“How have you borne it?” I cried. “What have you done?”
His answer made me start. “I have done very well,” he said; “I have not
been unhappy.”
The words seemed strange to me—but his voice was stranger yet. Surely
there were signs enough of unhappiness upon his face!
He seemed to read my thoughts. “Do not worry,” he went on, pressing his
hand in mine; “I will tell you all about it later.”
But my mind could not be turned away so easily. When I felt stronger and
sat up, I came back to the question, gazing at his haggard face and the
strange costume he wore.
“You can make no better clothing?” I cried; “and for food—what do you
do?”
“I have all the food that I can eat,” was the response, “and everything
else that I need. You shall see.”
“But have you seen _no_ one?” I persisted—“no ships, in all this time?”
“I have not wished to see any,” he said; and then he smiled gently as he
saw my stare of amazement. “I have not wished for anything,” he said
gently; “I have a home, as you shall see, and I have never needed
company. Have you forgotten how it used to be, dear brother?”
It took me a long time to understand his words. I was still gazing at
him helplessly. “And you mean,” I cried—“you mean that you still—you
still live in your music?”
“Yes,” he said, “I mean that.”
I was sitting upright and gripping his arm tightly. “And for twenty
years!” I gasped.
“Twenty thousand years would be all too little for music,” was the
reply.
I sank back, and he wrapped his arms about me. “Dear brother,” he said,
smiling, “let us not go into that just now. Wait until to-morrow, at the
least. Perhaps I can help you now, and we can walk.”
We had not far to go, and with his help I managed the task. Back from
the shore rose a high cliff, and a cavern in this was evidently his
home. At one side there was a pen, in which were three or four captive
goats; and upon the grassy lawn in front was a rough seat. With the
exception of a fireplace, and a path he had cut through the thicket,
there were no other signs that the place was inhabited.
I sank down upon the grass, and he brought me fresh water and fruits,
and cooked rice, which I ate hungrily. Then, when I was stronger, I got
up and began to examine his home.
The cave was the size of a large room; it was dry, but bare of all
furniture except a table and a roughly made chair and bed. My brother’s
possessions consisted mainly of a few objects (notably some tools) which
he and the sailors had been able to recover from the wreck of the ship.
There were a few skins which served him as bags in which to keep his
provisions; his bowls and dishes were gourds and the shells of turtles.
He was without artificial light, and he had only a few quires of
writing-paper from the ship-captain’s portfolio. For the rest, a violin
without strings, and a bow without hairs, made up a list of the
possessions so far as I could make them out. And it was upon the
strength of these that he had said to me: “I have everything that I
need!”
With rest and food my strength returned, and before long my mind was
altogether occupied with my brother.
First of all, of course, my thought was of his home—of his surroundings
and his ways. I rummaged about his cavern, wondering at his
makeshifts—or rather, at his lack of them.
“You have no lamp?” I cried. “But, Daniel, the wax-plant grows in this
climate. Or you might use tallow or oil.”
“Dear brother,” he answered, “you forget that I have no books to read.
And the few things that need light—cannot I just as well do them by
day?”
“But, then, the long nights—you sleep?”
“No,” said he gently, “I do not sleep”; and later, with his strange
smile, he added: “I live.”
“You live!” I echoed in perplexity; and then I stopped, catching the
quiet, steady gaze of his eyes.
“Just so,” he said, “I live. I had never lived before.”
Most of all, I think, I was perplexed at the sight of his violin. From
what I had seen of his youthful life, I could have imagined him spending
all day and all night with that; but here it hung, useless as a stick of
wood.
“You could have made strings for it,” I said. “I can make them for you.”
“But they would be of no use to me,” he answered.
“And all your music—you have given it up?”
“The music I have to do with,” he said, “has long ceased to be music
that anyone could play.”
“But, Daniel!” I protested.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Have you never read that Beethoven never heard
some of his greatest symphonies? Do you not understand how a musician
can comprehend music from a score? And from that, how he can create it
in his own mind and enjoy it, without ever writing it down or hearing
it?”
