvet smoking jacket. "

"He used to wear his hair, and dress, like
any ordinary gentleman. But when I was here
last year his wardrobe was in a shocking
condition." The immaculate Englishman
sighed deeply. "He is totally demoralised.
Fortunately we are about the same figure.
If all his clothes are gone to seed I can supply
him till he can get a box out from England.

50 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

For the matter of that there is a tailor here
who makes admirable linen suits, and evening
clothes not badly "

"Is he very fascinating?" asked Anne
ingenuously. She had long since recovered
her poise. "My aunt has set her mind upon
a high and mighty marriage for me, and might
apprehend "

"Fascinating! Apprehend! Great heavens!
He was handsome once, a beau garcon,
— no doubt fascinating enough. But now!
He is a ruin. No woman would look at him
save in pity. But you must not think of that.
It is his soul I would save — that I would have
you help me to save" — with a glance into the
glowing eyes which he thought remarkably
like the blue of the Caribbean sea, and
eloquent of fearless youth. "His soul, Miss
Percy. I cannot, will not, let that perish for
want of enterprise."

"Nor his fountain of song dry up," replied
Anne, whose practical side was uppermost.
"He should write, and better and better^
for twenty years to come."

"I should not care if he never wrote another
line. I see a friend with the most beautiful
nature I have ever known — he has the essence

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 51

of the old saints and martyrs in him — going
to ruin, wrecking all hopes of happiness,
mortal and immortal. I must save him!
I must save him!"

Anne glanced at the flushed face of her
companion. His expression was almost fanati-
cal, but as he turned suddenly and she met
the intense little blue eyes, something flashed
in them in no wise resembling fanaticism.
She stiffened and replied coldly:

"You can count on me, of course. How
could I refuse .'' But I have sensations that
assure me it is close upon the breakfast hour.
Shall we return?"

CHAPTER V

A FTER breakfast, Mrs. Nunn, pretending
"'*■ to saunter through the saloon and
morning rooms with Anne, introduced her
naturally to a number of young people, and
finally left her with a group, returning to
the more congenial society of Lady Hunsdon
and Lady Constance Mortlake.

Anne, although shy and nervous, listened
with much interest to the conversation of
these young ladies so near her own age, while
taking little part in it. The long windows
opened upon an orchard of cocoanuts and
bananas, grenadillas and shaddocks, oranges
and pineapples, but in spite of the cool refresh-
ing air, many of the girls were frankly loung-
ing, as became the tropics, others were turning
the leaves of the Journal des Modes, dabbling
in water colours, pensively frowning at an
embroidery frame. Of the three young men
present one was absorbed in the Racing
Calendar, another was making himself gen-
erally agreeable, offering to read aloud or hold

63

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 53

wool, and a third was flirting in a corner with
the sparkling Miss Bargarny.

All acknowledged Mrs. Nunn's introduc-
tions with nauch propriety and little cordiality,
for Anne was far too alert and robust, and
unconapromising of eye, to suit their modish
taste. Nevertheless they asked her politely
what she thought of Nevis, and seemed satis-
fied with her purposely conventional replies.
Then the conversation drifted naturally to
the light and dainty accomplishments for
which all save herself professed a fondness;
from thence to literature, where much languid
admiration was expressed of Disraeli's " Vene-
tia," a "performance of real elegance," and the
latest achievement of the exciting Mr. G. P. R.
James. Dickens wrote about people one
really never had heard of, but Bulwer, of
course, was one of themselves and the equal
of Scott. In poetry the palm was tossed
between Mjs. Hemans and L. E. L. on the one
hand and that.delightful impossible American,
Mr. Willis, and Barry Cornwall on the other.
Young Tennyson received a few words of
praise. When the talk naturally swung to
Byam Warner Anne eagerly attended. Had
he made a deep personal impression upon any

54 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

of these essentially feminine hearts ? But
the criticism of his poems was as languid,
affected, and undiscriminating as that of
other work they had pretended to discuss.
They admired him, oh vastly! He was
amazing, a genius of the first water, the legiti-
mate successor of Byron and Shelley, to say
nothing of Keats ; he might easily surpass them
all in a few years. In short they rehearsed
all the stock phrases which the critics had set
in motion years ago and which had been
drifting about ever since for the use of those
unequal to the exertion of making their own
opinions, or afraid of not thinking with the
elect. Had Warner been falsely appraised by
the higher powers their phrases would have
been nourished as faithfully; and Anne, with a
movement of irrepressible impatience, rose,
murmured an excuse, and joined her aunt.
Lady Hunsdon was a short, thin, trimly
made woman, with small, hard, aquiline feat-
ures, piercing eyes, and a mien of so much
graciousness that had she been a shade less
well-bred she would have been patronising.
She looked younger than her years in spite
of her little cap and the sedateness of attire
then common to women past their youth.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 55

Lady Constance Mortlake had the high bust
and stomach of advanced years; her flabby
cheeks were streaked with good living. Her
expression was shrewd and humorous, how-
ever, and her eyes were kinder than her
tongue. Mrs. Nunn rose with vast ceremony
and presented her niece to these two august
dames, and as Anne courtesied, Lady Huns-
don said, smiling, but with a penetrating
glance at the newcomer.

"My son tells me that he has acquainted
you with our little plan to reform the poet "

"Our.''" interrupted Lady Constance.
"None of mine. I sit and look on — as at
any other doubtful experiment. I have no
faith in the powers of a parcel of old women
to rival the seductions of brandy and Canary,
Madeira and rum."

"Parcel of old women! I shall ask the
prettiest of the girls to hear him read his poems
in my sitting-room."

"Even if their mammas dare not refuse you,
I doubt if the girls brave the wrath of their
gallants, who would never countenance their
meeting such a reprobate as Byam War-
ner "

"You forget the despotism of curiosity."

56 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

"Well, they might gratify that by meeting
him once, but they will sound the beaux first.
What do you suppose they come here for?
Much they care for the beauty of the tropics
and sulphur baths. The tropics are wondrous
fine for making idle young gentlemen come
to the point, and there is n't a girl in Bath
House who is n't on the catch. Those that
have fortunes want more, and most of them
have too many brothers to think of marrying
for love. Their genius for matrimony has
made half the fame of Nevis, for they make
Bath House so agreeable a place to run to
from the fogs of London that more eligibles
flock here every year. There is n't a dis-
interested girl in Bath House unless it be
Mary Denbigh, who has two thousand a year,
has been disappointed in love, and is twenty-
nine and six months." She turned sharply
to Anne, and demanded:

"Have you come here after a husband?"

"If you will ask my aunt I fancy she will
reply in the affirmative," said Anne, mis-
chievously.

Mrs. Nunn coloured, and the others looked
somewhat taken aback.

"That was not a very lady-like speech,"

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 57

said Mrs. Nunn severely. "Moreover," with
great dignity, "I have found your society so
agreeable, my dear, that I hope to enjoy it
for several years to come."

Anne, quick in response, felt repentant and
touched, but Lady Constance remarked drily:

"Prepare yourself for the worst, my dear
Emily. I '11 wager you this purse I'm netting
that Miss Percy will have the first proposal of
the season. She may differ from the prevail-
ing mode in young ladies, but she was fashioned
to be the mother of fine healthy children; and
young men, who are human and normal au
fond, whatever their ridiculous affectations,
will not be long in responding, whether they
know what is the matter with them or not."

Anne blushed at this plain speaking, and
Mrs. Nunn bridled. "I wish you would
remember that young girls "

" You told me yourself that she was two-and-
twenty. She ought to have three babies by
this time. It is a shocking age for an unmar-
ried female. You have not made up your
mind to be an old maid, I suppose?" she
queried, pushing up her spectacles and
dropping her netting. "If so, I'll turn
matchmaker myself. I should succeed far

58 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

better than Emily Nunn, for I have married
oflf five nieces of my own. Now don't say
that you have. You look as if it were on the
tip of your tongue. All girls say it when there
is no man in sight. I shall hate you if you are
not as little commonplace as you look."

Anne shrugged her shoulders and said
nothing, while Lady Hunsdon remarked with
her peremptory smile (this was one of a well
known set): "We have wandered far from
the subject of Mr. Warner. Not so far either,
for my son tells me, Miss Percy, that you have
kindly consented to meet him — to help us,
in fact. I hope you have no objections to
bring forward, Emily. I am very much set
upon this matter of reclaiming the poet. And
as I can see that Miss Percy has independence
of character, and as I feel sure that she has
not come to Nevis on the catch, she can be of
the greatest possible assistance to me. What
Constance says of the other young ladies is
only too true. They will pretend to comply,
but gracefully evade any responsibility. I
can count upon none of them except Mary
Denbigh, and she is rather passee, poor
thing."

"Passee.!^" cried Lady Constance. "At thirty.!*

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 59

What do you expect ? She looks like an ele-
giac figure weeping on a tombstone. I can't
stand the sight of her. And it's all kept up
to make herself interesting. Edwin Hay has
been dead eleven years "

"Never mind poor Mary. We all know
she is your pet abomination "

"She gives me a cramp in my spleen."

"Well, to return to Mr. Warner. Will you
all meet him when I ask him to my sitting-
room up-stairs ? Will you spread the news
of his coming among the other guests ? Hint
that he has reformed ? Excite in them a
desire to meet the great man.?"

She did not speak in a tone of appeal, and
there was a mounting fire in her eye.

Lady Constance shrugged her shoulders.
"You mean that you will cut us if we don't.
I never quarrel in the tropics. Besides, I
have buried too many of my old friends! I
don't approve, but I shall be interested, and
my morals are as pure and solid as my new
teeth. If you can marry him to Mary Den-
bigh and leave her on the island "

"And you, Emily?"

None had had more experience in yielding
gracefully to social tyrants than Mrs. Nunn.

60 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

She thought Maria Hunsdon mad to take up
with a drunken poet, and could only be thank-
ful that her charge was a sensible, common-
place girl with no romantic notions in her
head. "I never think in the tropics, my
dear Maria, and now that you are here to
think for me, and provide a little variety, so
much the better. What is your programme ?"

"To ask him first for tea in my sitting-
room, then for dinner; then to organise pic-
nics, and take him with us on excursions.
I shall frequently pick him up when I drive —
in short before a fortnight has passed he will
be a respectable member of society, and
accepted as a matter of course."

"And what if he gets drunk?"

"That is what I purpose he shall not do.
As soon as I know him well enough I shall
talk to him like a mother."

"Better let Miss Percy talk to him like a
sister. Well, regulate the universe to suit
yourself. I hope you will not forget to order
Nevis to have no earthquakes this winter,
particularly while we are cooking our gouty
old limbs in the hot springs. By the way,
whom have you decreed James shall marry ?"

"I should not think of interfering in such

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 61

a matter." Lady Hunsdon spoke with her
usual bland emphasis, but darted a keen glance
at Anne. It was not disapproving, for Miss
Percy's descent was long, she liked the
splendid vitality of the girl, and Hunsdon
had riches of his own. But, far cleverer than
Mrs. Nunn, she suspected depths which might
have little in common with her son, and a will
which might make a mother-in-law hate her.
Lady Hunsdon loved peace, and wondered
that anyone should question her rigid rules
for enforcing it. But of Anne as a valuable
coadjutor in the present instance there could
be no doubt, and, to do her justice, she
anticipated no danger in the meeting of a fine
girl, full of eager interest in life, and the
demoralised being her son so pathetically
described. She was quite sincere in her
desire to lift the gifted young man from his
moral quagmire, but this new opportunity
to exercise her power, almost moribund since
her party was no longer in Opposition, was a
stronger motive still.

When Anne was alone in her room she sat
down and stared through the half-closed
jalousies until the luncheon bell rang at two
o'clock, forgetting to change her frock. But

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

she could make little of the ferment in her
mind, except that her mental companion,
that arbitrary creation she had called Byam
Warner, was gone forever. Even did she
return to her northern home and dwell alone,
his image would never return. She could
not even now recall the lineaments of that
immortal lover. The life of the imagination
was past. Realities multiplied; no doubt
she was converging swiftly upon one so hide-
ous as to make her wish she had never been
born. Any day she might be formally intro-
duced over a dish of tea to a degraded, broken
creature whom all the world despised as a
man, and who she would be forced to remind
herself was the author of the poems of Byam
Warner. Byron, at least, had never been a
common drunkard. Picturesque in even his
dissipations, he had been a superb romantic
figure to the last. But this man! She could
hear the struggle and rattle of romance as it
died within her. Oh, that she had never seen
Nevis, that her father had lived, that she

could have gone on ! Then a peremptory

thought asserted itself. The time was come
for her to live. To dream for twenty-two
years was enough. She must take up her

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 63

part in life, grasp its realities, help others
if she could. She could not love this poor
outcast, but were she offered a share in his
redemption she should embrace the circum-
stance as a sacred duty.

In time, perhaps, she might even marry.
That dreadful old woman was right, no doubt,
it was her manifest destiny. Certainly she
should like to have children and a fine estab-
lishment of her own. Lord Hunsdon was
unacceptable, but doubtless a prepossessing
suitor would arrive before long, and when
he did she would marry him gladly and live
rationally and dream no more. And when
she reached this decision she wept, and could
not go down to luncheon; but she did not
retire from the mental step she had taken.

CHAPTER VI

TTER mind had time to recover its balance.
It was a fortnight and more before she
met Byam Warner. Lady Hunsdon, to her
secret wrath and amazement, met defeat with
the poet himself. He replied politely to her
ladyship's flattering notes, but only to remind
her that he was very busy, that he had been
a recluse for some years, that he was too
much out of health to be fit for the society
of ladies. The estimable Hunsdon, after one
fruitless interview, invariably found the poet
from home when he called. "The massa" was
up in the hills. He was on St. Kitts. He was
visiting relatives on Antigua. Had he been
in London he could not more successfully
have protected himself. Lord Hunsdon
was a man of stubborn purpose, but he
could not search the closed rooms along the
gallery.

But the poet's indifference to social patron-
age at least accomplished one of the objects
upon which Lady Hunsdon had set her heart.

64

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 65

The guests of Bath House, vaguely curious, or
properly scandalised, at the first, soon became
quite feverish to meet the distinguished friend
of Lord Hunsdon. So rapidly does a fashion,
a fad, leap from bulb to blossom in idle minds,
that before a fortnight was out even the young
men were anxious to extend the hand of good
fellowship, while as for the young ladies,
they dreamed of placing his reformation to
their own private account, learned his less
subtle poems by heart, and began to write
him anonymous notes.

Meanwhile, Anne, hoping that his purpose
would prove of a consistency with his habits,
and determined to dismiss him from her
thoughts, found sufficient pleasure and dis-
traction in her daily life. She made her short
skirts — several hemmed strips gathered into
a belt! — and walked about the island in the
early morning. The negroes singing in the
golden cane fields, the women walking along
the white road with their swinging hips,
immense baskets poised on their heads,
pic'nees trotting behind, or clinging to their
flanks, the lonely odorous, silent jungles in
the high recesses, the cold fringe of forest
close to the lost crater, the house in which

66 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Nelson courted and married his bride and
the church in which the marriage certificate
is still kept; she visited them all and alone.
In the afternoon she drove with her aunt, their
phaeton one of a gay procession, stopping
sometimes at one of the Great Houses, where
she was taken by the young people out to the
mill to see the grinding and partake of "sling;"
home in the cool of the evening to dress for
the long dinner and brilliant evening. She
would not dance, but she made several friends
among the young men, notably that accomp-
lished lady-killer and arbiter elegantiarum,
Mr. Abergenny, so prosilient in the London of
his day; and found herself in a fair way to
be disliked thoroughly by all the other young
women save Lady Mary Denbigh; who,
somewhat to her embarrassment, showed a
distinct preference for her society, particularly
when Lord Hunsdon was in attendance. The
men she liked better than she had believed
possible, estimating them by their suspiciously
small waists, their pinched feet, and hair so
carefully curled and puffed out at the side;
but although Lord Hunsdon's attentions were
now unmistakable, she liked him none the
better that she esteemed him the more, and

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 67

was glad of the refuge the admiration of the
other men afforded her.

And then, without any preUminary sign of
capitulation, Byam Warner wrote to Lady
Hunsdon announcing that he now felt suf-
ficiently recovered to pay his devoirs to one
who had been so kind, apologised for any
apparent discourtesy, and asked permission
to drink a dish of tea with her on the following
evening.

Lady Hunsdon was quite carried out of
herself by this victory, for there was a Lady
Toppington at Bath House, whose husband
was in the present cabinet and a close friend
of Peel. She had given the finest ball
of the season to signalise the return of the
Tories to power, and would have taken
quick possession of the social reins had Lady
Hunsdon laid them down for a moment.
Politics enjoyed a rest on Nevis, but other
interests loomed large in proportion, and the
apparent defeat of the hitherto invulnerable
leader of ton excited both joy and hope in the
breast of Lady Toppington and her little
court. Now did Lady Hunsdon sweep rivals
aside with her flexible eyebrows, and on the
evening when she was able to announce her

68 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

triumph, she was besieged in her stately chair,
not unlike a throne.

But she was deaf to hints and bolder hopes.
She would not thrust a shy young man, long
a hermit, into a miscellaneous company when
he had come merely to drink tea with herself
and son and a few intimate friends. Later,
of course, they should all meet him, but they
must possess their souls in patience. To this
dictum they submitted as gracefully as possible,
but they were not so much in awe of Lady
Hunsdon as to forbear to peep from windows
and sequestered nooks on the following
evening at nine o'clock, when Byam Warner
emerged from the palm avenue, ran hurriedly
up the long flights of steps between the ter-
races, and, escorted by Lord Hunsdon, who
met him at the door, up to the suite of his
hostess.

Anne was standing in the deep embrasure
of the window when he entered the sitting-
room, where she, in common with Lady
Constance Mortlake, Lady Mary Denbigh,
Mrs. Nunn; and Miss Bargarny, who was a
favourite of Lady Hunsdon and would take
no denial, had been bidden to do honour
to the poet. She heard Lady Hunsdon's

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 69

dulcet icy tones greet him and present him
to her guests, the ceremonious responses of
the ladies — but not a syllable from Warner —
before she steeled herself to turn and walk
forward. But the ordeal she had anticipated
was still to face. Warner did not raise his
eyes as her name was pronounced. He merely
bowed mechanically and had the appearance
of not having removed his gaze from the floor
since he entered the room. He was deathly
pale, and his lips were closely pressed as if
to preserve their firmness. Anne, emboldened
by a shyness greater than her own, and relieved
of the immediate prospect of meeting his eyes,
examined him curiously after he had taken
a chair and the others were amiably covering
his silence with their chatter. He had dressed
himself in an old but immaculate white linen
suit with a high collar and small necktie.
It was evident that he had always been very
thin, for his clothes, unassisted by stays, fitted
without a wrinkle, although his shoulders were
perhaps more bowed than when his tailor
had measured him. His hair was properly
cut and parted, but although he was still
young, its black was bright with silver. His
head and brow were nobly formed, his set

70 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

features fine and sensitive, but his thin face
was lined and gray. It was unmistakably
the face of a dissipated man, but oddly enough
the chin was not noticeably weak, and the
ideality of the brow, and the delicacy of the
nostril and upper lip were unaltered. Never-
theless, and in spite of the suggestion of ease
which still lingered about his tall figure,
there was something so abject about his whole
appearance, his painful self-consciousness at
finding himself once more among people that
had justly cast him out was so apparent, that
Anne longed for an excuse to bid him go
forth and hide himself once more. But to
dismiss him was the part of Lady Hunsdon,
who had no intention of doing anything of the
sort. It is doubtful if either she or any of
the others saw aught in his bearing but the
natural embarrassment of a shy man at finding
himself once more within the enchanted circle.
Lady Hunsdon expatiated upon the beauty
of Nevis, long familiar to her through his
works, vowed that she had come to the island
only to see for herself how much he had
exaggerated, but was quite vanquished and
speechless. Not to have met her son's most
valued friend would have blurred and flawed

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 71

the wonderful experience. Warner bowed
gravely once or twice, but did not raise his
eyes, to Anne's continued relief: she dreaded
what she must meet in them. If the rest of
his face was a ruin, what sinks of iniquity,
what wells of horror, must be those recording
features ? There were lines about them and
not from laughter! He looked as if he had
never smiled. She pitied him so deeply that
she could have wept, for she had never seen
an unhappier mortal ; but she had no desire to
approach him further.

