Another fortnight passed and still no sign from the great wide world
beyond the seas. The days came and went with monotonous regularity.
According to the notches on Grace's shell calendar, which she had made
carefully with each rising and setting of the sun, they were now well on
toward the end of September. Three long months had gone by since that
terrible night when the hurricane drove the ill-fated _Atlanta_ on the
reef.
Would a ship never come? This question Grace had asked herself almost
hourly until gradually the belief came firmly rooted in her mind that
they would never be rescued, that she was doomed to spend the rest of
her life in this unknown, out of the way island, her grief-stricken
parents believing that she had been drowned when the _Atlanta_ went
down. If any of the survivors reached land, as she supposed some of them
did, the news would have been instantly cabled to America, and her name
would be listed among the missing. No doubt her father had long given
her up for dead. It would never occur for him to come in search of her.
Nor was there much chance of a passing vessel ever seeing the smoke from
the signal-fire. As Armitage had said, they were probably hundreds of
miles out of the shipping track. In all probability no human being had
ever set foot on that islet before.
Yet she never quite lost courage. Each day she made her weary pilgrimage
to the summit of Mount Hope and eagerly scanned the horizon. Only
disappointment awaited her. There was never anything in sight to bring
joy to her heart.
They kept the big signal-fire going just the same. Night and day it
burned, sending its flaming message of distress over the vast waste of
heaving waters. It was never permitted to die down. Fresh fuel was piled
on until the flames leaped high in the air or the thick black smoke went
curling up in a long, straight column to the sky. Either the smoke or
the blaze must be seen miles away at sea. Any moment some ship might
turn out of her course and come to investigate.
Otherwise they seldom discussed the chances of rescue. By mutual consent
it seemed to be a tabooed topic. Armitage never failed in his
self-appointed task; he kept the fire going with a plentiful supply of
driftwood, but that was all. He never voluntarily mentioned the
signal-fire or the prospects of getting away, and intuitively she knew
that it was a subject that was distasteful to him. If he took the pains
to keep up the fire, he did it for her sake. She understood that, and
she was mutely grateful to him for it. In return, she was considerate
for his feelings. She avoided speaking of her desire for a ship to
arrive. Occupied with their daily tasks, they never broached the
subject. When he went up the hill to attend to the fire he was always
alone, and she tactfully selected a time when he was occupied about the
encampment to make her daily climb to Mount Hope.
What if help did not come? Could they--he and she--go on forever living
together like this? She was an intelligent girl. She knew that the
present relations between herself and Armitage were artificial, and
based wholly upon the conventions of organized society. But they were
unnatural relations, contrary to the laws of nature. In her heart she
knew that she cared more for this strange, silent man than she dared to
admit. Yes, he was the man of her day-dreams, the man she had waited
for, the man she could love. She did not ask what he had been. She only
knew him as he was. She loved him for what he was. He was poor, he was
not what the world calls of gentle birth, yet he had qualities that in
her eyes raised him above all men more favored by fortune. He was one of
nature's noblemen. Some great secret sorrow had wrecked his life, but it
had not taken from him his sweetness of character, his beauty of face
and mind, his manly courage, his courtesy to a lonely, helpless woman.
She loved the rich tones of his voice, the sad, wistful gaze in his fine
eyes when they looked silently into hers. She knew of what he was
thinking. She knew the dread that was on his heart--the dread of a
misfortune a hundred times worse than any that had yet embittered his
life. The dread that one day, sooner or later, the ship would come to
carry away from him forever the woman who had once more made life seem
worth living.
One morning Grace was sitting sewing, deftly plying the fish-bone needle
which Armitage had made for her. She was making a desperate effort to
patch up, for the hundredth time, her old battered ball-dress, which
now, reduced to shreds, scarcely covered her decently. Armitage, no
better off as regards attire, was stretched out on the sands near her,
watching her work. It was a domestic scene. Any stranger chancing to
pass that way would have taken them for a young married couple, the man
evidently a fisherman, the woman, his wife, doing the household mending.
