Chapter 8: The Man in White

It was at the sixth hole that they passed the man ahead who was playing all alone--a courteous young fellow in white flannels, who smiled and bowed them “through” in silence.

They thanked him, drove from the tee, and left the polite and reticent young man still apparently hunting for a lost ball.

Like other things which depended upon dexterity and precision, Tressa had taken most naturally to golf. Her supple muscles helped.

At the ninth hole they looked back but did not see the young man in white flannels.

Hammock, set with pine and palmetto, and intervals of evil-looking swamp, flanked the course. Rank wire-grass, bayberry and scrub palmetto bounded the fairgreen.

On every blossoming bush hung butterflies--Palomedes swallowtails--drugged with sparkle-berry honey, their gold and black velvet wings conspicuous in the sunny mist.

“Like the ceremonial vestments of a Yezidee executioner,” murmured the girl. “The Tchortchas wear red when they robe to do a man to death.”

“I wish you could forget those things,” said Cleves.

“I am trying ... I wonder where that young man in white went.”

Cleves searched the links. “I don’t see him. Perhaps he had to go back for another ball.”

“I wonder who he was,” she mused.

“I don’t remember seeing him before,” said Cleves... “Shall we start back?”

They walked slowly across the course toward the tenth hole.

Tressa teed up, drove low and straight. Cleves sliced, and they walked together into the scrub and towards the woods, where his ball had bounded into a bunch of palm trees.

Far in among the trees something white moved and vanished.

“Probably a white egret,” he remarked, knocking about in the scrub with his midiron.

“It was that young man in white flannels,” said Tressa in a low voice.

“What would he be doing in there?” he asked incredulously. “That’s merely a jungle, Tressa--swamp and cypress, thorn and creeper, --and no man would go into that mess if he could. There is no bottom to those swamps.”

“But I saw him in there,” she said in a troubled voice.

“But when I tell you that only a wild animal or a snake or a bird could move in that jungle! The bog is one vast black quicksand. There’s death in those depths.”

“Victor.”

“Yes?” He looked around at her. She was pale. He came up and took her hand inquiringly.

“I don’t feel--well,” she murmured. “I’m not ill, you understand--”

“What’s the matter, Tressa?”

She shook her head drearily: “I don’t know ... I wonder whether I should have tried to amuse you this morning--”

“You don’t think you’ve stirred up any of those Yezidee beasts, do you?” he asked sharply.

And as she did not answer, he asked again whether she was afraid that what she had done that morning might have had any occult consequences. And he reminded her that she had hesitated to venture anything on that account.

His voice, in spite of him, betrayed great nervousness now, and he saw apprehension in her eyes, also.

“Why should that man in white have followed us, keeping out of sight in the woods?” he went on. “Did you notice about him anything to disturb you, Tressa?”

“Not at the time. But--it’s odd--I can’t put him out of my mind. Since we passed him and left him apparently hunting a lost ball, I have not been able to put him out of my mind.”

“He seemed civil and well bred. He was perfectly good-humoured--all courtesy and smiles.”

“I think--perhaps--it was the way he smiled at us,” murmured the girl. “Everybody in the East smiles when they draw a knife...”

He placed his arm through hers. “Aren’t you a trifle morbid?” he said pleasantly.

She stooped for her golf ball, retaining a hold on his arm. He picked up his ball, too, put away her clubs and his, and they started back together in silence, evidently with no desire to make it eighteen holes.

“It’s a confounded shame,” he muttered, “just as you were becoming so rested and so delightfully well, to have anything--any unpleasant flash of memory cut in to upset you--”

“I brought it on myself. I should not have risked stirring up the sinister minds that were asleep.”

“Hang it all!--and I asked you to amuse me.”

“It was not wise in me,” she said under her breath. “It is easy to disturb the unknown currents which enmesh the globe. I ought not to have shown you Yian. I ought not to have shown you Yulun. It was my fault for doing that. I was a little lonely, and I wanted to see Yulun.”

They came down the river back to the canoe, threw in their golf bags, and embarked on the glassy stream.

Over the calm flood, stained deep with crimson, the canoe glided in the sanguine evening light. But Tressa sang no more and her head was bent sideways as though listening--always listening--to something inaudible to Cleves--something very, very far away which she seemed to hear through the still drip of the paddles.

They were not yet in sight of their landing when she spoke to him, partly turning:

“I think some of your men have arrived.”

“Where?” he asked, astonished.

“At the house.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I think so.”

They paddled a little faster. In a few minutes their dock came into view.

“It’s funny,” he said, “that you should think some of our men have arrived from the North. I don’t see anybody on the dock.”

“It’s Mr. Recklow,” she said in a low voice. “He is seated on our veranda.”

As it was impossible to see the house, let alone the veranda, Cleves made no reply. He beached the canoe; Tressa stepped out; he followed, carrying the golf bags.

A mousy light lingered in the shrubbery; bats were flying against a salmon-tinted sky as they took the path homeward.

With an impulse quite involuntary, Cleves encircled his young wife’s shoulders with his left arm.

“Girl-comrade,” he said lightly, “I’d kill any man who even looked as though he’d harm you.”

He smiled, but she had not missed the ugly undertone in his words.

They walked slowly, his arm around her shoulders. Suddenly he felt her start. They halted.

“What was it?” he whispered.

“I thought there was something white in the woods.”

“Where, dear?” he asked coolly.

“Over there beyond the lawn.”

What she called the “lawn” was only a vast sheet of pink and white phlox, now all misty with the whirring wings of sphinx-moths and Noctuidæ.

The oak grove beyond was dusky. Cleves could see nothing among the trees.

After a moment they went forward. His arm had fallen away from her shoulders.

There were no lights except in the kitchen when they came in sight of the house. At first nobody was visible on the screened veranda under the orange trees. But when he opened the swing door for her a shadowy figure arose from a chair.

It was John Recklow. He came forward, bent his strong white head, and kissed Tressa’s hand.

“Is all well with you, Mrs. Cleves?”

“Yes. I am glad you came.”

Cleves clasped the elder man’s firm hand.