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FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT,
ND where exactly," de
"AN manded Adrienne, "do
you suppose that we are? Beyond,”. she added, "the fact that we're stuck on this detestable mud bank with a falling tide.”
From his seat by the tiller Mor- timer looked across at her
at the lovely, though rather discon- tented, mouth; at the grey-green eyes; at the fair hair all tousled by the afternoon's wind. At last she said impatiently, “Well?”
“Well?” he said, "well, what? Do you know, something's just occurred to me--I don't think it matters a damn. Where wo are, I mean."
"Are you by any chance," she said, "trying to be funny?”
He shook his head, smiling. "By no chance whatsoever. I was never more serious in my life. But since you evidently want a more definite answer, I'll give you one. I haven't the faintest idea.” And he lit a cigarette.
"But but," she began. "but what are we going to do?
"Stop here," he replied, "for the night. We are aground exact- ly one hour after high water, which means that we shan't float again until about eight o'clock to- morrow morning. Let us, there-
Short Story
'fore, put on, our sea boots and paddle across to the island.”
And he pointed to it, a low hum- mock of marsh and tussock, crown- ed with a dozen shrubs. It rose from the mud some hundred feet from, where they lay...
"Buy we've nothing to eat." "Enough. I've chocolate in my pocket, and there are biscuits in that looker:""
He helped her over the side.
✓
MARCH 24, 1939
THE ENCHANTED NIGHT
here to-night, you and I.”
“A game?"
Yes, à game. What shall we call it? Cannibal Isle? Eden? It doesn't matter, but here it is -we're not here in Essex at all, We're right out of the world, thrown together and we've got to do something about it. This isn't an estuary mud-flat, it's the South Pacific. Look, Adrienne, those bushes, they're palm trees, and you're smelling poinsettia and hibiscus and it's not mud all round us but coral reefs. You're a wo- man, and I'm a man, and there's a great moon, big as a melon and soft as honey, coming up-look, you can see it, right, over there."
"Aren't you," she said, "being rather absurd?"
"If being enchanted is to be absurd, yes I am. Perhaps I don't express myself very well, but there's something about this place, this night, about you, maybe.”
"About me?" She stared at him, as though în astonishment.
"Yes, about you, the you that's standing here beside me, here on Cannibal Isle. No, don't laugh-
By C. Gordon Glover
it's serious, Perhaps there's some- thing about me too. I'm not the person who's spending his holiday at that awful hotel-nor are you. For to-night, Adrienne, may be for ever, wo're different people.” He paused, and then "We've got to be," he cried, almost savagely.
"Perhaps you're right,” she said and looked him in the eyes.
"Right? Of course I'm right, What are you in that hotel in Lon-
She laid a hand on his arm, and ---- ·don? I'll tell you. You're a wife
together they floundered through the slime, reaching the shore in safety.
"Cannibal isle," he said, laugh- ing, then added, "it might very well be for all the, hope we've got of establishing contact with any one."
*
"We were idiots," said Adrienne, "to come so far. You might have known.
"Perhaps," he said, slowly, "I did know. Sometimes you know- folly and rejoice în it. This after- noon was rather like that-I—I felt like sailing, non-stop to Tahiti."
"And you landed on a mud bank ten miles from Southend." She gave a short little laugh. “Delight- ful."
He had left her, and was stam- ding on the edge of the islet star- ing towards the sun. : Suddenly he turned and said, "Don't you feel
enchantment of this place Look at those marelles, like part of the primeval world. You can see the very first life stirring in them under a cold red sum. Look at them. Adrienne.
She shivered "It's lonely, though!
he enchantment.
and you aren't happy. You've got a thoughtless hüsband who doesn't understand you. You left him there to-day. I left a tiresome, disgruntled wife. I watched you at breakfast this morning. You hardly spoke to him, you toyed with your food, you sighed, you looked intolerably bored. and rather plain in consequence. Didn't you?"
She smiled. "Maybe I was wat- ching you too," she said.
"Oh, you were, eh? And what did you see?"
"Oh, a nervy, irritated man, sometimes glancing at his wife, but not more than he could help. certainly not a happy person.”
