LOVE IN A MIST
XLIV
The effect of the mate's death on The Girl's spirits was visible at
once. The cloud had lifted from her face before they got fairly home.
Her eyes shone untroubled, though a look of horror and disgust came
into them whenever they rested on the swirling gray cloud behind them.
In her very movements Wulf noticed a new and gracious freedom.
And his judgment did her no injustice in the matter, nor imputed it, in
any slightest degree, to mere exultation over a fallen enemy. For he
knew to the full in what terror of the dead man she had lived, and how
the fear of him, both for herself and himself, had lain like a weight
on her soul and darkened all her outlook.
He felt as she did about it. He could not regret the fact of the man's
death, but the manner of it gave him poignant distress.
In spite of their hard work they had neither of them much appetite for
food that night. They turned in early and slept as they had not slept
for long, without fear and without strain. The darkness was no longer
pregnant with ungaugeable terrors. The dawn was like the beginning of
a new life to them.
Wulf, indeed, saw again that night, and many a night thereafter, the
horror of the clustering birds and that over which they bristled and
fought. But he woke each time to the immeasurable relief of the man's
death. That had been essential to their own safety, but he thanked God
with his whole heart that it had not been by his hand that he had had
to die. For that he never could be sufficiently grateful. He had
played him fair and more than fair. He was dead, and their consciences
and their hearts were alike at rest.
They woke next morning to the close folding of the mist, and he had to
set to work at once making good the broken companion-doors to keep it
out of the cabin as much as possible.
Being but a poor carpenter, the only way he could do this was by
nailing a blanket to the top of the hatch and pegging it down tightly
to the top step. But he foresaw that the next gale would blow his
stop-gap to pieces and destroy their comfort below. So did the dead
man's deeds live after him, and it was not the only one.
They were sitting at their mid-day meal, when the thick silence of the
mist outside was rent by a shrill frightened scream right above their
heads, and almost simultaneous with it a heavy thump, and then, on the
deck above them, blows and screams and the sound of some large body
tumbling to and fro.
The Girl sprang up with a white face and scared eyes and a word of
dismay. Wulf picked up his axe and burst through his carefully
adjusted blanket at the top of the companion. Then she heard the
chop-chop of his axe on the deck, and the fall of something into the
water, and he came down laughing at the start it had given him also.
"It was the biggest bird I ever saw," he said. "It had banged itself
against the mast, I think, and was flopping all over the place. I
chopped its head off and pitched it overboard. It must have measured
six feet at least from tip to tip of its wings. It gave you a start."
"I was just thinking of that man and how different everything was now
he is gone, and then that horrid scream----"
"Yes, it was enough to make anyone jump."
"It seemed to me for a moment that it was his spirit come back to
trouble us still, as he had done while he lived."
"It won't come. Unless it's got inside a bird, as he always said. You
must try to forget all about him."
"It is not easy. But, whether it is wicked of me or not, I thank God
he is dead."
"And I thank God that he did not die by my hand. I shall never cease
to be thankful for that."
"We shall never be able to build a boat now," she said presently,
following out the natural train of her thought.
"I'm afraid not,"--with a doleful shake of the head. "Unless you have
had any experience in such things."
"And so we may have to pass the rest of our lives here."
"It is better to consider how very much worse off we might be. For
myself.... Besides, one never knows. Some unexpected chance may turn
up."
"And you can bear to think of living on and on and on here till--the
end?"
"I can bear to think of it very much better than I could a short time
ago.... No cloud is black on both sides. Look on the bright side.
Either of us might have been here alone. That would have been
terrible----"
"I should have been dead."
"But instead of that we are two, we have comfortable shelter, the
mighty blessing of fire, food enough to last us as long as we live----
"It sounds like that man in the Bible--the man who had his barns full,
all he wanted to eat and drink, and so he made merry. And that night
he died, if I remember rightly."
"We are not boasting. We arrived here lacking everything, and
everything has been provided for us. We have reason to be grateful.
Even Macro was necessary. He showed us how to turn the wreck-pile to
account. If I had come ashore alone I doubt if I would ever have gone
out to it again. It did not attract me.... And--he found you and
brought you ashore."
"And that was the beginning of the end."
"No--the beginning of better things. We will hope the end is a long
way off yet."
"I wonder ... and what it will be," said she thoughtfully.
And he wondered if in her heart there was any sweet white seed of hope
akin to that which was striking its roots so deeply in his own,--and if
not, if it might be possible to plant it there.
XLV
This new life, free from the shadow of perpetual menace, was full of
rare and delicate charm for both of them, differing only in quality and
degree according to that wherewith Nature had endowed them.
One root-thought was inevitable to both their minds--that here were
they two, cut off from the rest of the world, probably for the term of
their natural lives. Here, as far as they could foresee, they two must
live, alone,--together; and here, in the end, they must die; their
living and their dying alike unseen and unknown except by their Maker.
In his heart the white seed of the greater hope was striking deep and
strong, filling his whole being with a new and exquisite delight before
even it had had time to shoot and flower.
Exile for life on that barren strip of sand, which with Macro as sole
fellow-sufferer would have been barely tolerable, assumed a very
different aspect with Avice Drummond as his companion; and with her as
sole companion, an aspect of supremest joy and expectation. It was no
longer a thing to look forward to with foreboding, or at best with dull
and hopeless acquiescence in the inevitable. The shadow had suddenly
lifted. The desert had suddenly blossomed like the rose. The future
smiled shyly as does the dawn with promise of the day.
But this new great hope, and the sense of it all in him, were of so
fine and delicate a nature that he hardly dared to whisper it even in
his inmost heart, lest she should see some sign of it and take fright,
and all his hope vanish like smoke in a gale.
She was so fair and sweet, so charming and gracious, so pre-eminently
and perfectly desirable. It was highest and keenest delight--delight
so keen that at times it had in it the elements of pain--simply to
watch the play of her face, so eloquently responsive to the quick
emotional soul within,--the large dark eyes so clear and frank, so
unreservedly trustful of him.
He would sooner die than forfeit one iota of the honour her faith
conferred on him. And that great springing hope of his must be
carefully covered and concealed, until such time as he should discover
in her eyes the outlook of a hope responsive.
It would come. It would come, he said to himself--in time--when she
should have come to know him still better and to trust him still more
fully--to the uttermost.
For the ultimate goal of his desire was, in the manner of its possible
attainment at all events, somewhat nebulous to him, though it set the
whole distant future ablaze with rosy fires. In the nature of things,
circumstanced as they were, such ultimate attainment, if ever it were
reached, could be reached only by the treading of unusual ways. And to
require that of any girl--and especially of a girl such as this,
high-born, intelligent beyond most, and deeply versed in the great
world's ways--was asking of her more than any true man, truly loving,
could bring himself to ask,--unless to both their hearts no other thing
were possible,--unless the barrier of Circumstance left no other
possible hope or way.
And for the proving of that, Time held the keys and must have his say.
He wondered often, and with keenest anxiety, if her heart could
possibly have come through all the strange experiences of her previous
life unchallenged, unassailed, unwon. Seeing that she was what she was
it seemed to him almost impossible.
She was to him so compact of goodness and beauty, so fashioned to
bewitch, that he could not imagine any man impervious to her grace and
charm. What manner of men could they be who, consorting with her daily
and on terms of equality, had failed to capture a heart so made for
loving?
He recalled in minutest detail all she had told him of her past life
and friends and acquaintances, figured them all in his mind, weighed
them jealously in the scales of his own devotion, and could not
discover one trace of emotion towards one or another, but rather of
aversion towards all.
Again and again she had expressed the joy she had felt at the prospect
of her escape to a freer and larger life. It was, of course, not
impossible that that feeling might but hide some heart-breaking
disappointment of the earlier times. But he did not think so. She was
to him truth personified, though still a woman. He believed in her
absolutely, as a man should in the woman who holds his heart. So far
as assurance could go,--without the definite question which he longed
to put but did not yet dare, lest the hopeful anxiety of his present
state should be turned to hopeless regret,--he felt fairly safe in
building on a rosy future.
How she regarded himself he could not surely say. But she trusted him
and that was a good foundation for his building.
And she? Well, that is our story!
XLVI
That thick white bank of mist clung to them for the best part of a
week. But, freed from all fear of treacherous assault, it troubled
them little.
Once they had to go ashore for water, but got back safely by means of
their guiding-line, and as they pushed through the fog they recalled
that former time, when the mate's grim figure fashioned itself suddenly
out of the clammy whiteness and brought them near to a disastrous end.
For the rest they had no scarcity. The fish bit as well in the fog as
in the clear, and they had pork and flour for weeks to come.
In their narrow confinement to the ship, their intimacy and knowledge
of one another grew with the days. She talked well, and he was an
excellent listener, and led her on and on to tell him of the past and
all that had interested her in it, and mused on all she said, and
sought in it enlightenment as to her heart's freedom or otherwise.
Once, when she had been roving at length through her earlier days, she
broke off suddenly with, "But, mon Dieu, I am doing all the talking!
Now, tell me of yourself!"
"I have so little to tell compared with you. Shall I tell you of
school-days--of college--of the hospitals--of my patients and their
ailments?"
"Tell me why you left it all to seek the new life."
"For very much the same reason as you did, I imagine. I was living in
a groove and I wanted something wider and larger."
"And now you are sorry."
"So very sorry that if I had the chance again, and knew beforehand all
that was to come, I would jump at it like the fish to our hooks," as he
hauled one aboard and knocked it an the head. "And you?"
"Ye--es, I think I would have come also. Not perhaps if I had known I
would have to float about on that mast. It was so terribly
cold,"--with a shiver. "For the rest, I have no regrets, but it is
perhaps too soon to say. In ten years hence I may have come to be
sorry."
"Ay--ten years hence!" he said musingly. "Many things may happen in
ten years. There's a fish on your hook," and she hauled it in and let
him dispose of it.
As they sat at supper that night the blanket which supplied the place
of companion-doors began to flap, and, going up to look, he found the
mist whirling away before a gusty breeze.
"It's going to blow," he told her, "and when it's blown itself out we
may have a spell of fine weather again," and he proceeded to block the
opening with some planks he had chipped to size as well as he could
with his axe.
The wind was rising rapidly, and before they turned in for the night
the birds had all come in and were whirling and screaming round the
ship, and lighting on it as was their custom in bad weather. But they
had grown accustomed to their clamour and both slept soundly.
Wulf was shaken back to life in the dead of the early morning by a
restive jerk of the ship at her rusty anchor-chain, followed by a
momentary sense of the unusual. And while he lay sleepily considering
the matter, his bunk heeled slowly over--over--over, and rolled him
right against the side of the ship. The sound of a heavy fall,
somewhere beyond, made him scramble out very wide awake, full of
wonder, but dimly perceptive of what must have happened. The rusty
chain had evidently parted, the ship had drifted ashore broadside on,
and the force of the wind had caused her to heel over. The sound he
had heard was, he feared, of Miss Drummond's falling out of her bunk.
He flung on some clothes and clawed his way out to the cabin. The
floor of it was tilted up at such an angle that he had to claw his way
up by the side wall as best he could.
"Are you hurt?" he cried, outside The Girl's door.
"Bruised a bit. Whatever has happened?"
"The cable has parted and we're ashore on our beam-ends. No danger, I
think."
"I'll be out in a minute."
Then he became aware of a smell of burning, and found that the sand
hearth with its core of fire had slid downhill and was smouldering
among the silken draperies, which were beginning to break into flame.
He crawled back and tore them down and bunched them tightly together,
then scooped up handfuls of sand and smothered every cinder he could
see.
Miss Drummond's door opened just as he had finished.
"Stop where you are," he cried. "I'll come up for you. Everything's
on the slope. I think we'd better sit on the floor and let ourselves
down by degrees."
Outside, the wild screaming of the birds mingled eerily with the rush
and howl of the gale. It was still quite dark. He could not see her,
but groped about till he felt her blankets, then found her hand and
eased her carefully down the slope, and they crouched side by side in
the angle made by the floor and the side of the ship.
"Will she go down?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, no. No fear of that. We're aground. But whether she'll ever
come straight again I don't know. Did it pitch you out of your bunk?"
"Yes. I woke with a crash on the floor, and could not imagine what had
happened."
"I hope you didn't break yourself."