“Then,” I said, almost speechless with wonder; “then you compose music
in your mind?”
“No,” he said. “I _live_ music in my soul.”
These things were on the day of my rescue, after I had recovered from my
exhaustion. The words which he spoke I no more comprehended than if I
had been a child; but the strangeness of the thing haunted my soul, and
my questioning and arguing never ceased. All of this he bore with a
gentle patience.
I had my youthful recollections of Robinson Crusoe; and as a man of
science, I could naturally not spend two minutes conversing with Daniel
and examining his affairs without thinking some new device by which he
could have made his lot more tolerable. I could as yet hardly realise
that it was to be my own fate to live upon the deserted island for ever;
all my thoughts were of what I should have done had I been in his place.
He had no weapons, no traps, no gardens, no house—and so on. “But,
Edward,” he would say again and again, “do you not understand? Once
more—I have no _time_ for such things.”
“Time! _Time!_” I would cry. “But what _else_ have you? What have you to
_do?_”
“I have my life to live,” was the invariable response; “I have no time
for anything else.”
We were sitting that afternoon beneath the shade of a great forest-tree
before the cavern. Suddenly, seeing again the dazed look upon my face,
he put his arm about me.
“Listen to me, dear brother,” he said, smiling. “You remember Diogenes,
who lived in a tub? That was in order that he might have to call no man
master, and no thing—least of all his own body. And can you not see that
a man’s own soul is his soul just the same, whether he be on a desert
island or in the midst of a city of millions? And that mind, emotion,
will—he has the life of his soul to live?”
I sat surprised into silence; then suddenly I felt Daniel’s arm tighten
about me. “Ah, my dear brother,” he said, his voice lowering, “it will
be so hard! Do you think I have not realised it—how hard, _hard_ it will
be?”
“What will be hard?” I asked.
“Your life—everything you have to face,” he answered. “How can you not
see it—do you not see that _you_ have to live upon this island, too?”
“I have not thought of it much,” I said. “I have been thinking of you.”
“I know it,” he replied; “but I do not see how you are to bear it. I saw
it all while I watched you sweep in with the boat—I saw all the pain and
all the sorrow, and it was long before I made up my mind that it was not
best to let you die.” I started, but he held me tight.
“Yes,” he said, “and I fear that I chose wrongly. Is it not strange that
a man who has seen what I have seen should still be bound by such
chains—that what I knew would be best, I could not do, simply because
you were my brother?”
He must have felt my heart beating faster. “Listen to me,” he went on
quickly, but still with his frightful quietness. “Listen to me while I
try to tell you—what I can hardly bear to tell you. All the tragedy of
being is summed up in such a situation as this of ours; I am as helpless
before it as you are—both of us are as helpless as children.”
I gazed at him again, and suddenly he caught me with the wild look of
his eyes. He had no need to hold me with his hand.
“Brother,” he said, “you must think this out for yourself, as you can: I
cannot explain it to you—cannot explain anything about it. Suffice it to
say that for twenty years I have lived here, and that I have fought a
fight which no man has ever fought before, and seen what I believe no
man has ever seen. Knowing you as I do, I know that you can by no
possibility ever follow me. It is as if I had found the fourth dimension
of space; it is as if I dwelt in a house through the walls of which you
walked without seeing them. How you are to bear your life here, my dear,
dear brother, I do not know; but the truth is merciless, and you must
face it—you will have to live on this island all your days, I am sure;
and you will have to live here _alone_!”
A sudden shudder passed through me. “Daniel!” I gasped; it seemed to me
that his eyes were on fire. “You mean, I suppose, that you are going
away to some other part of the place—to another island?”
“Whether I go to another place or not, what matters that? No, I shall
not, I think; and rest assured that, whatever I do, I love you, my heart
yearns for you, and all my tenderness and love are yours; but also that
though you were with me, and held me in your arms four-and-twenty hours
a day—yet all the time you would be alone.”