THE WAY OF THE PRIMITIVE.
Claire was the first to wake. She sat up and gazed around her. The
morning sun was just breaking through a heavy fog that had drifted in
from the ocean. Her clothes were damp, and she was chilled through,
while her swollen and discolored ankle throbbed with steady pain. She
looked down at the sleeping man beside her, and her forehead gathered in
a little thoughtful frown. Then she looked around her again. Despite the
knowledge of their desperate situation, she could not help noticing the
beauty of the scene.
Great trees grew in massive profusion all about them. Heavy tropical
moss hung from the branches and trailed its green mat over the stones.
Birds were beginning to sing, their notes breaking the silence of the
place in sharp thrills. Then she studied her companion. Finally, she
laughed aloud.
"Lawrence," she said gaily.
He turned and sat up, yawning drowsily. "What is it?" he demanded.
"We are certainly the primitive pair."
"H-m, I suppose. Anyhow, I feel better for my sleep."
"It's beastly cold," returned Claire, "and my ankle is playing fits and
jerks with me."
"We'll have to do something about it," he said earnestly. She did not
answer.
"We can bind it up, I presume," he went on. "But it's a frightful
inconvenience."
"Admitted," she said quickly. "It can't be helped, however."
"I'm very much for a fire," he suggested, as though he had not noticed
the hints of hardness in her voice.
"Some twenty feet ahead is a flat rock. We might build one there. Have
you matches?"
He shook his head. "We'll have to go it primeval."
"But I don't see how," she began.
"Never mind," he answered, with a malicious grin. "I do know some few
things."
"Perhaps you also know how to find food when there isn't any," she
retorted.
He rose without replying.
"Well," she continued, "I see plenty of roots and stuff. We may as well
prepare to eat them. It's unbelievable that I should be here, and with
you. It's a horrible nightmare, this being stranded and lame out here
somewhere with a blind man."
He winced, but answered quietly: "I'm not especially charmed myself. I
could prefer other things."
She looked at him and smiled. "Don't ever let me repeat those
sentiments," she said, simply. "I'm sorry. Of course you aren't to
blame, and I shouldn't have said that."
He stepped forward timidly. "Will you suggest the best means of finding
dry wood?" he asked, as though the matter were forgotten.
She pursed her lips and looked around her. "This moss seems to be feet
deep," she said at last. "You might dig up some that is dry, and with
that as a starter you can add twigs."
He stopped and began to tear away the moss. His hands were stiff, but he
worked rapidly and before long he had a heap of the brown, dry stuff
from underneath.
She watched him silently. When he stopped, she said: "Straight to your
left is the rock. Get the fire started. Then you can move the invalid."
He took the moss and felt his way to the rock, which was eight or ten
feet square and practically flat, standing up almost a foot from the
ground.
"Now, for a dry stick or two," he said, cheerily.
She directed him, and at last he found what he thought would do. Then
began the age-old procedure of twisting a pointed stick between one's
hands, the point resting on another piece of wood, until friction
brought a flame. It was a long, hard experiment; several times he
stopped to rest; but the consciousness of the skeptical expression he
knew to be on her face sent him quickly back again to his task. At last
the moss began to burn. True, it smoked much and flamed little, but he
gathered twigs from the shrubs near by and in time had a good fire. Then
he carried Claire to the rock and set her down beside it. She leaned her
elbow on the edge and said, happily: "It's quite a success, Lawrence. I
really feel as though we were progressing."
"Our woodcraft will doubtless improve with experience," he answered.
"Next, I guess we had better bathe your ankle," he observed, as though
giving due care to the order of procedure.
"Very well," she replied.
At her suggestion he gathered moss and wet it in the tiny stream. She
wound it about her ankle and held it tightly.
"Now the surgeon orders splints and bandages," she said.
He brought several sticks, and with a strip which she tore from the
lining of his coat, she bound them fast.
"There," she said, sighing, for the pain was wearing. "That ought to
help. I wonder what our distant grandparents did in such cases."
"Made the best of it," he said cheerfully. "Many of them died, I
suppose."
"And we are back again at their game. Whether we can outwit the master
strategist and survive, is at least interesting to try."
"In any event, we'll have to eat to do it," he said shortly.
She studied the greenery about her, meditatively. "It's probable that
most any of these things are edible, but are they nourishing?"
"We'll try them. Which shall I get?" he asked.
"I hate to start in on roots or leaves. If we only had some berries!"
He got up determinedly. "I'll go down the ravine and hunt. If I get
mixed in directions, I'll shout."
She watched him go, and when he had disappeared through the trees she
felt strangely sadder and very much alone. She fell to wondering if he
were really so necessary to her. Sooner or later would come the
inevitable problem between them. Would he fall in love with her, and
would she, in the days that they might be alone together, find his
companionship growing into any really vital proportion in her life? That
she, Claire Barkley, rich and independent, whose life had been selfish
to a marked degree and who had never considered anything except from the
point of view of vigor, perfection, or beauty, should ever love a blind
man was incredible.
"No," she thought, "not even the closest of daily relationships with him
could ever make me really care. He is not of my life." She wondered how
much she would sacrifice for him if it were necessary in their
pilgrimage toward civilization, and she answered herself, frankly: "No
more than I must to maintain a balance in our forced business
partnership." She knew that was all this meant to her.
