_THE OTHER SURRENDER_
The first few days and nights after this episode found Ridgeway
despairing and unhappy, but as time removed the sting from defeat, his
hopes began to flounder to the surface again, growing into a resolution,
strong and arrogant. He devoted himself to her tenderly, thoughtfully,
unreservedly. There was something subtle in his gallantry, something
fascinating in his good humor, something in everything he did that
attracted her more than it had before. She only knew that she was happy
when with him and that he was unlike any man she had known.
There were times when she imagined that he was indifferent to the shock
his pride had received at her hands, and at such times she was puzzled
to find herself piqued and annoyed. A little gnawing pain kept her awake
with these intermittent fears.
She became expert in the art of making garments from the woven grass.
Her wardrobe contained some remarkable gowns, and his was enlarged by
the addition of "Sunday trousers" and a set of shirt blouses. They wore
sandals instead of shoes. Each had a pair of stockings, worn at the time
of the wreck, but they were held in sacred disuse against the hoped-for
day of deliverance.
One day, late in September, after the sun had banished the mists from
the air and the dampness from the ground by a clear day's process, they
wandered down between the gateposts to the beach where they had first
landed with Pootoo. The sun was sinking toward the water-line and they
sat wistfully watching it pass into the sea. For nearly five months they
had lived with the savages, for the greater portion not unhappily, but
always with the expectation that some day a vessel would come to take
them back to civilization.
"It has not been so unpleasant, after all, has it?" she asked. "We have
been far more comfortable than we could have prayed for."
"I should enjoy seeing a white man once in a while, though, and I'd give
my head for this morning's Chicago newspaper," he answered
rather glumly.
"I have been happier on this island than I ever was in my life. Isn't it
strange? Isn't it queer that we have not gone mad with despair? But I,
for one, have not suffered a single pang, except over the death of our
loved ones."
"Lord Huntingford included," maliciously.
"That is unkind, Hugh. I am ashamed to say it, but I want to forget that
he ever lived."
"You will have plenty of time to forget all you ever knew before we die.
We'll spend the rest of our days in that nigger village back there. If
I should die first I suppose you'd forget me in a week or so. It--"
"Why, Hugh! You know better than that! Why do you say such disagreeable
things?"
"I'm not worth remembering very long," he said lamely. She smiled and
said the statement threw a different light on the question. Whereupon he
did not know whether to laugh or scowl.
"This dear old island," she cried, looking toward the great rocks
lovingly. "Really, I should be sorry to leave it."
"When the ship comes, I'll go back to America, and you may remain here
if you like and be the only Izor in the business." He said it in jest,
but she looked at him solemnly for a moment and then turned her eyes out
to sea. She was reclining on her side, her hand supporting her head, her
elbow in the sand. He sat five feet away, digging holes in the sand with
an odd little walking stick. One of her sandalled feet protruded from
beneath the hem of her garment, showing ever so little of the bare,
white, fascinating ankle.
"I should despise the place if I had to live here a day without you,"
she said simply.
"What do you mean?" She did not answer at once. When she did, it was
earnestly and without the least embarrassment.
"Can't I make you understand how much you are to me?" she asked without
a blush. "You are the best, the noblest man I've ever known. I like you
so well that I do not know how I could live if I did not have you to
talk to, if I could not see you and be with you. Do you know what I did
last night?"
He could only shake his head and tremble with the joy of feeling once
more that she loved him and did not understand.
"I prayed that we might never be taken from the island," she said
hurriedly, as if expecting him to condemn her for the wish. He rolled
over on his back, closed his eyes, and tried to control a joyous,
leaping heart. "It was so foolish, you know, to pray for that, but I've
been so contented and happy here, Hugh. Of course, I don't expect we are
to live here always. They will find us some day." He opened his eyes and
hazarded a glance at his face. She smiled and said, "I'm afraid
they will."
There was but the space of five feet between them. How he kept from
bounding to her side and clasping her in his arms he never knew; he was
in a daze of delight. So certain of her love was he now that, through
some inexplicable impulse, he closed his eyes again and waited to hear
more of the delicious confession.