Miss Bargarny poured the tea, and when
she passed his cup, roguishly quoted a couplet
from one of his poems; lines that had no
reference to tea — God knows, he had never
written about tea — but which tripped from
her tongue so gracefully that they had the
effect of sounding apropos. He blushed
slightly and bowed again; and shortly after,
when all the cups had been handed about and
he had drained his own, seemed to recover
his poise, for he addressed a few remarks to
Lady Hunsdon, at whose right he sat. Anne,
who was seated some distance from the table
could not even hear his voice, but Lady Huns-
don received such as he ventured upon with

72 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

so much empressement, that he manifestly
rose in courage; in a few moments he was
extending his attention to Lady Mary Den-
bigh, who leaned forward with an exalted
expression shaded by ringlets, raising her
imperceptible bosom with an eloquent sigh.
By this time Lord Hunsdon was talking into
Anne's ear and she could hear nothing of the
conversation opposite, although now and
again she caught a syllable from a low toneless
voice. But his first agony was passed as well
as her own, and she endeavoured to forget
him in her swain's comments upon the political
news arrived with the packet that afternoon.
When tea was over and Miss Bargarny, who
cultivated liveliness of manner, had engaged
the poet in a discussion upon the relative
merits of Shelley and Nathaniel P. Willis —
astonishingly original on her part, mild to the
outposts of indifference on his — Anne fol-
lowed Hunsdon to the other side of the room
to look over an album of his mother's, just
unpacked. It contained calotypes of the most
distinguished men and women of the day,
and Anne, who had barely seen a daguerreo-
type before, and never a presentment of the
famous people of her time, became so absorbed

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 73

that she forgot the poet to whose spirit hers
had been wedded these five years, and whose
visible part had sickened the very depths of
her being. Lord Hunsdon had the pleasure
of watching her kindling eyes as he told her
personal details of each of his friends, and
when Anne cried out that she was living in a
bit of contemporary history, he too flushed,
and felt that his suit prospered. But Anne
was thinking as little of him as of Warner, and
so intent was she upon the ugly striking
physiognomy of the author of "Venetia,"
with his Byronic curls and flowing collar, that
she was hardly aware that Lord Hunsdon's
attentions had been claimed by his mother;
who skilfully transferred him to the side of
Lady Mary.

A moment later she turned abruptly and
met the eyes of Warner. He was sitting
apart, and he was staring at her. It was not
meeting his eyes so suddenly that turned her
hands to ice and made them shake as she
returned to the album, but the eyes themselves
that looked out from the ruin of his face.
She had expected them to be sneering, las-
civious, bold, anything but what they were:
the most spiritual and at the same time the

74 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

most tormented eyes that had ever been set
in the face of a mortal. She caught her
breath. What could it mean ? No man could
live the life he had lived — Lady Mary,
who had a fine turn for gossip, had told her
all that Lord Hunsdon had left unsaid — and
keep his soul unspotted. It was marvellous,
incredible. She recalled confusedly some-
thing Hunsdon had said about his having a
beautiful character — well, that was origin-
ally, not after years of degradation. Besides,
Hunsdon was a fanatical enthusiast.

At this point she became aware that Warner
was standing beside her, but as she glanced
up in a surprise that restored her self-pos-
session, he had averted his eyes, and embarrass-
ment had claimed him again. She was too
much of a woman not to rush to the rescue.

"I have never seen anything so interesting!"
she exclaimed with great animation, "I am
sure you will agree with me, although of
course you have met all these great people.
Is not this process a vast improvement upon
the daguerreotype? And I am told they
expect to do better still. Have you read
'Venetia'? Do you remember that Disraeli
makes Lord Cadurcis — Byron — assert that

"At tliis point stie became aware that Warner ^was standing beside lier"

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 75

Shakespeare did not write his own plays ?
Fancy!"

"I never for a moment supposed that he
did," replied Warner, evidently grasping at a
subject upon which he felt at home. "Nor
did Byron. Nor, I fancy, will a good many
others, when they begin to think for them-
selves — or study the Elizabethan era. I
have never read any of Disraeli's novels.
Do you think them worth reading.?"

He was looking at her now, still with that
expression of a saint at the stake, but obvi-
ously inattentive to her literary opinions.
Before she could answer he said abruptly:

"What a fine walker you are ! I have never
seen a woman walk as you do. It is pot the
custom here, and even in England the ladies
seemed far too elegant to do more than stroll
through a park."

"I am not at all elegant," replied Anne,
smiling; "as my aunt will tell you. I had to
make myself some short skirts, and I get up
at unearthly hours to have my tramp and
return in time to dress for breakfast. But
I have never met you."

"I have passed you several times, but of
course you did not notice me. I have a hut

76 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

up in one of the jungles and I am always
prowling about at that hour in the morning."
He hesitated, drew in his breath audibly, and
as he looked down again, the colour rose under
his pallid loose skin. "I came here to-day
to meet you," he added.

For a moment Anne felt that she was going
to faint. Good God! Had this dreary out-
cast found his way to her castles in Spain ?
Could he know? She was unable to articu-
late, and he went on.

"You must pardon me if that was too bold
a thing to say — you are the last person to
whom I would give offence! But you have
seemed to me the very spirit of the fresh
robust North. I have fancied I could see
the salt wind blowing about you. All the
English Creoles of this island are like porce-
lain. The fine ladies that come to Bath House
take too much care of their complexions,
doubtless of their pretty feet — they all want
to be beauties rather than women. That is
the reason you seem something of a goddess
by contrast, and vastly refreshing to a West
Indian."

Anne drew a long breath as he blundered
through his explanation. She was relieved,

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 77

but at the same time femininely conscious of
disappointment. Nor was there sentiment
in his low monotonous voice. He paid but
the homage of weary man to vital youth.

"I am unfashionably healthy," she said,
hoping that her eyes danced with laughter at
the idea of being likened to a goddess. She
continued with great vivacity, "How relieved I
am that you have never noticed the hang of
my morning skirts. Ah, that is because you
are a poet. But I wish I could give you one-
tenth of the pleasure, by my suggestion of the
North, that I derive from your wonderful
tropics. Don't fancy that I get up at five
merely for the pleasure of exercise. My chief
object is to enjoy your island for a bit while
all the rest of the world is asleep. These last
sixteen days have been the happiest of my
life." She brought out the last words some-
what defiantly, but she met his gaze, still
smiling.

"I am not surprised to learn that you are a
poet. What else could be expected — once
I learned to pay compliments gracefully, but
if I have forgotten the art, I have not lost my
power to admire and appreciate beauty in any
form. It has given me the greatest pleasure

78 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

I have known for years to watch you, and I
thank you for coming to Nevis."

Anne by this time was accustomed to the
high-flown compliments of polite society,
but she could not doubt the sincerity of this
man, who had no place in a world where idle
flattery was the small coin of talk. She
blushed slightly and changed the subject,
and as he talked, less and less haltingly, of
the traditions of Nevis, she watched his eyes,
fascinated. They were not the eyes of mere
youth, any more than of a man who had seen
far too much of life. Neither, upon closer
inspection, were they the eyes of a saint or a
martyr, although she could better understand
Hunsdon's estimate by picturing him born
three centuries earlier. But they were the
eyes of the undying idealist, of the inner
vision, of a mental and spiritual life apart from
the frailties of the body. They seemed to
look at her, intent as was his gaze, as from a
vast distance, from heights which neither she
nor all that respectable world that despised
his poor shell could ever attain. With it all
there was no hint of superciliousness: the
eyes were too sad, too terribly wise in their
own way for that ; and his whole manner went

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 79

far beyond modesty; it had all the pitiable
self-consciousness of one that has fallen from
the higher social plane. No common man,
no matter what his fame and offences, could
lose his self-respect as this poor gentleman had
done. Anne, filled with a pity she had never
known was in her, exerted herself to divert
his mind from the gulf which had so long
separated him from his class. She talked as
she fancied other women must have talked to
him when he visited London in the first flush
of his youth and fame. She even began with
"The Blue Sepulchre," which now no longer
ranked with the best of his work, so far had he
progressed beyond the unlicensed imagination
of youth. She told him that she looked down
from her balcony every morning expecting
to see the domes and towers of ancient cities
rise from the sea. And, alas! in the enthusi-
asm of her cause, before she could call a
halt, she had told him all that his poetry
had meant to her in her lonely life by the
North Sea; in a few moments he was aware
that she possessed every volume he had
written, knew every line by heart; and although
she caught herself up in time jealously to
conceal the more portentous meanings it had

80 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

held for her, he heard enough to make his
eyes kindle at this delicious echo of his youth,
coming from an innocent lovely creature who
had evidently heard little of his evil life.

"I knew that you came from the sea!"
he exclaimed. ' ' And the purple rolling moors !
How well I remember them, and longed to
write of them. But only these latitudes drive
my pen. Indeed, I once tried to write about
the heather — the purple twilight — no fig-
ment of the poetical fancy, that. The atmos-
phere at that hour literally is purple."

"When it is purple! But you should see
the moors in all their moods as I have done.
I rarely missed a day in winter, no matter
how wild — I have tramped half a day many
a time. And I can assure you that the sea
itself cannot look more wild, more terrify-
ing — with the wrack driving overhead, and
the rain falling in torrents, and the wind
whistling and roaring, and rushing past you
as if called by the sea to some frightful tryst,
some horrible orgy of the elements, and
striving to tear you up and carry you with it.
Still — still — perhaps it is as beautiful —
then — in its way, as in its season of colour
and peace."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 81

"Ah! I knew you would say that." He
added in a moment, "You are the only
person that has quoted my lines to me that
has not embarrassed me painfully. For the
moment I felt that you had written them,
not I!"

"I often used to feel that I had; all, that

is " The magnet of danger to the

curiosity in her feminine soul was irresistible.
"All but your ode to the mate whom you
never could find."

And then she turned cold, for she remem-
bered the story of the woman who had been
his ruin. But he did not pale nor shrink;
he merely smiled and his eyes seemed to with-
draw still farther away. "Ah! that woman
of whom all poets dream. Perhaps we really
find her as we invoke her for a bit with the
pen." Then he broke off abruptly and
looked hard at her, his eyes no longer absent.

"You — you " he began. "Ten years

ago " And then his face flushed so

darkly that Anne laughed gaily to cover the
cold and horror that gripped her once more.

"Ten years ago ? I was only twelve ! And
now — I am made to feel every day that two-
and-twenty is quite old. In three more

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

years I shall be an orthodox old maid. All
the women in Bath House intimate that I
am already beyond the marriageable age."

"The men do not, I fancy!" The poet
spoke with the energy of a man himself.
"Besides, I looked — happened to look —
through the window of the saloon one night
and saw you talking to no less than four
gallants."

Here she turned away in insufferable eon-
fusion, and he, too, seemed to realise that he
had betrayed a deeper interest than he had
intended. With a muttered au revoir he
left her, and when she finally turned her head
he was gone. Miss Bargarny was exclaiming:

"Well, dear Lady Hunsdon, he was quite
delightful, genteel, altogether the gentleman.
Thank heaven I never heard all those naughty
stories, so I can admire without stint. Did
you notice, Mary, how pleased he was when
I recited that couplet.?"

"I saw that he was very much embarrassed,"
replied Lady Mary, who for an elegiac figure
had a surprising reserve of human nature.
"It was too soon to be personal with a poor
man who has been out of the world so long.
But I think he enjoyed himself after the first

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 83

embarrassment wore oflf. I feel surer still,"
with an exalted expression turned suddenly
upon Lord Hunsdon, "that we shall rescue
him. We must have him here often, not lose
a day of this precious time. Then we can
leave Nevis without anxiety, or perhaps
induce him to go with us." She reflected
that were she mistress of Hunsdon jTowers
she should be quite willing to give the famous
poet a turret and pass as his mundane
redeemer.

Hunsdon moved toward her as if her enthu-
siasm were a magnet. "It has all exceeded
my fondest hopes," he exclaimed. "He was
quite like his old self before he left "

"Thanks to Miss Percy," broke in a
stridulous voice. "He was devoured with
ennui, to say nothing of shyness, until he
summoned up courage to talk to her, and then
he seemed to me quite like any ordinary
young spark. I don't know that he quite
forgot to be a poet," she concluded with some
gallantry, for she had taken a great fancy to
Anne and was determined to marry her bril-
liantly, "but he certainly ceased for a few
moments to look like a God-forsaken one.
What were you talking about, my dear?"

84 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

'''Dear Lady Constance — Oh, Nevis, and
his poetry, for the most part."

"I should think he would be sick of both
subjects. Come now, be frank. Did not
you get on the subject of your pretty self.?
I '11 be bound he has an eye for a fine girl as
well as the best of them. You make Mary
and Lillian look like paper dolls."

"I do protest!" cried Miss Bargarny indig-
nantly. "If he does it is practically because
he is a — lives in the country himself. If
he lived in London among people of the first
fashion "

"He 'd admire her all the more. Look at
the other beaux. Wait until Miss Percy is in
the high tide of a London season. You forget
that if girls are always on the catch, men are
always ready for a change."

Miss Bargarny's black eyes were in flames,
but she dared not provoke that dreaded
tongue further. She forced herself to smile as
she turned to Anne, standing abashed during
this discussion of herself, and longing to be
alone with her chaotic thoughts. "Confess,
dear Miss Percy, that you did not talk about
yourself, but about that most fascinating of
all subjects to man, himself. I believe you

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 85

have the true instinct of the coquette, in spite
of your great lack of experience, and that is a
coquette's chiefest sugar-plum."

"I believe I did talk about himself — natur-
ally, as I have always been a great admirer of
his work, and the very inexperience you men-
tion makes me seize upon such subjects as I
know anything about."

Lady Mary went forward and put her arm
about her new friend's waist. "Let us take
a turn in the orchard before it is time to retire,"
she said. "I long to talk to you about our
new acquaintance. Try to devise a plan to
bring him here daily," she said over her
shoulder to the complacent hostess; and to
Lord Hunsdon, "Will you come for us in a
quarter of an hour?"

It was only of late that Lady Mary had
determined to lay away in lavender the luxury
of sorrow. When a woman is thirty ambition
looms as an excellent substitute for romance,
and there had been unexpected opportunities
to charm a wealthy peer during the past
five weeks. She hated poetry and thought
this poet a horror, but he was an excellent
weapon in the siege of Hunsdon Towers.
She was not jealous of Anne, for she divined

86 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

that Hunsdon's suit, if suit it were, was hope-
less, and believed that her new friend's good
nature would help her to win the prize of
a dozen seasons. So she refreshed her com-
plexion with buttermilk and spirits of wine,
and made love to Anne; who saw through her
manoeuvres but was quite willing to further
them if it would save herself the ordeal of
refusing Lord Hunsdon.

CHAPTER VII

/^N THE following evening there was so
^-^ much more dancing than usual — a
number of officers had come over from St.
Kitts — that the saloon was deserted by the
young people, and at the height of the
impromptu ball Anne found herself alone near
one of the open windows. The older people
were intent upon cards. Anne, who had
grown bolder since her first appearance in the
world, now close upon three weeks ago,
obeyed an impulse to step through the win-
dow, descended the terrace and walked along
the beach. She could have gone to her room
and found the solitude she craved, but she
wanted movement, and the night was so
beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The
moon was at the full, she could see the blue
of the sea under its crystal flood. The blades
of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons
unsheathed. She could outline every leaf
of palm, cocoanut, and banana that fringed
the shore. The nightingales ceased their

87

88 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

warbling and she heard that other and still
more enchanting music of a tropic night, the
tiny ringing of a million silver bells. What
fairy-like creature of the insect world gave
out this lovely music she was at no pains to
discover. It was enough that it was, and she
had leaned out of her window many a night
and wondered why Byam Warner had never
sung its music in his verse.

Byam Warner! How — how was she to
think of him ? Her overthrown ideals no
longer even interested her, belonging as they
did to some far off time when she had not
come herself to dream upon these ravishing
shores. And now the surrender of the past
three weeks had been far more rudely dis-
turbed. Would even Nevis dominate again ?
Must not such a man, even in his ruin, cast
his shadow over any scene of which he was
a part.'' And of Nevis he was a part! She
had been able to disassociate them only until
he stood before her, quick. And now she
should see him, talk to him every day, possibly
receive his devotions, for there was no doubt
that he admired her as the antithesis of all
to which he had been accustomed from birth ;
unquestionably she must take her part in his

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 89

redemption. The thought thrilled her, and
she paused a moment looking out over the
water. Faded, even repellent, as that husk
was, not only was his genius so far unimpaired,
but she believed that she had caught a glimpse
of a great soul dwelling apart in that polluted
tenement. From the latter she shrank with
all the aversion of uncontaminated girlhood,
but she felt that she owed it to her intellect to
recognise the separateness of those highest
faculties possessed by the few, from the flesh
they were forced to carry in common with the
aborigines. And it seemed almost incredible
that his life had not swamped, mired, smoth-
ered all that was lofty and beautiful in that
inner citadel; her feminine curiosity impelled
her to discover if this really were so, or if he
had merely retained a trick of expression.

She was skirting the town, keeping close
to the shore, but she paused again, involun-
tarily, to look in the direction of that baker's
dwelling, through the window of which, some
months since, Byam Warner, mad with drink,
had precipitated himself one night, shrieking
for the handsome wife of the indignant spouse.
For this escapade he had lain in jail until a
coloured planter had bailed him out — for

90 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

the white Creoles thought it a good opportunity
to emphasize their opinion of him — and
although he had been dismissed with a fine,
the judge had delivered himself of a weighty
reprimand which was duly published in the
local paper. He had lain in prison only forty-
eight hours, but he had lain in 'prison, and
the disgrace was indelible. No wonder he had
been ashamed to hold up his head, had
hesitated so long to accept Lady Hunsdon's
invitation. The wonder was it had been
extended. Anne shrewdly inferred it never
would have been in London, no matter what
the entreaties of Lord Hunsdon, but on this
island many laws were relaxed and many a sin
left behind.

