The Master-Knot of Human Fate Part 8

"To tell the truth, I never cared anything about him at all," Adam answered quickly. "Like a good many others, I was enthusiastic over your voice. He asked me to the house to hear you sing, and I went, and was glad of the chance. And you have never sung for me once this year."

"You never asked me," she answered. "'A dumb priest loses his benefice.' But I was speaking of my club. We studied Andersen all winter, and got enough more out of him than a lot of us who pored over Ibsen, guided by a literary expert. Andersen has a more beautiful, a more inspiring philosophy. Every nation has its story of Psyche, the lost soul of things, but none is more beautiful than the tale of Gerda and Kay. There were children in that club who were cruel, horribly cruel, and one day when we gave an entertainment for them, one of the older girls recited the story of 'The Daisy and the Lark.' They cried as I had cried over it years before."

"I remember," he said. "It broke my heart when I was a little shaver.

I couldn't give so sad a story as that to a child."

"Oh, yes, you could," she said, "if the child needed it. The world was cruel, cruel, Adam; I used to wonder sometimes why G.o.d did not blot it all out, as He has blotted it out now. Once in another club, a big, swell affair, there was a Humane Society programme. One woman, in a Persian lamb jacket, spoke on the evils of the overcheck; you know how they get that wool? And women nodded the aigrettes in their bonnets, torn from the old birds while the little ones starved to death, to show their approval, and patted their hands gloved in the skins of kids, sewed in cloth soon after their birth so they couldn't grow a fleece, and tortured all their short lives, and went home to eat pate-de-foie gras, and broil live lobsters, thanking G.o.d they were not as the rest of men, if only they let out their check-reins a hole or so. It was horrible,--the cruelties men practised to gratify appet.i.te, and that women were guilty of for vanity. I suppose I am a monomaniac on the subject, but we never seemed far removed from barbarians, when we went clothed in the skins of wild animals, and decorated with their heads and tails and feathers, like so many Sioux chiefs. The varnish of civilization isn't dry on us yet. Why, if a ship should come here now, do you know what they would do first, unless they happened to be East Indians? They would say they wanted some fresh meat, and offer to buy Lily; she is the fattest of the cows. If we wouldn't sell her, they would probably take her anyway."

"Kill Lily," cried Adam, angrily. "They'd have me to kill first; nothing on this place is going to be slaughtered while I can protect it." He went on more slowly, a little ashamed of his heat, "I feel a sense of kinship with all these creatures that would make it impossible to kill them. It's like the woman whose Newfoundland died, and a friend asked if she was going to have him stuffed. 'Stuffed!'

she said; 'I'd as soon think of stuffing my husband!'"

Robin laughed, and leaning over tweaked La.s.sie's ear. "If we are to be stuffed, we prefer to have it an ante-mortem performance, don't we, little dog?"

The sun dropped behind the tall peaks, but its dying light still covered sea and sh.o.r.e. They rose as if for the benediction, and looked out at the waters before them. Then they looked at each other and grew white to the lips, and Robin knelt down and flinging her arms around La.s.sie sobbed and laughed. Adam never took his eyes from the coming ship.

XIII

Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well a.s.sured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.

EMERSON.

The ship bore steadily toward them, but night was coming on so rapidly that her lines were obscured. They could not even tell whether it was a sailing vessel or propelled by steam.

"There's one thing certain," said Adam, excitedly: "it was coming this way, but very slowly. I suppose that is to be expected of a ship sailing unknown waters. They have nothing to go by, though they know, of course, just what part of the round globe they are on."

She answered almost apathetically, as if she found it difficult to talk, "It seems as if good sailors would lay by at night, when they do not know their course, and there is land in sight,--land that has never been explored."

"It does seem strange she should come right on," he a.s.sented. "For surely no ship has ever sailed these seas before. Perhaps--"

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps she has been clear around; perhaps this is the only bit of land left above a world ocean."

Robin shivered a little, and Adam turned toward the beacon, that had glowed in vain for a year. It had been built on a high, altar-shaped rock, across the gorge, where it could be kept up without leaving the park. Robin went with him, and they gathered a pile of timber that insured the brilliancy of their signal until morning. Adam piled on the logs till the blaze leaped far up in the darkness; then they went back to the boulder and sat down to think and wait.

"See how the wind is rising," said Robin, breaking a silence of an hour, during which even La.s.sie had been motionless.

"But it is toward land," answered Adam.

"But the same wind that brings us the ship may dash it to pieces on this awful coast."

"True, but she is far enough out to make herself secure. Oh, Robin, suppose she sails around us and goes on!"