She was silent for a moment and then said, "I'm afraid I did break
something, but I couldn't----"
"Broke something? What?" he asked hastily.
"My arm feels numb and queer. I fell on it."
"Let me feel it," and, kneeling in front of her, he groped till he
found it, and felt it with anxious gentle fingers.
"Good Lord, it's broken!"
"I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. You see"----
"Your right arm too! Don't move it!"
He groped about for another length of the silken hangings, tore it
down, and wound it tightly round her arm. "That will keep it in
place," he said. "The moment it is light I will make splints and set
it properly. I am truly sorry you should have suffered so."
"Better me than you. It might have been worse. What made that chain
break, I wonder? We've had worse storms than this."
"It was bound to give sooner or later. It was very old and rusted.
Its time came, I suppose, and it went. Sure you have no other damages?"
"Only bumps and bruises. I felt as if the side of my face were crushed
in, but I don't think it is."
"Were you in the top bunk?"
"Yes. I liked to look out of the window in the mornings."
"That's a good big fall to take unawares."
"Yes, I fell out like a sack and woke on the floor. What shall we do
if she doesn't come right side up again? We can't live all upside down
like this."
"There's always the other ship to fall back on ... unless her chain's
broken too."
"I like our own much the best."
"But not if she stops like this.... And even if she straightened up
she would heel over again in the next gale. I'm afraid we'll have to
move."
"I shall always see that man's black face about the cabin, glaring at
me as he used to do as if he wanted to eat me."
"If we have to go we'll give it a good cleaning, and fresh hangings,
and make it to your taste."
So they chatted quietly, while the gale and the birds shrieked in
chorus outside, and the waves of the lake thumped scornfully on the
exposed bottom of the ship.
As soon as he could see, he rooted about for axe and knife, and chopped
up a board and made a set of splints for her arm. And, though he
grieved for the pain she must have suffered, he could not but feel a
huge enjoyment in ministering to her.
The mere touch of her firm white flesh was a rare delight and made his
fingers tingle. He did his best to think of her only as a patient, but
found it impossible. She was so very much more to him than any
ordinary patient ever had been or could be.
But for her suffering, he felt inclined to bless the breaking of the
rusty cable. It brought them closer than ever before. It threw her
more than ever on to his care. With her right arm prisoner she would
be able to do but little for herself. She had not been able to dress
herself properly, but had simply swathed a blanket about her night
attire, leaving the broken arm free. But even so, her natural taste
and capability had so arranged it, even in the darkness and moment of
danger, that she looked like a Greek goddess, he said to himself, with
one arm in a sling. One can make allowances for him.
As the light grew stronger he saw, to his distress, that her face had
also suffered sorely in her fall. The whole right side was badly
bruised and discoloured.
"Is it very bad?" she asked, as she saw him looking at it. "It feels
sore and my head hums like a bee-hive."
"You got a bad bump there. I will get some salt water and bathe it.
Our fresh will all be gone in the upset, but I'll sling a bucket under
the scupper-hole and we'll have enough for some coffee presently. When
you've had some breakfast you will go and lie down in my bunk. If you
could get a good sleep it would be the very best thing for you. Does
the arm hurt much?"
"Not so much as it did, but I don't think I can sleep."
"You will when you lie down. You've had a bad shaking up. I'm truly
sorry that all the penalties have fallen on you."
"It's a good thing you didn't break yourself too. Suppose we'd broken
all our arms!" and she laughed a wry little laugh.
He crawled up the slope, and wormed himself through his barricade, and
came back presently with a bucketful of water, found a piece of soft
linen and insisted on bathing her face, under plea that she would
joggle the broken arm if she tried to do it herself.
Then he scraped together at the foot of the slope sand enough for a
small hearth, split some wood and kindled a fire, but found it
necessary to open one of the ports to leeward to let out the smoke.
When he did so he found the water within a foot of it and could only
hope they would heel over no more. He proceeded to make cakes and
coffee, and then fried some salt pork, and anointed the bruised face
with the fat of it, and she found it soothing.
When he had cut up her meat for her, and she had managed to eat a
little, he helped her into his bunk, the upper one because it was
airier and allowed more head-room, and covered her with blankets and
told her to go to sleep. And then, since there was nothing more to be
done, he crawled up the slope and got her blankets off the floor of her
room, and made up a bed for himself in the angle at the foot of the
slope. He lay for a time listening to the gale, and pondering the
possibility of its doing them any further damage, and fell asleep with
the matter still unsettled.
XLVII
When he awoke it was close on mid-day, unless his appetite misled him.
He prepared another meal and then tapped gently on The Girl's door.
Receiving no answer he peeped into the dim little room and found her
still sleeping soundly, her head in the crook of her left arm, from
which the wide sleeve of her night-dress had slipped down,--as fair a
picture as man could wish to look upon, in spite of her bruised face
and broken arm.
He stood watching her for a moment with bated breath, and recalled that
first morning when she came ashore and he had doubted if he could
recover her; and he thanked God again for the dogged obstinacy which
would not let him accept defeat so long as smallest hope remained.
She moved, opened her heavy eyes, and lay quietly looking at him, just
as she had done that other time, and for a brief space there was no
more recognition in them than there had been then.
"What is it? Who are you?" she asked, and he suffered a momentary
shock. But for reply he laid his cool strong hand--rougher than it
used to be, but vitally sensitive to the feel of her--on the broad
white forehead, and found it hot and throbbing. That did not greatly
surprise him. There was sure to be a certain feverishness after such
an experience. And he would have given much for five minutes' root
round his old dispensary.
He had nothing,--nothing but common sense, and his professional
knowledge, and Nature's simplest remedies. He went out quietly and got
cold water and soft linen, and bathed the throbbing forehead and then
laid the wet bandage on it.
"That is nice," she said softly. "What a trouble I am to you!"
"Oh, frightful!" he smiled, as he changed the cloth for a fresh one.
"You see how I resent it. Has the arm been hurting?"
"It hurts at times, but my head is the worst, and I feel bruised all
over."
"But no more breakages?" he asked anxiously.
"I don't think so, just bruised and stiff and sore."
He hesitated for a second. She was so very much more to him than
simply a patient.
"Will you let me remind you that I am a doctor? The very best cure for
all that is gentle rubbing. If you will allow me I will undertake to
reduce the pains by one half."
"Then please do, Doctor, for I ache in every bone."
And he drew off all her blankets but one, and through it proceeded to
massage the aching limbs, and had never in his life found greater
enjoyment in his work. He even ventured to treat the throbbing head in
the same way, drawing his fingers soothingly over the white forehead
and up into the masses of her hair.
"There is virtue in your fingers," she murmured drowsily, and before he
had done she was sleeping soundly again. Then he laid another wet
cloth on her forehead and left Nature to do her share in the good work.
It was fortunate that she had little appetite for the next few days.
The cakes he made for her, and water, scrupulously boiled and cooled
and flavoured with coffee, amply satisfied her; and he, himself lived
on pork, fish and fresh meat being unobtainable.
For four days the gale bellowed round them, but being to leeward, and
protected somewhat by the heeling of the ship, they felt it less than
if they had been on an even keel, and it never kept The Girl from
sleeping.
Much of that time Wulf spent in an endeavour to obtain salt from sea
water, the lack of it being one of their greatest deprivations. As the
result of many boilings and the careful scraping up of the slight
encrustations on his pans, he managed to get a little, and exultantly
let The Girl taste it as a great treat; but it was a long and slow
process.
The default of her right arm made her very dependent on him in many
little ways, but never was service more tactfully rendered or more
delighted in by the servitor. And every service, so rendered and
accepted, made for increased knowledge on both sides, and so for closer
intimacy.
Never, in all her contact with the greater world, had she met any man
in whom she felt such implicit confidence as in this man. Never, since
that first time her wondering eyes met his, when his strenuous
exertions had dragged her back from the dead, had he by word or deed or
look, raised one shadow of fear or mistrust in her mind. In
everything, to the extremest point of death itself, he had proved
himself a simple, brave, and honest gentleman.
And as she lay there helpless, with the gale howling outside and the
broken waves of the lake clop-clopping in the strakes under her ear,
she had much time to think of him and all he had done and was doing for
her, and all her thought was warm and grateful.
"I am a dreadful burden to you," she would say. "And you are very very
good to me."
And he would answer her, with the smile she liked to provoke, "But for
your suffering in the matter I would tell you how grateful I am to that
rotten chain for giving me the opportunity. I count it a privilege as
well as a pleasure."
And when he had left her, she would think at times how it might have
been with her if it were not this man but the other with whom she had
been left alone. And she would shiver at the thought, and then
remember that if the other had been alone she would not have been
there, for he could never have drawn her back from the dead as this one
had done.
And she thought also at times of their fight with the other in the fog,
and followed that idea up and shivered still more. For if the mate had
killed this man it would indeed have gone hard with her. Ay, she had
much to be thankful for, and thankful she was.
And as to the future.... It was all vague and dim, as the future
always must be, but she had no fear of it, because she trusted this man
so perfectly.
Vague and dim it might be, but it was shot with rosy gleams.
Whatever he might ask of her she would hold it right because he asked
it. She had found him worthy. She would trust him completely, ask
what he might. Yes, ... ask ... what ... he ... might.
XLVIII
"The sun's coming out," was his cheerful announcement, one morning when
he came in with her breakfast. "And here's some fish for you at last."
"The sight of it makes me hungry."
"That's the best news you've given me for four days. There's some salt
for you in payment," he said, with full pride of accomplishment.
"Salt is a great treat. Have you left any for yourself?"
"Oh, I've got some. I'm going to set up a regular salt factory as soon
as you're about again."
"I would like to get up and go on deck when I've had breakfast. Surely
the ship is not so tilted as it was."
"Not quite so bad, but I'm afraid it will never come quite right side
up again. It's hard and fast on the shore at present. I could wade
across."
"I must see it. I will get up as soon as I have had my breakfast."
"Can you manage?" he asked doubtfully. "You must keep that arm quiet,
you know."
"I'll try anyway. If I get stuck I will call," and in due course she
called, and he found that she had managed to get her blankets round
her, and that as gracefully as ever in some marvellous fashion, but she
had doubted her power of getting out of the bunk in its lopsided state
without his help.
He stepped up on to the lower bunk, and worked his arms under her.
"Now, if you wouldn't mind steadying yourself with your usable hand on
my shoulder--so! There you are!" and he lifted her gently to her feet
on the floor. "Now, hang on to my arm.... But your shoes?--you had
better have them on. In your own room of course. Wait and I'll get
them," and he climbed up and got them, and put them on and tied them
for her. "I've pegged some slats across the slope for better
foot-hold. You can't slip," and he got her safely out on to the deck.
"It is delightful to be in fresh air again," she said, as she drank it
in. "I wish the good weather would last for ever."
"We'll hope for a good long spell anyhow. Doesn't it feel odd to be so
close to the shore? We'll have rabbit for dinner. You must almost
have forgotten what it tastes like."
"I can still just remember," she laughed.
"I'll get up some blankets and tuck you into this corner, and then I'll
go and get some and some fresh water. Our raft's blown ashore and the
other one also. I shall have to wade."
He made her comfortable in the corner, got his buckets and a stick, and
dropped over the side.
She lay watching him as he waded ashore, saw him stop for a moment to
examine the raft, and then, with a wave of the hand, he set off for the
pools, swinging his buckets jauntily.
Were there many such men in the world, she wondered, and why had she
never met any of them before? The men she had met were so very
different. They were as a rule so elusive and evasive that you never
quite knew what they were driving at ... except that it was certain to
be for their own satisfaction and advantage ... and that unless you
were always on your guard it was likely to turn out ill for you ... a
queer world, and life was a puzzle past comprehending.....
She was glad to be out of it ... even on this sandbank.... Life was
sweeter here, and certainly very much simpler.... Well, perhaps a
little too severely simple in some respects.... But one could not have
everything.... Thank God, again, that it was this man who was with her
and not that other!...
She saw him coming at last with his full buckets, and presently made
out a couple of rabbits hanging round his neck.
"The birds are having a great time out yonder," he called to her.
"Lots of new wreckage, I expect, and they've been fasting. I must get
across as soon as I can and see if the storm has brought anything for
us. One never knows,"--he had come alongside, and lifted the buckets
and tossed the rabbits on to the deck. "I'll fasten the raft to the
chain there"--and he hauled himself along on it to the bows.