Then her thoughts swung to his indubious
assertion that he had emerged from his lair
merely that he might meet her. She recalled
the admiration in his eyes, the desperate
effort with which he had overcome his shyness
and approached her. What irony, if after
having been ignorant, unsuspecting, of her
existence during all those years of her worship,
when she had been his more truly than in
many a corporeal marriage, he should love
her now that she could only think of him with

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 91

pity and contempt. It gave her a fierce shock
of repulsion that he might wish to marry her,
dwell even in thought upon possessing her
untouched youth after the lewdness of his own
life. She must crush any such hope in its
bulb if she would not hate him and do him ill
when she sincerely wished him well. She
reviewed the beaux of Bath House for one
upon whom she might pretend to fix her
affections, and at once, before Warner's
inclination ripened into passion; but the very
thought of entering into a serious flirtation with
any of those tight-waisted, tight-trousered
exquisites induced a sensation of ennui,
and with Hunsdon she did not care to trifle.
He might be wearisome, but he was good and
sincere, and Lady Mary should have him were
it in her power to bring about that eminently
proper match.

It was at this point in her reflections that
she found herself opposite the house of the
poet.

CHAPTER VIII

OHE had walked more rapidly than she
^^ had been aware of and was shocked
at her apparent unmaidenliness in approach-
ing the house of a man, and at night,
in whom she was irresistibly interested; al-
though, to be sure, if she walked round the
island, to pass his house sooner or later was
inevitable. She was about to turn and hurry
home, when she saw what had appeared to be
a shadow detach itself from the tree in the
court and approach her. She recognised
Warner and stood rooted to the ground with
terror. All the wild and detestable stories
she had heard of him sprang to her mind in
bold relief, and although she had met many
a hard character when tramping her moorg
and felt sure of coming oflF best in a struggle,
her strength ebbed out of her before this
approaching embodiment of all mysterious
vice. To fly down the beach in a hoop
was impossible; besides she would look
ridiculous. But what would he do! She

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 93

forgot his eyes and remembered only his
adventures.

But he looked anything but formidable as
he came closer, and, being without a hat,
bowed courteously. Under the softening rays
of the moon his features looked less worn,
his skin less pallid, and, perhaps because she
was alone and attracted him strongly, his
hang-dog air was less apparent. He even
made an effort to straighten his listless
shoulders as he came close enough to get a
full view of the beautiful young woman,
standing with uncovered head and neck in
the bright light of the moon and staring at
him with unaccountable apprehension.

"It is I, Miss Percy," he said. "Have
you walked ahead of your party ? I have not
seen anyone pass."

"I — it is a dreadful thing to do, I
know — I stepped out of the window — just to
take a stroll by myself. I never seem to get
a moment alone. I am so tired of hearing
people chatter. I was thinking — before
I knew it I was here. I must go back. My
aunt will be very angry."

"Let me get you a cloak. Your shoulders
are bare and the fog will come down presently."

94 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

He went rapidly into the house and she had
her chance to flee, but she waited obediently
until he returned with a long black Inverness,
which he laid about her shoulders. I
shall walk home with you," he said. "I
don't think you are quite prudent to go about
alone at night. There are rough characters
in the town."

"Ah! — never again. You are very kind.
I do not know why I should trouble you."

He did not make the conventional response,
and for a few moments they walked on in
silence. Then, gathering confidence, as he
barely looked at her and was undeniably sober,
she asked abruptly: "Why have you never
written of the fairy orchestra one hears every
night .P It is about the only phase of Nevis
you have neglected."

"The little bells? Thank you for calling
my attention to it. I remember — I once
thought of it. But so many other things
claimed my attention, and I forgot it. I
fancy I seldom hear it. But you are right;
it is very lovely and quite peculiar to the West
Indies. If it would please you I will write
some verses about it — well — one of these
days."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 95

"I wish you would write them while I am
here."

"I am not in the mood for writing at
present."

He spoke hurriedly, and she understood.
Hunsdon had told her that he never wrote
save under stimulants. Could it be possible
that he had made up his mind not to drink
as long as she was on Nevis ? She turned
to him a radiant face of which she was quite
unconscious, as she replied eagerly. "Yes!
We have all resolved that you shall not write
a line this winter. A few months out of your
life are nothing to sacrifice to people that
admire and long to know you as we do. Never
was a man so sought. I cannot tell you how
many schemes we have already devised to get
hold of you — — "

"But why — in heaven's name ? I cannot
help feeling the absurdity."

"Not at all. You are the most celebrated
poet of the day, and all the world loves a
lion."

"For some five years the world of Bath
House has existed without the capers of the
local lion," he responded dryly.

"Ah, but you were so determined a recluse.

96 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

It takes a Lady Hunsdon to coax a lion from
his cave. And, no doubt, she is the only
person to come to Bath House during all
these years who knew you well enough to
take such a liberty. You are such an old
and intimate friend of her son."

He stole a quick glance at her, as if to
ascertain were she as ignorant of his life as
she pretended, but she was now successfully
in the role of the vivacious young woman,
who, in common with the rest of the world,
admired his work and was flattered to know
the author.

"Don't think that we mean to make fools
of ourselves and bore you," she added, with
another radiant and somewhat anxious
smile. "But now that the opportunity has
come we are all so happy, and we feel deeply
the compliment you have already paid us.
Lady Hunsdon hopes that you will read from
your works some evening ' '

"Good God, no! Unless, to be sure, you
have a charity entertainment. I have done
that in the past and felt that the object com-
pensated for the torture. But I am some-
what surprised to find that you are a lion
hunter."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 97

"I don't think I am — that is, I hardly
know. You are the first great man I have
ever seen. Perhaps after a season in London
I shall be quite frivolous and worldly."

"I can imagine nothing of the kind. I am
not so surprised to learn that you have not
yet spent a season in town."

"Oh, yes, I am a country girl," she said
roguishly.

"Not quite that." But he did not pursue
the subject, and in a few moments they came
to the gates of Bath House. He took the
cloak from her shoulders. "It would exceed
the bounds of decorum should I escort you
further," he said formally. "If you will
hasten you will not take cold. Good night."

She thanked him and ran up the steps and,
avoiding the saloon, to her own room.

"I have begun well," she thought trium-
phantly. "No one could say that I have
not done my part. And if he does not drink
for three months — who knows?"

CHAPTER IX

ANNE conceived more respect for Lord
' Hunsdon as the days went on, for there
was no doubt that his stratagem, carefully
planned and carried out, was succeeding.
Whether Warner suspected his object or not
no one could guess, but that he was flattered
and encouraged there could be no question.
Invitations to Bath House descended in show-
ers. He breakfasted, lunched, dined there,
drove with the ladies in the afternoon, and
finally summoned up courage to be host at a
picnic in the hills. He was still shy and quiet,
but he no longer looked abject and listless.
His shoulders were less bowed, even his skin
grew more normal of hue, the flesh beneath
it firmer. It might be a fool's paradise;
these spoilt people of the world might have
forgotten him before their return next winter,
but the mere fact that they overlooked his
flagrant insults to society and once more
permitted him to become an active member of
his own class was enough to soothe ugly

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 99

memories and make the blood run more freely
in his veins.

Anne treated him with a uniform courtesy
and flattering animation, but made no oppor-
tunities for private conversation, and he on
his side made no overt attempt at deliberate
approach. On the contrary, although she
often caught him regarding her steadily,
sometimes with a sadness that made her
turn aside with a paling colour, he seemed
rather to avoid her than otherwise. Not
so Lord Hunsdon. He was ever at her side
in spite of her manifest indifference, and
daily confided to her his delight in Warner's
response, and his hopes. He joined her in
no more of her walks, but he rarely failed
to attend her in the orchard in the afternoon
— where the younger guests never tired of
watching the little black boys scramble up
the tall thin smooth cocoanut trees, and,
grinning and singing amidst the thick mass
of leaves at the top, shake down the green
delicious fruit — or in the saloon after dinner.
Frequently he invited a small party to take
grenadilla ices on the terrace of the gay
little restaurant in Charlestown, where half
the Creole world of Nevis was to be met, and

100 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

upon one occasion he took several of the
more venturesome out to spear turtles, that
Anne alone might be gratified. So far he
had made no declaration, and often stared
at her with an apprehension and a diffidence
that seemed a travesty on the fettered and
tortured soul that looked from Warner's eyes ;
but his purpose showed no wavering, despite
the efforts of Lady Hunsdon and of Anne
herself to bring him to the feet of Lady Mary.
That his mother was uneasy was manifest.
She was too worldly to pin her faith to the
apparent indifference of any portionless
young woman to a wealthy peer of the realm,
and the more she saw of Anne Percy the less
she favoured her as a daughter-in-law. Lady
Constance, who understood her perfectly,
laughed outright one evening as she inter-
cepted a scowl directed at Hunsdon and Miss
Percy, who sat apart in one of the withdraw-
ing-rooms.

"She won't have him. Do not worry."

"I am not at all sure. You forget that
Hunsdon would be a great match for any girl."

"She does not care two straws about mak-
ing a great match."

"Fiddlesticks."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 101

"She is made on the grand scale. Hunsdon
is all very well, but he makes no appeal to
the imagination. I am almost glad Warner
has made such a wreck of himself. A hand-
some, dashing young poet, with the world
at his feet, might be fatal to her. Warner
never was dashing, to be sure, but he certainly
was handsome ten years ago, and fame is
a dazzling halo."

"He improves every day, but he seems to
fancy Miss Percy as little as any of the others."

"Poor devil! I suppose he recalls the time
when so many girls tried to marry him. I
cannot see much improvement myself, although
he does not look quite so much like a lost
soul roaming about in search of a respectable
tenement. But his physical attraction is all
gone. Not one of the girls is in love with
him, not one of the men jealous."

"Oh, certainly no woman could fall in love
with him, any more than any parent would
accept him. And as he is quite safe I wish he
would command more of Miss Percy's atten-
tion, and leave her with the less to bestow
on Hunsdon."

"He is too much in love with her."

"What.?"

102 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

"I seem to be the only person in Bath
House with eyes in my head. He is des-
perately, miserably, in love with her, and
too conscious of his own ruin, too respect-
ful of her, to dream of addressing her. He
would stay away altogether, I fancy, did
he not find a doubtful pleasure in looking
at her."

"I am distressed if I have added to his
trouble," said Lady Hunsdon, who prided
herself upon always experiencing the correct
sentiments. "I hoped he came so often to
us because we had restored his lost self-respect,
and he was grateful to be among his equals
once more."

"Oh, that, doubtless. But the rose leaves
crumple more with every visit. I only hope
the reaction will not awaken the echoes of
Nevis."

"What a raven! Let us hope for the best
and continue to do our duty. If he really
is in love with Anne Percy it may prove his
redemption."

"Much more likely his damnation. It
will be the last drop in a cup of bitterness
already too full."

"You grow sentimental."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 103

"Always was. But that never prevented
me from seeing things as they are. The
result is that I am generally called cynical.
But don't worry about Hunsdon. He needs
a refusal, and this is his only opportunity."

CHAPTER X

T ADY MARY DENBIGH achieved a signal
"^ triumpli ; she persuaded the poet to accom-
pany her to church. Fig Tree Church, roman-
tically poised on the side of the m.ountain,
was this year the favoured place of worship
with the guests of Bath House ; and where this
select extract of London led all the world of
Nevis followed. And not merely the wives
and daughters of the English Creole planters,
but the coloured population, high and low,
who could make themselves smart enough.
It was long since Warner had entered a
church, and the brilliant scene contributed
to the humour of his mood. The church
looked as gay as an afternoon rout in London
at the height of the season, and the aristocracy
of Nevis were quite as fine as the guests of
Bath House. Their costumes were of deli-
cate fabrics radiant of hue, and they were
beflounced and beruffled, and fringed and
ribboned. There were floating scarves and
sashes of lace and silk; bonnets were covered

104

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 105

with plumes and flowers, the little bunch of
curls on either side of nearly every face,
half -concealed by a mass of blonde or tulle.
Behind the elect sat the respectable coloured
Creoles, often dignified and noble of aspect,
for the West Indian African had been torn
from a superior race; their dress differing
little from that of their betters. But who
shall describe the mass of coloured folk massed
at the back of the church, a caricature
of the gentry, in their Sunday abandon to the
mightiest of their passions. Their colours
were primal, their crinolines and bonnets
enormous — - the latter perched far back ;
their plumes, if cheaper, were even longer;
where flowers and ribbons took the place
of feathers heads looked like window boxes;
their sleeves were so tight that they could
not hold their prayer books at the correct
angle, and more than one had stumbled over
her train as she dropped her skirts and
tripped into the church. They were still
further bedecked with a profusion of false jew-
ellery, cotton lace and fringe, ribbons stream-
ing from every aurve and angle, and shoes as
gaudy as the flowers on their bonnets. Their
men, in imitation of the aristocrats, wore.

106 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

of the best quality they could muster, smart
coats, flowered waistcoats, ruffled neck-cloths,
tight white trousers, and pointed boots a size
too small. They were the tradespeople of
the village; in some cases the servants of
the estates, although by far the greater num-
ber of the young women of* humbler Nevis
had received a smattering of education and
were now too good to work. Their parents
might get a living as best they could, huckster-
ing or on the plantations, while the improved
offspring, content to herd in one room on the
scantiest fare, dreamed of gala days and a
scrap of new finery. Nevertheless, many of
them were handsomer than the white fragile
looking aristocrats, with their olive or cream
coloured skins, liquid black eyes, and superb
undulating figures.

Warner had more than once written of the
tragedy of these people, his poet's imagination
tracing the descent of the finer specimens
from ancient kings whose dust was mixed
with the sands of the desert ; and his had been
one of the most impassioned voices lifted in
the cause of emancipation. For these reasons
he was much beloved by the coloured folk of
Nevis of all ranks, and some one of them had

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 107

never failed to come forward, when he lay ill
and neglected, or the bailiffs threatened to
sell his house over his head. All obligations
were faithfully discharged, for he received
handsome sums from his publishers, but his
patrimony was long since squandered; nothing
remained to him but his home and a bit of
land high on the mountain, which he had
clung to because he loved its wild beauty and
solitude.

Lady Mary Denbigh, with her languishing
airs, her "Book of Beauty" style, bored him
more than anyone in Bath House, and he had
begun to suspect that her attentions were due
not more to vanity than to a desire to find
favour with Lord Hunsdon. But she was
seldom far from Anne Percy, whose propin-
quity he could enjoy even if debarred com-
munion. And Lady Mary frequently made
Anne the theme of her remarks, in entertain-
ing the poet; whose covert admiration she too
detected and encouraged, although not without
resentment. Miss Percy was imdeniably
handsome and high-born, but alas, quite
lacking in fashion, in style, in ton. Not that
Lady Mary despaired of her. If she could
be persuaded to pass three seasons in Lon-

108 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

don, divorced from that stranded corner of
England where she had spent twenty-two
long years, all her new friends felt quite
hopeful that she would yet do them credit
and become a young lady of the highest fashion.
Her figure was really good, if somewhat
Amazonian, and her face, if not quite regular
— with those black eyebrows as wide as one's
finger, and that square chin, when all the
beauties had oval contours and delicate arches
above limpid eyes — was, as she had before
maintained, singularly striking and handsome,
and if perhaps too warmly coloured, this was
not held to be a fault by some.

Warner recalled the bitter-sweet of her
babble as he heard her sigh gently beside
him, her long golden ringlets shading her
bent face. His eyes wandered, after their
habit, to Anne Percy, who sat across the
church, distinguished in that gay throng by
bonnet and gloves and gown of immaculate
white. He worshipped every irregular line
in that noble, impulsive, passionate face and
wondered that he had ever thought another
woman beautiful ; condemned his imagination
that it had lacked the wit to conceive a like
combination. Her eyes, commonly full of

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 109

laughter, he had seen darken with anger
and melt with tenderness. There were
moments when she looked ao strong as mo-
mentarily to isolate herself from normal
womanhood, and suggest unlimited if unsus-
pected powers of good or evil; but those were
fleeting impressions; as a rule she looked the
most completely human woman he had ever
known.

He sighed and looked away. A wave of
superlative bitterness shook him, but he was
too Just to curse life, or anyone but himself.
He did not even curse the worthless woman
who had struck the curb from his inherited
weakness and made him a slave instead of
a rigid and insolent master. She had been
no worse, hardly more captivating, than a
thousand other women, but she had appealed
powerfully to his poetical imagination, and he
had elevated her into the sovereignship of
his destiny, endowed her with all the graces
of soul, the grandeur of character and passion,
that he had hitherto shaped from the rich
components in his brain. When he was
faced with the naked truth his mental dis-
quiet was as great as his anguish. If this
woman, one of the most finished works of

110 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

the most civilised country on the globe, had
revealed herself to be but common clay,
where should he find another worth loving?
Surely the woman was not yet evolved who
could fasten herself permanently to his soul
and his senses. This may have been a rash
conclusion for a man of his years, but a poet
is as old in brain at six-and-twenty as he is
green in soul at sixty. With all the ardour of
his youth and temperament he had longed
for his mate, dreamed of a life of exalted
companionship on the most poetic of isles;
and one woman, cleverer than many he had
met, had read his dreams, simulated his
ideal, and amused herself until the game
ceased to amuse her; and the richest nabob
of the moment returned from India with a
brown skull like a mummy had offered his
rupees in exchange for the social state that
only the daughter of a great lord could give
him. She had laughed good naturedly as
Warner flung himself at her feet in an agony
of incredulous despair, and told him that
no mood had become him so well, for
hitherto he had never expressed himself fully
save in verse. And Anne, neither classic
nor modish, still vaguely resembled her! It

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 111

was this suggestion of the woman whom at
least he must always remember as the per-
fection of female beauty, that had tempted
him to lurk in the darkness of the terrace
and watch Anne through the windows of Bath
House. In a day when girls cultivated the
sylph, minced in their speech, had number-
less affectations, his early choice had possessed
a noble, large figure and a lofty dignity. She
was not ashamed to walk, was to be seen on
her horse in the Row every morning, and
cultivated her excellent brain.

But the resemblance, Warner had divined
at once, was superficial, and the first inter-
view had justified his instinct. Anne was a
child in many ways; the other, although
younger in years, had been cool, shrewd,
calculating, making no false moves in any
game she chose to play. Warner knew that
if he had discovered a gold mine in Nevis
and won her, he should have hated her long
since.

But Anne Percy! He could not make the
same mistake twice. And had he met her
when he had a decent home and an honoured
name to offer her he believed that he could
have fovmd happiness in her till the end of

112 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

his life. Nor, had she loved him, would she
have been influenced by worldly considerations.
He had seen little of women of the great
normal middle class. Conditions had thrown
him with the very high or the very low, and
experience taught him that the former when
unmarried were all angling for husbands,
and the latter for patrons. Therefore had
he created a world of ideal women — one
secret of his popularity, for every woman that
read his poems looked into the poet's magic
mirror and saw herself; and he had found
happiness in creating, as poets must. Even
since his ostracism there had been many hours
of sustained happiness and moments of rapture
when he had quite forgotten his position
among men. And Anne Percy, in her radiant
presence, drove his ideals into the shadows
and covered them with cobwebs ! And he could
never claim her! Even were he not a poor
broken creature, with little alive in him but
that still flickering soul dwelling in his faded
unspeakable body, he would not even offer
the commonest attentions to this uncommon
girl who was worthy of the best of men. Nor
did he wish to suffer any more deeply than he
did at present. To know her better would

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 113

be to love her more. When she left the island
he hoped to relegate her to the plane upon
which he dwelt in dreams, and forget that she
had not been a created ideal.