"That is impossible," answered Robin. "The people on that ship are as anxious to find us as we can be to see them, if they are civilized at all. Noah and Mt. Ararat are not to be named in the same day with us."

Adam crossed the gorge and added fuel to the fire. For a time the wind increased in velocity until a stiff gale was blowing, then, as the small hours came on, it waned, and the beacon flared straight up once more.

"I wonder where's she from?" said Adam.

"I wonder where she is now," answered Robin.

"I feel sure," he said, "when morning comes we shall see her riding the waves out there; and think of it, Robin, we can go!"

Robin made no reply, and her very silence made Adam repeat, but as a self-addressed question, "Go where? Yes," he went on quickly, "go where, Robin. Suppose the ship is all right, and that she stops, and the crew are not pirates, and are willing to take us aboard, where are we to go? Is there any place on earth that can mean as much to us as this island? Suppose Asia, or Africa, or Europe are still in existence, we should not regain our friends and relatives, and life would be harder with strange people, under a strange government, far more so than we have found it here, even without so many of its luxuries."

Robin shook her head sadly. "At first, Adam. We should learn their language and their customs. New friends are speedily acquired, and as for relatives,--well, in the scheme of life relatives don't count for much. There always comes a time when they step out of our lives, anyway."

"But as to happiness?"

Her face paled a little. "Have you been happy here?" she asked, without raising her eyes to his, and then went on, not waiting for a reply, "If you have been, it has been in the care of our little family of dependents, who do not need you half so much as the great family of human dependents. Rest a.s.sured if there is a continent over there across the darkness, it is peopled with beings who need the devoted and unselfish labors of such a man as you. You would find your work easily enough,--the work you have been saved for, the work you must do."

"But if there is no continent left?" he queried.

"In that case there must be islands; there were many mountains higher than these, and they are peopled, no doubt. Shall we not go to these other orphans, deserted by Mother Earth, our brothers and sisters, through our common calamity?"

Both were silent, engrossed in their own thoughts. A return to the world meant going back to the uncivilized rush of civilization. It meant the eternal question of what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and where-withal shall we be clothed? It meant the old compet.i.tion, the stern old law of the survival of the brawniest. Above all, to Robin, it meant separation from Adam, for once more in Rome, the customs of Rome must be followed. To do Adam justice, this was a contingency which did not enter his mind. As he had said before, whatever had put them in this dream together would keep them there, so that when he thought of relinquishing all the comfort and ease and quiet of his present life, all the loving animals, the cosy little house, the tiny fields, the blooming garden, it never occurred to him that he must relinquish more than all these things, more than the peace and harmony, that which, unconsciously, had come to be the very guiding star of his life.

"I wonder if whoever is left cares for grand opera?" said Robin, rather grimly.

"Why?" asked Adam in so startled a voice that she laughed hysterically.

"It's the only thing I know well enough to make a living at it," she said laconically. "I think the fire needs some more wood, Adam."

As he replenished it, her words burned themselves upon his brain, and he realized in an instant that a return to the old world meant giving up this supreme friend, all that he had left in the world, all there was for him in any world. The thing was impossible. He turned to go back to her, some kind of an impetuous avowal on his lips, but she had left the boulder and walked down almost to the edge of a precipitous cliff which they had called "Lover's Leap," in a spirit of badinage.

She stood there quietly, watching the gray dawn, and his heart impelled him to go to her and take her in his arms. As his love revealed itself to him in all its power, it seemed impossible that he should know it now for the first time. Why, why, had he been so blind?

If the ship took them away--

He walked unsteadily down to her, resolved to say nothing. If she wanted to go, her wish should be sufficient.

The dawn came slowly, but it came at last. As the darkness lifted, a slight fog settled over the face of the waters. Instinctively they recalled that other night when they had watched through the mist and his hand closed over hers. The sun was well up before the east wind dissipated it, and left only the dancing waves, brilliantly blue, stretching away into the dawn. On all that broad expanse there was not so much as a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l afloat.

Robin turned and looked to right and left in bewilderment, and then at Adam.

His chest was heaving, and as his eyes searched her face he cried, "Thank G.o.d," and gathered her up in his arms. She nestled there without a word.

They crossed the gorge and scattered the brands of their watch-fire, and walked on down to the cove. Suddenly La.s.sie came bounding toward them uttering short, excited barks. They quickened their pace, and as they came in sight of the beach discovered the object of her alarm.

Against a small promontory, lying on one side, was the ship they had sighted the evening before. It was a hopeless wreck, and had borne to them no living thing. Yet it had served its purpose. It had revealed their love for each other, and told them that they had hoped against a second deluge in vain.

XIV