Autumn came once more to the lonely dwellers on the Isle of Demons.
The dreary time was settling down threateningly; and as they faced the
inevitable months, their hearts sank within them.
The bleak, late September winds again compelled them to spend most of
their time within their hut. Daily through the summer they had watched
for a passing sail, but with the return of autumn they gave up hope, and
made ready as best they could to pass another winter on their island
prison. Their supply of food, although they had husbanded it with the
utmost care, was almost exhausted, and they had now scarcely anything
save fish and fowl.
Yet their wretched surroundings, their hopeless future, only drew them
closer together. They had each other, and that meant everything. They
could scarcely have been said to be actually unhappy, but for one
ever-gnawing anxiety--the state of Claude's health. All summer he had
remained strong and hopeful, but with the first cold weather his cough
returned, and he himself realised that he could never live through the
winter, whose icy breath they could even now feel from the north. He
was to give up the fight sooner than either of them expected; but before
the struggle ended still another sorrow--or joy, they scarce knew
which--was to be added to their lives.
Early in October Marguerite's child was born. Almost she had prayed that
it might not live; almost she had hoped that she might die with it, and
end the awful suffering which was all they could look forward to. But
when she came slowly back to strength again, and held the tiny, helpless
creature in her arms, and knew that it drew its life from her veins, the
desire to live returned to her; she had now a double incentive to
courage and hope.
For a time Claude forgot the future, his own sufferings, everything
except his son. All the tenderness in his nature showed itself now. His
hands, which in France had known no service but war, were now as apt as
any woman's. Night and day he waited on Marguerite and her child, and
with great joy saw them both grow strong. Meanwhile, a kind Providence
seemed to be mindful of him, for his strength never failed him; and
Marguerite, as each morning she met his bright smile and cheery words,
began to hope that the miracle for which she had prayed had been worked,
and that Claude would yet be spared to her.
The cold of September had been followed by an unusually late and mild
autumn, and in the mellow, hazy days Marguerite would walk up and down
the cliff with her child in her arms, followed by the cub, which they
had humorously christened Francois, and which had now grown quite
domesticated, and would shuffle after his mistress wherever she went,
like a faithful dog. In these peaceful days Marguerite found herself
crooning to her baby the old Normandy lullabies, which she had not heard
since her own infancy, but which came back instinctively to her lips.
But her happiness was to be of short duration. The blow she had dreaded
fell upon her when she least expected it. Claude's strength had been but
false fire. With the return of the cold weather heaviness seized his
limbs, a dull weight oppressed his lungs, and his cough grew rapidly
worse. At last, one night, there came a haemorrhage which would not be
checked, and in the morning Marguerite found herself alone with her
dead.
How she lived through that night and the days which followed it she
never knew. Nature was merciful to her, and blotted out all memory of
details from her brain. The constant necessity of caring for her child
was all that saved her reason, and kept her from taking her life.
With her own hands she dug a third grave beside the two others on the
cliff, and after incredible labour and exertion, she laid Claude's body
to rest, and heaped the earth above it. When she had finished her task,
which she had performed with wild and feverish energy, she threw herself
upon the mound, and gave way to utter despair. How long she lay there
she did not know; but she was recalled to herself by the crying of her
child from the hut. Not for herself, but for the sake of the little life
which depended upon her, she must continue to live and be strong. She
pressed her baby to her breast, and with amazing fortitude and heroism,
set herself to face the task before her.
Then followed many weeks of agony. Through the long nights the wind
howled about her hut, and she imagined she heard the voices of the
demons of the island clamouring for her soul. With fiendish fury they
yelled and shrieked round her frail little shelter, and often she
fancied she could hear them trying to force an entrance. In the morning,
with her child wrapped close and warm at her breast, she would go out
and pace the cliff in all weathers, finding in the worst tumult of the
elements a relief from the terrors of the night. Madness seemed settling
down upon her, but the thought of her child bore her through it all, and
the iron will of the De Robervals stood her in good stead.
Her vitality was marvellous. Something of the nature of her warrior
ancestors seemed to have entered into her veins, and she was able to
endure hardships such as had caused many a hardy soldier to succumb. The
winter, which closed in upon her, bade fair to be no less severe than
the preceding one, and now she had no one to help her in her daily
tasks. With her own hands she had to break the bare branches, carry in
fire-logs, and even cut down trees.
Her efforts to obtain fish were unsuccessful, although the ice, which
occasionally formed about the shore, was soon broken up by the wind, and
the birds, which still hovered about their island haunts, seemed to have
no difficulty in procuring their food. Fortunately, the powder and
shot, which they had carefully husbanded, still held out, and she had a
sufficient supply to carry her through the winter. She was loth to
destroy the only living creatures left upon the island. The hares, which
leaped across her path, she had learned to love, and the warmly-clad
northern birds had become very dear companions to her in her loneliness.
But the terrible necessity that stared her in the face knew naught of
mercy, and the winter stillness often re-echoed to the sound of her
arquebuse. So expert had she become that she rarely wasted a charge of
powder.
December passed, and January was nearly over, when the crowning sorrow
which Fate had in store for this heroic woman fell upon her. She woke
one morning to find her child cold and lifeless at her side. She seized
him in her arms, pressed the little icy form close to her warm breast,
but felt no answering warmth. Madly she kissed his lips and eyes and
cheeks; she would not believe that he was dead. When at length she
became convinced of the truth, she rushed wildly from the hut.