But he was sometimes surprised at the
strength of his suffering and his longing. He
was so unutterably tired, had been for years,
so weary in mind and body through excess and
misery and remorse, so bitterly old, that he
was amazed there should be moments when
he experienced the fleeting hopes and deep
despair of any other lover of his years.
He left his bed at night and went out and
walked about the island, or rowed until he
was lost under the stars; he dreamed miser-
ably of her over his books, or hid in the cane
fields to watch her swing by in the early morn-
ing, divested of that hideous hoop-skirt, and
unconsciously mimicking the undulating gait
of the coloured women she passed. He had
replenished his wardrobe and was becoming
as dandified as any blood in Bath House,
having borrowed from Hunsdon against his
next remittance. And as he was eating
regularly for the first time in years — less and
less of the concoctions of his own worthless
servants — and drinking not at all, there was

114 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

no doubt that he was improving in appearance
as well as in health, in vitality. The last
word rose in his brain to-day for the first time.
Could it be that this mortal lassitude might
leave him, neck and heel? That red blood
would run in his veins once more ? To what
end ? He was none the less disgraced, none the
less unfit to aspire to the hand of Anne Percy.
Not only would the world denounce her if
she yielded, but his own self-contempt was too
deep to permit him to take so much innocent
loveliness to himself. But the thought often
maddened him, and to-day, as he looked up
and caught her eyes fixed upon him, suddenly
to be withdrawn with a deep blush, he had to
control himself from abruptly leaving the
church. More than once he had suspected
an interest, which in happier conditions
might have developed very rapidly. There
was no doubt that his work meant more to her
than to any woman he had ever met, and he
was convinced that she avoided him both
from a natural shrinking and because her
strong common sense compelled her to see
him as he was, forbade her imagination to
transmute his battered husk into the sem-
blance of what was left of his better self. But

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 115

she could love him. That was the thought that
sent the blood to his head and drove him from
his pillow.

But it did not drive him to brandy. He
had felt no temptation to drink since he met
her. It was true that before his final down-
fall he had only felt the actual necessity of
stimulant coincidently with the awakening
of his wondrous but strangely heavy muse;
but during the past five years he had burnt
out tormenting thoughts and remorse with
alcohol, drinking but the more deeply when his
familiar throbbed dully and demanded release.

He could not look ahead. He had not the
least idea what would be the immediate result
of the departure of Anne Percy, his return to
the loneliness of his home. With a reinvigor-
ated body, and some renewal of his faith in
woman, he might resist temptation if he thought
it worth while. But the next poem? What
then ? He had never written a line of serious
work except under the influence of brandy.
He knew that he never should. And with
nothing else to live for, to forswear the muse
to whom he was indebted for all the happiness
he had ever known was too much for God or
man to ask of him,

116 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

He had been sitting tensely, and he suddenly
leaned back and endeavoured to invoke into
his soul the peace that pervaded the house
of worship. The good clergyman was dron-
ing, fans and silken skirts were rustling, eyes
challenging. But outside the light wind was
singing in the palm trees, the warm air entered
through the window beside him laden with the
sweet perfumes of the tropics. The sky was as
blue as heaven. He reflected gratefully that
at least he had never grown insensible to the
beauty of his island, never even contemplated
deserting her for either the superior advan-
tages or the superior dissipations of the great
world. To live his life on Nevis and with
Anne Percy! Oh God! He almost groaned
aloud, and then came to himself as Lady
Mary rose and extended the half of her hymn
book.

CHAPTER XI

A S HE left the church Hunsdon took his arm,
■^*- and begging Lady Mary to excuse them
both, led him down the mountain by a side
path to Hamilton House. It was evident that
the young nobleman had something on his
mind, but it was not until they were in
Warner's study, and he had fidgeted about
for a few moments that he brought it out.

"Of course, old fellow, you divine that I
have a favour to ask.''" he said, growing very
red, and staring out of the window.

Warner, who had seated himself, looked
surprised, but replied that no favour was too
great to be asked by the best of friends.
Then he wondered if Hunsdon had guessed
his love for Anne Percy and was come to warn
him from Bath House. With a hot rush of
blood to the head he almost hoped that the
favour was nothing less and he might relieve
his overcharged feelings by pitching Hunsdon
out of the window.

But nothing could have been so far from

117 ..-•

118 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Hunsdon's well-regulated mind. He had
come on a very different errand.

"The truth is — well, my dear Byam,
you no doubt have seen how it is with me, long
since. The state of my affections. But I
do not seem to make much headway. Miss
Percy is charming to all, but the only reason
that I sometimes permit myself to hope is
because she is occasionally rude to me.
I am told that is always a propitious sign
in females."

"Do you want me to propose for you?"
asked Warner.

" Oh, by no means. I shall do that myself
when I think the moment is ripe. But it is
not, as yet. What do you think.?"

"I have not the least idea, not being an
eavesdropper."

"Of course not, dear old fellow. And
naturally you do not take much interest in
such matters. But there are certain pre-
liminary steps a man may take, and as I never
paid court to a woman before I fear I am not
as skilled as some. I feel that you could
assist me materially."

"I have few opportunities of talking apart
with Miss Percy, but I am willing to in-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 119

form her of the high esteem in which I
hold you "

"Oh dear me no. Her aunt, I fear, does
too much of that. Young women should not
be antagonised by being made to feel that
their relatives and friends are too anxious for
a match. I fancy they are not unlike us,
the best of them, in that regard. No, what
I should like, what would be of inestimable
service in my suit, would be to have you write
a sonnet or madrigal to her in my name, that
is to say that I could sign — which would not
be so good as to betray the authorship. As
you know, many men with no pretensions
whatever, write odes and sonnets to their
fair ones, but I could not even make a rhyme.
She does not know that, however, and if it were
not too fine, yet delicately flattering — I feel
sure that she would be touched."

"By all means, my dear fellow." Warner
almost laughed aloud as he wheeled about
and took up a quill. He had no jealousy of
Hunsdon, knew that he would never win
Anne Percy; but the irony of inditing a sonnet
to her in the name of another man took away
his breath.

He wrote steadily for an hour, copying and

120 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

polishing, for lie was too great an artist to
send forth even an anonymous trifle incom-
plete in finish. Lord Hunsdon, who was a
young man of excellent parts, took from the
table a copy of the De Augmentis Scientiarum,
and read diligently until Warner crossed the
room and handed him the sonnet.

Hunsdon was enraptured, but Warner
refused to be thanked.

"It would be an odd circumstance," he
said dryly, "if I could not do that much for
you."

Hunsdon blushed furiously. "Only one
thing more could make me the happiest of
men," he cried, with that kindling of the eye
that in other conditions would have developed
into a steady fanaticism. "And when all
is well, you must come and live with us. Now
that the world has found you once more I
feel that I above all should be held to account
did you despise and forget it again, I shall
not even leave you behind when I return
to England. Now, I must run off and copy
this. Remember, you dine with us to-night."

CHAPTER XII

T ORDHUNSDON had already bought an
■^ album in Charlestown, and after copy-
ing the sonnet several times to practise his
chirography, he inscribed it upon the first
page — a pink one — signing it "Your most
obedient Hunsdon," with an austere flourish.
Then he carefully wrapped the album in
tissue paper and sent it to Anne's room, with
strict orders to his man not to leave it unless
she were quite alone. The best of men have
their vanities ; the idea that the superior Mary
Denbigh or the satirical Miss Bargarny might
witness the ofl^ering's arrival was insupportable.
Anne was alone and unfolded the large
square package with much curiosity. It was
one of those albums that the young ladies of
her day loved to possess; indeed, so far, she
had been the only girl in Bath House without
one, and had read the flattering verses in several
with some envy. This tribute was sumptu-
ously bound in brown calf embossed with gold,
and all the leaves were delicately tinted.

121

122 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

She turned over the pale greens and pinks,
blues and canaries, with that subtle indefin-
able pleasure that colour gives to certain
temperaments. She had not glanced at the
servant, and fancied the album a present from
Lady Constance. When she saw the signature
on the first page she stared, for Lord Huns-
don was the last person she would have
suspected of cultivating the muse. She
began the sonnet with a ripple of laughter,
but paled before she finished. Trifling as
it was she recognised it as the work of Byam
Warner. She could never be mistaken there.
It resembled nothing of his that she knew,
but the grace of the verse, the fine instinctive
choice of words, the glitter and sweep of phrase,
belonged to him and none other. Her heart
leaped as she wondered if it were not the first
bit of verse he had ever written while sober.
And she had inspired it ! The thought brought
another in its train and she went suddenly
to her window and stared through the jalousies
at the dazzling sunlight on the palms, for the
first time seeing nothing of the beauty of
Nevis.

The poem had been written from himself
to her. A phrase or two not intended for

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 123

Hunsdon's unsuspecting eye assured her of
that. It was not an old sonnet furbished up
to fit the purpose of a friend. And fragile
as the thing was, still it was poetry — and he

had written it when sober — and to her

She repeated this discovery many times
before she could give shape to the greater
thought building in her brain. It was a
beginning, a milestone. Might it not be
within her compass to influence him so in-
delibly that his muse would continue to wake
at her call, at the mere thought of her, with
no aid from that foul hag of drink, which of
late had almost made her hate his poetry as
the work of a base alliance ? She believed
that if he did not love her he was yet so deep
in admiration that she could inspire him
with a profound attachment if she chose.
And the result.? If only she were a seer,
as certain of her Scotch kin claimed to be.
A hopeless love might inspire him to the
greater work the world expected of him; she
had read of the flowering of genius in the
strong soil of misery. But he had suffered
enough already, poor devil! The result of
loving for the last time, with no hope of
possession, might fling him from Parnassus

124 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

into the Inferno, where he would roast in
unproductive torment for the rest of his
mortal span. Even that might not be for long.
He looked frail enough beside these fresh
young English sportsmen, or even the high-
coloured planters, burnt without and within.

It was a terrible question for any woman
to be forced to ask, particularly were she
honest enough to confess that no woman
should ask it. What right had she to put her
finger into any man's destiny unless she were
willing to take the consequences and share
that destiny if invited ? But that no woman
could be expected to do. Why could he
not have realised her mental picture of him:
that glorified being with whom she had
dwelt so long? She sighed as she recalled
her many disillusionments of the past few
weeks. Bath House was the world in
little. It seemed years since she had left
Warkworth Manor. She found that world
a somewhat mean and sordid place. She
still loved the gaiety and sumptuousness of
her new life, for it appealed to inherited
instincts. But she had not found a respon-
sive spirit. The young married women
were absorbed in their children or their

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 125

flirtations. The girls were superficially read,
"aecojnplislied," conceited, insincere, with not
an aspiration above getting a husband of
fortune. Lady Mary, alarmed at last, was
become cool and spiteful. Lady Hunsdon
was almost an enemy. Lady Constance
seemed to have more heart than most of her
ilk in spite of her caustic tongue, but she
hardly made a sympathetic companion for a
romantic young girl brought up in the country.
It was true that she had recently made an
interesting acquaintance in Miss Medora
Ogilvy, the clever daughter of one of the
planters, who vowed she loved her and swore
undying friendship; but Anne needed more
time to reciprocate feelings so ardent, par-
ticularly in her present state of mind.

On the whole she liked the young men bet-
ter, as they were less spiteful and petty, but
they had read little and the only subject of
which, barring sport and society, they had
any real knowledge, was politics, and this they
vowed too fatiguing for the tropics. They
preferred the language of compliment, they
loved to dawdle, to hold a skein of worsted, to
read a novel aloud, or " The Yellowplush
Papers" or selections from "Boz"; when tired

126 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

of female society, or when it was too hot to
hunt or fish, they retired to the gaming tables.
Anne had never dreamed that the genus man
could be so little stirring, and although she
was flattered by their attentions, particularly
by those of Mr. Abergenny, and her natural
coquetry was often responsive, for mere
youth must have its way, she was appalled
by her general sense of disappointment
and wondered what her future was to be.
She had no desire to return to her
manor, and for a season in London she
cared as little. She would have been glad to
remain on Nevis, but to this she knew that
Mrs. Nunn would not hearken. London
was inevitable; and possibly she would meet
some intelligent and interesting man who
would help her to bury romance and fulfil
the proper destiny of woman.

She wondered to-day as she had wondered
once or twice before, could she have loved
Byam Warner in spite of his unlikeness to
her exaggerated ideal had she found him a
normal member of society, as fine in appear-
ance as his years and his original endow-
ment deserved. It was a question to which
she could find no answer, but certainly his

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 127

conversation, could she but permit herself
to enjoy it, must be far superior to that of
anyone else on Nevis. And a flirtation with
the poet of the day would have been ex-
citing, something to remember, a feather in
her cap. She had her share of feminine
vanity — it grew daily, she fancied — and it
was by no means unfed by the manifest
admiration, possibly love, of this great poet
in his ruin. Whatever his tribute might be
worth, it was offered to none but herself, and
if the man were beneath consideration the
poet was of a radiance undimmed.

Suddenly it occurred to her that did he
tread his present straight and hygienic path
for a full year he might indeed be his old
self when next she came to Nevis. The
island was healthy at all seasons, those who
lived on it were immune from fever. Nature
would remake what Warner had unmade
too early to have destroyed root and sap.
Many a man had sown his wild oats and lived
to a hale old age. Would that mean that
next winter Byam Warner would be hand-
some, attractive, confident ? She often heard
the good looks of his youth referred to, and
there certainly were the remains of beauty

128 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

in that wrecked countenance. His eyes were
sunken, but they were still of a deep black
gray, and they daily gained in brightness.
His hair was almost black, and abundant.
The shape of his head and brow and profile
were above reproach, for dissipation had never
grossened him. But his face, although im-
proving, was still haggard and lined and
stamped with satiety; his mouth betrayed
the wild passions that had wrecked him, and
was often drawn in lines of bitterness and
disgust. There was nothing commanding
in his carriage, such as women love, and his
manners were too reserved, too shy, to
fascinate her sex apart from the halo of his
fame. A return to health and vigour might
improve him vastly, but nothing could ever
make him a dashing romantic figure; and
although sometimes a light came into his
face that revealed the poet, commonly he
betrayed not an inkling of his gifts. But
even so he might be more worth while than
any man she had met so far, whatever the
great world might have in store; and she
wished that his reformation had been accom-
plished the winter before and she were now
in enjoyment of the result. Then she found

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 129

distaste in the thought that she might have
had no hand in his reclamation, and was glad
to recall his hint that but for her he would
never have crossed the threshold of Bath
House. And then she was overwhelmed
with the sense of her responsibility. It was
not for the first time, but not until to-day had
she faced the question of how far she ought
to go. And even to-day she did not feel up
to reasoning it out. She knew too little of
the world, of men; there was no one to whom
she could go for advice. She re-read the
sonnet, determined to be guided by events,
registered a vow that in no case would she
shirk what she might believe to be her duty;
and then wrote a prim little note of acknowl-
edgment to Lord Hunsdon.

CHAPTER XIII

T ADY HUNSDON, having in vain be-
■*-^ sought the poet to read aloud to a
select audience, acted upon the hint he had
unwittingly dropped to Anne Percy and
organised a charity performance for the benefit
of an island recently devastated by earth-
quake. Warner was visibly out of counte-
nance when gaily reminded by Anne of his
careless words, but he could do no less than
comply, for the wretched victims were in want
of bread. Lady Mary, Miss Bargarny, and
several others offered their services. All
aristocratic Nevis were invited to contribute
their presence and the price of a ticket, and
the performance would end with a dance that
should outlast the night.

Nevis was in a great flutter of excitement,
partly because of the promised ball, for which
the military band of St. Kitts was engaged,
partly because but a favoured few, and years
ago, had heard Byam Warner read. Indeed,
his low voice was never heard three yards

13Q

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 131

away, in a drawing-room, although it had
frequently made Charlestown ring. He was
now on his old footing at the Great Houses.
The nobler felt many a pang of conscience
that they had permitted a stranger at Bath
House to accomplish a work so manifestly
their own, while others dared not be stigma-
tised as provincial, prejudiced, middle-class.
If London could afford a superb indifference
to the mere social offences of a great poet,
well, so could Nevis. They forgot that Lon-
don had arisen as one man and flung him
out, neck and crop. Lady Hunsdon had
eclipsed London; rather, for the nonce did
she epitomise it. Her gowns came not even
from Bond Street. They were confected in
Paris. Hers was the most distinguished Tory
salon in London. Her son was the golden
fish for which all maidens fortunate enough
to be within reach of the sacred pond angled.
It was whispered that Warner would accom-
pany Hunsdon to London, be a guest in his
several stately homes, possibly be returned
from one of his numerous boroughs. The
poet approached his zenith for the second time.
Curricles, phaetons, gigs, britzskas,
barouches, family chaises brought the el'ect

132 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

of Nevis, and their guests, from St. Kitts to
Bath House a little before nine o'clock; the
lowly of Charlestown to the terrace before
the ever open windows of the saloon where
the performance was to be held. In the
friendly bedrooms of the hotel there was a
great shaking down of skirts, rearranging of
tresses. Miss Medora Ogilvy went straight
to Anne's room, by invitation, and finding
it empty, proceeded to beautify herself.
Byron had been much in vogue at the time
of her birth — was yet, for that matter —
and she had been named romantically. But
there was little romance in the shrewd brain
of Miss Ogilvy. She was well educated
and accomplished — like many of her kind she
had gone to school in England; she could
cook and manage even West Indian servants
— her mother was an invalid; and she wished
for nothing under heaven but to marry a man
of "elegant fortune" and turn her back upon
Nevis for ever. She really liked Anne and
thought her quite the most admirable girl she
had ever met, but she was not of those that
deceive themselves, and frankly admitted that
the chief attraction of her new friend was her
almost constant proximity to Lord Hunsdon.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 133

Miss Ogilvy was petite, with excellent
features and slanting black eyes that gave her
countenance a slightly Oriental cast. She wore
her black hair in smooth bands over her ears,
a la Victoria, and her complexion was as
transparently white as only a West Indian's
can be. To-night she pirouetted before the
pier glass with much complacency. She wore
a full flowing skirt of pink satin, with little
flounces of lace and rosettes on the front,
puffed tight sleeves, and a corsage of white
illusion, pink bands, flowers, and rosettes.
As she settled a wreath of pink rosebuds
on her head and wriggled her shoulders still
higher above her bodice, she felt disposed
to hum a tune. She was but nineteen and
Lady Mary was twenty-nine if she was a day.

Anne, who had been assisting Mrs. Nunn's
maid to adjust lavender satin folds and the
best point lace shawl, entered at the moment
and was greeted with rapture.