From down the ravine she heard him shouting lustily, and she answered,
her clear, rich voice waking pleasant echoes as she called. She waited
for some time before he came. In his arms he carried a bundle of
branches loaded with red berries, while in one hand was a clump of large
mushrooms.
Claire watched him as he approached, and was surprised at the ease with
which he walked. There was less hesitation in his stride than she had
thought, and he came briskly through the trees, dodging as though by
instinct.
When he reached the rock, it was characteristic of her that she said:
"You came through those trees remarkably well."
He laughed. "I have an uncanny way of feeling things on my face before
they touch me. I experimented somewhat with it in the laboratory at
college. It's a sort of tropism, perhaps, such as bugs have, that
enables them to keep between two planks or that turns plant-roots toward
the sun. Anyway, I've brought some breakfast. These berries may be good,
and these other things may be toadstools. I brought them along."
"How does one tell?" she asked.
"Oh, mushrooms are pink underneath and ribbed like a fan."
She examined them and said they might be mushrooms, they looked it. He
sat down again, but not until he had replenished the fire.
"They may be poison, both of them," he hazarded. "That's our sporting
chance. Will you try them?"
Claire took some of the berries and ate them. "I don't feel anything
yet," she announced after a minute's solemn munching.
"Oh, you probably won't for several hours anyway," he said lightly. Then
he continued: "If we could devise a way, we might heat water and cook
the mushrooms. Then, too, I've been thinking we might even catch a
bird."
"Neither sounds very simple."
"Nothing in life is simple," he replied. "At home, in America, where we
leave food-getting to the farmer, dress from a store, and go to heaven
by way of a minister, things are fairly well arranged, but here we
aren't even sure of salvation unless we mind the business of thinking."
He continued after a pause. "Of course, I don't especially remember that
I counted on heaven. It always seemed a bit distant in the face of
living and working. Perhaps, however, you counted it as vital."
"I was fairly occupied with more immediate things," she answered.
"However, that is a different world from this. What we did then can't
especially matter to us here. This is our place of business, so to
speak, and social life doesn't factor."
"I see." He accepted the snub thoughtfully. "But this business of ours
will grow exceedingly irksome without talk. I doubt if we can find the
means of escape an all-sufficient topic."
"We haven't boiled our water yet," she said. "And the bird is still free
to roam."
He did not carry on his line of thought aloud. If she had known what was
going on in his mind, she might have been angered. He was wondering just
how much thinking she was capable of. Certain that she was beautiful, he
had scarcely allowed that to occupy him. His experience had led him to
estimate people almost wholly by their ability to be open-minded. In his
struggle against blindness, he had concluded that open minds were rare
indeed, and persons who limited his freedom of action or tended to baby
him he had grown to dismiss with a shrug. Claire did not belong to that
class. "She has shown remarkable willingness to let me go my own pace,"
he thought, "but is this due to her mind or to mere indifference?" He
decided at last that the relationship would be tiresome for both of
them, and that she was not especially eager to prevent it from being so.
This conclusion led him to adopt a definite attitude toward her. She
could do as she pleased; he, for his part, would treat her simply as an
uninteresting person, a machine that furnished the eyes which he could
use in his travel to liberty.
He recalled how, when he had been displeased with convention, he had
thought of life in the wild as the best possible means of liberty, and
he laughed.
Claire looked up. "What is there amusing just now?"
"Myself, and you."
"Why, pray, am I amusing?" Then she was sorry she had said it.
"Because you are you."
"And are you other than yourself?" she asked scornfully.
"Not at all, but my own particular interests seem infinitely more
important to me than there is any possibility of yours doing."
"You mean to say that you are an egotist."
"Frankly, I am," he agreed. "One is an egotist, I suppose, when he finds
himself and his needs and whims essentially worth while. I'll admit I
find mine so. Perhaps you feel the same about yours. One scarcely knows
where egotism and vanity meet or end in a woman." He smiled, for he
meant that to provoke, and it did.
Claire's voice was edged when she replied. "A very penetrating remark.
With men generally, vanity seems to be a widely extended cloak to spread
over all things in a woman that they cannot dispose of in any other way.
If I find you dull, or if I am not struck with your ability, or if you
do not seem to me sufficiently fascinating, I am possessed of feminine
vanity."
"Precisely. And why not? If I choose to regard myself as all those
things which you deny, why shouldn't I find the fault in you rather than
in myself?"
"Because it may be in you," suggested Claire.
"It may, but that doesn't alter the case. I quite agree that you are
right, but none the less you are at fault, because I, Lawrence, am the
most important of all things to me."
She did not answer. The conversation seemed to her useless. She saw no
reason for arguing the matter, and she half suspected that he was simply
teasing her. Besides, she could not but feel that to sit here in his
coat and discuss egotism was a trifle ridiculous. He was merely trying
to establish a friendship in talk which she did not care to encourage.
That was her conclusion.
As he rose to gather more sticks, he asked: "Do you happen to see a rock
that flattens to an edge?"
Told where he might find one, he brought it and struck it hard against
their boulder. It did not break. "It may do," he said thoughtfully, and
began to grind it against the side of the other rock. He worked steadily
and long, and the result was a fairly good edge, which was nicked and
toothed, but still an edge. He laid it down with a sigh of contentment.
"My first tool," he commented.