There had been a heavy snowfall during the night. She was in her bare
feet, but she heeded not the cold. She rushed to the cliff, her child in
her arms, her hair streaming about her shoulders. The end had at last
come; there was nothing further to live for. Fate had conquered. She
could but throw herself into the sea, and, with her baby in her arms,
confront the good God who had seen fit to pursue her with such
suffering. But as she stood upon the cliff, the rolling waves beating
against the rocky hollows in the grey dawn seemed to her the hoarse
voices of the demons. Once more she heard them calling for her soul, and
for the soul of her child. She turned, and retraced her steps to her
empty hut.
Laying the baby's body on the bed, she sat down beside it on the floor,
her hands clasped about her knees. Silent she sat there, beside the fire
she had heaped up to try to revive the child, till night fell, and the
stars shone out bright and clear in the frosty sky. Silent she sat till
they faded again before the grey light of dawn, and the morning of a new
day broke. The wind had risen during the night, and the waves had been
bellowing up the beach; but she heard neither wind nor waves. Dry-eyed
she sat beside her long-dead fire, and felt not cold nor fear. Her
faculties were deadened, her brain numbed, and it was not till her
faithful companion, Francois the bear, tired of waiting to be taken
notice of, pressed his nose against her clasped hands, and breathed his
warm breath into her face, that she awoke from her trance.
She rose mechanically, turned to her brush heap, selected some dry
sticks for her fire, and was about to place them on the embers when she
noticed that it had long been dead. Her hands were like ice; she was
chilled to the very bone; but the physical pain she now began to feel
saved her. It called forth her energies; quickly she went to work to
renew the fire, and the exertion drew her out of herself. As the flames
blazed up and crackled through the dry branches, the life began to come
back to her frozen limbs, and she roused herself to face her situation.
Her baby must be buried, and she must perform the task. She fashioned a
rough coffin out of some planks, and tenderly laid the tiny body in it.
As she fastened down the lid it seemed to her that every nail went
through her own heart, but she did not weep. Her eyes had long since
ceased to know the comfort of tears. Wearily she climbed the hillside
with her little burden, wondering within herself how much longer it
would be before she could lay her worn-out limbs beside those three rude
graves, and be done with suffering for ever.
The baby must not lie alone; she would open Claude's grave, and lay him
beside his father. The frozen ground was almost impenetrable, and it was
long before she succeeded in digging a hole deep enough to admit the
coffin. But patiently she toiled; slowly, with weak hands, hacking the
soil, and scraping the lumps out of the grave. At last she had made a
shallow opening which would hold the box, and when it was placed within
she knelt beside it, holding the crucifix which had saved Claude from
the waves, and prayed that their souls might rest in peace. A sudden
impulse seized her. All that she had treasured, all that she had lived
for, was in that grave. The crucifix was the last precious thing left to
her, and she laid it upon the coffin of her child. Then, without
trusting herself to kneel there longer, she rose hurriedly, cast back
the frozen soil into the double grave, and piled large stones in a heap
over the top, to prevent any animal scratching away the earth. Then she
went back to her hut, and resumed the weary round of her hopeless,
solitary life.
To a modern mind it may seem strange that reason did not utterly desert
her; but the age in which she lived may help to account for the strength
which sustained her. Though of noble blood, and tenderly nurtured, she
had been accustomed to view scenes of death and hardship with a calm
eye. Young as she was, she had beheld death in many forms; and the
sieges which her uncle's castle had several times resisted had taught
her something of a man's strength and endurance, which, coupled with a
woman's tenacious vitality, made her doubly strong. Then, too, she had
not been unfamiliar with loneliness. In her youthful days, before Marie
de Vignan had come to live with her, she had often been left alone for
weeks, with no one to relieve the monotony of her existence save old
Bastienne and the other servants; and during these periods she had
rarely spoken to any human being, save to issue some command. And now,
though she was absolutely alone, the struggle for existence, and the
presence of the young bear, her sole living companion, saved her reason.
Sometimes, however, the unwonted sound of her own voice made her start
and wonder if she who had spoken could really be one with the desolate
creature who trod this snow-clad island, hopelessly scanning the horizon
for some sign that there was a world other than the narrow one within
whose limits she was hemmed.
Night she dreaded. She kept her fire going through the long hours of
darkness, but often the glowing embers and tongues of flame would take
weird shapes before her eyes. Across the island the wind swept and
moaned, and every sound seemed to her the voice of some of the fabled
evil spirits of the north. Often she would wake from sleep feeling
ghostly presences near her--at her very side. At such times she would
creep close to her strange companion, Francois, and nestle against his
shaggy coat. The warmth of his body, and the thick, soft rug which they
had made from the skin of the old she-bear, were all that saved her from
perishing of the bitter cold of that terrible winter.
It was with unutterable relief that she saw the spring sun return, and
felt the warm south wind breathe upon the island hollows. Daily she had
watched with hopeless eyes for the sail that never came; but now, as the
green shoots began to glisten here and there on the brown sod, she once
more built her watchfire high on the cliff, and kept it blazing night
and day.
Winter seemed suddenly to have given place to summer. All through April
the warm sun streamed down upon the island, and for hours she sat
looking out over the blue stretch of scarcely moving water. But fickle
spring had a change in store. A chill, icy breath swept down from the
north; the pines and birches moaned and sighed once more; and the great
green waves crashed foaming on the beach. Her heart sank within her;
but ever southward she gazed. An inward voice seemed still to assure her
that help was on its way to her, and that her sufferings were nearly at
an end.
At last, on the second day of the storm, her eye caught sight, on the
broken horizon, of a sail. Steadily she watched it till there could no
longer be any doubt of its reality; and then she heaped a huge pile of
brushwood upon her fire. They had seen it! Nearer and nearer the vessel
was drawing. At last she was to be rescued!