"Dearest Miss Percy! What a vision!
A Nereid! A Lorelei! You will extinguish
us all. Poor Lord Hunsdon. Poor Mr.
Warner — ah, ma belle, I have eyes in my
head. But what a joy to see you in colour.
How does it happen.''"

134 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

" My aunt insisted while we were in London
that I buy one or two coloured gowns. My
father has been dead more than a year. I
put this on to-night to please her, although
I have two white evening gowns."

She wore green taflFeta flowing open in
front over a white embroidered muslin slip,
and trimmed with white fringe. A sash
whose fringed ends hung down in front,
girt her small waist. Her arms and neck
were bare, but slipping from the shoulders,
carelessly held in the fashion of the day, was
a white crepe scarf fringed with green. She
wore her hair in the usual bunch of curls
on either side of her face, but in a higher
knot than usual, and had bound her head
with the golden fillet Mrs, Nunn had
pressed upon her in London. Depending
from it and resting on her forehead, was an
oblong emerald; Anne had a few family
jewels although she wore no others to-night.

"I vow!" continued Miss Ogilvy, tripping
about her, "quite classic! And at the same
time such style! Such, ton! Madame Lucille
made that gown. Am I not right.?"

Anne confessed that Madame Celeste had
made it.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 135

"Celeste, I meant. How could I be so
stupid ? But it is two long years since I laid
eyes on Bond Street. A humbler person,
plain Mrs. Barclay, sends out my gowns.
Wbat do you think, dear Miss Percy, shall
I look provincial, second-rate, amongst all
these lucky people of fashion?"

"You are lovely and your gown is quite
perfect," said Anne warmly, and then the
two girls went down-stairs arm in arm, vowing
eternal friendship. Miss Ogilvy professed
a deep interest in the poet, declared that she
had begged her obdurate papa time and
again to call upon and reclaim him; and
Anne, who now detested Lady Mary, was
resolved to further her new friend's interests
with Lord Hunsdon. He joined them at the
foot of the staircase and escorted them to a
little inner balcony above the saloon. There
was no danger of interference from Lady
Mary, who was to perform, or from Lady
Hunsdon, who occupied the chair of state in
the front row.

They were late and looked down upon a
brilliant scene. Not even a dowager wore
black, and the young women, married and
single, were in every hue, primary and

136 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

intermediate. Almost as many wore their
hair a la Victoria as in the more becoming
curls, for loyalty, so long dead and forgotten,
was become the rage since the young Queen
had raised the corpse. But they softened the
severity of the coiffure with wreaths, and
feathers, and fillets, and even coquettish little
lace laps, filled with flowers. The men were
equally fine in modish coats and satin waist-
coats; narrow and severe or deep and ruffled
neckties but one degree removed from the
stock, or in flowing collars a la Byron. Their
hair was parted in the middle and puffed out
at the side; not a few wore a flat band of
whisker that looked like the strap of the
condemned. Both Hunsdon and Warner
shaved, or Anne would have tolerated neither.

There was a platform at the end of the
saloon, with curtains at the back separating
it from a small withdrawing-room, and it
had been tastefully embellished with rugs,
jars of gorgeous flowers, a reading stand, a
harp and a piano.

"Who will sway over the harp.?" asked
Miss Ogilvy humorously.

"Lady Mary. Ah! They are abqut to
begin."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 137

A fine applause greeted Miss Bargarny,
who executed the overture to Semiramide
quite as well as it deserved. After the
clapping was over and she had obligingly
given an encore, she remained at the piano,
and Mr. Stewart, a young man with red hair
and complexion, in kilts and pink knees,
emerged from the curtains, and sang in a thun-
dering voice several of Burns's tenderest
songs. After their final retirement the cur-
tains were drawn apart with much dignity,
and Lady Mary stepped forth; a vision, as
her severest critics were forced to admit.
She was in diaphanous white, with frosted
flowers amidst her golden ringlets, a little
crown of stars above her brow, and a scarf
of silver tissue.

"All she needs is wings!" exclaimed Miss
Ogilvy, and added to herself, "may she soon
get them!"

Lady Mary, acknowledging the rapturous
greeting with a seraphic expression and the
grand air, literally floated to the harp, where
nothing could have displayed to a greater
advantage her long willowy figure, her long
white thin arms, the drooping gold of her
ringlets. As the golden music tinkled from

138 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

the tips of her taper fingers — formed for
the harp, which may have had somewhat
to do with her choice of instrument — her
ethereal loveliness swayed in unison, and,
one might fancy — if not a rival — emitted
a music of its own.

"She doesn't look a day over twenty!"
exclaimed Miss Ogilvy. "Who would dream
that she was thirty? But those fragile crea-
tures break all at once. When she does
fade she will be even more passee than most,"

"But women know so many arts nowadays,"
said Anne drily. "And she would be the last
to ignore them."

"Ah! no doubt she will hang on till she gets
a husband. I never knew anyone to want
one so badly."

"Lady Mary.?" asked Hunsdon wonder-
ingly. "I had long since grown to look
upon her as a confirmed old maid."

"La! La! my lord!" Miss Ogilvy sud-
denly resolved upon a bold stroke. "She's
trying with all her might and main to marry
your own most intimate friend."

"My most intimate friend? He is in
England. Nottingdale. Do you know him ?
Or do you perchance mean Warner?"

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 139

"Never heard of the first and it certainly
is not the last. Oh, my lord!" And then
she laughed so archly that poor Lord Huns-
don could not fail to read her meaning. His
fresh coloured face, warm with ascending
heat, turned a deep brick red. He felt
offended with both Miss Ogilvy and Lady
Mary, and edged closer to Anne as if for
protection.

This conversation took place while Lady
Mary was bowing in response to the plaudits
her performance evoked. She tinkled out
another selection, and then, with a gently
dissenting gesture, the dreaming eyes almost
somnambulistic, floated through thi curtains.

There was a brief interval for rapturous
vocatives and then the curtains were flung
apart and Spring burst through, crying,

"I come! I come! Ye have called me long.
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth
By the winds that tell of the violet's birth. "

The young lady, attired in white and
hung with garlands, looked not unlike the
engraving of "Spring" in the illustrated
editions of the poems of the gentle Felicia.
For a moment Anne, who had long outgrown

140 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Mrs. Hemans, was disposed to laugh, but as
the sweet ecstatic voice trilled on a wave of
sadness swept over her, a familiar scene of
her childhood rose and effaced the one
beneath. She saw the favourite room of her
mother in the tower overhanging the sea,
her brothers sprawled on the hearthrug,
herself in her own little chair, her mother
in her deep invalid sofa holding her youngest
child in her arms, while she softly recited the
"Evening Prayer at a Girl's School," "The
Coronation of Inez del Castro," "Juana,"
or, to please the more robust taste of the
boys, "Bernardo del Carpio," and "Cas-
abianca," the last two in sweet inadequate
tones. Lines, long forgotten swept back to
Anne out of the past:

The night wind shook the tapestry round an ancient palace

room,
And torches, as it rose and fell, waved through the

gorgeous gloom.

There was music on the midnight —
From a royal fane it rolled.

The warrior bowed his crested head, a'nd tamed his heart of

fire.
And sued the haughty king to free his long imprisoned sire.

Mrs. Percy had been a gentle, sentimental.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 141

romantic creatiire with golden ringlets and
floating sylph-like form, not unlike Lady
Mary's. She received little attention from
her scientific husband and devoted her short
life to her children and to poetry, writing
graceful vacant verses herself. Mrs. Hemans
was her favourite poet, although her eyes
could kindle when she read "The Corsair,"
or "The Bride of Arbydos," particularly as
she had once met Bjrron and remembered
him as the handsomest of mortals. But
she would have thought it indecorous even
to mention his name before her young children.
Mrs. Hemans was as much a part of the
evening hour in winter as the dusk and the
blazing logs, and the children loved her
almost as well as the gentle being who re-
newed her girlhood in those romantic effusions,
A maUgnant fever raging up the coast, had
burnt out that scene for ever, leaving Anne
alone and aghast, for her father, the first
horror and remorse over, subsided once more
into his laboratory. Then had come a suc-
cession of governesses; finally the library
was discovered; she ceased to miss her
old companions. But she never forgot them,
and no doubt the sweetness and melancholy

142 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

of the memory did as much as the imaginary
Byam Warner to save her from the fate of
her dry dehumanised father.

Anne came to herself as a charade progressed,
and Miss Ogilvy gaily commented upon the
interpretation of the middle syllable of Cater-
pillar, as A, in the architecture of which one
of the handsomest girls and her swain
made a striking silhouette. Then she re-
membered that the next name on theprogramme
was Warner's ; he was to read for half an hour
from his own work; after which all would hie
themselves to the music room and dance.

There was a longer interval than usual.
Anne's hands and feet became nerveless bits
of ice. Had his courage given out.'' Had
he run away.? Worse still, was he nerving
himself to an ordeal to which he would prove
unequal.? A humiliating breakdown! Anne's
blood pounded through her body as he finally
emerged from the curtains, and she broke her
fan, much to the amusement of Miss Ogilvy.

The company, although it had once or twice
permitted its applause to go beyond the bounds
prescribed by elegant civility, had reserved
its real enthusiasm for the poet whose halo
of present fashion electrified their springs of

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 143

Christianity. As he entered, correctly attired,
although more soberly than most of his
audience, and walked slowly to the reading
stand, they not only clapped but stamped
and cried his name until the walls resounded;
and so excited the coloured people (with
whom his popularity had never waned)
that a stentorian chorus burst through the
windows and drowned the more polite if no
less ardent greeting of the elect.

Warner blushed faintly and bent his head
in acknowledgment, but otherwise gave no
sign of the astonishment he must feel, and
stood quite still until the noise had died away
down to its final echo in the neighbourhood of
the palm avenue. When he finally lifted his
book a sudden breathless silence fell upon the
company. Anne leaned over the railing in
almost uncontrollable excitement, her face
white, her breath short. Lord Hunsdon was
too agitated himself to observe her, but the
unaffected Miss Ogilvy took note and matured
plans.

Warner began to read in his low, toneless,
but distinct voice. In a few moments the
excitement subsided; he was pronounced in-
sufferably monotonous. Fans rustled, hoops

144 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

scraped the hard floors. Lady Constance
gave a loud admonitory cough. Warner paid
no heed. Still he read on in low monotone.
A few moments more and its spell had
enmeshed the company. The silence was so
deep that the low murmur of the sea could
be heard beyond (or within) his own voice.
The most impatient, the most vehement,
raised significant eyebrows and shot out
optical affirmations that nothing could be
more effective than the verbal method the
poet had adopted — although doubtless it
was quite his own, so in keeping was it with
his reserved, retiring, non-committal person-
ality. Be that as it may, the dramatic
scenes, the impassioned phrases, the virile
original vocabulary that flowed from his set
lips could never be delivered so potently by
tones that matched their tenor. The con-
trast flung them into undreamed of relief.
Those most familiar with his work wondered
that they had never understood it before.

Anne felt more than all this. She closed
her eyes and enjoyed a delusion. It was the
soul of the poet reading. The body there
was but a fallacy of vision, non-existent,
really dead, perhaps; subservient for a while

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 145

longer to that imperious immortal part that
had not yet fulfilled its earthly mission. She
had allowed herself to believe that she had
caught fleeting glimpses of this man's soul,
so different from his battered clay; to-night
she heard it, and heard as she never did by
the North Sea when all her world was one
vast delusion. It murmured like the sea
itself, the gray cold sea of some strange dark
planet beyond the stars, whence came, who
knew.? all genius; a sea whose tides would
rise high and higher until they exhausted
the clay they beat upon while they had yet
a message to deliver to Earth. That clay!
If it could but be preserved a few years
longer! Great as was his accomplished work
he must do greater yet. No student of his more
ambitious poems, half lyric, half dramatic,
believed his powers were yet developed.

Anne came to herself amidst a new thunder
of applause. She told herself with a sigh and
an angry blush that she was a romantic idiot
and the sooner she married and had a little
family to think of the better. Heaven knew
what folly she might be capable of did she
give rein to dreams. She became aware
that Warner, compelled to silence, was look-

146 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

ing straight at her, and she automatically
beat her hands together. He smiled slightly
and gave his head an almost imperceptible
shake. Then some one in the audience called
for the popular poem in which he had so
vigorously denounced Macaulay's .unjust
estimate of Byron a few years since, holding
up to scorn the brain of the mere man of letters
who dared to criticise or even to attempt to
understand the abnormal brain and tempera-
ment of a great poet. He recited it from
memory and then retired followed by a tumult
of approval that he well knew he never should
evoke again.

CHAPTER XIV

"IT^rHEN Anne descended the company
' ~ was streaming toward the music
room, whence issued the rich summons of a
full military band. She mancBuvred so well
that Lord Hunsdon led out Miss Ogilvy for
the first dance, and sat down beside Mrs.
Nunn, hoping that Warner would summon
courage to take the empty chair beside her.
Her pulses beat high with excitement and
delight in his triumph, and she longed to show
him recklessly for once the admiration and the
faith she had taken care to conceal under a
correctly flattering manner. But Warner
stood talking with a group of men, and even
could he have ignored a sudden imperious
beckoning of Lady Hunsdon's fan he would
have been too late. With one of those con-
certed impulses to which men no less than
women are subject, the young bloods of Bath
House, the moment they saw Anne Percy
radiant in colour, with an even deeper blush
and brighter eyes than usual, determined that

147

148 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

she and she alone should be the belle of the
evening. She had hardly seated herself when
she was surrounded, she was besieged for
dances; and in spite of her protests that she
had never danced save with her governesses,
she found herself whirling about the room in
the arm of Mr. Abergenny, and followed by
many an angry eye. Abergenny might be
untitled and less of a "catch" than Lord Huns-
don, but he had far more dash, manner, and
address ; he possessed a fine property, if some-
what impaired by high living, and was a man
of note and fashion in London. His word
alone had stamped more than one ambitious
beauty for good or ill, and this was not the
first time that he had intimated his entire
approval of Miss Percy. Anne guessed that
his intentions were never serious, but he had
amused her more than the others, and since
she must know the world, doubtless she should
be grateful for tutelage so able.

Although trembling and suffused with terri-
fied blushes, all her old shyness in possession,
Mr. Abergenny was so admirable a partner,
he gave her so many courteous hints, he kept
her so persistently in the thick of the dancing,
where critical eyes could hardly follow her.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 149

that her confidence not only returned, but
before she had completed the circuit of the
room three times she was vastly enjoying her-
self. She danced round and square dances
with her various admirers for the next hour,
and when the country dance was at its height
she found herself tripping alone between the
long files with no return of bashfulness and no
less grace than Lady Mary herself; forgetting
that there could be no better preparation for
grace in the ball-room than years of free exer-
cise out of doors.

She abandoned herself to the new and
unanticipated pleasure, and not only of danc-
ing but of being the acknowledged belle of
the night. Beyond the intoxication of the
moment nothing existed. Once indeed, she
met Warner's eyes, and they flashed with
surprise and rage, but she forgot him and
danced until even her strong frame could
stand no more, and she went to bed with the
dawn and slept till afternoon.

CHAPTER XV

T^EPRESSED with reaction and heavy
-*-^ with unwonted sleeping by dayUght,
she was glad to go from her dressing-table to
the carriage waiting to take herself and her
aunt for the customary drive. It was but a
moment before her mind was startled into
its accustomed activity.

"Mr. Warner has disappeared again." Mrs.
Nunn tilted her lace parasol against the slant-
ing sun. "Poor Maria!"

"Disappeared ?"

"That is the general interpretation.
Maria, with whom he was to dine to-night,
received a note from him this morning asking
to be excused as he was going away for some
time; and when Hunsdon rushed down to
Hamilton House — unshaved and without his
plunge — he was told that the poet was gone ;
none of the servants could say where nor when
he would return. So that is probably the last
of the reformed poet. I suppose last night's
excitement proved too much for him."

150

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 151

Anne's feeling was almost insupportable, but
she forced her tone into the register which
Miss Bargarny and her kind would employ to
express lively detached regret. "That would
be quite dreadful, and most ungrateful. But
I do not believe — anything of the sort. No
doubt all that reading of his own work stirred
his muse and he has shut himself up to write."

"Well, as he always shuts himself up with
a quart of brandy at the same time, that is
equally the end of him as far as we are con-
cerned. For my part I have never been able
to make out what all of you find in him to
admire. He would be quite ordinary to look
at if it were not for a few good lines, and I
never heard him utter a remark worth listening
to. And as for fashion! Compare him last
night with Lord Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny !"

"I think myself he made a mistake not to
appear in a rolling collar and a Turkish coat
and turban! I don't fancy that he emulates
Lord Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny in anything."

"At least not in devotion to you, so you will
not miss him. And you have nothing to regret,
if he was the fashion — thanks to Maria —
for awhile; a young girl should never suffer
detrimentals to hang about her. Which of

152 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

your beaux do you fancy most ? " she demanded
in a tone elaborately playful.

"Which ? Oh, Lord Hunsdon is the better
man, and Mr. Abergenny the better beau."

"I don't fancy that Mr. Abergenny's atten-
tions are ever very serious," said Mrs. Nunn
musingly. "He certainly could make any
young lady the fashion, but he is fickle and
must marry fortune. But Hunsdon — he is
quite independent, and as steady as " —
she glanced about in search of a simile,
remembered West Indian earthquakes, and
added lamely — "as the Prince Consort him-
self." Then she felt that the inspiration
had been a happy one, and continued with
more animation than was her wont: "You
know they are really friendly."

"Who.?"

"The Prince Consort and Hunsdon. It is
almost an intimacy."

"Why not ? I suppose a prince must have
friends like other people, and there are not
many of his rank in England. I do not see
how the Prince Consort could do better than
Hunsdon. The Queen certainly must ap-
prove."

"I am glad you so warmly commend Huns-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 153

don. I have the highest respect for him
myself — the very greatest."

"If you mean that you wish me to marry
him, Aunt Emily — have you ever reflected
that it might cool your friendship with Lady
Hunsdon ? She does not like me and I am
sure would oppose the match. I may add,
however, that Lord Hunsdon has so far made
no attempt to address me."

"I don't fancy you are more blind than
everybody else in Bath House. I am grati-
fied, indeed, to see that you are not. You
are mistaken in thinking that your marriage
with Hunsdon would affect my friendship with
Maria. It is true that she has conceived the
notion that you have an independent spirit,
and is in favour of Mary Denbigh at present;
but she is too much a woman of the world not
to accept the inevitable. And we have been
friends for five-and-forty years. She could not
get along without me. I have not been idle
in this matter. I sing your praises to her,
assure her that you have never crossed my
will in anything. Last night I told her how
sweetly you had submitted to buying that
coloured gown, and to wear that fillet — it
becomes you marvellously well. I have also

154 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

told her what a tractable daughter you
were."

"I couldn't help myself. I had not a
penny of my own "

"One of the unwritten laws of the world
you now live in is to tell the least of all you
know. The fact remains. You were tract-
able — submissive. You never made a scene
for poor Harold in your life."

"He would n't have known if I had."

"Well, well, I am sure you are submissive,
and always will be when your interest demands
it. I admire a certain amount of spirit, and
your difference from all these other girls,
whatever it is, makes you very attractive
to the young men. Abergenny says that you
are an out-of-door goddess, which I think
very pretty; but on the whole I prefer Huns-
don's protest: that you are the most womanly
woman he ever set eyes on."