She heard a smothered exclamation, and presently he climbed up and came
along the deck with something in his hand.
"What is it?" she asked.
"What do you make of that?" and he handed her the link of the rusty
cable which had given way and let them drift ashore.
She turned it over in her fingers. Just where it had opened, the metal
glinted in the sunshine, and just above that there was a patch that
looked like grease. She shook her head.
"Don't you see?--it's been filed enough to weaken it, and there was
grease on the file."
"And you think----" with a shocked look.
"Undoubtedly. No one else could have done it. But what his idea was,
I can't make out. Just to make trouble, I suppose. Of course if the
wind had come the other way, as it has done once or twice, we might
have blown right down the lake. It was a mean trick. I wonder when he
did it."
"I am more thankful than ever that he's gone."
"So am I.... I've been thinking we'd better move across there as soon
as possible."
"Must we? I have grown so fond of this old ship."
"But we can't live on the slope like this. Besides, if a gale did come
the opposite way we might have trouble. I'll go over presently and
begin cleaning. When I've finished you'll find it much more
comfortable than this."
"I shall always like this the best."
"I was thinking as I went over to the pools that it might not be a bad
idea to build some kind of a house on shore. I can get timber enough
for a hundred. You see, we don't quite know what winter may be like in
this place, but it's pretty sure to be a time of storms."
"Can you build a house?"
"One never knows what one can do till one tries. This is a great place
for bringing out one's unknown faculties. I've done a good many things
I never expected to do, since I came here."
"It might be a good plan. Can't it wait till I can help?"
"We'll see. We must do like the ants and squirrels--work hard while
it's fine and get in our supplies for the winter. We are mighty
fortunate to have such a store to draw upon."
He spent all the rest of the day slaving like a charwoman on the 'Jane
and Mary,' and The Girl lay in her nest watching him, as he went up and
down, now flinging rubbish overboard, then hauling up buckets of water,
and sluicing and mopping, with every now and again a cheery wave of
hand or mop in her direction, and long periods below devoted, she did
not doubt, to the doing of more of those things which he had never
done, or expected to do, until he came there. And her heart was very
warm to him, knowing that it was not for his own comfort but for hers
that all these great labours were toward.
She saw him busy on deck, bending and bobbing up and down, and once she
caught the gleam of vivid colours, and wondered what he was at. He was
a long time below after that, and then he went ashore for a load of
sand, and when it was getting dark she suddenly caught glimpse of his
head in the water as he wound up the day's work with a very necessary
swim.
He came across on the raft all aglow, but visibly tired and hungry, and
greeted her with a cheery, "I think you'll find it all to your liking.
I've swabbed away every trace of the former tenants and everything is
fresh and new."
"I wish I could have helped."
"Oh, but you did, by sitting quietly here and getting better, to say
nothing of a wave of the hand now and then."
"That was not doing much when you were working like a----"
"Like a nigger. I looked like one too till I'd had that swim. Now
I'll get supper ready, and tomorrow we'll flit, and you'll be able to
walk about on an even keel without any danger of falling."
He helped her down to the cabin and their very close quarters at the
bottom of the slope, and set to work preparing their evening meal. And
the more incongruous his occupations and the more menial his tasks, the
more The Girl's heart warmed towards him.
XLIX
In the morning, as soon as they had eaten, he got the raft round to the
lower side of the ship, ruthlessly hacked out a section of the bulwarks
so that she could step down with the smallest possible exertion, and
took her across to the new house.
Getting her on board without shock to the broken arm was not so easy.
He moored the raft, stem and stern, and braced it tight so that it
could not move. Then he built on it a pyramid of three empty boxes,
forming steps up which she could climb high enough to grip his strong
hand teaching down through the gap in the side and so be drawn safely
up on to the deck, which he had swabbed with sand and water till it was
cleaner than it had been for years.
"It is nice to be able to walk on the flat of one's feet again," she
said, and he led her down below to a cabin gorgeous as an Eastern room
with drapings of amber silk and blue, and every bit of woodwork scoured
as clean as elbow-grease could make it.
"It is delightful," she said fervidly. "How you must have slaved at
it!"
"And how I enjoyed doing it!"
There was a new sand hearth, nicely banked up between planks pegged
upright on the floor, and a pile of wood on it ready for lighting. He
lit a match with his flint and steel, and handed it to her as before,
so that she might start the first fire in the new home.
"You will take your old room," he said. "Then if we should topple over
again you won't be able to fall out of your bunk. Now I'll go back and
bring over all our belongings. I made a complete clearance here,
except some of the stores which we can use," and before mid-day he had
everything transferred and stowed away.
He spent most of the afternoon weaving in and out of their rusty cable
lengths of the least-rotten rope he could lay hands on, in order to
strengthen it and stop its chafing as much as possible. But below
water he could not go beyond a foot or two, and the lower links he had
to leave to Providence.
As he worked, The Girl paced the deck, rejoicing in its horizontality,
and came each time to lean over the bows and watch him and say a lively
word or two. And, if any had been there to see, it would have been
difficult to believe that two such cheerful people were, to the very
best of their belief, condemned by an inscrutable fate to imprisonment
for life on this lonely sandbank,--to a confinement as solitary in some
respects, and in the prospect of escape as hopeless, as that of the
Bastille itself.
But--they were together; and Adam and Eve, cast out of the Garden,
could still make a home in the wilderness and turn the joys that were
left them to fullest account.
L
He was up betimes next morning, and had fish for their breakfast before
she came out of her room, and, moreover, had made cakes and full
provision for all her needs during the day.
"I shall go out there at once," he said. "You will not mind being
left? I want to get in everything we shall need for the winter as soon
as possible."
"I am sorry not to be able to help, but I shall be quite all right
here. You will..." she began, with a quite novel access of timidity,
and finished with a rush,--"you will be very careful. I am rather
fearful of that horrid wreckage. If you never came back----"
"I will be very careful, and I will certainly come back--laden, I hope,
with good things," and he went off on the raft, and she stood watching
and waving her hand at times when he turned, until he disappeared along
the spit. And as he went his heart beat high, for he did not believe
that her fears were chiefly for herself, although she had made it
appear so.
He found the wreckage considerably altered. The gale had swept it bare
of all traces of their previous peckings and nibblings, and had piled
and stuffed it with tempting-looking new plunder. And with things less
attractive. Whatever had been left of the mate had disappeared, hurled
down probably into some black crack. But, during the day, in various
crannies he came on no less than three drowned men, partly dressed in
what appeared to him naval uniform, anyway not in the usual slops of
the merchant service. And they set him thinking how narrow, yet how
sharp, was the dividing line between themselves and the outer world.
He built his raft as usual and toiled all day, smashing his way through
scores of boxes, cases, seamen's chests, and rooting in them as eagerly
as ever did the mate, but with a different spirit within him.
First he gathered indispensable stores, and practice had by this time
so perfected his eye that he could tell almost at a glance what a cask
or box contained, how long it had been afloat, and what damage its
contents were likely to have suffered.
Many odd, and some extraordinary and incomprehensible, things his hasty
search brought to light. It was indeed an absorbing inquisition into,
an endless revelation of, the ruling passions and frailties of the
human heart.
Little hoards of money and jewelry were his commonest finds, pitiful
now in view of their uselessness to those who had gathered them. But
he would take from the pile nothing but what it rightly owed them,
means of life and the tempering of its hard conditions, and he left all
these untouched. Tobacco and pipes, and flints and steel, were lawful
plunder.
One brass-bound chest he broke open and found great store of women's
clothing, rich with lace and finely wrought even to the eyes of a man.
The Girl might find that useful and he began to make a selection, with
the eyes of her delight dancing before him as he did so. Then with a
start, and a sharp breath of amazement, he straightened up for a
moment, crammed everything back into the chest, and hauled it to the
edge of the pile and hurled it into the sea. For there, at the bottom,
wedged tight among all these delicate draperies was the body of a
new-born child, strangled at its birth, as he knew by the look of it.
Bundles of letters, papers which might be of highest import to waiting
friends, anxious heirs, business houses, he found in places, but left
them as they were.
He came on another box containing women's clothes, of plainer material
and simpler make, and rooted carefully after the character of its owner
before deciding to take some back for The Girl. It seemed above
suspicion, and he rejoiced to be able to supply some of her more
pressing needs. Clothes for himself the wreckage had always been
generous of, but to come upon two chests of women's things in one day
was extraordinary. They had at times searched far and wide and
anxiously, and never lighted on one.
He got back with his load, and in two journeys from the spit got it all
on board, before it was too dark for his reward in The Girl's exuberant
joy at the things he had brought for her.
"Shoes! ... stockings! ... Some proper needles and thread! ... and oh,
but I am glad to see these other things! ... I was washing some of my
things while you were away, but it was not easy with one hand ... And
another brush and comb! ... and scissors! If we can clean them I can
cut your hair for you."
"I shall be grateful. I feel like a savage. I'll clean them all
right."
"And did you make any strange discoveries?" she asked, while they sat
at supper, as one asks news of the outer world from a traveller.
"Oh, heaps. Jewels and money, and papers, letters and so on----"
"They might be interesting,--in winter days."
"I had not thought of that. I'll bring you an armful tomorrow."
"You will go again tomorrow?"
"I must go till I think we have enough for the winter's siege. There
may be weeks when I can't get out there. This storm brought in a
mighty pile of stuff and it's best to get it while it's in good
condition. Do you want more clothes if I can find them?"
"A woman never has too many," she laughed. "But don't waste time
searching for them. I can manage very well, especially now that I have
needles and thread."
"I just smash open each box as I come to it. One never knows what one
may come upon. Their contents are as different as their owners. I
have been trying to imagine them from their belongings."
He wrought at the pile for many days, and she filled in the time at
home by evaporating endless pans of water over the fire to get the
salt, and managed to accumulate quite a fair supply.
He brought over for her amusement a great bundle of written papers
which she was too busy to delve into at the moment, all her time being
given to salt-making. And then one day he returned exultant with some
great lumps of rock salt, such as cattle love to lick, and her little
efforts were like to be put in the shade. But he averred that her salt
was infinitely the finer to a cultivated taste and they would use it
only on very special occasions.
He brought her too a quantity of oatmeal in cases, and--treasure-trove
indeed--a dozen cans of the oil used for ships' lights. He searched in
vain for a lantern, but felt sure he could turn that oil to account in
some way during the long winter nights. From the marks on the cases in
the neighbourhood of these discoveries, and the superior quality of
some of their contents, he thought a warship must have gone down not
very far away.
His belief was confirmed by finding other unusual supplies in the same
place, and he worked at it for days until there was hardly a case or
box or barrel which he had not tapped.
One of his greatest finds was a handful of spare tools, in a chest that
had probably belonged to a ship's carpenter--an auger, a gimlet, a
chisel, a screwdriver, and a small piece of sharpening hone. And that
same day he lighted on an unpretentious little box, stoutly made of
deal, which had swelled with the water to the partial protection of its
contents. A glance inside showed him how great was this treasure, and
he carried it at once to his raft and bestowed it with care.
When he opened the little deal case on deck that evening The Girl gave
a joyful cry, "Books! Oh, but I am glad, and the winter nights will
not be long! Let me see them all quickly.--"Poems," by Robert Burns.
"Life of Samuel Johnson," by James Boswell. The Book of Common Prayer.
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon, Vol 1. "The
Vicar of Wakefield," by Oliver Goldsmith. "Tristram Shandy," by
Laurence Sterne. "The Castle of Otranto," by Horace Walpole. The
Annual Register--one, two, three volumes. "Tom Jones," by Henry
Fielding. "Clarissa Harlowe," by Samuel Richardson. Cruden's
Concordance. Hymns by Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. A Bible. One, two,
three volumes of sermons. John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Holy
War," and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs"! Oh, we shall do famously. Now
what do you make of the owner of this fine thing?" she challenged him
merrily.
"A parson, I should say. They are the greatest readers. But that is
easily seen," and he turned to the fly-leaves of several of the volumes
and found them all inscribed with the same name, 'James Elwes, Esq.
M.A. Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.'
"Good Mr Elwes! I am sorry he is drowned, but I am grateful to him for
taking his books with him when he travelled, and leaving them behind
him when he went. That is the greatest find yet," said she.