There was another pause, Then he said.-
"What do people on South Sea islands do when they get together when a moon that size climbs up into the sky and there's nobody, else in the world? What do they
the world? W do?"
She laughed and laid a hand on his arm. “I'll tell you what these two people are going to do-
Got those biscuits?”
おかも
Ed rapped out the
down side by side, lously he divided the
**- he said, "How-
did you come to be cast on a desert island with you are cast there, what are your
now that
going to do?”.
She answered, mook-serious, "I came to be cast Hore because we caught the same boat, and we caught the same boat because--- well, why do people meet, any- way?" She paused, then added, "And what am I going to do? First-talk."
"And then?”
"We're on a desert island?” "We are."
She looked him between the eyes. He thought she was very lovely in that soft twilight. She laughed. "What a lovely ridi- culous game!"
"We're on a desert island. It's very quiet. We can hear nothing but the sea, smell nothing but the flowers. Nobody's here, nobody's ever been here before. There's a ridiculous moon to play a ridi- culous game by. And after you've talked ... ?"
"Then you shall make.love to me -under the moon, and palms, 'and in sound of the surf."
"And your husband?" "Would never believe It, And your wife?”
"Will be all the better for it. Adrienne?"
"Yes, darling."
way you
"That was nice-the said Darling. But, Adrienne, something else. Do you believe in moments like this?"
"I-I don't know. I've never had any before." She gave a wry little laugh. "My husband-long. long ago he tried to make me be- lieve in them. And then, somehow, suddenly we couldn't be bother- ed any more. He started to take ́up a hobby. You know, to get his mind off other things, other things other things being me, I daresay." And I
"And you still hankered after coconut isles, and moonshine, and the something which hides be hind stars, and dusks, and sudden- ly touches you so that you can't bear the enchantment of it? That it?"
"Yes," she whispered, "that's it. I suppose every woman,
"And I suppose every man, too. turns all too soon from that some- thing, and takes to fretwork, maybe, or tomato growing, stamps."
"Stop," she cried, “please stop.”..
or
"Gladly." He passed her a cigarette and took one himself. Their faces were close in the globe of matchlight. He went on: "Sometimes, all too often, you lose things in this world which seem to be quite beyond recapture. You've lost that something which drove you to him and him to you --haven't you? Haven't you?" he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. "I've lost that. "And I've lost the same thin We don't touch each other and thrill to that touch, my wife and I. Yet. Adrienne-
"Yes,
"Look at that water-It's like time, running away, down down, down the moon path into the bowl of the sun. But that's not what I was going to say, I was going say, Adrienne, our hands touch, and we'll
Adrienne, and
coconut
something new. Never mind. how long it lasts, or when it ends, never mind where it began, or why. Take it."
She shivered. Her hand re- mained in his "Yes," she whisper- ed, "take it. Are we are we stark, staring mad?” She sud- denly burst out, "We arɔ-mäd, mad, mad. We'll be back in that awful hotel to-morrow we'll be the real you and the real mo again.”
For a long while he said nothing, and then he spoke slowly. “Adrien- ne, perhaps you'll never be that you, and I'll never be
that me, ever, ever again.”
"Why, what do you mean?" "I mean-maybe.this is the real you, something lovely, delíriously happy-you are, aren't you?--and all in a pool of moonlight. Maybe that's the real, you, the you you should always remember. And the real me--maybe the romantic who makes love to a lovely, deliriously happy woman all set about with pools of moonlight."
"Those things don't last."
"They may not be sustained, but, Adrienne, they should last through being remembered-for
aver.'
It was almost dark. The tide had slipped away. They could hear it distantly, whispering in the channel. The moon, more. gigantic than ever, swam in a pewter-coloured sky. No wind blew. They smelled the sea laven- der.
Vast, specious, in giant and majestic perspective the moonlit world lay empty around them. "Just here," he said softly, "you have to whisper, for who knows what you may waken if you talk?"
"Whisper then-darling.". "Then kiss me." She kissed him,
"Breaking
faith? With him?
"Regaining it with every- thing.".
They fell asleep at last, but from time to time they awoke to whisper.
The moon sank. The moon fell low, then pitched and tumbled in a gathering vortex of cloud. The dawn Was coming up. They shivered a little for the heavy dew. (Continued on Pagė (7)
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