All day it had been uncomfortably hot and oppressive. The blazing sun
looked like a molten disk in a copper-colored sky. The horizon was
veiled in a sort of milky haze. The sea had quieted down to a dead calm.
There was not so much as a ripple on the ocean's smooth, oil-like
surface.
The big liner was still pounding her way toward Bombay. Another two days
and the passengers would go ashore. Saturday afternoon had already
arrived. Sailors were busy rigging canvas and putting up decorations for
the dance which was to take place that evening. In a cozy corner of the
promenade-deck an animated group, which included Grace, Mrs. Stuart,
Mrs. Phelps, Count von Hatzfeld, and Professor Hanson, were taking tea.
"I don't see how we can dance in this heat! I think we'd better put off
the ball, don't you, count?" exclaimed Grace, appealing to Mrs. Phelps'
aristocratic admirer.
Count Herbert von Hatzfeld was the typical Teuton, tall and blond, with
soldierly bearing. His mustache had the uptwist dear to the Kaiser. He
had good teeth, polished ways, and an engaging smile. Like most Germans,
his speech was stiff and slow, and he sat bolt upright, as if he had
accidentally swallowed a poker, which made it impossible for him to
unbend.
Grace's suggestion did not seem to appeal to him, for, with a hasty
glance at Mrs. Phelps, who appeared engrossed in something Professor
Hanson was saying, he replied:
"Ach--that is nothing. I like dancing with you in the heat better than
not dancing at all."
Grace purposely ignored the compliment. She had no desire to make Mrs.
Phelps jealous; so, hastening to draw the widow into the conversation,
she leaned over to her.
"What do you think about it, Mrs. Phelps? I just told the count that I
thought it too hot to dance to-night. What's your opinion?"
"Oh, dear, no," laughed the widow, fanning herself. "Let's enjoy
ourselves as long as we can. This weather's nothing to what we shall
get in the interior of India. I wouldn't miss the dance for anything."
"Mrs. Stuart, may I trouble you for some more tea?" asked Professor
Hanson, with his customary exaggerated politeness.
"You, professor, may have anything," replied Mrs. Stuart, with a smile
meant to be fascinating. Archly she added: "You know, I call you my
walking encyclopedia. Just think what you've taught me on this
voyage--all about ocean currents, the stars, wireless telegraphy. You
are a wonderful man."
The professor bowed and preened himself as he sugared his tea.
"You flatter me, my dear madam. Really, you flatter me. It has been an
honor and delight to talk with so charming and intelligent a woman."
"Do you hear that, Grace?" laughed Mrs. Stuart. "The professor says I'm
charming and intelligent."
"_Ja wohl_, it is true--it is true," exclaimed the count gallantly. "You
are very charming. The herr professor vouches for your intelligence
also. He is more competent than I to pass on that question. But I can
certainly vouch for your being irresistibly charming."
Mrs. Phelps frowned. For some reason she seemed to regard Mrs. Stuart as
more dangerous than Grace. Fanning herself vigorously, she exclaimed:
"It is hotter than I thought it was. I think we're in a warm corner.
Count, suppose we take a turn on deck."
"_Ja wohl_--if you wish it," responded the German, rising with native
politeness.
Somewhat reluctantly, Mrs. Stuart thought, he joined Mrs. Phelps, and
they walked off briskly together down the deck.
"Now they're gone, you'll have to amuse us, professor," laughed Mrs.
Stuart.
"I wish I had some one to fan me," complained Grace languidly.
"Allow me," exclaimed the professor eagerly.
Dapper and enthusiastic, he danced around, and, drawing up a chair, took
the fan which Grace willingly surrendered. The professor was not
exactly the man of her day-dreams, but he was as good as any one else
to arrange the rugs around her chair or to pick up the things she was
continually dropping. No one had seen the Hon. Percy Fitzhugh for the
last two days. He had not dared to show his face on deck since his
ignominious flight from the stoke-hold.
"Why is it so sultry, professor?" asked Grace wearily.
