John Woolfolk

“ John Woolfolk thought, as he presented himself, that he had never before seen such an immaterial living figure. Lichfield Stope was like the shadow of a man draped with unsubstantial, dusty linen. Into his waxen face beat a pale infusion of blood, as if a diluted wine had been poured into a semi-opaque goblet; his sunken lips puffed out and collapsed; his fingers, dust-colored like his garb, opened and shut with a rapid, mechanical rigidity.
“Father,” Millie Stope remonstrated, “you must manage yourself better. You know I wouldn’t bring any one to the house who would hurt us. ”

“ One thing more remained; and, going deeper into the tin box, John Woolfolk brought out a packet of square envelopes addressed to him in a faded, angular hand. They were all that remained now of his youth, of the past. Not a ghost, not a remembered fragrance nor accent, rose from the delicate paper. They had been the property of a man dead twelve years ago, slain by incomprehensible mischance; and the man in the contracted cabin, vibrating from the elemental and violent forces without, forebore to open them. ”

“ But after a minute he partly revived; his gaze, comparatively steady, met the other's.
"John," he breathed faintly.
"Don't talk," Woolfolk replied. He turned and went below, where he made up Jerry Annis's berth. Then he carried his companion in, undressed him, and put him under blankets. Jerry's hands and feet were deathly cold. A lamp, burning in gimbals by the hatchway, cast an unwavering glow over the contracted cabin. John Woolfolk sat on the engine-box, studying the closed eyes and white countenance against the white pillow. ”

“ It lay without motion, sprawling upon a lower step and the floor. John Woolfolk moved backward from it, his hand behind him, feeling for the entrance to the lighted room. He shifted his feet carefully, for the darkness was wheeling about him in visible black rings streaked with pale orange as he passed into the room.
Here objects, dimensions, became normally placed, recognizable. He saw the mezzotint with its sere and sunny peace, the portfolios on their stands, like grotesque and flattened quadrupeds, and Lichfield Stope on the floor, still hiding his dead face in the crook of his arm. ”

“ Halvard disappeared into the cabin; and, soon after, a faint, hot air, the smell of scorched metal, announced the lighting of the vapor stove, the preparations for supper. Not a breath stirred the surface of the bay. The water, as clear and hardly darker than the darkening air, lay like a great amethyst clasped by its dim corals and the arm of the land. The glossy foliage that, with the exception of a small silver beach, choked the shore might have been stamped from metal. It was, John Woolfolk suddenly thought, amazingly still. ”

“ John Woolfolk took the pistol from his pocket and, automatically releasing the safety, moved to the door, opening it with his left hand. The hall was unlighted; he could feel the pressure of the darkness above. The dank silence flowed over him like chill water rising above his heart. He turned, and a dim thread of light, showing through the chink of a partly closed doorway, led him swiftly forward. He paused a moment before entering, shrinking from what might be revealed beyond, and then flung the door sharply open.
His pistol was directed at a low-trimmed lamp in a chamber empty of all life. ”

“ The ketch forged ahead, but the wait was longer than before. “Caught,” Halvard's voice drifted thinly aft; “coral ledge.” Woolfolk held the Gar stationary until the sailor cried weakly: “Anchor's apeak.”
They moved imperceptibly through the dark, into the greater force of the wind beyond the point. The dull roar of the breaking surf ahead grew louder. Halvard should have had the jib up and been aft at the jigger, but he failed to appear. John Woolfolk wondered, in a mounting impatience, what was the matter with the man. ”

“ The sailor secured the tender, and, dropping into it, held the small boat steady while Woolfolk followed. With a vigorous push they fell away from the Gar. Halvard's oars struck the water smartly and forced the tender forward into the beating wind. They made a choppy passage to the rim of the bay, where, turning, they followed the thin, pale glimmer of the broken water on the land's edge. Halvard pulled with short, telling strokes, his oarblades stirring into momentary being livid blurs of phosphorescence.
John Woolfolk guided the boat about the point where he had first seen Millie swimming. ”

