The Blue Man | Page 4

had impressed me as being of middle age.
But I felt mistaken; he changed so completely. Springing from the rock
like a boy, his eyes glorified, his lips quivering, he met with open arms
the woman who had come around the jut of the Giant's Stairway. At
first glance I thought her a slim old woman with the kind of hair which
looks either blond or gray. But the maturity glided into sinuous
girlishness, yielding to her lover, and her hair shook loose, floating
over his shoulder.
I dropped my eyes. I heard a pebble stir under their feet. The tinkle of
water falling down its ferny tunnel could be guessed at; and the beauty
of the world stabbed one with such keenness that the stab brought tears.
We have all had our dreams of flying; or floating high or low, lying
extended on the air at will. By what process of association I do not
know, the perfect naturalness and satisfaction of flying recurred to me.
I was cleansed from all doubt of ultimate good. The meeting of the blue
man and the woman with floating hair seemed to be what the island had
awaited for thirty-five years.
The miracle of impossible happiness had been worked for him. It
confused me like a dazzle of fireworks. I turned my back and bowed
my head, waiting for him to speak again or to leave me out, as he saw
fit.

Extreme joy may be very silent in those who have waited long, for I did
not hear a cry or a spoken word. Presently I dared to look, and was not
surprised to find myself alone. The evergreen-clothed amphitheatre
behind had many paths which would instantly hide climbers from view.
The blue man and the woman with floating hair knew these heights
well. I thought of the pitfall, and sat watching with back-tilted head,
anxious to warn them if they stirred foliage near where that fatal trap
was said to lurk. But the steep forest gave no sign or sound from its
mossy depths.
I sat still a long time in a trance of the senses, like that which follows a
drama whose spell you would not break. Masts and cross-trees of ships,
were banded by ribbons of smoke blowing back from the steamers
which towed them in lines up or down the straits.
Towards sunset there was a faint blush above the steel-blue waters,
which at their edge reflected the blush. Then mist closed in. The sky
became ribbed with horizontal bars, so that the earth was pent like a
heart within the hollow of some vast skeleton.
I was about to climb down from my rock when two young men passed
by, the first strollers I had noticed since the blue man's exit. They
rapped stones out of the way with their canes, and pushed the caps back
from their youthful faces, talking rapidly in excitement.
"When did it happen?"
"About four o'clock. You were off at the golf links."
"Was she killed instantly?"
"I think so. I think she never knew what hurt her after seeing the horses
plunge and the carriage go over. I was walking my wheel down-hill just
behind and I didn't hear her scream. The driver said he lost the brake;
and he's a pretty spectacle now, for he landed on his head. It was that
beautiful old lady with the fly-away hair that we saw arrive from this
morning's boat while we were sitting out smoking, you remember."

"Not that one!"
"That was the woman. Had a black maid with her. She's a Southerner. I
looked on the register."
The other young fellow whistled.
"I'm glad I was at the links and didn't see it. She was a stunning
woman."
Dusk stalked grimly down from eastern heights and blurred the water
earlier than on rose-colored evenings, making the home-returning
walker shiver through evergreen glooms along shore. The lights of the
sleepy Old Mission had never seemed so pleasant, though the house
was full of talk about that day's accident at the other side of the island.
I slipped out before the early boat left next morning, driven by
undefined anxieties towards Madame Clementine's alley. There is a
childish credulity which clings to imaginative people through life. I had
accepted the blue man and the woman with floating hair in the way
which they chose to present themselves. But I began to feel like one
who sees a distinctly focused picture shimmering to a dissolving view.
The intrusion of an accident to a stranger at another hotel continued this
morning, for as I took the long way around the bay before turning back
to Clementine's alley I met the open island hearse, looking like a relic
of provincial France, and in it was a coffin,