The professor fanned her gently, taking mental inventory as the gentle
breeze he made stirred his companion's veil. Her aristocratic features,
her transparent, satinlike skin, her long silky lashes drooping on a
velvety cheek, half concealing her dark, soul-disturbing eyes, the
slender white neck and full bosom covered with dainty open laces
partially concealing hidden charms, and an upturned, wistful mouth, with
full red lips that suggested unholy delights--all this the professor
noted, and he turned away his head and sighed. For all his science, he
was, after all, only a man. And, alas, he had a wife at home. Besides,
who knew better than he--the man of science--the futility of lifting
one's eyes to the stars. He fanned on in philosophic silence.
"Tell me why is it so hot?" repeated Grace, quite unconscious of the
emotions she was stirring in her bespectacled _vis-a-vis_.
"Really, I don't know," said the professor, startled out of his
reveries. Looking around at the sky, he added: "I think we're going to
have a change in the weather."
"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart anxiously. "What makes you think
that?"
"Well," replied the professor, scanning with the expert air of a weather
prophet the distant horizon, where the fiery sun was sinking behind a
great mass of purple cloud, "I don't much like the formation of those
clouds over there. In these latitudes they usually portend a storm of
considerable violence. The sultriness, the unnatural calm, are all storm
warnings to the sailor, and if another proof were wanted, the barometer
has been falling rapidly all day. We're sure to get something before
long."
"Anything's better than this heat," yawned Grace. "I'd love to see a big
storm, with tremendous waves washing all over the ship."
"Really, Grace, I think it's horrid of you to talk that way," protested
Mrs. Stuart, half in jest, half in earnest. "If we were wrecked or
something, it would serve you right."
"I wouldn't mind being wrecked," laughed Grace. "It would be awfully
romantic--so different from our conventional, humdrum life. Just fancy,
professor, if the ship were wrecked and you and I were cast away on a
desert island, with only monkeys, snakes, and possibly savages for
neighbors!"
"You jest, Miss Harmon," replied the professor seriously. "But such
things have occurred. Don't you remember what happened to the passengers
of the _Aeon_, when that steamer was wrecked on Christmas Island? The
survivors were ten weeks on a barren rock in the South Pacific. One
woman's hair, which was brown, without a trace of gray, when she sailed
on the _Aeon_, turned almost white, as a result of the privations and
nerve strain endured on the island."
"Yes, I remember reading about it in the papers," said Mrs. Stuart.
"Possibly she lost her hair dye in the panic."
"I'd look pretty with white hair," laughed Grace. "It's the fashion now
to wear tufts of white hair among your own."
"If a cannibal cooked you _a la fricassee_, it wouldn't matter how you
looked!" growled Mrs. Stuart.
"Talking of desert islands," said the professor thoughtfully, "a very
interesting sociological problem might be solved if one had the time to
be shipwrecked and the courage to put my theory to the test."
"What theory is that?" demanded Grace, with languid curiosity.
The professor peered dubiously at both women over his gold-rimmed
spectacles, as if questioning their ability to grasp intellectual
problems of any nature. Then pedantically, pompously, as if addressing a
college class, he went on:
"Ethnology and sociology, as you are perhaps aware, are pet sciences
with me. I have always taken keen interest in studying man in his
relations to his fellow man, particularly in his relations with women."
He paused, as if afraid he had said something indelicate. Mrs. Stuart
sat up, made her pillows more comfortable, and said, with a laugh:
"This sounds interesting. Go on, professor!"
Thus encouraged, the professor continued:
"We must not lose sight of the fact that man as we see him
to-day--clean-shaven, manicured, trouser-creased--is only a step removed
from the naked savage ancestor who in the palaeolithic age emerged from
his cave, club in hand, to defend his family or provide it with food.