" It has more sense. I never read in any
mythology of indoor goddesses. Opinion
seems to diflFer, however. Lady Mary said
to me yesterday: 'You are so masculine,
dear Miss Percy. You make us all look the
merest females!' "

"Mary Denbigh is a cat. You know she is

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 155

a cat. She would give Maria many a scratch
if she caught Hunsdon. But she will not.
It is all in your own hands, my dear."

Anne did not make the hoped for response.
She did not even blush, and Mrs. Nunn con-
tinued, anxiety creeping into her voice: "You
need never be much thrown with Maria. She
would settle herself in the dower house which
is almost as fine as Hunsdon Towers. In town
she has her own house in Grosvenor Square.
Hunsdon House in Piccadilly — one of the
greatest mansions in London — would be all
your own."

But she could not command the attention
of her niece again, and permitting herself to
conclude that the maiden was lost in a pleasing
reverie, she subsided into silence, closed her
eyes to the beauty of land and sea, and also
declined into reverie, drowsy reverie in which
pictures of herself in all the glory of near kin-
ship to a beautiful and wealthy young peeress,
were mixed with speculations upon her pos-
sible luck at cards that night. She had lost
heavily of late and it was time she retrieved
her fortunes.

At dinner and in the saloon later the talk
was all of the poet's disappearance. Some

156 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

held out for the known eccentricities of genius,
others avowed themselves in favour of the
theory that respectable society had risen to its
surfeit the night before. The natural reaction
had set in and he was enjoying himself once
more in his own way and wondering that he
had submitted to be bored so long. Anne
went to bed her mind a chaos of doubt and
terror.

CHAPTER XVI

OHE would have overslept again had it
^^^ not been for the faithful maid with her
coffee. She sprang out of bed at once, a
trifle disburdened by the thought of a long
ramble alone in the early morning, and, post-
poning her swim in the tanks below until her
return, dressed so hurriedly that had hats been
in vogue hers no doubt would have gone on
back foremost. She was feverishly afraid
of being intercepted, although such a thing
had never occurred, the other women being
far too elegant to rise so early, and a proper
sense of decorum forbidding the young men
to offer their escort.

The sea had never been a stiller, hotter blue,
the mountain more golden, the sky more like
an opening rose. But she strode on seeing
nothing. Sleep had given her no rest and she
was in a torment of spirit that was a new
experience in her uneventful life. She recalled
the angry astonished eyes of Warner as she
danced with all the abandon of a girl at her

1S7

158 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

first ball. No doubt he had thought her vain
and frivolous, the average young lady at
whose approach he fled when he could. No
doubt he thought her in love with Abergenny,
whose habit of turning female heads was well
known to him, and upon whom she had cer-
tainly beamed good will. No doubt he had
expected her to manage to pass him, knowing
his diffidence, and oflFer her congratulations;
whereas she had taken no notice of him what-
ever. No doubt — oh, no doubt — he had
rushed oflF in a fury of disappointment and
disgust, and all the good work of the past
weeks had been undone, all her plans of
meeting him a year hence as handsome and
fine a man as he had every right to be, were
frustrated. She had for some time past
detected signs that apathy was gradually
relieving a naturally fine spirit of its heavy
burden, that his weary indifference was giving
place to a watchful alertness, which in spite
of the old mask he continued to wear, occa-
sionally manifested itself in a flash of the eye
or a quiver of the nostril. Anne could not
doubt that he loved her, inexperienced in such
matters as she might be. However she may
have kept him at a distance her thoughts had

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 159

seldom left him, and he had betrayed himself
in a hundred ways.

Had she been half interested in Hunsdon or
Abergenny and they had been so unreasonable
as to rush off and disappear merely because
she had enjoyed her first ball-room triumphs
as any girl must, she would have been both
derisive and angry at the liberty; but Warner
inspired no such feminine ebullition. He
was a great and sacred responsibility, one,
moreover, that she had assumed voluntarily.
That he had unexpectedly fallen in love with
her but deepened this responsibility, and she
had betrayed her trust, she had betrayed her
trust!

She left the road suddenly and struck up-
ward into one of the sheltered gorges, sat
down in the shadow of the jungle and wept
with the brief violence of a tropical storm in
summer. Relief was inevitable. When the
paroxism was over she found a shaded seat
under a cocoanut tree and determined not to
return to the hotel for breakfast, nor indeed
until she felt herself able to endure the sight
of mere people; and endeavoured to expel
all thought of Warner from her still tormented
mind. In the distance she could see Mon-

160 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

serrat and Antigua, gray blurs on the blue
water, she could hear the singing of negroes
in the cane fields far away, but near her no
living thing moved save the monkeys in the
tree tops, the blue butterflies, the jewelled
humming-birds. On three sides of her was
a dense growth of banana, cocoanut and palm
trees, cactus, and a fragrant shrub covered
with pink flowers. Almost overhanging her
was the collar of forest about the cone, and
the ever-faithful snow-white cloud that only
left the brow of Nevis to creep down and
embrace her by night. She took off her
bonnet and wished as she had rarely done
before that she might never leave this warm
fragrant poetic land. It was made for such
as she, whose whole nature was tuned to
poetry and romance, even if denied the gift of
expression — or of consummation! Why
should she not remain here ? She had some
money, quite enough to rent or even build a
little house in one of these high solitudes,
where she could always look from her window
and see the sapphire sea, that so marvellously
changed to chrysoprase near the silver palm-
fringed shore, inhale these delicious scents,
and dream and dream in this caressing air.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 161

She hated the thought of London. The world
had no real call for her. She wondered at her
submission to the will of a woman who had
not the least comprehension of her nature.
On Nevis would she stay, live her own life,
find happiness in beauty and solitude, since
the highest happiness was not for her; and at
this point she heard a step in the jungle.

She sprang to her feet startled, but even
before the heavy leaves parted she knew that
it was Warner. When he stood before her he
lifted his hat politely and dropped it on the
ground, and although he did not smile he
certainly was sober.

The relief, the reaction, was so great that
the blood rushed to Anne's brow, the tears
to her eyes. She made no attempt to speak at
once and he looked at her in silence. Per-
haps it was the mountain solitude that gave
his spirit greater freedom; perhaps it was
merely the effect of the beneficial regime of the
past two months; there might be another
reason less easy of analysis ; but she had never
seen him so assured, so well, so much a man
of his own world. His shoulders were quite
straight, his carriage was quite erect, there
was colour in his face and his eyes were bright.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Nor did the haunted, tormented expression
she had so often seen look out at her. These
were the eyes of a man who had returned to
his place among men. He looked young,
buoyant.

She spoke finally. "I — we all thought —
you disappeared so abruptly — what am I
saying.?"

"You believed that I had returned to the
pit out of which you — you alone, mind you —
had dragged me. You might have known
me better."

"You should not put such a burden on me.
You have character enough "

" Oh yes, I had character enough, but doubt-
less you noticed when you first met me that
I had ceased to exercise it. I went to the
dogs quite deliberately, and, with my enfeebled
will and frame, I should have stayed there,
had not you magnetised me into your presence,
where I was forced to behave if I would
remain. Later, for reasons both prosaic and
sentimental, I remained without effort. I
have never had any real love of spirits,
although I loved their effect well enough."

"You must have loved that oth — that
woman very much,"

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 163

"She made a fool of me. There is always
a time in a man's life when he can be made
a complete ass of if the woman with the will
to make an ass of him happens along coin-
cidently. I fancied myself sated with fame,
tired of life, a remote and tragic figure among
men — the trail of Byron is over us all.
That was the moment for the great and fatal
passion, and the woman was all that a malig-
nant fate could devise; not only to inspire the
passion, but to transform a frame of mind
arbitrarily imagined into a sickening reality.
From a romantic solitary being I became a
prosaic outcast. Nor could I recall anything
in the world I had left worth the sacrifice of
the magician that gave me brief spells of
happiness and oblivion. Nobody pretended
that it injured my work, and I remained in
the pit."

"And your self-respect.? You were satis-
fied ? Oh surely — ■ you looked — when I
first saw you "

"I loathed myself, of course. My brain
was unaffected, was it not .'' I abhorred my
body, and would willingly have slashed it off
could I have gone on writing without it.
Either I compelled my soul to stand aside,

164 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

or I was made on that plan — I cannot tell ;
but my inner life was never polluted by my
visible madness. I have been vile but I have
never had a vile thought. I fancy you under-
stand this. And when I am writing my ego
does not exist at all — my worst enemies have
never accused me of the egoism common to
poets. I have lived in another realm, where
I have remembered nothing of this. Had it
been otherwise no doubt I should have put
it all at an end long ago."

Anne had averted her eyes, caught in one of
those inner crises where the faculties are almost
suspended. She faltered out: "And after —
when I come back next year, shall I find you
like this?"

He paused so long before replying that she
moved with uncontrollable excitement, and
as she did so his eyes caught hers and held
them.

The intensity of his gaze did not waver but
he said, unsteadily, until his own excitement
mastered him, "I have assured myself again
and again that I never should dare to tell you
that I loved you; that I was not fit to approach
you; that I must let you go, and try to live
with the memory of you. But now I remem-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 165

ber nothing but that I love you. I can speak
of what I have been, but I cannot recall it.
I feel nothing but that I am a man in the
restored vigour of youth in the presence of
the woman I want. If love is egoistical then
I am rampant this moment with egoism. If
I could have the bliss of marrying you I never
should return to the past even in- thought. I
am a poet no longer. I am nothing but a
lover. I remember nothing, want nothing,
but the perfection of human happiness I
should find with you."

The words poured from his lips before he
finished, and the trained monotony of his
voice had gone to the winds. His face was
violently flushed, his eyes flashing. "I dare ! "
he cried exultingly. "I dare! It would be
heaven of a sort to have broken through those
awful barriers even if you told me to go and
never enter your presence again."

' ' I cannot do that ! I cannot ! ' ' And then she
flung her arms out from her deep womanly
figure with a gesture expressive as much of
maternal yearning as of youthful and irresisti-
ble passion. "I will stay with you forever,"
she said.

CHAPTER XVII

OEVERAL hours later Miss Ogilvy, who
^"^ was riding slowly along the road after
a call at Bath House, suddenly drew rein and
stared at an approaching picture. She had a
pretty taste in art, had Miss Medora, and had
painted all her island friends. Never had
she longed more than at this moment for
palette and brush. A tall supple figure was
coming down the white road between the palms
and the cane fields, clad in white, the bonnet
hanging on the arm, the sun making a golden
web on the chestnut hair. Never had the
Caribbean Sea looked as blue as this girl's
eyes. Even her cheeks were as pink as
the flowers in her belt. She seemed to float
rather than walk, and about her head was a
cloud of blue butterflies. Miss Ogilvy had
seen Anne striding many a morning, and it
was the ethereal gait that challenged her
attention as much as the beauty of the picture.
They were abreast in a moment, and
although Miss Ogilvy prided herself upon

166

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 167

the correctness of her deportment, she cried
out impulsively, and with no formal greeting:
"What, in heaven's name, dear Anne, has
happened? I never saw any one look so
beautiful — so — happy!"

"I am going to marry Byam Warner," said
Anne.

Miss Ogilvy turned pale. She had
intended to scheme for this very result, but
confronted with the fact, her better nature
prevailed, and she faltered out,

"Oh — oh — it is too great a risk! No
woman should go as far as that. We are
all willing to help him, but that you should be
sacrificed — you — you of all "

"I am not sacrificing myself. Do you fancy
I am so great a fool as that ? No — no —
that is not the reason I shall marry him!"

"He certainly is a great poet and has
improved vastly in appearance. I never
should have believed it to be possible."
The inevitable was working in Miss Ogilvy.
"But Mrs. Nunn.? All her friends.? There
will be dreadful scenes. Oh Anne, dear,
they will rush you off. They will never
permit it."

"My aunt controls nothing but my property,

168 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

and not the interest of that. If she refuses
her consent I shall simply walk up to Fig Tree
Church and marry Mr. Warner."

Miss Ogilvy recovered herself completely.
"You will do nothing of the sort," she cried,
warm with friendship and the prospect of figur-
ing in the most sensational episode Nevis had
known this many a year. "Come to me.
Be my guest until the banns have been properly
published, and marry from Ogilvy Grange.
Everything must be de rigueur, or I should
never forgive myself. And it would give me
the greatest happiness, dear Anne. Mama
and papa do everything I wish, and papa
is one of Mr. Warner's father's oldest friends.
Mrs. Nunn will not consent. So promise
that you will come to me."

"I am very grateful. I had not thought
much about Aunt Emily's opposition, but
no doubt she will turn me out of Bath House.
You may see me at the Grange to-night."

"Send one of the grooms with a note as
soon as you have had the inevitable scene.
I only hope the result will be that I send the
coach for you to-day. I do hope you '11 be
happy. Why should n't you ? Byam Warner
would not be the first man to settle down in

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 169

matrimony. But can you stand living your
life on Nevis."

"I should have wished to live here had I
never met Byam Warner."

"Oh — well — you are not to be pitied.
I shall paint you while you are at the Grange,
all in white — only in a smarter gown — in
this setting, and with those blue butterflies
circling about your head. You cannot
imagine what a picture you made. What a
pity I frightened them away. Now, mind you
write me at once."

She kissed her radiant friend with a sigh,
doubting that even conquest of Lord Hunsdon
would make herself look like a goddess, and
rode on.

Anne went her way, even more slowly than
before. She was in no haste to face Mrs.
Nunn, and she would re-live the morning
hours before other mere mortals scattered
those precious images in her mind. Warner
had taken her up to his hut concealed in a
hollow of the mountain and surrounded on
all sides by the jungle, then, while she sat on
the one chair the establishment boasted, he
had cooked their breakfast, a palatable mess
of rice and plantains, and the best of coflFee.

170 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

They had consumed it with great merriment
under a banana tree, then washed the dishes
in a brook. Afterward he had shaken down
several young eocoanuts and they had
pledged themselves in the green wine. Then
they had returned to the shade and talked —
what had they not talked about ? Anne
opened the sealed book of the past five years
of which he had been the hero. He read it with
amazement and delight, but contrite that he
had received no message from that turbulent
young brain by the North Sea. But he
atoned by confessing that he had recognised
her as his own the moment he laid eyes on
her, that she was all and more than he had
once modelled in the mists of his brain. He
demanded every detail of that long union,
so imaginative and so real, and told Anne
that never before had a poet had the fortune
to meet a woman who was a locked fountain
of poetry, yet who revealed the sparkling jBood
by a method of her own with which no words
could compete.

"And will you write my poems.?" Anne
had asked eagerly. But he had drawn down
a broad leaf between his face and hers. "I
told you that I was a poet no longer — merely

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 171

a lover. To know absolute happiness in two
forms in this world you must take them in
turn. I shall write no more."

"Were you perfectly happy when you
wrote ?" asked Anne, a little jealously.

"Perfectly."

"I can almost understand it."

"I can no more express it than I have ever
been able to tell in verse the half of what I
blindly conceived."

"I should think that might have clouded
your happiness."

"Yes — when a poem was revolving and
seething in my distracted head. Never tempt
me to write, for while the thing is gestating I
am a brute, moody, irritable, unhappy. The
whole poem seems to work itself out remorse-
lessly before I can put pen to paper, and at
the same time is enveloped in a mist. I
catch glimpses like will-o'-the-wisps in a fog
bank, sudden visions of perfect form that
seem to turn to grinning masks. It is
maddening! But when the great moment
arrives and I am at my desk I am the happiest
man on earth."

By tacit consent the subject of the stimu-
lants under which he had always written was

172 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

ignored, as well as the terrible chapter of
his life which it was her blessed fortune to
close. They had discussed the future, talked
of practical things. He had told her that
his house could be put in order while they
travelled among the islands, and that he made
quite enough to support her properly if they
lived on Nevis. She had three hundred a
year and would have more did she consent to
let the manor for a longer term, and he had
assured her that hers was a fortune on Nevis
outside of Bath House. They finally decided
to marry at once that he might show her the
other islands before the hurricane season
began.

In spite of loitering Anne arrived at the
hotel quite two hours before luncheon, and
after divesting herself of a frock that would
send Mrs. Nunn into hysterics if her news did
not, she went to her aunt's room.

Mrs. Nunn, fresh from her sulphur bath,
was reclining on a sofa in her large cool room,
where the jalousies were half closed, and
dawdling over Godey's Lady's Book, a fashion
magazine printed in the United States,which
found great favour in her eyes.

"My dear Anne," she said languidly, "I

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 173

suppose you breakfasted with Miss Ogilvy.
La! La! You are more burnt than ever.
Your face is quite red. And I would have
you well bleached before the London season.
Pray sit down. It affects my nerves to see
you wander about like that."

Anne took a chair facing her aunt. "I did
not breakfast with Miss Ogilvy. I have been
talking to Mr. Warner all the morning."

"Heavens! what a waste of time, when you
might have been talking to Hunsdon in the
morning-room. It was quite empty. Maria
has Mr. Warner in charge. I hope you have
not been walking about with him. You
know I told you "

"No one saw us. We talked up in one of
the jungles."

"One of the jungles!" Mrs. Nunn sat up.
"I never heard anything sound so horrid.
Do you tell me that you have the habit of
sitting in jungles — dear me — with young
gentlemen! I forbid you to go out again
unattended."

"This was the first time."

"It assuredly will be the last."

"I think not. Mr. Warner has a hut in the
jungle and I am going to marry him."

174 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

"What — you " And then as she met

Anne's eyes she gave a piercing scream, and
her maid rushed in. "The sal volatile!" she
gasped. "The salts."

She fell back limp, and Anne, who was
unaccustomed to the easy fainting of fine
ladies, was terrified and administered the
restoratives. But Mrs. Nunn may have been
less time reviving than Anne fancied, for
when she finally opened her eyes they were
very hard and her features singularly
composed.

"You may go, Claire," she said to the
maid. "Return in an hour and pack my
boxes. We leave by the packet to-morrow.
Now," she added, turning to Anne, "I am
prepared to talk to you. Only kindly remem-
ber, if you have anything further of a startling
nature to communicate, that I am accustomed
to less direct and brutal methods."

"I am sorry," said Anne humbly. Mrs.
Nunn waved apology aside.

"Of course you know that I shall never
give my consent. Are you determined to
marry without it.''"

"Yes."

"Your father all over. It was his expres-

" ' I never ■wis}i to see you apain ' "

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 175

sion of inhuman obstinacy in your eyes that
gave me even more of a shock than your
words. Many a time I endeavoured to gain
his consent to your visiting London where
you would have seen the world and been
sensibly married by this time. Never under
my earlier tutelage would you have made
a fool of yourself. And you have used Huns-
don abominably ill."

"I have given him no encouragement
whatever "

"Do not argue. My nerves will not stand
it. Now this much I have the right to
demand: You are of age, I cannot prevent
your marrying this outcast, but you owe it to
me as well as to yourself to return to London,
be presented to Her Majesty, and do a London
season "

"I never expect to leave the West Indies
again, unless to be sure, Mr. Warner should
feel obliged to go to London himself. If you
sail to-morrow I shall go to Medora
Ogilvy "

"You have planned it all out!" shrieked
Mrs. Nunn. Anne hastily poured out
another dose of sal volatile.