“ He saw these things, remembered them, and yet now they had new significance—they oozed a sort of vital horror, they seemed to crawl with a malignant and repulsive life. The entire room was charged with this palpable, sentient evil. John Woolfolk defiantly faced the still, cold inclosure; he was conscious of an unseen scrutiny, of a menace that lived in pictures, moved the fingers of the dead, and that could take actual bulk and pound his heart sore. ”

“ They fell again, and equally their efforts slackened, their grips became more feeble. Finally, as if by common consent, they rolled apart. A leaden tide of apathy crept over Woolfolk's battered body, folded his aching brain. He listened in a sort of indifferent attention to the tempestuous breathing of Iscah Nicholas. John Woolfolk wondered dully where Millie was. There had been no sign of her since he had fallen down the step and she had cried out. Perhaps she was dead from fright. He considered this possibility in a hazy, detached manner. She would be better dead—if he failed. ”

“ John Woolfolk brought the ketch up where he intended to anchor and called to the stooping white-clad figure in the bow: “Let go!” There was an answering splash, a sudden rasp of hawser, the booms swung idle, and the yacht imperceptibly settled into her berth. The wheel turned impotently; and, absent-minded, John Woolfolk locked it. He dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved about with a noiseless and swift efficiency ”

“ But Woolfolk, annoyed, ignored the sailor, and the latter finally moved away, muttering. Even in the scintillating day the island remained a place of black shadows, metallic foliage. Not a sign of life was visible except a blue drift of smoke from a hidden chimney. John Woolfolk sat somberly thinking, and Jerry rested extended on the deck. At times there were involuntary twitchings of his hands and facial muscles. He said:
"The collection of instincts and emotions huddled in the human frame is rather appalling. ”

“ III He advanced more slowly, and a low, irregular house detached itself from the tangled growth pressing upon it from all sides. The doorway, dimly lighted by an invisible lamp from within, was now near by; and John Woolfolk saw a shape cross it, so swiftly furtive that it was gone before he realized that a man had vanished into the hall. There was a second stir on the small covered portico, and the slender, white-clad figure of a woman moved uncertainly forward. He stopped just at the moment in which a low, clear voice demanded: “What do you want?” ”

“ The tender passed about the point, and he could hear more clearly the sullen clamor of the waves on the seaward bars. The patches of green sky had grown larger, the clouds swept by with the apparent menace of solid, flying objects. The land lay in a low, formless mass on the left. It appeared secretive, a masked place of evil. Its influence reached out and subtly touched John Woolfolk’s heart with the premonition of base treacheries. The tormented trees had the sound of Iscah Nicholas sobbing. He must take Millie away immediately ”

“ Poul Halvard had been below, by inference asleep; but when the yacht changed her course he immediately appeared on deck. He moved aft, but Woolfolk made no explanation, the sailor put no questions. The wind freshened, grew sustained. Woolfolk said:
“Make sail.”
Soon after, the mainsail rose, a ghostly white expanse on the night. John Woolfolk trimmed the jigger, shut off the engine; and, moving through a sudden, vast hush, they retraced their course. The bay was ablaze with sunlight, the morning well advanced, when the ketch floated back to her anchorage under the oleanders. ”

“ Halvard immediately came aft and dropped into the tender. A fever of impatience, a vague, inexplicable dread, seized Woolfolk. "Hurry," he called after the boat slipping away over the silver expanse.
He saw Halvard reach the island, but there the tender was lost in obscurity. Almost immediately, however, it shot back into the refulgent light, with the sailor rowing in a panic of haste. He blundered inexcusably in coming alongside the ketch, scraping away the paint, and clattered his oars inboard. John Woolfolk could see no trace of Annis, but Halvard cried out, "Give him an arm." ”

“ In the space beneath the afterdeck Woolfolk found a spare folded anchor for the tender, a length of rope; and he slowly completed the preparations for his purpose. He lifted the body to the narrow deck outside the rail, and, in a long dip, the waves carried it smoothly and soundlessly away. John Woolfolk said:
“‘... Commit his body to the deep, looking for the general resurrection ... through ... Christ.’”
Then, upright and motionless at the wheel, with the wan radiance of the binnacle lamp floating up over his hollow cheeks and set gaze, he held the ketch southward through the night. ”