"We won't despise the lower things. All the same I'm glad to have the
books."
"They will be a wonderful help. Let us dry them at once. They are
more precious than jewels," and he got her soft cloths, and they
carefully mopped up and wiped over every volume and promised them they
should be set in the sun to complete their cure on the morrow.
"And those horrid birds?" she asked, as they worked. "You had no
trouble from them?"
"They were all too busy elsewhere. There is grain enough floating
about there to feed a city. They will be plump and happy birds for
some time to come. They were too busy even to quarrel and they never
so much as looked my way."
LI
As though exhausted by its late violence, or needing rest before
renewing it, the weather continued mild and open except for occasional
mists.
Thanks to her own caution and Wulfrey's assiduous attention, The Girl's
arm was going on well, and she was looking forward eagerly to being an
active member of society again.
"You see, I have never been laid up in my life before," she said, "and
it is unnatural to me. A dozen times a day I have to stop that
wretched arm when it wants to do something."
"A very little longer and it shall do what it wants, within reason.
Let me rub it again for you."
"You are a great believer in rubbing," she said, with reminiscent
smiles, as she surrendered the arm to him, and he rubbed it gently and
tirelessly to keep the sinews and muscles from stiffening.
"I have found great virtue in it, and great reward," he smiled back.
He took her ashore almost every day, and they rambled far along the
northern beach and enjoyed the soft autumnal days to the full. But all
the time his thoughts were on the coming winter whose rigours he had no
means of forecasting. And so, like a wise man, he made such provision
as was possible for the worst.
He set her to gathering and drying every herb she deemed suitable for
seasoning purposes. And he himself caught very many fish and split
them open and dried them in the sun as he had read was done elsewhere.
He tried some rabbits in the same way, but they did not take to it and
had to be used for bait.
And, after a few days' rest from his exertions at the wreckage, he set
to work on building a house on shore, in case anything should happen to
the 'Jane and Mary,' or they should find solid ground preferable to
water during the winter gales.
He had for a long time past secured every nail he could knock out of
the old timbers, and regarded them as most precious possessions. The
finding of the auger and gimlet opened up wider possibilities. Where
nails are scarce, a hole and a peg may take their place. Wood he had
in superfluity, for the remains of every raft that had brought cargo
from the pile lay strewn about the spit, in some cases hurled half-way
across it by the waves that broke there in the storm times.
Where best to build was a matter not easily decided. They would need
all the sunshine obtainable. But all the heaviest gales came from the
south and west and from these they wanted shelter. And they must be
within easy reach of the fresh-water pools and not too far from the
ship, where their supplies would be mostly stored.
After much discussion they fixed on an odd little hollow--a mere cup in
the centre of three sandhills of size, which stood close together and
moreover were well matted with wire-grass and looked too solid to whirl
away in a gale as the smaller hills constantly did.
To the south-west of these stood the largest hill in the neighbourhood,
and this would break the force of the gales in that direction. The
water-pools lay out in the sandy plain just beyond this hill.
Wulf entered on the building of this first house he had ever attempted,
with the gusto of a schoolboy.
"I feel about fourteen," he laughed, as he detailed his ideas to her.
"So do I,--except this wretched arm, which is one hundred and five."
"We'll soon have it back to fourteen. You see, if I can carve out the
sides of those three smaller hills, and back our house into each of
them, it will make immensely for solidity and warmth. No gale can blow
through a sand-hill, though they do waltz about now and again. But
these seem fairly well set and fixed. I'll start on it tomorrow. I
wish I had a spade and a saw. I can chop out some kind of a spade from
a plank, maybe, but, lacking a saw, the house will be a bit rough, I'm
afraid."
"That doesn't matter as long as it stands up and keeps us warm."
"Oh, I'll guarantee it will stand up and keep you warm."
"Can you make a chimney?"
"I've been thinking of that. I will run four boards up through a hole
in the roof, and we must try to induce the smoke to go up. There is no
clay here, you see, nor stone,--nothing but sand."
The site settled, he set to work at once rafting his timber across the
lake from the spit, and then hauling it across the sandy plain past the
fresh-water pools, and this gave him a full week's hard labour. Some
of the lighter planks he let The Girl drag across, since she insisted
on having at all events one hand in the work. The heavier ones were as
much as he could handle himself. In his rest times, and after supper
of a night, he whittled pegs till he had an ample supply, and sharpened
his axes with the bit of hone he had found in the carpenter's chest.
With his axe he hacked out a rude spade from a plank, and trimmed the
handle and the point with his knife; and then he set to work on his
three sandhills, cutting down the side of each where it rounded down
into the cup-like hollow, and flinging the sand into the cup itself to
make a level floor.
The building of such a house was entirely new to him, but he had brains
and he bent them all to every problem that presented itself, and never
failed to find the way out. For instance,--the space he wished his
house to occupy between the sandhills was quite twelve feet in width,
and his planks ran mostly to six or eight feet only. There must
therefore be a row of posts in the middle, with one or more beams on
top as a ridge-pole, from which he could carry side pieces to the walls
six feet away on either side, and he had foreseen some difficulty in
fixing these posts absolutely rigid in the yielding sand. If they
wobbled or gave in any direction his roof would be in danger.
But before he began carving down his sand-slopes he had settled that
point. He selected his uprights, the longest and strongest in his
stock, chopped them to size, and to the end of each pegged stout flat
cross-pieces, boring the holes with his auger and driving home the pegs
with the back of his axe. These he set up in a line in the middle of
the hollow, standing upright on their cross-piece feet. Then, as he
carved down his slope, every spadeful of sand buried the cross-pieces
deeper, till, when he had finished, they were under two feet of
well-trampled sand and he looked upon their rigidity as a personal
triumph.
That was surely as extraordinary a house as was ever built by a man who
knew nothing whatever about building. It took him five full weeks and
he enjoyed every minute of it. And so did The Girl, for she sat in the
sun, watching all his cheerful activities with envious eyes because she
was so unable to share them, discussing points with him as they arose,
giving suggestions and advice which he always adopted when they chimed
with his own, and approving heartily of all he did.
"I wish I could help,"--how many times she said it, and thought it very
many more. "It is disgusting to have to sit and watch while you work
like a--like a galley-slave."
"Galley-slaves don't build houses--not such houses as this anyway.
There never was such a house before," he laughed. "Besides, you help
more than you know by simply sitting there and approving of it. 'They
also serve,' you know, 'who only sit and watch.'"
"Who says that?"
"One John Milton,--not quite in those words, but the meaning is the
same. As a matter of fact, he had, I believe, just gone blind when he
said it and was feeling rather out of it. Your arm will soon be all
right again. It's doing famously."
Truly a wonderful house, not so much because of the quaint way in which
its difficulties were surmounted or evaded--which alone might have
given an ordinary builder nightmares for the rest of his life, but more
especially by reason of the rose-golden thoughts which swept at times
like flame through hearts and minds of both watcher and builder as they
wrought. If all those glowing thoughts could have transmuted
themselves into visible adornment of that rough little home no fairy
palace could have vied with it.
For ever and again--and mostly ever--in his heart--helping the auger as
it bored and the axe as it hammered the pegs well home--was the thought
that was radiant enough and mighty enough to transform that desolate
bank of sand into a veritable Garden of Eden;--"If no rescue comes,
here we shall live--she and I--together,--one in heart and soul and
body, and here, maybe, we shall die. But death is a long way off, and
Love lives on forever. I would not exchange my Kingdom for all the
Kingdoms of the earth."
And perhaps he would permit himself a foretaste from the cup of that
intoxicating happiness, in a quick caressing glance at her as she sat
in the sand nursing her arm; and at times she caught those stolen
glances, for her eyes found great satisfaction in his tireless energy
and visible enjoyment in his work.
And she knew as well as if he had told her in words,--nay better, for,
without a word, the heart speaks louder than all the words in the world
when it shines through honest eyes,--she knew all that possessed him
concerning her, and she was not discomforted thereby.
She trusted him completely. She had never felt towards any man as she
did to this man. Whatever he willed for her would be right. Her whole
heart and soul rejoiced that he should find such hope and joy in her.
She was wholly his for the asking, but she knew he would not ask it all
until he was satisfied in his own mind that he was right in asking and
she in giving.
She felt like a wounded bird, sitting below there, while her mate built
their nest up above. But not, she said to herself, like their island
birds, for they were harsh and cruel, with cold hard eyes, and
ever-craving hunger in place of hearts.
That wonderful house, when at last it was finished, would have given no
satisfaction to the soul of any ordinary builder, but to these two it
was a monument of hard work and difficulties overcome.
It contained one room twelve feet square in front, with two smaller
rooms opening out of it at the back. The roof sloped slightly from
ridge-pole to side-walls and was made in four layers--boards side by
side below, then thick sheets of crimson velvet, an outer shield of
overlapping planks, and a thick coat of sand and growing wire-grass
over all. He was hopeful that it would withstand the heaviest gales
and rains the winter might bring. The walls were of stout boards
backed up against the sandhills, with new sandhills thrown up in the
intervening spaces, and inside they were draped with more crimson
velvet, of which they had a large supply. The floor was of planks.
The door had been a troublesome problem, and, lacking hinges, had to be
lifted bodily in and out of its place. The bay-window alongside it was
the cabin skylight from the 'Martha' and this, and the square
smoke-shaft of four stout boards above the sand hearth, they regarded
as crowning achievements.
Emboldened by success, and finding enjoyment in the development of a
craft of which he had never suspected himself until now,--experiencing
too, to the very fullest, the primal blessing of work, he evolved an
arm-chair for The Girl, out of a barrel that had once held salt pork,
and when its asperities were softened and hidden under voluminous folds
of red velvet she assured him it was the most comfortable chair she had
ever sat in.
And, for his part, he knew that no girl ever sat in any chair that ever
was made who could compare with her.
Beds too he made with some old sail-cloth fitted to rough frames, and a
table, and their furnishing sufficed, though he promised to add to it
during the winter.
The Girl's arm was well again, though he still urged caution in the use
of it, and kept a watchful eye on it and her; and never had he felt
himself so full of the joy and strength of life. When the house was
finished, they brought over a supply of stores and lived in it for a
time, and turned the waning autumn days to account by long ramblings
all over the island, in anticipation of the days when ill weather might
coop them strictly within narrower bounds.
There were no discoveries to make in land or sea or sky, scarcely any
in themselves. He felt assured in his own mind that she was not
unaware of all that he felt for her. The fact, the great undeniable
fact, that she did not seem to resent it, was a deep joy to him.
Their good-comradeship had known no cloud. She was as charmingly frank
and gracious as ever. She talked away without reserve or constraint of
that strange past life of hers, which, in every smallest particular,
was so absolutely the opposite of this one. And never once did she
display any hankering after Egypt, rather seemed to regard this as the
Promised Land, or at all events the doorway to it.
Ever and again the possibilities of rescue or escape came to the front
in their discussions, but grew less and less as the weeks went by. He
had been seven months on the island, and she four, and save herself, in
all that time no other living soul had come to it,--unless, as the mate
had so strenuously held, the bodies of those discomforting sea-birds
were occupied by the souls of drowned sailor men.
"And you, you know, were a miracle," he would remind her. "The chances
against you were about a thousand to one----"
"And you were that one."
"It was not that I was thinking of----"
"I never forget it."
"This place is undoubtedly shunned, as Macro said. It is known as a
death-trap. No ship comes here except in pieces. No man comes until
he is dead. And so, our prospects of rescue or escape are very small,
I fear. For your sake I wish it were otherwise."
"Have I shown signs of discontent, then? I assure you I have never
been so ... so content to wait and hope. It is the most delightful
holiday from the world I have ever had.... Sometime perhaps we shall
look back upon it as the wide dividing line between the old world and
the new ... and between the old life and the new."
"A line is black as a rule."
"It may be light," she said, and waved her hand expressively towards
the shimmering golden spear which the setting sun sent quivering over
the water right up to their feet, as they stood watching it on the
beach.
"If we could only walk on it!" she said softly, as the red disc swelled
and sank and disappeared amid a glory of tender lucent greens and blues
and glowing orange, with a line of crimson fire on the edge of every
hovering cloud, and a heavenful of crimson flakes and splashes
smouldering slowly into gray above their heads.
"It points the road, but we cannot take it," he said quietly, and they
turned and went back to the house.
