IN WHICH THE SUN-TIME COMES AGAIN
I have told you the story of Ken's Island, but there are some things
you will need to know, and of these I will now make mention. Let me
speak of them in order as they befell.
And first I should record that we found the body of Edmond Czerny, cold
and dead, by that pool in the woods where so many have slept the
dreadful sleep. Clair-de-Lune stumbled upon it as we went joyously
through the sunny thickets and, halting abruptly, his startled cry drew
me to the place. And then I saw the thing, and knew that between him
and me the secret lay, and that here was God's justice written in words
no man might mistake.
For a long time we rested there, looking down upon that grim figure in
its bed of leaves, and watching the open eyes seeking that bright
heaven whose warmth they never would feel again. As in life, so in
death, the handsome face carried the brand of the evil done, and spoke
of the ungoverned passions which had wrecked so wonderful a genius.
There have been few such men as Edmond Czerny since the world began;
there will be few while the world endures. Greatly daring, a man of
boundless ambitions, the moral nature obliterated, the greed of money
becoming, in the end, like some burning disease, this man, I said,
might have achieved much if the will had bent to humanity's laws. And
now he had reaped as he sowed. The cloak that covered him was the cloak
of the Hungarian regiment whose code of honour drove him out of Europe.
The diamond ring upon the finger was the very ring that little Ruth had
given him on their wedding-day. The agony he had suffered was such as
many a good seaman had endured since the wreckers came to Ken's Island.
And now the story was told: the man was dead.
"It must have been last night," I said, at length, to Clair-de-Lune.
"His own men put him ashore and seized the ship. Fortune has strange
chances, but who would have named such a chance as this? The rogues
turned upon him at last, you can't doubt it. And he died in his
sleep--a merciful death."
The old man shook his head very solemnly.
"I know not," said he, slowly; "remember how rare that the island give
mercy! We will not ask how he died, captain. I see some-thing, but I
forget it. Let us leave him to the night."
He began to cover the body with branches and boughs; and anon, marking
the place, that we might return to it to-morrow, we went on again
through the woods, as men in a reverie. Our schemes and plans, our
hopes and fears, the terrible hours, the unforgotten days, aye, if we
could have seen that the end of them would have been this!--the gift of
a verdurous island, and the ripe green pastures, and the woods
awakening and all the glory of the sun-time reborn! For so the shadow
was lifted from us that for a little while our eyes could not see the
light; and, unbelieving, we asked, "Is this the truth?"
* * *
I did not tell little Ruth the story of the woods; but there were
whispered words and looks aside, and she was clever enough to
understand them. Before the day was out I think she knew; but she would
not speak of it, nor would I. For why should we call false sorrow upon
that bright hour? Was not the world before us, the awakening glory of
Ken's Island at our feet? Just as in the dark days all Nature had
withered and bent before the death-giving vapours, so now did Nature
answer the sun's appeal; and every freshet bubbling over, every wood
alive with the music of the birds, the meadows green and golden, the
hills all capped with their summer glory, she proclaimed the reign of
Nature's God. No sight more splendid ever greeted the eyes of
shipwrecked men or welcomed them to a generous shore. Hand-in-hand with
little Ruth I passed from thicket to thicket of the woods, and seemed
to stand in Paradise itself! And she--ah, who shall read a woman's
thoughts at such an hour as that! Let me be content to see her as she
was; her face grown girlish in that great release, her eyes sparkling
in a new joy of being, her step so light that no blade of grass could
have been bruised thereby. Let me hear her voice again while she lifts
her face to mine and asks me that question which even now I hear
sometimes:
"Jasper, Jasper! is it real? How can I believe it, Jasper? Shall we see
our home again--you and I? Oh, tell me that it is true, Jasper--say it
often, often, or I shall forget!"
We were in a high place of the woods just then, and we stood to look
down upon the lower valley where the rocks showed their rare green
mosses, and every crag lifted strange flowers to the sun, and little
rivulets ran down with bubbling sounds. Away on the open veldt the
doll-like houses were to be seen, and the ashes of her bungalow. And
there, I say, all the scene enchanting me, and the memory of the bygone
days blotted from my mind, and no future to be thought of but that
which should give me forever the right to befriend this little figure
of my dreams, I said:
"It is true, little Ruth--God knows how true--that a man loves you with
all his heart, and he has loved you all through these weary months.
Just a simple fellow he is, with no fine ways and small knowledge of
the world; but he waits for you to tell him that you will lift him up
and make him worthy----"
She silenced me with a quick, glad cry, and, winding both her arms
about my neck, she hid her face from me.
"My friend! Jasper, dear Jasper, you shall not say that! Ah, were you
so blind that you have not known it from the first?"
Her words were like the echo of some sweet music in my ears. Little
Ruth, my beloved, had called me "friend." To my life's end would I
claim that name most precious.
* * *
We were picked up by the American war-ship Hatteras ten days after the
sleep-time passed. I left the island as I found it--its secrets hidden,
its mysteries unfathomed. What vapour rises up there--whether it be, as
Doctor Gray would have it, from the bog of decaying vegetation, which
breathes fever to the south; whether it be this marsh fog steaming up
when the plants die down; or whether it be a subtler cloud given out by
the very earth itself--this question, I say, let the learned dispute. I
have done with it forever; and never, to my life's end, shall I see its
heights and its valleys again. The world calls me; I go to my home.
Ruth, little Ruth, whom I have loved, is at my side. For us it shall be
sun-time always; the night and the dreadful sleep are no more.