A short distance away was their cabin, and on the fire close by the iron
saucepan in which a savory mess was cooking for their noonday meal.
Nothing was lacking to make the picture of connubial felicity complete.
Some such thought occurred to Armitage, for suddenly he blurted out:
"Do you believe in marriage?"
She looked up in surprise.
"Do I believe in marriage?" she smiled. "What a singular question. Of
course I do."
"What do you understand by marriage?" he persisted.
Grace thought for a moment and then readily replied:
"Marriage is a contract entered into by a man and woman by which they
become husband and wife."
Nodding assent, he went on:
"That is to say, a contract entered into between themselves?"
"Not exactly," replied Grace hesitatingly. "Rather I should say an act
before a magistrate or a religious ceremony by which the legal
relationship is sanctioned by the law and church."
"Then, without such act or ceremony, you would not consider a marriage
binding or right?"
"No," answered Grace emphatically.
He remained silent a moment, and then he said:
"But suppose a man and a woman loved each other and wished to enter into
the married state, and yet were so placed that it was impossible for
their union to have the sanction of either the law or church, what
then?"
Grace laid down her work and, shaking her head, looked gravely at her
interlocutor:
"It is difficult to answer such a question offhand," she said. "I think
it would depend altogether on the circumstances and chiefly on the
personal views of those directly concerned. Some people scoff at
marriage. Among them are many of my own sex. They regard marriage merely
as a time-honored, worn out convention which really means nothing. They
get married, of course, not because they believe in it as an
institution, but as a matter of form, because their mothers did it
before them, because it is the thing to do. But not unreasonably, they
argue, that nowadays when it is so easy to obtain a divorce on the most
trivial pretext, there is not much left about marriage that is sacred
and binding."
He listened attentively. When she ceased speaking, he asked quietly:
"And what is your view? Do you indorse these opinions?"
"No, I do not," she replied, meeting his steady gaze frankly. "I
believe in marriage. I think it is the noblest gift that civilization
has bequeathed to the human race. It marks the great divide between man
and the brute. More than that, it protects the woman who is, naturally,
the weaker, and, above all, it protects the offspring."
"You are right," he rejoined quickly, "yet isn't it curious that man
seems happiest under monogamy, which is directly contrary to nature. Man
is naturally polygamous."
"Ah, but that is only brute love. It rests on nothing tangible. Like a
tiny flame, it is extinguished by the first adverse breath of wind. Man
thinks he is polygamous. But that is only the beast in him--the beast
with which his better and higher nature is ever at war. The superior man
learns to control his appetites, the baser man indulges them, and
therefore is nearer to the tailed ancestry from which he originally
sprang. That is not love as I understand it."
He leaned quickly forward.
"How do you understand love?" he asked, in low, eager tones.
Grace smiled, and, poutingly, she protested:
"Why do you question me in this way?"
Slightly raising himself on one hand, he drew nearer to her and looked
steadily up into her face until the boldness of his gaze embarrassed
her. Her cheeks reddened, and she lowered her eyes.
"What do you know about love?" he demanded hoarsely.
"Every woman knows or thinks she knows," she replied, with affected
carelessness.
He was silent for a moment, and then he went on:
"Suppose a woman--say a friend of yours--loved a man, with all the
strength of her heart and soul. Suppose special conditions made her
legal union with that man impossible. Would you forgive her if her great
love tempted her to give herself to that man, or would you insist that
she should suffer and make him suffer--alone?"
She listened with averted face. Well she knew the purport of these
questions. But her face remained impassive, and her voice was calm as
she replied gently:
"No woman may sit in judgment over another woman. No woman can tell
positively what she might do under all circumstances. The temptation
might be such that even a saint would succumb. That reminds me. Do you
know the story of the Abbess of Jouarre?"
