doorway he said, “He really was a fool, you know.”
I didn’t immediately understand him. After an embarrassing few seconds, I finally realized he meant the man I’d been engaged to almost nine years ago. By that time I could think of no way to answer Stephen Giles, but apparently he didn’t expect an answer. He added, “Thank you, Judith. For my wife, and for me. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Giles.”
He didn’t like that formality and pretended to scowl but closed the door. I sat for a very long time, not thinking of anything in particular, sometimes getting little blurred visions of the man I had once expected to marry, pictures of the courtroom and the jury. They had looked so sympathetic, almost all of them. It just went to show. You couldn’t tell by people’s looks. Gradually, as if I had been trying vainly to shut it out, I came back to the real problem: the childish behavior of Deirdre who was now a grown-up, married woman of twenty-one.
Was it possible her behavior had something to do with the rheumatic fever that had left her with the slight heart problem? I supposed because she was endearing and often generous and sweet, she must have used these qualities to lean upon and cling to her schoolmates and her teachers. In this way she had discovered she could save herself from every problem. Perhaps, too, the bad heart assisted her in this calculated dependence upon others. But the result was that she had grown to her present age without ever facing anything more threatening than a frown. And now this Berringer and his friend with their awful suspicions came trooping ashore to stir up trouble, so she had run away.
What, precisely, were Berringer’s suspicions? Did he imagine a delicate girl like Deirdre had somehow murdered his daughter? Physically, it was preposterous. Ingrid Berringer, from the little I knew of her, was far more athletic than Deirdre, so the suspicion was extremely farfetched. Unless, of course, they were concerned about the way Deirdre’s mother died.
Feeling as cowardly as Deirdre, I closed my eyes and my thoughts to that subject and got ready for bed. Just before I got into that comfortable bed and sighed at the exact “rightness” of the mattress (not too hard, not too soft), I went to the window which faced west, and opened it to get the fresh, flower-and earth-scented air. The steep path up through the jungle vegetation from the copper-covered light on the channel dock was directly below the house. It was geometrically shadowed by the vegetation on both sides of the path. For a moment or two I imagined I saw long prehensile fingers, weird figures, endless fantasies, but actually, all these visions were formed by the curious, rich growth of the jungle beyond the path.
The moon was high overhead now. A tropic moon, exactly like the one in movies and the travel folders. I stood there dreaming a little, wondering how my life would have been by this time, over eight years later, if I had married John Eastman. Curiously enough, although I tried very hard, I couldn’t remember very much about the face of the man who had jilted me “for my own good,” as he put it at the time. Even the color of his eyes had faded from my mind. Maybe I tried too hard to remember. Or maybe he no longer mattered.
I shook myself and banished the thought of my unpleasant past. I looked out the open window, this time toward the front of the house, toward the green open space, the hole in the center that was the emu , and beyond, the grove with its half-finished cabins—Deirdre’s hiding place. I could see why the Hawaiians felt that the lush little grove was sacred. Bougainvillea and hibiscus, orchids and many less-famous bushes of perfume and beauty could be seen as far away as my window. They were guarded and heavily shadowed by hardwood trees, not the thickets I had seen on Kaiana, Ili-Ahi’s “parent” island, but straight, dignified trees intermingled with clinging plants and countless
I didn’t immediately understand him. After an embarrassing few seconds, I finally realized he meant the man I’d been engaged to almost nine years ago. By that time I could think of no way to answer Stephen Giles, but apparently he didn’t expect an answer. He added, “Thank you, Judith. For my wife, and for me. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Giles.”
He didn’t like that formality and pretended to scowl but closed the door. I sat for a very long time, not thinking of anything in particular, sometimes getting little blurred visions of the man I had once expected to marry, pictures of the courtroom and the jury. They had looked so sympathetic, almost all of them. It just went to show. You couldn’t tell by people’s looks. Gradually, as if I had been trying vainly to shut it out, I came back to the real problem: the childish behavior of Deirdre who was now a grown-up, married woman of twenty-one.
Was it possible her behavior had something to do with the rheumatic fever that had left her with the slight heart problem? I supposed because she was endearing and often generous and sweet, she must have used these qualities to lean upon and cling to her schoolmates and her teachers. In this way she had discovered she could save herself from every problem. Perhaps, too, the bad heart assisted her in this calculated dependence upon others. But the result was that she had grown to her present age without ever facing anything more threatening than a frown. And now this Berringer and his friend with their awful suspicions came trooping ashore to stir up trouble, so she had run away.
What, precisely, were Berringer’s suspicions? Did he imagine a delicate girl like Deirdre had somehow murdered his daughter? Physically, it was preposterous. Ingrid Berringer, from the little I knew of her, was far more athletic than Deirdre, so the suspicion was extremely farfetched. Unless, of course, they were concerned about the way Deirdre’s mother died.
Feeling as cowardly as Deirdre, I closed my eyes and my thoughts to that subject and got ready for bed. Just before I got into that comfortable bed and sighed at the exact “rightness” of the mattress (not too hard, not too soft), I went to the window which faced west, and opened it to get the fresh, flower-and earth-scented air. The steep path up through the jungle vegetation from the copper-covered light on the channel dock was directly below the house. It was geometrically shadowed by the vegetation on both sides of the path. For a moment or two I imagined I saw long prehensile fingers, weird figures, endless fantasies, but actually, all these visions were formed by the curious, rich growth of the jungle beyond the path.
The moon was high overhead now. A tropic moon, exactly like the one in movies and the travel folders. I stood there dreaming a little, wondering how my life would have been by this time, over eight years later, if I had married John Eastman. Curiously enough, although I tried very hard, I couldn’t remember very much about the face of the man who had jilted me “for my own good,” as he put it at the time. Even the color of his eyes had faded from my mind. Maybe I tried too hard to remember. Or maybe he no longer mattered.
I shook myself and banished the thought of my unpleasant past. I looked out the open window, this time toward the front of the house, toward the green open space, the hole in the center that was the emu , and beyond, the grove with its half-finished cabins—Deirdre’s hiding place. I could see why the Hawaiians felt that the lush little grove was sacred. Bougainvillea and hibiscus, orchids and many less-famous bushes of perfume and beauty could be seen as far away as my window. They were guarded and heavily shadowed by hardwood trees, not the thickets I had seen on Kaiana, Ili-Ahi’s “parent” island, but straight, dignified trees intermingled with clinging plants and countless
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