There were times when she thought he was about to tell her all that was
in his heart concerning her. She could see it in his face and eyes and
restless manner. And she was ready to respond.
There were times when it was almost more than he could do to keep it
all in. He believed she knew. He hardly doubted her response.
But he said to himself, with set jaw and a firmer grip of his
manhood,--"She has known me just four months. She is here helpless in
my hands. I may not press her unduly, for she might feel that she
could hardly say me nay. Her very helplessness must make me the more
careful and considerate."
And more than once, when the desire of his heart was leaping to his
lips, he jumped up abruptly and went out into the night and strode away
along the beach. And there he would pace to and fro under the quiet
stars, with the black waves swirling up the shore in long slow gleams
of shimmering silver, till the peace of it all passed into his blood,
and presently he would go quietly in again, with face and heart toned
down to reasonableness.
And when he went out so, The Girl would smile to herself at times, as
one who understood. And again, at times the smile would slowly fade
and she would sit thoughtful. But, if she wondered somewhat, and found
him beyond her complete understanding, she liked him none the less for
his restraint.
She was quite happy in their present fellowship, but she knew it could
not continue so, indefinitely. A man always wants more. The woman
gives.
She felt towards this man as she had never felt towards any man before.
Without a word spoken, she was satisfied as to the integrity of his
intentions, as she had never been of any of those who had approached
her in that old life, and she had been approached by many. But the
coinage of love about the Court had grown as debased as did the paper
money of the Republic later on. Whispers of love had become but fair
cloaks for foul deeds. This man had whispered nothing, but she
understood him and held him in honour.
And she was in no hurry. His love would not burn out, or she was much
mistaken in him. The flame repressed burns brightest in the end.
And then ... and then.... Well, she sometimes laid hold of the future
by the ears, as it were, and held its changing face while she peered
intently into it, and endeavoured to read there all that it might mean
for her.
Sooner or later he would open his heart to her--and that would be the
first change. Their relationship would of necessity become closer and
warmer. She would welcome that. It would bring great happiness to
them both.
And then--later on--sometime--when all hope of rescue or escape had
left them ... he would ask still more of her.... That was
inevitable.... And in her heart, hiding behind a thinning cloud of
doubt, which had, when first it came upon her, been tinged with dismay,
she knew he would be right, and that in consenting, she would do no
wrong, although it must run counter to all her normal views of right
and wrong.
She faced it all squarely and honestly,--Courtship properly ends in
Marriage. If by this accident of their strange fate the regular
marriage rites prescribed by the law of the land could not take place,
they would have to content themselves without them. It was inevitable.
Elemental views of right and wrong were indeed tap-rooted in her heart
and safe from bruising. But she recognised that circumstances alter
cases and that normal views were out of place here.
And as to the law of the land--what country claimed this bank of sand
she did not know. It was a No Man's Land, outside the pale of all laws
save God's and Nature's.
With no man she had ever met, except this man, could she have imagined
herself considering possibilities such as these. But with him she
would feel as safe and happy as if all the archbishops and bishops in
the land had performed the ceremony. For, after all, it was only man's
law and man's ceremony; and God's law and Nature's were mightier than
these.
With such thoughts in her--deep thoughts and long--she could wait
quietly, and she veiled her feelings for him lest he should deem her of
light mind and too easily to be won.
Now and again, induced perhaps by some adverse humour of body or
atmosphere, a plaguy little fear would leap at her heart and nibble it
with sharp teeth,--could it be that he had ties in the old life of
which he had never dared to hint,--some other woman--to whom he was
bound by honour or by law?
He had told her much, and yet not very much. Had he told her all? Did
men ever tell all? He had told her much, but there was room in what he
had not told for anything--for everything.
But surely he had one time said that he had left no ties behind
him,--that he was alone.
If there should be anything of the kind it would explain his
self-restraint, his quiet service, the looks he could not wholly check,
the words he did not speak.
That his heart had gone out to herself she could not mistake. But that
was not incompatible with ties elsewhere that might keep them apart.
But fears such as that could not hold her long. They had sprung up, in
spite of her, once or twice when he had jumped up and left her alone,
and gone out into the night to pace the beach. But when he returned,
quieted and all himself again, they disappeared at once, and her heart
was at rest. Wrong and this man had nothing in common, she said to
herself. She felt as sure of his honour as of her own.
LII
"This weather cannot last much longer," he said, one night as they sat
talking after supper; he with his pipe, which she never would permit
him to sacrifice on her account, pronouncing the smell of it homely and
comfortable, in spite of his apologies for the varied qualities of his
tobacco. "We must be somewhere near the end of October."
"It is either the 21st or 22nd or 23rd," she said very definitely.
"You have kept count?"
"Except the time I was on the mast and before I came to life again."
"Two days probably."
"I imagined so. In that case it is the 21st."
"And we must be ready for November and bad weather. Would you sooner
stop here or go back to the 'Jane and Mary'?"
"We could not be more comfortable than we are here. But I will do
whatever you wish."
He glanced at her through the wreathing smoke of fire and pipe, for
nothing they could do would make it all go up the chimney.
Would she say as much if he asked her more? he wondered.
Was she ready to be asked? Or was it still too soon?
If he told her all that was in his heart, would he startle her out of
this most pleasant companionship?
She sat gazing quietly into the fire of scraps of old ship's timber.
Those leaping tongues of blue and green and yellow and crimson flame
were a never-failing joy to her. Many a curious thing had she seen in
them, and thought many strange thoughts to the tune of their merry
dance.
She was winsome beyond words when she sat so, with the lights and
shadows playing over her face, and about the misty dark eyes in which
her clear soul dwelt and shone without disguisements.
Suppose he said to her--here and now,--"Avice, dearest, do you know
what you are to me? I cannot possibly tell you in words, but--do you
know?..." And she said "I know,"--and said again, "I will do whatever
you wish...."
Ah--God! ... If that could be he would ask no more of life.... One
word from her and this bare bank would be swept with golden fires; in
the twinkling of an eye it would become a Paradise for him and her to
dwell in....
If he sat there looking at her it must out. He could not keep it in.
And why should he? Why not tell her, here and now? ...
He got up quietly and strode out into the night. A smile hovered in
the corners of her lips, as, without looking, she caught sight of his
face. Then she rose also and stole out after him.
She was causing him pain when she wished him only joy. His thought,
she knew, was all for her. She would think and act for them both. If
he had sat there like a pent-up volcano for another second the hot lava
would have come rushing out. She had felt it all in the air. Her
heart too was so full of expectant joy that the tension was akin to
pain.
It was very dark, with only throbbing stars in a velvet sky and the
white gleam of the foam along the beach. She did not know which way he
had gone, but he would come back presently, all himself again. She
sank down into the side of a hummock and waited.
He came at last, slowly, heavily, with bent head.
He stopped quite close to her, where the way led to the house, and
stood looking out over the darkness of the sea. Then he heaved a great
sigh and turned to go back to the house.
"God!" she heard him mutter. "If I dared but tell her!"
She rose swiftly out of her form and caught him by the arm, with
something between a laugh and a cry, "Tell me, then!"--and the mighty
arms of his love were round her, gripping her to him till she was
squeezed almost breathless.
"Avice! Avice!--and you knew! Oh, thank God for you!"
"Of course I knew," she gasped. "And I want you as much as you want
me."
"Thank God for you, dearest!" he said deeply. "We will thank Him all
our lives. He has given us with a full hand.... I have nothing left
to ask Him ... except your fullest happiness, now and always."
"And I yours. You are my happiness. You give me Heaven."
"God requite me ten times over if ever you rue this day. I have longed
for you till my heart was sick with the pain of longing----"
"Foolish! Why did you not tell me before?"
"I could not. Until I knew.... Placed as we are, you see, it felt
like forcing you.... You might not have felt free to say no.... It
might have put an end to all our comradeship...."
"You don't know me. I'd have said no quickly enough if I hadn't wanted
you. But I do, and you make me very happy."
He led her into the house and held her there at arm's length in the
firelight, as though he could hardly believe it all true, and looked
deep into the dark eyes and rosy face and kissed it rosier still.
And the blue and yellow and green and crimson flames danced their
merriest, as these two sat hand in hand watching them, and talking
softly by snatches with long sweet silences in between.
LIII
"I was so afraid there might be some other to whom you were bound," she
said, as she lay there in the firelight, with her head against his arm
and his right hand smoothing her hair, that wonderful hair which had
been to him as the aureole of a saint and was more to him now than all
the gold in all the world.
"There is no other, my dear one. Not a soul on earth has any claim on
me except that of friendship.... It was inevitable that we should both
have that fear. Four months ago we did not know of one another's
existence----"
"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "I wonder if we had never met if
you would have found someone else----"
"Never anyone to fill my heart as you do. I cannot even imagine it."
"And if I should have found someone else?"
"That is possible, but no one who could feel for you all that I do, or
could want you as much as I do. You are to me the one supreme good,"
and the clasp of his arm told her even more than his words.
"You do not ask me if I had any ties in the old life," she began.
"You would not be lying in my arm like this if there were. I know you
too well."
"That is true and I thank you. It is good to be taken on trust. But
indeed there were none. The men one met there--faugh!--they were
masquers, puppets, dandies;--some had brains, but few had hearts, and
they were most dreadful liars. Such talents as they possessed were
devoted to finesse and intrigue, and the turning of everything to their
own satisfaction and advantage."
"Thank God you are out of it all."
"Yes, I do thank God,--for the shipwreck and everything else, but
chiefly that He sent you here to meet me and took that other one away."
The weather held still for a few days, and he spent them in providing
for her future comfort in every way he could think of.
He chopped logs enough to last them through the winter, and piled them
in stacks about the house. He got over from the ship supplies in
abundance. As the result of much labour and many failures he
constructed a primitive lamp out of the silver mug from which Macro
used to swill his rum. He distorted a beak out of one side of it, and
contrived a wick which passed through a hole in a piece of beaten
copper, and if the light was not brilliant it was at all events
steadier to read by than the dancing flames.
He had lighted quite by accident on Macro's hidden hoard in the hold of
the 'Jane and Mary.' He was rooting in a corner there for his knife,
which had worked out of its sheath at his back as he hoisted out
provisions, and found it sticking point downwards in a plank. As he
pulled it out, the plank gave slightly, and lifting it he found,
underneath, the useless treasure.
He wanted none of it, was indeed loth to touch it, but, on
consideration, took out two more silver mugs for their daily service
and half a dozen gold pins and brooches for Avice's use, since she was
always needing such things and regretting her lack of them.
The long spell of mild soft weather--which had come at last to have in
it a sense of sickness and decay--broke up in the wildest storm they
had yet seen.
The birds came whirling in in a shrieking cloud, but the wind
out-shrieked them. It shrilled above their heads in a ceaseless
strident scream like the yelling of souls in torment. It shook their
protecting sandhills and made their house shiver right down to the
buried cross-pieces of its pillars. It picked up the smaller hummocks
outside and set them waltzing along the shore. It heaped a foot of new
sand on their roof and sent a cartload of it down the chimney.
But their position had been well chosen. The more the sand piled on
their house and against it, the tighter it became. Then the rain came
down in sheets and torrents, but no drop came through, except down the
chimney, and that Wulf presently plugged with a blanket and let the
smoke find its way out through an inch of opened door, which he had
purposely placed to leeward, as all their great storms came from the
south and south-west.
But the change of atmosphere was bracing, and with solid sand under
their feet, and assured of the safety of their house, they welcomed it
and felt the better for it.
After the first day's confinement he must out to see, and she would not
stay behind. So they rigged themselves in oldest garments and fewest
possible and started out.
They were drenched to the skin in a second and whirled away like leaves
the instant they forsook the cover of their hollow.
Avice was being carried bodily towards their nearest shore. He feared
she would go headlong into the sea and started wildly after her. He
saw her throw herself flat and grip at the sand, but she was broadside
on to the merciless wind and it bowled her over and over, and rolled
her along like a ball. It carried him along in ten-feet leaps. He
flung himself down beside her, put his arm round her, wrenched her head
to the gale, and they lay there breathless, she choking hysterically
with paroxysms of laughter.
It took them an hour, crawling like moles, to get back to the shelter
of the hills. He would have had her go in, but she would not hear of
it. They could hear the booming thunder of the great waves on the spit
even above the wind, and she must see them.