The man of the stone age tore flesh from the skeletons of wild animals
he slew, and made of his wife a beast of burden. To-day, our city
dweller employs a French _chef_, and buys for his wife a box at the
opera. Conditions have altered radically since the dawn of history,
thousands of years of education and refining influences have tamed the
primeval man and woman and taught them how to keep their instincts,
their passions, under control. Yet the change is far more apparent than
real. Civilization is purely artificial. It is only a compromise, a
convention. Our boasted refinement at best is little more than skin
deep. There's an old saying: 'Scratch a Russian and you'll find a
Tartar.' We might also say: 'Scratch civilized man and you'll find a
primeval brute.' Fundamentally, men and women of to-day are the same as
their savage ancestors, they are moved by the same impulses and desires
as when in the dark quaternary epoch they roamed naked through the
virgin forests, ferocious-looking and bestial in appetite, their matted
hair falling over their brutal faces, their prominent teeth sharp and
pointed like wolves' fangs. By nature we are thieves, murderers, liars,
cheats."
"You have a fine opinion of your fellow men, I must say," interrupted
Grace, with a mischievous smile at Mrs. Stuart.
"I am stating a cold, scientific fact, and one that is unqualifiedly
endorsed by every self-respecting ethnologist," replied the professor
firmly. "Civilization," he went on, "teaches us that it is wrong to
kill, to steal, to lie, and society has amended Nature's law by
decreeing that the murderer shall be executed, the thief imprisoned, the
liar and cheat ostracized. That, frankly, is the chief reason why the
majority of us behave ourselves. But some men are so constituted that
they are unable to control their brutal instincts, their evil passions.
Morally and mentally, sometimes physically, even, they resemble in
striking fashion their savage prototypes of six thousand years ago. For
instance, take that fireman Armitage--a colossus in physical strength,
obeying only brutal impulses, to all intents and purposes an untutored
barbarian. Civilization, you see, has done nothing for him. He is the
primeval man. To me he is interesting, for he proves the truth of my
atavistic theory."
Grace yawned. The professor was too deep for her. In fact, she found him
rather tiresome, particularly as she could not guess what he was driving
at. Mrs. Stuart, however, was a more attentive, if somewhat puzzled,
listener.
"But what has all this to do with being wrecked on a desert island?" she
demanded.
The professor smiled in a superior kind of way.
"Allow me to come to my point," he said, with a lordly wave of his hand.
"Suppose a ship like the _Atlanta_, for instance, were wrecked, and the
only two persons who survived the disaster--a man and a woman--found
themselves on a desert island, far from the regular track of steamers
and with the remotest chance of any vessel seeing their signal of
distress. Suppose the man was one of the crew, a common sailor, a brute,
say, of the type of that Armitage fellow, and the woman one of the
first-cabin passengers, a beautiful, highly cultured girl, rich,
luxury-loving, fastidious, such, for instance, as Miss Harmon----"
"Please do me the favor to leave me out of your comparisons,"
interrupted Grace coldly. She did not exactly relish the coupling of her
name with that of a disreputable stoker.
"Oh--I only wanted to make my meaning as plain as possible," stuttered
the professor, in profuse apology.
"Your meaning isn't plain at all!" retorted Grace, not knowing whether
to laugh or to be angry.
"It's about as dense as an Irish Channel fog. But I grasp enough to see
that it's interesting," exclaimed Mrs. Stuart. "Please don't talk in
parables any longer, professor. Come quickly to the point. I'm getting
interested."
"This is the point," smiled the professor. "What would be this man's and
woman's attitude to each other? Separated under normal social conditions
by the widest gulf imaginable, on the desert island they would be thrown
together in the closest intimacy. The highly educated woman, the refined
product of centuries of high breeding, would suddenly find herself the
associate and helpmate of an uncouth, brutal fellow barely redeemed from
barbarism. Necessity would compel her to look to him for food. Instinct
would prompt him to build her a shelter from the elements, and to
protect her from attack. As their enforced sojourn on the island grew
longer, the common sailor would begin to cast covetous, lustful eyes on
his involuntary companion, and as each day the hope of rescue became
more remote, he might insist on ties the very suggestion of which would
overwhelm her with horror. Yet with no one but God above to call upon
for help, she would be completely at the man's mercy. She would be
powerless to resist or to deny herself. Her refinement, her culture,
her high intelligence, would go for nothing. The primeval man, the
beast, would assert his rights and only death could save her honor from
the exercise of his brutal force."