"I met Medora on my way home. She

176 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

fancied how you would take it and offered
me shelter."

"I am gratified that my sense of propriety
is so well known. You can go to her. I
proclaim to the world that I wash my hands
of the disgraceful affair by leaving to-morrow.
Great God! What a victory for Maria
Hunsdon. I believe she plotted it all along."

Then she plunged into worldly argument,
abuse of Warner, awful pictures of the future.
Finally Anne rose.

"I don't wish to do your nerves a real
injury, so I shall leave you until you are
calmer," she said.

"I never wish to see you again."

CHAPTER XVIII

ly/TRS. NUNN, although she had talked
"^ with much heat, was still collected
enough to console herself with the reflection
that Anne would be terrified into sailing with
her on the morrow; it was incomprehensible
to her well-regulated mind that any young
lady in her niece's position in life would con-
sent to a scandal.

To do her justice, she had no wish to pre-
cipitate Anne into an act which she believed
must be fatal to her happiness, and she
trusted to further argument to persuade her
to return to London if only for the trousseau.
With her niece and the poet on different
sides of the equator she would answer for
the result.

Nevertheless, she called in Lady Hunsdon
and Lady Constance Mortlake, and fairly
enjoyed the consternation visible upon the
bright satisfied countenance of her Maria.
Lady Hunsdon, indeed, thought it a great
pity that Anne had not spared her son by

177

178 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

selecting one of the beaux of Bath House
instead of the dissolute poet.

"It is quite a tragedy!" she said with
energy, "and I for one cannot permit it. I
feel as if it were my fault ■"

"It is," said Lady Constance.

"But is it.? I am inclined to blame my
son, as he brought me here to reform Mr.
Warner — and that part of the work I take
credit for "

"Devil a bit. He never would have come
to Bath House without Anne Percy as a bait.
I have learned that he was several times seen
staring through the windows of the saloon
before he accepted your invitation."

"In that case he would have managed to
meet her even had I not taken him in hand."

"Logical but doubtful. He had long since
lost the entree to Bath House and to all the
Great Houses. Only you, worse luck, had
the power to bring him into a circle where he
was able to meet the girl."

"Then you must admit that I have done
some good. Had he not been able to meet
her, he no doubt would have gone from bad
to worse. I at least have been the medium
in his reform, the necessary medium."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 179

"I don't believe in reform."

"You were brought up at the court of
George IV."

"So were you, and therefore should have
more sense. Warner is temporarily set up.
No doubt of that. He feels a new man and
looks like one. No doubt he has sworn never
to drink again and means it. But wait till
the honeymoon has turned to green cheese.
Wait till he begets another poem. Poets to
my mind have neither more nor less than a
rotten spot in the brain that breaks out
periodically, as hidden diseases break out
in the body. Look at poor Byron."

It was Lady Hunsdon's turn to be satiric.
"Poor dear Byron must have had a row of
rotten spots one of which was always in
eruption. One may judge not so much by
his achievements as by his performances."

"Never mind!" cried Lady Constance, the
colour deepening in her pendulous cheeks
streaked with purple. "He was the most
beautiful mortal that ever breathed and I was
in love with him and am proud of it."

"I feel much more original that I was
not "

"Oh, dear friends," cried Mrs. Nunn,

180 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

pathetically. "We have to do with a living
poet — unhappily. Byron has been in Huck-
nall-Torkard church these twenty years. Do
advise me."

"Stay and see it through," said Lady
Constance. "I know love when I see it.
It is so rare nowadays that it fairly wears a
halo. By and by it will be extinct on earth
and then we shall be kneeling to St. Eros
and St. Venus and forget all the naughty
stories about them, just as we have forgotten
the local gossip about the present saints. You
cannot prevent this match. You cannot even
postpone it. I regret it as much as you do,
but I cannot help sympathising with them!
So young and so full of high and beautiful
ideals! They will be happy for a time. Who
knows ? He really may be a new man. Maria
can convince herself of anything she chooses ; I
feel disposed to take a leaf out of her book."

Miss Nunn set her lips, thrust her bust up
and her chin out. She looked obstinate and
felt implacable. "I go to-morrow. Upon
that I am resolved. I should be criminal to
encourage her "

There was a tap at the door. A servant
entered with a note.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 181

"From Anne!" announced Mrs. Nunn.
She dismissed the servant and read it aloud:

Deab AtTNT Emily:

Miss Ogilvy has sent the coach for me, feeling
sure that I have incurred your displeasure, and asking me
to go at once to the Grange. I have no wish to leave you
if you remain at Bath House, but if you are resolved upon
going to-morrow, I shall accept her invitation. Will you not
let me come in and say good bye, dear aunt? Be sure
that I am deeply grateful for all you have done for me
and only wish that I might spare you so much pain.

Anne.

Mrs. Nunn called in her maid and sent a
verbal refusal to see her niece.

"I would have saved her if I could." She
was now quite composed, in the full sense of
duty done. "But it is imperative that I go
to-morrow and announce aloud my disapproval
of this unfortunate marriage. I shall re-
nounce my guardianship of her property the
day I return to London. I cannot save her,
so I wash my hands."

"I shall stay for the wedding," said Lady
Constance, "and all London can know it."

"It is my duty also to remain," said Lady
Hunsdon, "and my son must be best man.
But Emily is quite right to go."

CHAPTER XIX

A NNE, during the ensuing month, had
"^*- her first experience since childhood of
home hfe. Mrs. Ogilvy lay on a sofa in one
of her great cool rooms all day, but she made
no complaint and diffused an atmosphere of
peace and gentleness throughout the house.
The younger children were pretty creatures,
well trained by their English governess, and
Mr. Ogilvy, richly coloured by sun and port,
spent much of his time on horseback; amiable
at home when his will was not crossed. The
large stone house, painted a dazzling white,
and surrounded by a grove of tropical trees,
stood so high on the mountain that the garden
terraces behind it finished at the entrance to
the evergreen forest. It was fitted up with
every Antillian luxury: fine mahogany furni-
ture — the only wood that defied the boring
of the West Indian worm — light cane chairs,
polished floors of pitch pine, innumerable
cabinets filled with bibelots collected during
many English visits, tables covered with

182

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 183

newspapers and magazines, the least possible
drapery, and a good library. In the garden
was a pavilion enclosing a marble swimming
tank. Plates of luscious fruits and cooling
drinks were constantly passed about by the
coloured servants, who looked as if they had
even less to do than their masters. Anne
was given a large room at the top of the house
from which she could see the water, the white
road where the negro women, with great
baskets on their heads and followed by their
brood, passed the fine carriages from Bath
House; and, on all sides, save above, the rich
cane fields. Byam Warner came to breakfast
and remained to dinner.

Miss Ogilvy was in her element. To use
her own expression, Nevis and Bath House
were in an uproar. The unforeseen engage-
ment following on the heels of the famous
poet's transformation, the haughty departure
of Mrs. Nunn, and the manifest approval
of Lady Hunsdon and Lady Constance, who
called assiduously at The Grange, the dis-
tinguished ancestry and appearance of Miss
Percy, and the fact that the wedding was to
take place on the island instead of in London,
combined to make a sensation such as Nevis

184 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

had not known since the marriage of Nelson
and Mrs. Nisbet in 1787. Strange memories
of Byam Warner were dismissed. He was a
great poet and Nevis's very own. Never had
Nevis so loved Medora. The Grange over-
flowed with visitors every afternoon, the piano
tinkled out dance music half the night.

It was quite a week before Lord Hunsdon
called at the Grange, nor did Anne and
Medora meet him, even when lunching at
Bath House. But one morning he rode out,
and after a few moments of constrained polite-
ness in the drawing-room, deliberately asked
Anne to walk with him in the garden. She
followed him with some apprehension. He
was pale, his lips were more closely pressed,
his eyes more round and burning, than ever.

When they were beyond the range of Miss
Medora's attentive eye, he began abruptly:

"I have not come here before, dear Miss
Percy, because I had to conquer my selfish
disappointment. You cannot fail to know
what my own hopes were. But I have con-
quered and we will never allude to the matter
again. My friendship for Warner is now
uppermost and it is of him I wish to speak."

"Yes? Yes?"

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 185

" Last night I sat late with him. He is full
of hope, of youth — renewed youth must
seem a wonderful possession to a man:
we are so prone to let it slip by unheeded!
Well, he is changed. I never hoped for half
as much. He tells me that the demon has
fled. He has never a sting of its tail. That
may be because he never really craved drink
save when writing — until these last years.
It is this I wish to talk to you about. You
have the most solemn responsibility that ever
descended upon a woman: a beautiful soul,
a beautiful mind in your keeping. If you
ever relax your vigilance — ever love him
less "

"I never shall."

"No," he said with a sigh, "I don't fancy
you will. But you must never leave him.
He is not weak in one sense, but in loneliness
he might turn to composition again, and there
could be but one result."

"But if he had done without stimulant for
a long while — was quite happy — well, do
not you think I might be stimulant enough .?"
She laughed and blushed, but she brought it
out.

Lord Hunsdon shook his head. "No, I

186 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

do not believe that even you could work that
miracle. I have known him since we were at
Cambridge together, and I am convinced that
there is some strange lack in that marvellous
brain which renders his creative faculty
helpless until fired by alcohol. If the human
brain is a mystery how much more so is
genius? Much is said and written, but we
are none the wiser. But this peculiar fact I
do know. The island records and traditions
tell us that all his forefathers save one were
abstemious, dignified, normal men, mentally
active and important. But his grandfather,
who spent the greater part of his time in Lon-
don, was one of the most dissolute men of the
Regency. He was a wit at court, a personal
friend of the Prince Regent. There was no
form of dissipation he did not cultivate, and
he died of excess at a comparatively early age.
By what would seem to be a special tinkering
of the devil with the work of Almighty God
those lusts have taken possession of one section
of Byam Warner's brain only, diseased it,
redistributed its particles in a manner that
has resulted in the abnormal faculty we call
genius, but deprived it of that final energy
which would permit those great powers to

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 187

find their outlet without artificial stiniulant.
These may be fanciful ideas, but they have
become fixed in my mind, and I have come
here to-day to ask you to make me a solemn
promise."

"Yes?"

"That you will never permit him to write
again. You are not the woman to loosen your
hold on a man's strongest feelings when the
novelty has passed. You can hold, influence
him, forever. When you see signs of recurring
life in that faculty, divert him and it will
subside. He has fame enough. Nor do I
think that he was ever untowardly ambitious.
You — you can always persuade him to let
the pen alone."

"But you make no allowance for those
creative energies. They may still be very
strong, demand their rights. That cry may
in time be as irresistible as any of his more
normal instincts."

"He has written enough," said Lord Huns-
don firmly. "He must rest on his laurels.
You must persuade him that he cannot add to
his fame. With feminine arts you will induce
him to believe that it is best to let well alone."

"I have given little thought to all this "

188 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

" But you will now • Give me your promise,
dear Miss Percy, or I cannot leave this island
in peace."

"But do you believe that Byam Warner
will be content to settle down for the rest of
his mortal life to an existence of mere domestic
happiness ?"

"By no means. He delights in literature,
and although he is well read, there are tomes
which not even a Bacon could master in one
lifetime. Moreover, he should buy back his
canefields. That would keep him much out
of doors, as overseers are of little more worth
than negroes." Then Lord Hunsdon had an
inspiration. "Encourage him to write prose.
There need be no fury of creation in that.
The greater part of his mnid is capable of
accomplishing anything unassisted. Interest
him in politics. He is a Tory and he loves me.
Remind him constantly of the Whig inferno
from which we have just emerged. I am
sure he would write political pamphlets of
incomparable influence. I have never heard
Warner talk politics, but I don't doubt that
his mind would illuminate that subject as it
does everything else it touches. Pill the house
with quarterlies and newspapers."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 189

"He might write a political romance, after
the pattern of Disraeli," said Anne, who
wondered why Lord Hunsdon did not take
to romantic composition himself.

"Oh, not fiction, not by any means. Work
that requires the exercise of the merely intel-
lectual powers, not that fatal creative-spot.
But will you promise. Miss Percy ? Will you
permit me to make sure that you understand
your solemn responsibility.''"

He faced her, his eyes flashing with that
fanatical fire that would have sent him to the
stake three centuries since. They seemed to
retreat, become minute, bore through her.
Anne, whose mind was in confusion, and not
a little angered, stirred uneasily, but she
replied in a calm decided tone.

"I fully realise my responsibility. Make
no doubt of that. I know what I have done,
what I am undertaking, I shall live for him,
never for myself. I promise you that, if you
think the promise necessary."

"And you will never let him write another
line of poetry?"

"Not if I believed it would do him more
hurt than good."

"That is not enough," cried Hunsdon

190 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

passionately. "You must be unconditional.
One surrender and he is lost. If it were a
mere case of brandy while he was writing —
but you have not the least idea what it leads
to. He is transformed, another man — not
a man at all. And when he emerged, did he
enter that horror again, he would loathe
himself as he never did before. He would
be without one shred of self-respect. I shudder
to think what would be the final result."

"You will admit that as his wife I may find
better opportunities to understand that compU-
cated nature than you have had."

"Will you not make me that promise?"
"I will only promise to be guided by my
judgment, not by my feelings. I hear Byam's
voice. After all, it is hardly fair to talk him
over like this."

CHAPTER XX

TTUNSDON did not give up the siege, and
-^ rode out daily, much to the complacency
of Miss Ogilvy, to whom Anne contrived to
turn him over. Lady Constance, who found
Medora amusing, was still further amused
by the subtle currents beneath the surface,
blind only to the shrewd young Colonial's
court of herself, and was finally inspired to
invite her to London for the season. Miss
Ogilvy, in her own way, was as happy as Anne.
A younger sister was returning from England
and could take over her duties at the Grange:
Lady Mary, riding dashingly about the island
with the spirit of eighteen, was caught in a
shower, neglected to change her garments at
once, had a fever, and arose as yellow as a
lemon; Medora was nineteen and as white as
an amaryliis.

The day of the wedding arrived. Never
was there such a ringing of bells, so splendid
an array of equipages and gowns. Fig Tree
Church could hardly hold the planters and

191

192 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

their wives, the guests from Bath House, as
well as those from St. Kitts, and the Byams
and Warners that had sailed over from half
a dozen islands. Outside, the churchyard,
the road, the fields were crowded with the
coloured folk, humble and ambitious. Bon-
nets and parasols gave this dense throng the
effect of a moving tropical garden, and if the
women were too mindful of their new manners
to shout as the Ogilvy coach rolled past con-
taining the bride hardly visible under clouds
of tulle, the men set up a wild roar as they
caught sight of Warner hastily approaching
the rear of the church by a side path. Mr.
Ogilvy gave the bride away. Lord Hunsdon
was best man, and Medora the only brides-
maid. Anne had pleaded for a quiet wedding
at the Grange, but to this her young hostess
would not harken; and the festival was vastly
to her credit, from the beautiful decorations
of the chancel to the wedding-breakfast at
the Grange. Lord Hunsdon was much inter-
ested to learn that the dainty, varied, and
appetising repast was ordered and partly
cooked by the accomplished creature beside
him — whose eyes certainly had a most
attractive Oriental slant. It so happened that

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 193

his lordship was deeply concerned with the
Orient, and hoped that the cares of state, now
that the Tories were safely planted, would
permit him to visit it.

The negroes were dined on a platform in
one of the bare cane fields, and danced after-
ward until the bridal party started for the
beach before Charlestown; then all, high
and low, followed in the wake of the
Grange coach with its four horses decorated
with white ribbons and driven by postillions.
One of the wedding presents had been a
fine little sloop, and in it Warner and his
bride set off at four in the afternoon, almost
the entire population of Nevis, white and
black, crowding the sands and cheering
good will.

That honeymoon among the islands was
so replete with beauty and bliss and the
fulfilment of every romantic and ardent
dream, that when it was finished it was almost
a relief to Anne to adjust her faculties to the
homely details of housekeeping. For two
months they wandered amongst that chain
of enchanted islands set in a summer sea, the
sympathetic trade winds filling their sails

194 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

and tempering the heat on shore. St. Thomas
with its little city on three hills like a painted
fairy tale; St. Croix with its old Spanish
arcades and palm avenues; the red-roofed
Dutch village in the green crater of St. Bar-
tholomew, which shot straight out of the
sea without a hand's width of shore; Antigua
with its English landscapes and tropical
hospitality; St. Lucia, looking like an exploded
mountain chain, that had caught the bright
plains and forests of another island while the
earth was in its throes, green as a shattered
emerald by day, flaming with the long torches
of gigantic fireflies by night; St. Vincent with
its smoking volcanoes and rich plantations;
Martinique, that bit of old France, with its
almost perpendicular flights of street-steps
cut in the rock, lined with ancient houses;
beautiful honey-coloured women always pass-
ing up and down with tall jars or baskets on
their stately heads ; Dominica, with its rugged
mountains, roaring cataracts, and brilliant
verdure; Trinidad, with its terrible cliffs,
infinitely coloured valleys, mountain masses;
its groves of citron, and hedges of scarlet
hybiscus and white hydrangea, towns set in
the green amphitheatres of gentle hills, impene-

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 195

trable forests, and lakes of boiling pitch:
Warner and Anne lingered on all of them,
climbed to the summit of volcanoes hidden
in the clouds and gazed into awful craters
evil of smell and resounding with the menace
of deep, imprisoned, persistent tides; sailed
on the quiet lake in the crater of Mt. Pelee;
rode on creole ponies for days through scented
chromatic forests with serrated heights frown-
ing above them, and companioned by birds
as vivid as the flowers and as silent. There
were no wild beasts, nothing to mar days
and nights so heavy laden with beauty that
Anne wondered if the cold North existed on
the same planet, and sometimes longed for
the scent of English violets. In Trinidad
they were entertained in great state by the
most distinguished of Warner's relatives, a
high official of the island. Anne wore for
an evening the famous ring, and was
nearly prostrated with excitement and the
fear of losing it. If she had not been
half drugged with happines^ and the in-
effable beauty which scarcely for a moment
deserted her waking senses, she would have
attempted to define the quiver of terror
that crossed her nerves now and again; for

196 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

life at white heat has been embolismal since
the death of the gods. As to Warner, he
who had written many poems, now devoted
himself to living one, and achieved a perfect
success.

CHAPTER XXI

TTAMILTON HOUSE had been repaired
■^ ^ during their absence, without and
within. It was not necessary to refurnish,
for the fine old mansion was set thick with
mahogany four-posters, settles, chests, tables
and chairs — more stately than comfortable.
They arrived without warning, but the ser-
vants, under the merciless driving of Mr.
Ogilvy, had been on the alert for several days,
and as the sloop was becalmed for two hours
not three miles from shore, until the lagging
evening breeze filled the sails, when Warner
and Anne finally landed and were led in
triumph to their home by some twenty of
their friends, every room of the upper story
was flooded with the light of wax candles set
in long polished globes, the crystal and silver of
the wedding presents was on the great mahog-
any dining-table laden with the plenty of the
tropics, muslin curtains fluttered in the evening
wind, the pitch-pine floors shone like glass,
and flowers were on every stand and table.