So they set off once more, flat to the sand, and worked round in time
to the breast of the great hill near the fresh-water pools, and lay in
it, safe from dislodgment unless the hill went too.
They could only peer through pinched eyes, and then only with their
hands over them, into the teeth of that wind, but, even so, the sight
was magnificent and appalling. The grim gray sky and the grim gray sea
met just beyond the spit, and out of that close sky the huge gray waves
burst, high as houses,--whole streets of houses rushing headlong to
destruction. They curved gloriously to their fall with a glint of
muddy green below and all their crests abristle with white foam-fury.
Right out of the sky they came, right up to the sky they seemed to
reach, flinging up at it great white spouts of spray like flouting
curses, towering high above the land, crashing down upon it with a
thunderous roar which thinned the voice of the wind to no more than a
shrill piping.
Their own land-locked lake was lashed into fury also. The flying
crests of the outer waves came rocketing over in wild white splashes.
He was not sure that some of the waves themselves did not cover the
spit and come roaring into it. The 'Jane and Mary' danced wildly to
her cable. He wondered if it would hold. The 'Martha,' more than ever
on her beam-ends, was being pounded like a drum.
"Did you feel that?" he shouted in her ear, and she nodded, with a
touch of fear in her wind-blown face. For, under the impact of one
vast mountainous avalanche, the very ground on which they lay seemed to
shake like a jelly, and the whole island shuddered.
"It cannot wash it all away, can it?" she gasped, when they had wormed
their way back to shelter.
"It never has done yet anyway," he said cheerfully, as he squeezed
windy tears out of his smarting eyes. "Now, dear, change all your
things at once. We are wet through to the bone."
"It was very wonderful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But
I'm glad we're ashore," and she slipped away into her own room.
That was the first of the winter storms, and there were many like it.
But they bore them equably. They were in splendid health, the weather
at its worst was never very cold, indeed the gales were more to their
taste than the smothering chill of the frequent fogs. They had all
they needed,--food and fire, and light and books, a weather-tight
house, and one another.
If they lacked much of what their former life had taught them to
consider necessary, they had more than all that former life had given
them, and they were happy.
LIV
Between the storms and fog-spells, they tramped to and fro discovering
the changes wrought in their island, and many a strange thing their
wanderings showed them.
One great gale which lasted a full week strewed the south-west Point
with wreckage as thickly almost as the great pile beyond. Their hearts
ached at thought of the still greater loss it represented, of which the
proofs were never lacking. The chaotic bristle was studded with the
bodies of the drowned, and the sight sent them home sorrowfully, yet
marvelling the more at their own deliverance, and still more grateful
for it.
"We are miracles, without a doubt," said Wulf gravely, as they went
back home. "No one else gets here alive, you see.... I was the first
miracle. Macro was the second," and he told her what she had not known
before, how he had contrived to save the mate, and of his regret that
it had not been old Jock Steele the carpenter, who would have been a
blessing to them instead of a curse. "And you are the third and best
miracle of all," he said, clasping her arm more tightly under his own.
"God! what a difference it has made!" he said fervently. "Alone here
one might go mad. In time one most certainly would. See how good a
work you are accomplishing by simply remaining alive. Instead of being
a melancholy madman you make me the happiest man on earth. Oh, the
God-given wonder of a woman! Truly you are the greatest miracle of
all, and He has been good to me."
"And to me. If you had not been here I should have been dead and we
would never have met. Perhaps He sent us to one another."
"I'm sure He did, and all our lives we'll thank Him for it," and so the
sight of the dead but put a keener edge on their gratitude for life and
their joy in one another.
The next big storm washed the point clean again. All had gone,
wreckage, bodies, everything, and the great pile beyond bristled higher
than ever.
"Do you notice anything strange?" he asked her, as they stood looking
out at it.
"There seems more of it."
"And not a bird to be seen. They've all gone for the winter, I expect.
We shall not see them again till next year."
"I am glad. They are evil things. Our Paradise is sweeter without
them," and he kissed her for the word.
The weird forces of the gales, however, afforded them many surprises.
Tramping round the further end of their lake one day, they saw changes
in the great stretch of sand that ran out of sight towards the eastern
point. What had been a level plain was scored and furrowed as by a
mighty ploughshare. It was like a rough sea whose tumbling waves had
in an instant been turned into sand--league-long grooves with
high-piled ridges between, and in the hollows the watery sun glinted
briefly here and there on shining white objects sticking out of the
sand.
"Bones!" said Wulf in surprise, as they stood looking into the first
hollow, and he jumped down and picked up a human skull.
"Horrid!" said Avice. "And there's another, and another over there.
It's a regular grave-yard."
"A battle-field, I should say," as he examined them one after another.
"This is very curious. This fellow was killed by a bullet through the
head. Here's the hole. And this one's skull was split with an axe or
a sword. This one also. I wonder what it all means...."
"Pirates and murderers. That's what they look like."
"I shouldn't wonder.... Here's an ancient cutlass."
"And what's this?"--rooting at something with her foot.... "An old
pistol! ... and the hilt of another sword! ... I wonder if they were
the men who lived on our ships."
"Maybe. But I think these things are older than the ships....
Why--the place is thick with them," as they wandered on. "There must
be scores of them, and more still underneath the ridges, no doubt....
There was no lack of life here at one time evidently----"
"And death!"
"Yes, and death without a doubt. A good thing for us, perhaps, that
customers such as these don't frequent it now."
"I'm glad we live at the other end. You haven't found any bones there,
have you?"
"Not a bone! They're not very cheerful company. Let us hope the next
gale will cover them up again."
Further on, in another trench, they found one side of a boat, mouldered
almost into the similitude of the sand in which it had been embedded
for very many years. And, further along still, Wulf thought he could
make out the stark ribs of ships like those on the outer banks at their
own end of the island. But they were very far away and held out no
inducement to closer investigation, and Avice had had enough of such
things for the time being.
There were spells of bad weather, when, for days at a time, they
scarcely ventured out except to get in wood or fetch water from the
pools, which always meant a thorough soaking.
But they were completely happy in one another's company, and ever more
grateful for the Providence that had cast their lot together.
The days slipped by without one weary hour. Shrewder and subtler
proving of hearts and temperaments could hardly be conceived. But they
stood the test perfectly, never thought of it as such, found in their
present estate nothing but cause for joy and deepest thankfulness.
The depth and warmth of his love for her expressed itself in most
devoted service and tenderest care, and hers for him in so frank and
implicit a confidence that he felt it an uplifting honour to be so
favoured. Indeed the man who could have betrayed so great a trust must
have been lowest of the low and basest of his kind.
"I can't help wondering sometimes whether we would have felt like this
to one another if we had met in an ordinary way, outside there," she
said musingly, one night, as she lay in the hollow of his arm, watching
the coloured flames.
"Yes," he said emphatically. "For you laid hold of my heart as soon as
I set eyes on you. It got tangled first in the meshes of your hair,
and in your long eyelashes, and the thing I wanted most was to see what
your eyes were like. They were wells of mystery."
"And--they were right?" she laughed softly.
"They were exactly right and just what I had hoped. Large and dark and
eloquent and tender and true and----"
"Dear! dear! If I had known such an inquisition was going I should
have been afraid to open them."
"Ah, you didn't know me, you see."
"I didn't know you, but I knew I was all right as soon as I saw you. I
knew I could trust you.... How strange and wonderful it all was!"
LV
One strange and terrible experience they had when the winter was almost
over, and it came within measurable distance of making an end of them
both.
Depending on their reserve stock of flour on board the 'Jane and Mary,'
they had used freely what they had on shore. When he opened the other
he found to his dismay that it must have been more damaged at first
than he imagined. It was nearly all mouldy and smelt badly. He had
run short of tobacco also, and so decided to go over to the pile for
supplies on the first possible day.
The worst of the storms seemed over. They had occasional brisk
gleaming days in between times, and on one such, after seeing that
Avice had all she would need in his absence, they set off along the
northern shore.
She wanted to go out with him, but he dissuaded her from that. The
crossing would be very different from what it was in the summer and he
would not have her exposed to it. Besides, he intended to make only a
short job of it, just get what he wanted, and be back almost before she
knew he had gone. She was so loth to be parted from him, however, even
for that short time, that she insisted on walking with him to the point
and said she would sit there and wait till she saw him on his way back.
So she sat down in the sand and drew her blanket cloak about her, and
watched him wade and swim and at last scramble up on to the pile. He
waved his hand to her and then set to work constructing a raft as usual.
She saw him climbing to and fro among the wreckage, smashing away at
casks and cases, and then, to her dismay, he and the pile and the gaunt
wrecks beyond disappeared completely, wiped out by a bank of mist that
had come sweeping in from the sea. The sun still shone up above, but
intermittently. Dark clouds came rushing up out of the south and
presently it too was hidden. The wind blew gustily and increased in
violence every minute.
She wished he had not gone. She could do no good by stopping there,
but she did not care to go home. Behind her, on the southern shore,
the waves were beginning to break with the short harsh sounds that
portended storm.
Perhaps he would leave his work and swim across. He would know she was
waiting for him. She must wait till he came. She drew her blanket
over her head and sat there, huddled up with her back to the wind, and
hoped and prayed. For, if this sudden storm should work up into a gale
and last, she would be full of fears for his safety.
Suppose he should be drowned! What that awful pile would be like in
bad weather she dared not think.
She prayed wildly for his life,--"Oh God, spare him to me! He is all I
have! Spare him! Have pity on us both! Spare him! Spare him!"--over
and over again the same ultimate cry, for her mind was closed to every
other thought but this, that the man she loved more than anything on
earth was out there in peril of his life.
She stayed there, drenched by the rain and flailed by the wind, till it
began to grow dark, and then she crept wearily home like a broken bird.
Grim fear gripped her heart like an icy hand, but she would not despair
entirely. He was so strong and capable. He might have tried and found
it impossible to get back. He might come in at any minute.
If he were here the first thing he would have told her was to change
into dry clothes. She changed, and made up the fire and put on the
kettle. He would be cold and hungry when he came. She must be ready
for him.
Out there on the wreckage, Wulf had been so hard at work that he
noticed no sign of change in the weather, till the clammy mist swept
over him and blotted out everything but the box he was delving into.
The winter storms had wrought great changes in the pile. It seemed
thicker and higher and more chaotic than ever, bristling with new stuff
which he would have liked to investigate, in case it should contain
anything that would add to Avice's comfort.
But first, to find some decent flour, and, as it happened, there seemed
fewer barrels about than usual, and most of them had suffered in their
rough transit. The search for a good one took time. Such as he found
were gaping and he did not trouble to open them. However, he
discovered one at last, opened it to make sure of the goodness of its
heart and then turned to seek tobacco.
It was then that the fog swept down on him and chained him to three
square feet or so of precarious foothold. Trespass beyond that limit
might mean a broken limb or neck, for the surface of the pile was
seamed with ragged rifts and chasms, in which the tide whuffled and
growled like a wild beast anticipating food.
So he rooted away in the chest he had just smashed open, lighted on a
supply of tobacco to his great satisfaction, and then sat down where he
was, to wait till the fog cleared. But this, he perceived, was not one
of their usual clinging fogs which enveloped one like a pall of
cotton-wool. It drove on a rising wind and sped past him in dense
whirling coils that made his head spin. He thought briefly of mighty
spirits of the air trailing ghostly garments in rapid flight. Down
below him, in the black rifts and along the sides of the pile, the
water was yapping savagely, as if the wild beast would wait no longer.
When the last of the fog tore past him in tattered fragments, he found
to his dismay that the sea between him and home was beyond any man's
swimming,--every channel raging and foaming, and the banks between
boiling furiously in the rising tide and the rush of the south-west
wind. The raft he had made had already broken loose and started
northwards on its own account. It went to pieces on the nearest bank,
as he watched, and swept away in fragments.
There was nothing for it but waiting. So sudden a storm might pass as
quickly as it had come.
For himself he had no great fears. The pile had stood a thousand
storms, and worse ones than this. But he was filled with anxiety on
Avice's account. She would imagine the worst when he did not come, and
her suffering would be great. Thought of her troubled him infinitely
more than fear for himself.
He tried hard to make her out on the beach, though how to reassure her
he did not know. But the sky was overcast and the atmosphere murky
with sweeping showers, and he could not even see the point.