"What a horrid nightmare to conjure up," interrupted Grace, with a
shudder. "If such a thing happened to me, I'd jump into the sea."
"I'd pick up a carving-knife and stick him in the ribs," exclaimed Mrs.
Stuart, laughing.
"I don't think either of you would do anything of the sort," rejoined
the professor. "The sailor would quickly pull Miss Harmon out of the
water, and there wouldn't be carving-knives lying around with which to
do any rib-sticking. No, you would let Nature work out the problem."
"What!" cried both women simultaneously. "You mean to say that we
should----"
"No--not at all," smiled the professor. "You go too quickly. I have
merely stated the sailor's desires. Now, the interesting question
arises: Will he exercise his rights as the stronger, will he drag this
delicate, highly nurtured girl down to his own animal level, or will she
by sheer force of character, by her fine mentality and spiritual force,
be able to tame the beast and lift him up to her level? That is the
problem--a most interesting one from the sociological standpoint; but it
could be solved only by being put to an actual test."
"I hope you don't expect either of us to make the experiment," laughed
Mrs. Stuart.
"If you did, I should certainly aspire to be the sailor," retorted,
gallantly, the man of science.
"The hypothesis is an interesting one," said Grace thoughtfully. "After
all, the situation is not impossible."
The professor rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
"Quite so--quite so!" he replied. "What, in your opinion, would be the
outcome?"
For a moment Grace left the question unanswered. Then, decisively, she
said:
"Such a girl would never yield. Her training, her pride, her
self-respect, would protect her. She would die before she degraded
herself."
"The idea is preposterous!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart impatiently.
The professor shook his head.
"My dear ladies, you are both mistaken. I once knew a New York girl,
highly educated, wealthy, popular with her friends, who gave up
everything, a luxurious home, her position in society, to follow the man
she loved--a full-blooded Indian--back to the tents of his people.
To-day that girl is living Indian fashion on a Western reservation. In
place of her one-time elegance she wears her hair down over her
shoulders, an old blanket keeps her warm, her proud carriage has given
place to the uncertain, shambling gait, on her back is strapped her
Indian papoose. Her old life is practically blotted out."
"Ah," interrupted Grace, "but that is a different case. She loved the
Indian. If the girl on the island loved the sailor, she might fall, too,
but love should never degrade. On the contrary, it should redeem and
uplift the man."
The professor nodded approvingly.
"Bravo! bravo!" he cried.
"Really, Grace, I had no idea you were so sentimental!" exclaimed Mrs.
Stuart.
"In other words," went on the professor, addressing the younger woman,
"you think----"
"I think," replied Grace slowly and deliberately, "that if they found
they loved each other, she would not quite descend to his level nor
would he quite ascend to hers. There would be a compromise. In other
words, she would stoop; he would reach up. That is my view."
"A most sensible view--most sensible!" said the professor, with
enthusiasm.
Mrs. Stuart sprang up from her chair. Collecting her wraps, she said:
"This debate is highly interesting and instructive, but if I stop to
listen to any more I shall never be dressed for dinner. Come, Grace,
don't forget we dine earlier to-night, because of the dance."
The professor assisted Grace to her feet.
"Thanks," she said. "I've enjoyed our talk so much. You've set me
thinking. It's so seldom one is encouraged to think of anything worth
while."
The ladies disappeared below, and the professor, tipping his cap, turned
on his heel and continued his walk. On the promenade-deck, where a dozen
sailors were busy preparing for the evening's coming festivities, he
met Captain Summers, who was enjoying a smoke before dinner.
"Well, captain, pretty warm for dancing, eh? Is it going to get any
cooler?"
The captain stopped short and squinted around at the sky. As he took in
the weather signs, an anxious look came into his face, and he replied
gruffly:
"We'll get something to-night, that's sure. The glass is falling
rapidly. But I wouldn't say anything about it to the ladies, if I were
you."