"Then we shall leave the prettiest land in the world, a land where show
and pomp are not to be found, where nature reigns without the touch of
sham, and go back to a world where all is deceit, mockery, display. I
love everything on this island," she cried ecstatically. He said
nothing, so she continued: "I may be an exile forever, but I feel richer
instead of poorer away off here in this unknown paradise. How glorious
it is to be one's self absolutely, at all times and in all places,
without a thought of what the world may say. Here I am free, I am a part
of nature."
"Do you think you know yourself fully?" he asked as quietly as he could.
"Know myself?" she laughed. "Like a book."
"Could you love this island if you were here alone?"
"Well, I--suppose--not," she said, calculatively. "It would not be the
same, you know."
"Don't you know why you feel as you do about this God-forsaken land,
Tennys Huntingford?" he demanded, suddenly drawing very near to her, his
burning eyes bent upon hers. "Don't you know why you are happy here?"
She was confused and disturbed by his manner. That same peculiar flutter
of the heart she had felt weeks ago on the little knoll attacked
her sharply.
"I--I--I'm sure--I am happy just because I am, I dare say," she
faltered, conscious of an imperative inclination to lower her eyes, but
strangely unable to do so.
"You love this island because you love me," he whispered in her ear.
"No, no! It is not that! Please don't be foolish again, Hugh. You will
make me very unhappy."
"But you do love me. You love me, and you do not know it," he said,
thrilled with exultation. She looked at him wonderingly, a half
scornful, half dubious smile flitting over her face.
"I will try to be patient with you. Don't you think I know my own mind?"
she asked.
"No; you do not," he said vigorously. "Let me ask you a few questions,
and I beg of you, for your own sake and mine, to answer them without
equivocation. I'll prove to you that you love me."
"Who is to be the judge?" she asked merrily. She trembled and turned
cold as he took her hand in his and--she was not merry.
"First, is there another man in the world that you would rather have
here? Answer, dear." The blood mounted to her cheek at the term of
endearment.
"Not one," she answered firmly, trying to smile.
"Have you never thought--be honest, now--that you don't want to leave
the island because it would mean our separation?"
"Yes, but--but it would be the same with anybody else if I cared for
him," she exclaimed quickly.
"But there is no one else, is there?" She looked at him helplessly.
"Answer!"
"Oh, Hugh, I--it would not be right for me to encourage you by answering
that. Please let us go back to the village," she pleaded.
"Well, I know there is no one else. Tell me that you don't want to leave
me because we should drift apart in the big world," he persisted.
"I had thought of that," she said so low that he could barely hear.
"You have prayed that Grace may be alive. What would it mean to you if
she should be alive and we should be reunited?"
"I--I don't know," she muttered blankly.
"Would you be willing and happy to give me up to her?"
"I never thought of that," she said. Then a terror leaped to her eyes
and her breast heaved as with pain. "Oh, Hugh, what would that mean to
me? I could not give you up--I could not!" she cried, clasping his hand
feverishly in both of hers.
"Would you be glad to see us married, to see us living together, to see
children come to us? Would you be happy if I forgot you in my love for
her?" he went on remorselessly, yet delightedly.
"You couldn't forget me," she whispered, faint and trembling now. "You
don't mean to say I never could be near you again!" There was dismay in
her face and a sob in her voice.
"Oh, occasionally, but in a very formal way."
"I believe I should die," she cried, unable to restrain herself.
"You admit then that you want me for yourself only," he said.
"Yes, yes I do, Hugh! I want you every minute of my life!"
"Now you are beginning to know what love is," he breathed in her ear.
His eager arm stole slowly around her shoulders and, as she felt herself
being drawn close to him irresistibly, a sweet wonder overwhelmed her.
The awakening had come. With singing heart she lifted her hands to his
cheeks, bewitched by the new spell, holding his face off from her own
while she looked long and yearningly into his eyes. A soft flush crept
over her brow and down her neck, her eyes wavered and melted into
mirrors of love, her lips parted, but she could not speak. The clasp
tightened, his face came nearer, his words sounded like music in her
enchanted ears.
"Have I proved that you love me, darling?" "I never knew till now--I
never knew till now," she whispered.
Their lips met, their eyes closed, and the world was far, far away from
the little stretch of sand.