"No," replied Armitage; "what is it? Tell it me."
He settled down more comfortably in the sand to listen. Grace smiled,
and took up her sewing again.
"It's a story that made a deep impression on me," she said. "It was
during the bloodiest days of the French Revolution. On the Place de la
Concorde a hundred lives were being sacrificed on the guillotine daily
to appease the savage fury of the populace. Among the aristocrats
sentenced to death and who awaited in the Temple prison their turn to be
summoned to the scaffold was a chevalier, scion of one of the proudest
families of France and an Abbess, a woman of gentle birth, both of whom
had been denounced to the Revolutionary tribunal. They had known and
loved each other as children, and they met in prison for the first time
since the Abbess had taken her vows. Closely associated within the
dungeon's grim walls they soon discovered that time had not killed
their youthful infatuation. In the shadow of death the Abbess was
willing to admit that she had loved the chevalier all these years, that
she had prayed for him and carried his image in her heart. He clasped
her in his arms and, pleading his unconquerable passion, he urged her to
forget her vows and give herself to him. Kindly, but firmly, she
withdrew from his embrace and gravely recalled him to a sense of duty.
She declared that being now the affianced bride of Heaven, it was
forbidden for her to even think of earthly ties or joys. But the
chevalier refused to listen to reason or to calm his ardor. He insisted
that such love as theirs was sacred, and that her vows to the Church did
not bind her, now that she was about to die. In another few hours they
would both be dead. Her duty, during the short time she had yet to live,
was to yield to the promptings of her heart rather than to heed the
dictates of her conscience. Their union, he said, would be a marriage
before God, and after their earthly death they would be united forever
in Heaven. The Abbess listened. Her great love gradually gained the
mastery over her moral scruples. Her opposition weakened. The chevalier
took her again in his arms."
Grace ceased speaking. Armitage, his face betraying more and more
interest, waited for her to continue.
"That is not all," he said interrogatively.
Grace shook her head.
"No, now comes the tragedy of it." Continuing, she went on: "The next
day the prison doors were thrown open, and brutal jailers read out the
lists of names of those prisoners who that morning must ride in the
fatal death-cart. Among the first summoned was the chevalier. Tenderly
he bade the Abbess farewell. Death he hailed with joy, for it marked the
beginning of their coming felicity in another and better world. He
disappeared, and the Abbess awaited her turn. Other names were called,
but hers was not among them. The jailer stopped reading and turned to
depart. The Abbess tremulously asked when her hour, too, would come. The
jailer answered: 'You go free--by order of the Tribunal.'"
Again Grace was silent. Armitage seemed lost in thought. Presently he
said:
"And the Abbess--what became of her?"
"She had to bear her cross for her great sin. Her punishment was worse
than death. Not only had she broken her vows and offended Heaven, but
she was separated forever from the man to whom she had given her love.
Cursed by the Church, shunned by everybody, she wandered miserably from
village to village, leading by the hand a little child."
Armitage was silent for a few minutes, and then he said:
"You were reminded of this story by some remark you had previously made:
What was it?"
"I said in answer to your hypothesis as to what a woman would or would
not do for a man she loved, that even a saint might succumb, given
certain circumstances. The Abbess was a saint. Yet she sinned."
"I don't think I would call that a sin," objected Armitage. "The real
sinner was the judge who pardoned her."
"Why not the chevalier who tempted her?" rejoined Grace.
He made no answer, but remained looking steadfastly at her. Then rising
abruptly to his feet, he began to pace nervously up and down the sands.
His face was pale, his eyes flashed, the muscles around his mouth
twitched. He gave every sign of being under an intense emotional strain.
There was something to be said, and he dare not say it. It was a novelty
for him to find himself lacking in courage. At any other time he would
have faced a tiger about to spring; he would have looked without
flinching into the muzzle of a leveled rifle. But at that instant he
quailed like a craven--he dared not tell this girl that he loved her and
wanted her for his wife.