He was wet through with his swim, and the wind, though not cold in
itself, was so strong that it chilled him. He searched about for
shelter, and coming on a huge case which presented a solid back to the
weather, he stove in the front and found it contained fine lace
curtains. He hauled out a sufficiency, which the wind whisked
playfully away. Then he crept into their place, grateful for so much,
and lay and watched the strange writhings and contortions of the pile
under the impact of the gale and the rising tide.
The wind would go down with the tide probably, and then he would make
another raft and get home as quickly as he could with his flour. For,
great as Avice's anxiety would certainly be, they were still short of
flour, and it would be better to take it with him than to have to come
back for it. The wreck-pile in a gale was a decidedly unpleasant
experience, and its behaviour most extraordinary. He had never
imagined a dead conglomeration such as that capable of such antics.
When the tide was at its height the whole mass writhed and shuddered
through all its length and breadth like some great monster in its death
agonies. The rifts and chasms gaped and closed like grim black wounds
or hungry mouths. Strange and awesome sounds broke out all about,
groanings and creakings, ragged rendings and grindings, as the
component pieces lifted and settled regardless of their neighbours.
When the tide went down it was more at ease, and the only sounds were
the waves snapping at the sides and gurgling and rushing in the depths
below.
He did not find it very cold. Sheltered from the wind, the heat of his
body in time made a warm nook round him in the heart of the curtains.
But he was never dry. And before it got too dark, when he saw it would
be impossible to get away that night, he crept out and crawled
precariously to and fro till he lighted on a small cask of rum. He
carried it to his shelter, knocking in the head with his axe, and it
kept his blood warm through the night. But it was a terribly long
night, chiefly because he was thinking all through it of Avice, and her
fears for him, and her suffering.
To his bitter disappointment, morning showed no signs of abatement or
relief. It brought another wild gray day without a glimmer of hope in
the sky.
He had eaten nothing for more than twenty hours and was feeling empty
and ravenous. The tide had risen and gone down again in the night.
Before the pile began its writhings and contortions again he must eat.
So he crept out and foraged till he found a barrel of pork, and bashed
it open and carried back to his nest a big chunk which he ate raw and
washed down with rum.
All that day the gale held. He hardly dared to think of Avice and yet
could think of nothing else. At times, under the impulse of his fears
for her, he was tempted to leap into the sea and try to battle through
to the point. But when he studied the chances of it, common sense
prevailed. Adventure into those boiling currents meant death as surely
as if he cut his throat on the pile.
If he could only let her know that he was alive.... If he had had his
flint and steel he would have tried to set something on fire--even if
it were his nest--on the chance of her seeing the smoke and
understanding it. He searched eagerly for another tinder-box, but
could not light on one.
It was an anxious and gloomy man that crept into the heart of the
curtain-case that night; but he slept, in a way and brokenly, in spite
of it all, for Nature knows man's limits, and when he goes beyond them
she steps in at times and takes command.
LVI
To Avice, also, that first night was one long horror.
She made up the fire and sat waiting for him to come. He would know in
what a state of despair she would be and he would certainly come. She
was sure he would come--if he could. If he did not it was because he
could not. And ... if he could not....
The wind shrilled eerily outside. It sounded cold and heartless ...
pitiless ... like messages from the dead ... warnings of evil. It got
on her nerves and set her shivering. She crept to her room at last and
dropped hopelessly on to her bed, and lay there sorely stricken.
In the gray of the morning she ate mechanically, and hurried away to
the point for sign or sight of him. But it was all she could do to
make out the pile itself, like a bristling rampart in the dull dim
distance. As to distinguishing anything on it, that was out of the
question.
She wandered about there all day long, with her eyes strained on the
pile like one bereft, and only crept back when night shut it out and
drove her home.
She was satisfied in her own mind now that he was dead. If he had been
alive he would certainly have come. Well, she would not be long in
following him.... Without him she had no desire to live ... even if
she could struggle on alone, which was very doubtful ... better to join
him quickly than to drag on miserably all by herself on that lonely
bank, and go crazy in the end.
She sobbed herself asleep, her last wish that she might never waken.
She had eaten nothing since the morning, and then only a hasty scrap
that had no taste in it. The fire had gone out.... It did not matter.
She would go out herself as soon as might be.... A woful end to all
their golden hopes and happiness.
Morning found her still lying spent and hopeless on her bed, comatose,
neither asleep nor awake, simply careless of life and even of the fact
that the wind had fallen at midnight and that the new day had broken
soft and clear.
Then, in her dream-weariness, she heard a voice in the outer room--or
thought she did--but all her senses were dulled except the sense of
loss and heartache. People, she knew, heard voices when they were
going to die.
"Avice!"--the voice of God calling her--the sweet voice of death. She
was ready to go.
"Avice! Where are you?"--and a tapping on the wall of her room.
How like Wulfrey's voice! Perhaps he was permitted to be the
messenger,--a gracious thought--a joyful thought.
She rose painfully, stiff with weakness and long lying, stumbled to the
doorway, stood leaning her hands against the sides, and peered,
white-faced and awe-stricken, through the curtains into the room.
Then, with a broken cry, she threw up her hands and fell forward into
Wulf's arms.
When she came to herself she was lying on a blanket outside the house
and he was bathing her forehead and kissing her. She lay looking up at
him in wonder, out of eyes almost lost in the mists and darkness of her
suffering. She raised a hand and touched his face.
"Are you real? Are you alive?" she whispered doubtfully.
He proved it with hot kisses. His eyes swam with pity for her
sufferings. Her face and eyes told him all the story.
"By God's mercy we are both alive, dear. It might have been
otherwise.... You have suffered sorely."
"I thought you were sent for me ... the angel of Death. And it was so
good of them to send you and not a stranger.... But it is better to
have you alive," and happy tears welled weakly out of her eyes and
rolled down the white cheeks.
"I believe you have eaten nothing since I went. Lie still and I will
get you something," and he jumped up and went inside, lighted the fire
quickly, and presently was sitting by her side, feeding her with warm
rum and water, for she was icy cold, and some bits of the cakes she had
made three days before.
"You ought not to have starved yourself like that," he remonstrated.
"I was sure you were dead and I had no wish to live.... You will never
go out there again...."
"Not in the break of a storm anyway. We must go to the storehouse
sometimes, but we'll make sure of our weather in future."
"I wouldn't have minded if I'd been with you."
"I would. It was ghastly out there in the night," and he told her how
he had lived in the big case of curtains, and how the pile heaved and
writhed like a wounded sea-serpent under the tide and the gale. And
how he had brought back some flour after all, though it had been no
easy job as there was no wind to help him.
"It is dear flour," she said. "It nearly cost us our lives. I would
sooner live on raw meat another time."
LVII
That was their sorest trial of the winter. Often, over the fire of a
night, they talked of it and told one another all there was to tell of
their feelings and their fears, and their love burned the brighter for
its tempering.
But Avice was soon herself again, and as the Spring quickened all about
and in them, the bitterness of the experience gradually faded out of
their recollection and only the brightness was left.
And then there was so much to interest one everywhere that the days
were hardly long enough for all there was to see and do.
First, seals--mothers and babies galore. Those sandy beaches of the
northern coast seemed a favourite basking place and nursery, and Avice
could creep along behind the sandhills, and crawl up among the
wire-grass, and peep over, and she never tired of watching them. There
was something so human in the way the babies snuggled up to their
mothers when they were hungry, and still more in the way the mothers
looked down at their nurslings.
And the baby-rabbits. They were almost as entrancing as the seals, but
far shyer and more difficult to spy upon.
For the simple lifting of a head among the sparse tufts of grass set
the hollow below alive with tiny bobbing white scuts, whose terrified
owners tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get below ground.
Avice would not hear of rabbit-meat in those days. She said the very
thought of it made her feel like a cannibal.
And lastly,--birds. They were coming back in flights. The eastern
point seemed their chosen ground, but closer at hand stray families
were found, and importunate babies were being fed by the cold-eyed
mothers with whom, a few months later, they would be waging the fierce
battle for food. But Avice never took to the birds as she did to the
seals and rabbits. She could never forget what they would grow
into--brigands and fighters and cold-blooded raucous screamers at all
times.
Now and again they lived on the 'Jane and Mary' for a week by way of a
change, and fish was always obtainable whether they were afloat or
ashore.
The clear fire of their love waxed ever stronger, devoured the days and
weeks and months, and refined and fused them all into golden memories
without one smallest speck of alloy. More devoted lover never woman
had, nor man a sweeter mistress. Never was princess of the
blood--without a bar across her scutcheon--held in loftier esteem or
shown it more gallantly. Never, in word or act, did he offend her
sense of right in the smallest degree; yet she could set his heart
leaping and his blood racing by a touch--and she knew it.
Sometime,--when he believed it right--she knew he would ask more of
her. It was inevitable. She had known it from the beginning. And she
had no fear of it. Love such as theirs knows nothing of fear.
They were not playing at love. They loved with all the white fire of
passionate devotion which loses sight of self in the one beloved. For
better, for worse; in life, in death, she was wholly his. With the
ardour of the Spring in her blood, and the love-light in her eyes, she
waited for him to speak.
LVIII
Time came when, according to her calendar, he had been there full
twelve months and she just about nine. And as to prospect of escape,
or further addition to their company, they were in exactly the same
position as when they came.
Whenever they discussed that matter, she said, "Still, I came ashore
alive."
And he always said, "You were the miracle. Besides you were
nine-tenths dead."
She wondered when he would ask the next step of her, and how he would
do it. Her answer was ready--herself. Still, something of extra
fragrance--something ineffably sweet and delicate--would cling to it
for ever, or be for ever just that much lacking, according to the
manner of his asking.
But she believed his great love would choose the proper chord and
strike it with strong and gentle fingers.
And it did.
They were sitting in the firelight one night, when a more than usually
pregnant silence fell on them. The depth of their feeling for one
another expressed itself not infrequently in these long delicious
pauses in their talk, when that which was in them was all too sacred
for words. Her Northern blood, of which she was proud, prevailed as a
rule over the Gallic strain, which she held in light esteem, and made
for undemonstrativeness in any outward display of feeling. But she
felt to the depths, and when she did permit the brakes to slip, the
wheels struck sparks.
He also was more doer than talker. Hence those long sweet silences,
when she lay with her head in his arm in the coloured firelight, and
the gentle play of his hand on her hair was more to them both than all
the words in the world.
But this night there was more in the silences that fell on them. In
both their hearts the high-charged thoughts and feelings of many months
were converging to a point. The quickening of the Spring was in their
blood.
His hand slipped suddenly down from her hair and clasped on both of
hers where they lay in her lap. His voice as he spoke was deep with
emotion. It thrilled her to the depths. She felt the hot pulses in
his hand leaping and throbbing. His words were very simple, as became
a matter so vital. Deepest feeling needs no garnishment.
"Dearest, you have honoured me with your trust and love"---- Her hands
turned and clasped his fervently.
"Every hair of your head is precious to me. I would not knowingly
offend your feelings in any smallest thing.... We are here, cut off
from our kind, it may be, for ever.... We are as alone here with God,
as Adam and Eve were in The Garden.... You make my Paradise. You can
perfect it.... Will you?..."
And for answer she put up her arms, and drew down his face, and kissed
him passionately, and clung to him as if she would never let him go.
"I thank God for so precious a gift," he said, clasping her to him so
that she felt his heart pounding inside as furiously as her own.
"Heart ... soul ... body ... all yours!" she whispered, and he kissed
her hair, because her face was hidden, and clasped her closer still.
"It is the ordained crown of our love," he said presently, when their
first blinding whirl of emotion was over. "I cannot see that we offend
any law of man's, for here we are beyond the law. God's law we are
surely keeping.... And, so as not to act on simple impulse I have
thought that we would let another month go by before..." and he kissed
her rosy face again.
"But why?"
"Perhaps you have not thought it all out as I have----"
"But I have ... I knew it must be so...." and the joy in him was very
great.
"All the same, dear, we will not enter into that high estate without
your very fullest consideration.... And if you should find any reason
or instinct against it I shall abide by your decision."
"I am all yours. I shall not change."
"From what the mate said I imagine this island may pertain to Nova
Scotia. It is possible that Scottish law runs there.... We can take
one another for man and wife and place it on record...."