“ A deep loathing of his surroundings swept over John Woolfolk, a sudden revulsion from the dead man on the floor, from the ponderous menace on the stair, the white figure that had brought it all upon him. ”

“ Poul Halvard, at the mainstay, remarked tentatively: “There’s not a capful of wind.”
The wide calm, Woolfolk thought, was but a part of a general conspiracy against his liberty, his memories. “Get the anchor up,” he repeated harshly. “We’ll go under the engine.” The sudden jarring of the Gar’s engine sounded muffled in a shut space like the flushed heart of a shell. The yacht moved forward, with a wake like folded gauze, into a shimmer of formless and pure color.
John Woolfolk sat at the wheel, motionless except for an occasional scant shifting of his hands. He was sailing by compass ”

“ John Woolfolk realized that it had not been caused by his abrupt appearance; the faint accent of dread was fixed in the illusive form before him.
“I have robbed you too,” he continued in a lighter tone. “Your oranges are in my pocket.”
“You won’t like them,” she returned indirectly; “they’ve run wild. We can’t sell them.”
“They have a distinct flavor of their own,” he assured her. “I should be glad to have some on the Gar.” ”

“ At times his inflexible integrity oppressed John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult man to live up to.
He turned and absently surveyed the land. His restlessness increased. He felt a strong desire for a larger freedom of space than that offered by the Gar, and it occurred to him that he might go ashore in the tender. He moved aft with this idea growing to a determination. In the cabin, on the shelf above the berths built against the sides of the ketch, he found an old blue flannel coat, with crossed squash rackets and a monogram embroidered in yellow on the breast pocket. ”

“ John Woolfolk again took his place, turning to address the other, when he saw that one side of Halvard’s face was bluish and rapidly swelling.
“What’s the matter with your jaw?” he promptly inquired.
Halvard avoided his gaze, obviously reluctant to speak, but Woolfolk’s silent interrogation was insistent. Then:
“I met that Nicholas,” Halvard admitted; “without a knife.”
“Well?” Woolfolk insisted.
“There’s something wrong with this cursed place,” Halvard said defiantly. “You can laugh, but there’s a matter in the air that’s not natural. ”

“ She redirected her thoughts to her parent's enthralling end. “Do you think a man as brave as that should lie on the floor?” she demanded. “A flag,” she added obscurely, considering an appropriate covering for the still form.
“No, not on the floor,” Woolfolk instantly responded. He bent and, lifting the body of Lichfield Stope, carried it into the hall, where, relieved at the opportunity to dispose of his burden, he left it in an obscure corner.
Iscah Nicholas was stirring again. John Woolfolk waited, gazing up the stair, but the other progressed no more than a step. Then he returned to Millie. ”

“ He took up the lamp, held it elevated while he advanced to the door with a ready pistol. There, however, he stopped, realizing the mark he would present moving, conveniently illuminated, up the stair. The floor above was totally unknown to him; at any turning he might be surprised, overcome, rendered useless. He had a supreme purpose to perform. He had already, perhaps fatally, erred, and there must be no further misstep.
John Woolfolk realized that he must go upstairs in the dark, or with, at most, in extreme necessity, a fleeting and guarded matchlight. ”

“ In an hour you will be in a new world.”
“With John Woolfolk?”
“I am John Woolfolk.”
“But he—you—left me.”
“I am here,” he insisted with a tightening of his heart. He rose, animated by an overwhelming necessity to get the ketch under way, to leave at once, for ever, the invisible shore of the bay. He gently folded her again in the blanket, but she resisted him. “I’d rather stay up,” she said with a sudden lucidity. “It’s nice here; I wanted to come before, but he wouldn’t let me.”
A glimmer of hope swept over him as he mounted swiftly to the deck. “Get up the anchors,” he called ”