197

198 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

There was a very long and very gay dinner,
and many more guests came during the even-
ing. "When the last of them had gone and
Anne went to her own pink room, the only
luxurious room in the house, she felt happier
than even during the past enchanted weeks,
for she was at home and the home was her
own.

She had never been permitted to interfere
with the ancient and admirable housekeeping
at Warkworth Manor, but she discovered
next morning that the spirit of the housewife
was in her, and was far more exultant over
her bunch of keys, her consultations with her
major-domo, her struggles with the most
worthless servants on earth, than she had
ever been over her first doll or her first novel.
The routine into which the young couple
immediately settled was unique to both and
had little of monotony in it. After their
early walk Warner spent the morning in his
library, where he had a large case of books,
Hunsdon's wedding present, to consider. He
resisted his friend's proposition to write
political pamphlets with the seriousness that
rises from the deepest humour, but he loved
to read and ponder, and his few hours of

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 199

solitude were easily occupied with the lore of
the centuries. After siesta they rode and
called at one or other of the Great Houses,
and every evening they were dined or dined
others. Bath House was closed, but the
island was always gay until the dead heat of
summer came and hurricanes threatened but
rarely thinned the heavy air, when although
tropical storms were frequent, the rain was as
hot as the earth.

Even then Warner and Anne had a com-
panionship of which they never tired, and
there was a new interest in watching the
torn Caribbean and the furious driving of
the wind among the trees. They could
always exercise on the long veranda, or play
games within doors.

Then, for a time, this perfect state of bliss
was threatened. Anne was thrown from
her horse, frightened by a flash of lightning,
as, caught in a storm, they were riding full
speed for home, and was in agony and peril
for several days, confined to her bed for a
fortnight longer. There were the best of
doctors on so wealthy an island as Nevis, and
she recovered completely, although forced
to shroud not the least of her desires. But

200 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

the wild despair of Warner while she was in
danger, and his following devotion, his inspired
ingenuity in diverting her during her term of
sadness and protest, made her feel that to
cherish disappointment even in her inmost
soul would be flying in the face of providence ;
her spirits struggled up to their normal high
level, and once more she was the happiest
of women. It was another fortnight before
she could leave the house, but the languor
was a new and pleasant sensation and not
unbecoming the weather. Warner read aloud
instead of to himself, and they wondered
that they had never discovered this firm
subtle link in comradeship before. The rainy
summer is the winter of the tropics, and
they felt the same delight in hiding themselves
within their own four walls that others so
often experience in a sterner clime when the
elements forbid social intercourse.

CHAPTER XXII

A NNE could never recall just when it
-^*- was she discovered, or rather divined,
that her husband was once more a dual being.
A vague sense of change cohered into fact
when she realised that for some time he had
been reading aloud and pursuing an under-
current of independent thought. His devo-
tion increased, were that possible, but the
time came when he no longer could conceal
that he was often absent in mind and
depressed in spirit. He took to long rambles
in which she could not accompany him at
that season while so far from robust, smilingly
excusing himself by reminding her that being
so much more vigorous than of old he needed
a corresponding amount of exercise. There
finally came an entire week when he was
forced to remain indoors, so persistent were
the torrential rains, and after the first two
days he ceased even to pretend to read, but
sat staring out of the window with blank
eyes and set lips, at the gray deluge beating

201

202 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

down the palm trees. He came to the table
and consumed his meals mechanically. Nor
was he irritable. The gentleness of his nature
seemed unaflFected, but that his mental part
seethed was autoptical. If he was less the
lover he clung to Anne as to a rock in mid-
ocean, and if he would not talk he was uneasy
if she left the room.

There was but one explanation, and he
was becoming less the man and more the poet
every day. He slept little, and lost the spring
from his gait. Anne was as convinced as
Lord Hunsdon or Lady Constance that all
geniuses were unsound of mind no matter
how normal they might be while the creative
faculty slept. Sleep it must, and no doubt
this familiar of Warner's had been almost
moribund owing to the extraordinary and
unexpected change that had taken place in
his life, and the new interest that had held
every faculty. This interest was no less
alive, but it was no longer novel, and a ghost
had risen in his brain clamouring for form
and substance.

Anne wished that he would write the poem
and have done with it. She had never for a
moment demanded that he should sacrifice

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 203

his career to her, and during the past months,
having admired as much as she loved him,
s6e had dismissed as a mere legend the
belief held by his friends that he could not
write without stimulant. And she loved the
poet as much as she loved the man. Indeed
it was the poet she had loved first, to whom
she had owed a happiness during many
lonely years almost as perfect as the man
had given her. That he had no weakness for
spirits was indubious. There were always
cognac and Madeira on the table in the liv-
ing room where they received the convivial
planters, and she drank Canary herself at table.
It was patent to her that he refrained from
writing because he had voluntarily given
her his word he would write no more, and
that he had but to take pen in hand for the
flood to burst. She did not broach the sub-
ject for some days, waiting for him to make
an appeal of some sort, no matter how subtle,
but toward the end of this stormy week when
he was looking more forlorn and haunted
every moment, she suddenly determined to
wait no longer.

They were standing at the window watch-
ing the moon fight its way amidst torn black

204 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

clouds and flinging glittering doles upon the
black and swollen waters. She put her hand
on his shoulder as a man might have done
and said in a matter-of-fact tone:

"You want to write. You are quick with
a new poem. That must be patent even to
the servants. I wish you would write it."

He jerked up his shoulders as if to dis-
lodge her hand, then recollected himself and
put his arm about her.

"I never intend to write another poem,"
he said.

"That is nonsense. A poem must be much
like a baby. If it is conceived it must be
born. Do you deny it is there.!*" tapping
his forehead.

"When the devil takes possession it is
better to stifle him before he grows to his
full strength."

"You are unjust to speak in that fashion
of the most divine of all gifts. You are not
intimating that your poem is too wicked to
publish?"

"No!" He flung out his hands, striking
the window. His eyes expanded and flashed.
"I believe it to be the most beautiful poem
ever conceived!" he cried. "I never before

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 205

knew much about any of my poems until I
had pen in hand, but although I could not
recite a line of this I can see it all. I can feel
it. I can hear it. It calls me in my dreams
and whispers when I am closest to you. And
you — you — are its inspiration. You have
liberated all that was locked from my imagina-
tion before. I lived in an unreal world until
I knew, lived with you. Knowing that so
well, I believed that my deserted muse would
either take herself oflF in disdain, or be
smothered dead. Art has always been jealous
of mortal happiness. But the emotions I
have experienced in the past six months —
despair, hope, despair, hope, superlative
happiness, mere content, the very madness of
terror, and its equally violent reaction when
I experienced the profoundest religious emo-
tion — all this has enriched my nature, my
mind, that abnormal patch in my brain that
creates. Ever since I took pen in hand I
have dreamed of a poetic meridian that I
have never approached — until now!"

"What must it be?" cried Anne, quivering
with excitement and delight. "You have
done more than other men already."

"I have never written a great poetical

206 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

drama. My faculty has been mainly narra-
tive, lyric, epic, with dramatic action in short
bursts only. The power to build a great,
sustained, and varied drama, the richness
and ripeness of dramatic imagination, of
character portrayal, representation as distinct
from analysis, of vigorous scenes that sweep
through the excited brain of the reader with
the rush of the hurricane, and owe nothing
to metrical sweetness, to lyrical melody —
that has never come before — and now —
now "

"You will write it! Do you — can you
imagine that I am jealous — that I am not as
ambitious for you as you could be for
yourself.?"

"I have never been ambitious before. I
have never cared enough about the world.
I wrote first because the songs sang off the
the point of my quill, and then to keep a
roof over my head. I have never placed
any inordinate value on my work after it
was done, although the making of it gave
me the keenest happiness, the polishing
delighted all the artist in me. It is only now,
now, for the first time, that I have been fancy-
ing myself going down to posterity in the

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 207

company of the immortals. Oh God, what
irony! When it did not matter the inspira-
tion lagged, and now it can do me no good ! "

"But it shall! And as much for me as for
your fame. Your work has been little less
to me than yourself. I must have this!"

He turned to her for the first time and
looked at her curiously. "Is it possible
that you do not know the reason why I cannot
write?" he asked. "We have avoided the
subject, but I understood that you knew.
Hunsdon told me "

"Oh, yes, but that was when you were

physically and morally a " she stopped

short, blushing painfully.

"A wreck," he supplemented grimly.

"Well! You had let yourself go. Now it
is different. You are well. You are happy.
Even your brain is stronger — your will, as
a matter of course."

"I never wrote a hne in my earliest youth
without stimulant."

"But you might have done so. It is only
a freak of imagination that prompts you to
believe that you cannot write alone, that you
must take alcohol into partnership, as it were.
Even little people are ruled by imagination;

208 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

how much more so a great faculty in which
imagination must follow many morbid and
eccentric tracks ? And habit, no doubt, is
the greatest of all forces, while it is undis-
turbed. But that old habit of yours has been
shattered these last months. You made no
attempt to resist before. You could resist
now. If I have been the inspiration of this
poem, why cannot I take the place of brandy ?
It is no great compliment to me if I cannot.
Try."

He put his hands on her shoulders and
looked more the man than the poet for the
moment. "Anne," he said solemnly. "Let
well enough alone. I made up my mind
to write no more the day you promised to
marry me. I told you that the lover had
buried the poet, and I believed it. But I
find that the poet must come to life now and
again — for a while at least. But although
the process will be neither pleasant nor pain-
less, I shall strangle him in time."

"Can you?"

"Yes — I think so."

"And be quite as happy as before ?"

"Oh, I am not prophet enough for that.
I can never be unhappy while I have you."

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 209

"And I could never be happy if I let you
kill a gift that is as living a part of yourself
as your sense of vision or touch. Do you
suppose I ever deluded myself with the dream
that you would settle down into the domestic
routine of years — write pohtical pamphlets
for Hunsdon? I knew this would come and
I never have had a mis^ving. I know you
can write without stimulant. Nothing can
be more fanciful than that the highest of all
mental gifts must have artificial aid. That
may be the need of the little man driving a
pen for his daily bread, of the small talent
trying to create, but never for you!"

"There is some strange congenital want.
I am certain of it. And if I gave way, Anne,
I should be a madman for days, perhaps
weeks — a beast — oh, you have not the
faintest suspicion; and all I am living for in
the wretched present is that you never may."

"I do not believe in permanent congenital
weaknesses with a free rich faculty like yours.
I know how that fatal idea has wedged itself
in your brain — but if you try — if you per-
sist — you will overcome it. Promise me
that you will try."

"You are so strong," he said sadly. "You

210 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

cannot conceive, with all your own imagina-
tion, the miserable weaknesses of the still
half-developed human brain. The greatest
scientific minds that have spent their lives in
the study of the brain know next to nothing
about it. How should you, dear child.'' I
know the curse that is the other half of my
gift to write, but of its cause, its meaning, I
know nothing. You are strong by instinct,
but you have not the least idea why or how
you are strong. It is all a mysterious arrange-
ment of particles."

"But that is no reason one should not
strive to overcome weakness."

"Certainly not. But I have so much at
stake that I think it wisest to kill the tempta-
tion outright, and not tempt providence by
dallying with it. And this regarding the
arbitrary exercise of the imagination: It
is the small people of whom you spoke
just now who are the slaves of what little
imagination they have, who can make them-
selves ill or sometimes well under its influence.
But when a man uses his imagination pro-
fessionally as long as I have done it takes a
place in his life apart. It has no influence
whatever on his daily life, on his physical or

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 211

even his mental being. He knows it too well.
It would seem as if the imagination itself
were cognisant of this fact and was too
wise to court defeat."

"I can understand that, but I also know
that genius is too abnormal to accept any such
reasoning, no matter what the highly devel-
oped brain may be capable of. Unknown
to yourself you have become the victim first
of an idea, then of a habit. You will struggle
and exhaust yourself and end by hating your-
self and me. You have no doubt that this
would be a greater work than your greatest ?"

"Oh, no! no!"

"Then do me the justice to make one
attempt at least to write it. Come to the
Ubrary!"

His face had been turned from her for
some moments, but at the last words, so full
of concrete suggestion, he moved irresistibly
and she saw that his eyes were blazing with
eagerness, with a desire she had never seen.

"Come," she said.

He stared at her, through her, miles beyond
her, then turned mechanically toward his
library. "Perhaps," he muttered. "Who
knows.? Why not?"

CHAPTER XXIII

"l^rHEN Anne rose the next morning
' ' and tapped on Warner's door there
was no answer. She entered softly, but
found that his bed had not been occupied.
For this she was not unprepared, and al-
though she had no intention of galling her
poet with the routine of daily life, still must
he be fed, and she went at once to the library
to invite him to breakfast. He was not there.
She glanced hastily over the loose sheets
of paper on his writing table. There were
a few scratches, unintelligible phrases, noth-
ing more. In the gallery she met the
major-domo, who informed her that the
master had gone out in his boat about
five o'clock. The day was clear and the
waters calmer. There was no reason for
either surprise or uneasiness, and Anne, who
expected vagaries of every sort until the
poem was finished, endeavoured to while
away the long day with a new novel sent her
by Medora Ogilvy. But she had instinctively

213

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 213

taken a chair by a window facing the sea,
and as the day wore on and she saw no sign
of boat of any sort, she finally renounced the
attempt to keep her mind in tune with fiction.
She snatched a brief luncheon and omitted
siesta, returning to her seat by the window.
The fate of Shelley haunted her in spite of
her powerful will, and she sat rigid, her hands
clasped about her knees, her face white.
When Warner's boat shot suddenly round
the corner of the island the relief was so
great that without waiting to find a sunshade
she ran out of the house and down to the sands,
reaching his side before the boat was beached.

"You should not come out at this hour —
and without a sunshade," he said, but keep-
ing his face from her.

"If you could stand it for hours out on
those hot waters it will not hurt me for a
moment or two here. Have you had any
luncheon?"

"I got a bite in Basseterre. Let us go in."

As he raised himself she saw that his face
was haggard, his eyes faded. He looked
as if he had not slept for weeks. When they
reached the living-room he flung himself,
with a word of muttered apology, on a sofa

214 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

and slept until late. The dressing-bell roused
him and he went to his room, reappearing
at the dinner table. There he talked of his
morning excursion, declaring that it had done
him good, as he had long felt in need of a
change of exercise, and had missed the water.

It was not until they were in the living-room
again that he said abruptly: "I can't do it.
Let us not talk about it. The air is delight-
fully cool. Shall we order the carriage and
call on the Ogilvys ?"

The roads were deep in mud, but the moon
was bright, the air fresh and stirred by the trade
wind that always found its way to Nevis even
in summer during one hour of the twenty-four.
Warner played billiards with Mr. Ogilvy and
Anne listened to the hopes and fears of her
hostess respecting Lord Hunsdon, while
Felicia, the second daughter, poured out her
envy of Medora's good fortune in enjoying
a London season, and its sequel of visits to
country houses.

They returned late. Warner was almost
gay and very much the lover. The next few
days were magnificent and Anne saw for the
first time a West Indian island in all its glory
of young and infinite greens. Less like a

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 215

jewel than in her golden prime Nevis seemed
to throb with awakening life like some great
Bird of Paradise that had slept until spring.
Warner and Anne remained out of doors in
all but the hotter hours, and the poet was
once more the normal young husband, rich
in the possession of a beautiful and sympa-
thetic wife. Anne was wise enough to make
no allusion to the unborn poem. When
curiosity piqued or impatience beset, she in-
voked the ugly shade of Lady Byron, and
resolved anew that while alert to play her
part in Warner's life, she would be guided
wholly by events.

The rains began again, those terrible rains
of a tropic summer, when the heavens are in
flood and open their gates, beating palm tops
to earth, tearing the long leaves of the banana
tree to ribbons, turning the roads into roaring
torrents, and day into night. Boats were
used in the streets of Charlestown. The
heat was stifling. The Caribbean Sea roared
as if boiling tides were forcing their way from
Mount Misery on St. Kitts to the crater of
Nevis. Warner pretended to read during
the day, but it was not long before Anne dis-
covered that he stole from his room every

216 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

night, and she knew his goal. He appeared
at the nine o'clock breakfast, however, and
neither made allusion to the vigils written in
his face. At first it was merely haggard,
but before long misery grew and deepened,
misery and utter hopelessness; until Anne
could not bear to look at him.

The storms continued. Ten days passed.
Anne was not sure that he even slept in the
daytime. He ceased to speak at all, although
he managed to convey to Anne his gratitude
that she was good enough to let him alone.
Once she suggested a trip to England as soon
as they could get a packet for Barbadoes, but
he merely shook his head, and Anne knew
that he would not stir from Nevis.

There came a night when Anne too gave
up all attempt to sleep. Even after her
illness she had found no diflSculty in resuming
the long unbroken rest of youth, but youth
had taken itself off in a fright.

On this night she wandered about and
faced the truth. It was a night to assist the
least imaginative to face an unhappy crisis.
A small hurricane raged, seeming to burst
in wild roars from Nevis itself. The streams
on the mountain were cataracts. The sea

■ Then she left the room again '

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 217

threatened the island. At another time,
Anne, like other West Indians, would have
paid incessant visits to the barometer, but
to-night she cared nothing for the threat of the
elements. A storm raged within her, and
she had a perfect comprehenison of the mad-
ness and despair in the library.

She was out of her fool's paradise at last.
She knew that he would never write his
drama without the aid that marvellous but
rotten spot in his brain demanded. And
its delivery was in her hands. He was the
soul of honour, unselfish, high-minded. He
had taken the woman he loved better than
himself into his life and he would keep the
promise he had voluntarily made her unless
she released him. He would conquer and
kill the best part of him.

Anne had no apprehension of his physical
death. No doubt his mere bodily well-
being would go on increasing after the struggle
was over ; but what of his maimed and thwarted
intellect, the mind-emptiness of a man
who had known the greatest of mortal joys,
mental creation.? What of the haunting
knowledge throughout a possibly long life, of
having deliberately done a divine gift to death ?

218 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Anne felt like a murderer herself. She
went suddenly out into the gallery, and
stood for a monaent with her arms rigidly
upraised to the black rolling sky. There
was no response in the fury of the rain that
drowned her face, and compelled her to
bend her head.

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 be-
numbed 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

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 219

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

220 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

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 him-
self 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 insignifi-
cant and transient a thing as human happi-
ness, the welfare of the body that began its
decay with its birth? Genius of mental
creation was the most mysterious, the most
God-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

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 221

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 God. And
the chosen were few. Nor had Warner, con-
sciously or not, been indiflferent to the sacred-
ness of his wardship. Never for a moment
had it felt the blight of his wild and often
gross and sordid life. He had been passion-
ate but never sensual, romantic and primal,
but never immoral. He had consoled thou-
sands for the penance of living, and he had
written much that would perish only with the

222 THE GORGEOUS ISLE

English language. All this might be as noth-
ing 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 irritabil-
ity 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 passed. 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.

THE GORGEOUS ISLE 223

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 sex 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.