"How?"
"We have books with fly-leaves. Among the sand-hills you will find all
the quills you want. The birds are some use after all.... Anyone can
make a pen ... and ink we can always get even though it is red.... All
we need for a good Scots marriage is a pair of witnesses."
"Seals, rabbits, birds...."
"They cannot testify.... All we can do," he said thoughtfully, "if, by
God's mercy, we ever leave this place is to regularise ourselves by
proper marriage ashore as soon as we land. But the prospects of
getting away seem very small, I'm afraid."
"We have been very happy here. We can still be very happy here," she
said contentedly.
So amazing is this great power of Love in covering all deficiencies of
outward circumstance.
LIX
The days slipped past, and each day he watched her quietly for
slightest sign of compunction, or retraction. And if such had come to
her, sore though he might have felt, and bereaved of the perfect
unfolding of the fair flower of their love, he would have choked the
feeling down, trampled on it, buried it so that she would have seen no
sign of it in him. For he recognised to the fullest what a mighty
thing this was that he was asking of her.
But she understood him perfectly, fathomed his fears, was on the
look-out for his quietly-questioning looks, and met them with clear
full-eyed serenity and a face rosy at times with anticipation.
"You need not fear for me," she laughed softly, one night as she lay in
his arm before the fire. "I shall not change."
He clasped her closer. "I could not blame you if you did. From every
worldly point of view you would be right----"
"What have we to do with worldly points of view? We are out of it all.
We are here alone, and like to be. And we are doing right in our own
eyes."
"I would risk my soul on what seems right to these pure eyes," and he
bent and kissed them warmly.
"Ten more days!" she murmured, and nestled closer, with her head on his
breast so that she could feel the strong beating of his heart.
"It says 'Avice!--Avice!--Avice!'" he said quietly. "It is full of
Avice," and she pressed still closer.
So the great day came, the greatest day either of their lives had known.
Wulf had found sleep impossible. His heart, full-charged, felt like to
burst its mortal bounds. He rose quietly in the dark and went out into
the soft twilight of the dawn--to greet the coming of the perfect day.
And she, as impossible of sleep as he, heard him in spite of all his
caution, and laughed softly to herself for very happiness in him and in
herself. And when he had gone, she thanked God for this great gift of
a true man's love, and for that in herself which responded to it so
fully.
She had not a doubt nor a fear. The smallest of either would have
barred her from him. But there was not the smallest shadow between
them. Their hearts were one. It was meet and good that their lives
should be one also. Wulfrey paced the beach out there and found the
silent darkness soothing to his bounding senses.
It was late April. The air was sweet and fresh. The sea just breathed
in its sleep and no more. The water rippled silently up the hard sand
with scarce a murmur. The darkness of the eastern sky thinned as he
paced and watched. There came a soft suffusion of light there. It
throbbed and grew. A faint touch of carmine outlined a cloud above it.
The darkness seemed to fade and melt out of the sky. All the tiny
clouds above him turned their faces to the east and flushed rose-red
with the joy of the new day.
He climbed a hill and caught the first golden gleam of the rising sun.
His eyes shone, and his face. In his eyes two suns were reflected.
But there was only one sun. And they were two and now were to become
one. The Perfect Day had dawned.
And just as she, lying in her bed with her face in her hands, had
thanked God for His goodness, so he. He flung his right hand up
towards the sun in the brightening sky and said deeply, "My God, I
thank Thee for this day and most of all for her!"
And, down below, he saw her coming out of the house towards him.
He sprang down to meet her, caught her hands, and looked right down
through her eyes into her heart, and was satisfied.
LX
Arm in arm they paced the beach till the sun was well up, and their
bank of sand shone in the flood of golden light as it had never shone
before,--fresh and sweet as if but new-created.
A light wind had come with the sun. The small waves came hurrying in
as though they were invited guests. At sight of the wedding-party they
broke into crisp white laughter, curled themselves over in league-long
sickles of tenderest lucent green, and raced up the sands to their feet
in long soft swirls of liquid amber, laced with bubbles and edged with
creamy foam.
"They haste to the wedding, to pay their tribute to the only bride they
have ever set eyes on," said Wulf, as they stopped to watch them. "And
each one is glad to give his life for a single peep at her."
"Foolish little waves," laughed she. "I am going to make their very
close acquaintance presently. How beautiful the sea is this
morning!"--as her eyes travelled out to the wide blue sweep beyond,
with its dapple of purple shadows.
"The most beautiful sea and the most wonderful morning that ever was,"
he asserted heartily. "But it is only a beginning. There will be many
more like it. And still better."
"I am so glad it is so sweet a day. A dull one would have troubled me."
"But it could not possibly have been anything else."
"Oh, but it could."
"In mere outward accident perhaps. But I've got the sun inside me. I
wonder it doesn't show through."
"It does," she laughed joyously. "You are all aglow."
"And never man had better reason. I would not change places with all
the kings of all the earth rolled into one."
"Nor I with all the queens. We are happier here by far with nothing
but ourselves."
"Ourselves, and our Love, and infinite Hope. Now let us go and eat.
My bride must not starve. That would be a bad beginning. Did you
sleep?"
"Not a wink. I heard you go out."
"And I was pluming myself on not having made a sound."
While she was making cakes he busied himself making a pen out of a
quill he had picked up on the beach, and she smiled when she saw what
he was at.
"And the ink?" she asked.
"I've got it all ready. I always carry some with me in case of need,"
at which she knitted her brows prettily and looked puzzled.
After breakfast she said, "Now you must leave me for a couple of hours.
I am going to thank the waves for their good wishes and then I shall go
to the fresh-water pool."
"You will be very careful.. You won't get yourself drowned."
"I will be very careful. And you!"
"I will go across to the spit. But when we are wed----"
"Yes--then!" she nodded rosily, and he kissed her and went off past the
fresh-water pools, and splashed through the narrows that joined their
lake to the smaller one, and so to the shore and into the sea, for the
last time alone.
He waited till he was sure she had done with their bathing-pool, and
then ran across and plunged into it, for the salt water braces, but
sticks and never makes one feel so clean as fresh.
She was still busy with the princely brush and comb when he came on
her, and his heart leaped again at her fresh and radiant beauty.
She had clothed herself all in spotless linen, swathed about her in
that marvellous fashion of which she held the secret to perfection. To
his rejoicing eyes she appeared half angel, half Vestal Virgin, yet all
bewitching human girl, and, best of all, his bride.
"Be thankful you're a man, and delivered from this," she said, her eyes
shining through the glorious veil at his visible joy in her.
"I'm thankful I'm a man, but I wouldn't have you relieved of that for
half the world. I glory in it," and he bent and kissed it. "For a
moment I thought you were an angel."
"Perhaps I am."
"I know you are. But, thank God, you're human too! Men don't wed with
angels.... I must go and dress myself also," and he disappeared into
the house.
When, in due course, he came out, gallantly clad in a long blue coat
with flap-pockets, and figured vest, and white silk knee-breeches, and
stockings to suit, she first stared and then laughed.
"My faith, but we are fine!" said she. "But, in truth, I like you best
as I have known you best. Do you marry in a dead man's clothes?"
"Not if I know it. Sooner in my rags. But, to the best of my belief,
these belonged to your friend the Duke of Kent. Macro would have them,
but little he dreamed of the high use to which they would be put. I
borrow them for the occasion. His Highness would make no objection I
am sure."
"I am sure he would not, and they become you well. But still I like
you best as I have known you best."
"I will doff them presently. But you are so like a queen that I did
not like to come to you like a beggar."
In his hand he had brought the Prayer-book, with the quill in a certain
place.
He stepped up to her and lifted her hand to his lips.
"You do not repent you of this we are about to do?"
"I shall never repent it," she said, with dancing eyes.
"Please God, and as far as in me lies, you shall never have cause to
repent it.... We are here, our two selves, with none to witness this
that we do but God.... We are doing what we believe to be right for
our own great happiness and well-being.... It would suffice, I
believe, for a Scots wedding, simply to declare ourselves man and wife.
But I have thought it would please us both to do something more. We
are not entering upon this new estate lightly or without due
thought.... It will, I know, be to both our minds and comforting to
both our hearts, to think that in our loneliness here we have done all
we could to supply the deficiencies for which we are not to blame."
He spoke with very great emotion. She rejoiced in this fresh evidence
of the heights and depths of his nature and his essential goodness of
heart, though indeed she had not needed it.
Her great dark eyes, fixed on his, were abrim with happy tears.
"So," he continued, "We will read together the Form for the
Solemnization of Matrimony in this Prayer-book, and then we will
inscribe on the front leaf of it the fact that this day we have become
man and wife. We will sign our names to it, and we can do no more to
comply with man's law.... Is that your will, my dear?"
"Yes."
"Then here we will kneel and wed," and down they knelt in the sand,
with a clear sky and bright sun above, and the blue sea that held them
captive dancing and laughing in front; and holding the book between
them he read the Service aloud in a deep and reverent voice.
Parts of it were of course somewhat incongruous to their situation, but
he would not slur or miss a word. The statement that they were
gathered together in the face of this congregation almost provoked her
to an explosion. For out of the corner of her eye, as she followed his
reading, a slight movement on the side of an adjacent sandhill showed
her a rabbit, sitting up and watching them with critical attention, and
it looked to her just like the frowsy old female in black she had seen
hovering about the skirts of a wedding in a London church.
And there were parts that brought the colour to her face, though she
was familiar with them. Applied to oneself they seemed to hold new
point and meaning.
However, he read bravely on. No one interfered to show any just cause
why they should not lawfully be joined together, nor had either of them
any confession of impediment to make.
At the "Wilt thou----?" he answered heartily, "I will." And waited for
her to do the same when her turn came.
When it came to--"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?"--he
answered boldly,--"God."
Then they took hands and plighted their troth, reciting the words in
the book.
But when it came to the putting on of the ring there came an interlude
not provided for in the Marriage Service.
He had duly provided a plain gold wedding ring.
"Where did you get it?" she asked with a look of surprise.
"I found it among Macro's treasures."
"It must be some dead woman's, then. I would sooner not. Can we not
leave that out? Will it make any difference?"
"No, dear. It will make no difference to our being truly wed."
"Then please go on without it."
So they left the ring out and read on to the end together.
He closed the book and drew her to him as they knelt, and kissed her as
his wife.
"Now," he said, lifting her up. "We will put on record the most
wonderful thing that has ever happened on this island, and then we will
go home and prepare the marriage-feast.... I wonder now if James
Elwes, M.A., late of Brasenose College, Oxford, is aware of the high
use to which his Prayer-book is being put,"--as he pointed to the name
inscribed on the fly-leaf, and turned over to the blank on the other
side.
"Do you think they know?"
"I do not see why not. But as we never knew him, nor he us, it is
possible he is not present."
And suddenly those words at the beginning of the Marriage Service
assumed a new and mighty significance for her. "In the face of this
congregation" might mean more than she had ever dreamed of. Perhaps
her mother had been there---- If she had, if she should be here
now--it, was somewhat startling to think of--she would be glad, for she
would know how good and true a man this was.
But he was busily writing, and at the sight she cried, "Oh!"--for the
writing was red and the ink was drawn from a little jag he had made in
his arm.
"In blood," she said, with a touch of dismay.
"It could not be put to better use," he laughed. "It is all at your
service ... to the very last drop.... How begin better than by setting
down here that we are one till death?"
"What you said made me think that perhaps my mother had been with
us----"
"I am sure she was, and mine too.... They will both approve, you may
be sure.... Here is what I have written--
"'I, Wulfrey Dale, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Avice
Drummond to be my lawful wedded wife.' And for you, 'I, Avice
Drummond, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Wulfrey Dale to
be my lawful wedded husband.' Now I will sign.... And you will sign
there ... and I will add the date as far as we know it ... and our
present place of abode--Sable Island."
He held the book till the writing was dry, then kissed her signature.
"It is the first time I have set eyes on your handwriting," he said.
"It is like yourself--clear and strong and true ... Mistress
Dale,"--with a smiling bow, as he handed her the book,--"your
marriage-lines! You will like to keep them."
"And the pen, please," she said, holding out her hand for it, and
wrapping it and the book in a fold of her white robe. "These will be
more to me than all the treasures of the world."
He put his arm round her and they went slowly home--man and wife.