XXVI
It was almost dark before the mate pitched his cargo up on to the deck and came groping up the side after it.
"What luck?" asked Wulfrey, as he came up to help him.
"Brought all I could lay hands on, but I wouldn't like to say they're right kind of things."
"She'll be glad of them whatever they are."
"Has she come round?"
"I wakened her to take some soup and biscuit. Now I hope she will sleep till morning."
"And you told her it was me brought her ashore?"
"Yes, I told her that. She will thank you herself."
"Did you find out who she is and where she hails from?"
"Not yet. There'll be time enough to learn all that. My only desire was to get some nourishment inside her. She'll be building up now all the time she's sleeping."
"An' she's a good-looking bit of goods, eh?" asked the mate, as they sat eating.
"Very good-looking, I should say, and pulling round quickly. A gentlewoman without doubt."
"And how can ye tell that now? There's many a good-looking hussy that's not gentle-born."
"Undoubtedly," said Wulfrey, looking across the fire at him. "But this isn't one of that kind. She's a lady to the finger-tips."
"Ah—too fine a lady to live on a ship with the likes o' you and me, mebbe," growled the mate. "All same, if't 'adn't bin for me her leddyship ud be no more'n a little white corp tumbling about out yonder in its little white shift."
"Quite so," said Wulfrey, on whom this insistence on his sole claim to the salvaging of her was beginning to pall. "And if it hadn't been for me your bringing her ashore wouldn't have been of much service to her. So suppose we say no more about it. We'll divide the honours."
"If I hadn't brought her ashore ye couldn't have brought her round," growled the mate.
"Six of one and half a dozen of the other."
"No six of anything. Ye can't deny I brought her ashore."
Wulfrey lit his pipe and went up on deck, wondering what was working in the curious fellow's brain now.
When he went down again he found that Macro had opened his bundles and spread their contents out to dry, and had turned in. He just glanced at the varied assortment, and then, not to disturb his patient by going anywhere near her, spread some blankets in the room next to the mate's, and turned in himself. But he lay awake for a long time, wondering if the introduction of this new element into the limited circle of their lives was like to make for peace or otherwise.
XXVII
Wulfrey was up early, after a restless night, anxious to see how his patient fared. It was such a morning as usually followed their storms—clear and bright and sunny, with a pale-blue wind-swept sky, and a crisp breeze that tipped the green of the waves outside with white.
The first time he went softly in she was still sleeping, and with much satisfaction he noted the improvement the food and rest had wrought in her. Her face had filled out, the cheek-bones were less prominent, the dark circles round her eyes were not nearly so pronounced as before, though he imagined the long dark lashes and level brows would always lend a sense of depth and witchery to the great dark eyes themselves. The slight salting and roughening of the skin would speedily cure itself under the application of fresh water. She was almost herself again.
Their fire, on its bed of sand, was never allowed to go out. The supply of wood was unlimited and always, in the depths of the heap of white ashes, was a golden core of heat only waiting to be fed. So he set to and prepared coffee for her, and some flour-and-water biscuits, and when he went in again she was awake. She turned her head and looked at him, and his heart beat quicker than was its wont.
Her eyes, he perceived, were very dark blue, almost black, and looked the darker for the dark fringing lashes. They were very beautiful eyes, he decided, and very eloquent,—there was something of apprehension in them when first they met his, but it vanished when he spoke.
"You are better, I can see. You slept well?"
"I have only just wakened. You are the doctor."
"Yes, I am the doctor. I have got some coffee for you and some biscuits. I will get them."
"You are very good," as he came in with them and she raised herself on to her elbow again. "Did your friend get me any clothes? I feel quite well, and I would get up."
"He brought a whole heap of things. They have been spread out all night, but I'm afraid they'll never dry properly till they are washed in fresh water."
"And have you fresh water?"
"Oh, plenty,—Ashore there, in pools. If you can select a few things I will go across and steep them. They will soon dry in the sun."
"You are very good," she said again, and sipped the coffee and glanced up at him with a somewhat wry face. "No, you have no sugar on this strange ship—nor milk. Nor a brush, nor a comb, I'll be bound. Nothing but——"
"A brush and a comb we can provide at all events, and of exceptional quality. They belonged, I believe, to His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent."
"Edward of Kent?" she asked quickly. "Why—how...."
"Some ship, bringing home his belongings from Canada, must have been wrecked here. We have found quite a number of his things."
"Well, he would not mind my using them," she said quietly. "He is of a pleasant temper, quite the nicest of them all"; and as she finished the coffee and biscuits, "If you could find me ... a brooch—no, you will not have a brooch! ... a large pin or two,—but no, you will not have any pins! ... Let me see, then,—a sharp splinter of wood——"
"I can get you all the splinters you want. Might I ask——"
"To pin some of these blankets about me, do you see,—so that I may get up. And if you would get me that royal brush and comb——"
He trimmed up half a dozen sharp little skewers and left them with her, together with the brush and comb, and plunged overboard for his morning swim.
The mate was sitting by the fire at his breakfast when he went down again.
"Well?—how is my lady this morning?" he asked.
"So well that she is getting up."
"Them clothes all right?"
"She will pick out what she wants. But they'll never dry with the salt in them. I'll rinse them in one of the pools as soon as she says which."
"There's more mebbe for the finding——" and then they heard the door of her little room open and she came into the cabin to them.
The mate jumped up and stood staring as if she were a ghost; and even Wulfrey, who had already made her acquaintance, eyed her with surprise, and was confirmed in the idea that had been growing in him that there was foreign blood in her. He doubted if any Englishwoman could have made so brave a showing out of such poverty of material.
Fastened simply with her wooden skewers, she had one blanket draped about her as a skirt, and another covered her shoulders, with a high peak behind her neck, like a monkish cloak. And inside this rough calyx the fair white column of her neck rose out of its surrounding frillery like the stamen of a flower from its nest of petals. Her abundant hair, combed and brushed, but still lacking somewhat of its natural lustre, was coiled about her head in heavy plaits.
Though her garments were only rough blankets they were so disposed about her person that she stood before them tall and slim and graceful. Her eyes and face were all aglow at the novelty of her situation. Her feet were bare.
She sailed up to the mate with outstretched hand.
"It was you who brought me ashore out of that terrible sea," she said, and her voice was no longer hoarse and husky. "I thank you with all my heart."
Macro ducked his head but never took his eyes off her.
"Gosh! Ye looked very different then, miss," he jerked. "We scarce expected ye'd ever come round like this."
"I am the more grateful. But—what a wonderful room you have!"—as she looked round at the mate's barbaric hangings. "Silks and satins!—and such gorgeous colours!"
"There's bales of them about, miss, and you're very welcome to them. They'd look better on you than them blankets."
"But the blankets are warm, and the dreadful chill of the sea is still in my thoughts all the time. Now I would go on deck and understand about this strange ship of yours," and Macro hastened to lead the way and Wulfrey followed.
"But it is truly amazing," she said, as she gazed round at the sandhills and the spit, at the tumbling waves beyond, and the unruffled waters of the lake.
"And another ship! Who lives there?"
"No one. There is not another soul on the whole island but we three," said Wulfrey.
"It sounds dreadfully lonely."
"It is not so lonely as the sea."
"No, it is not so lonely as the sea. The sea is dreadful, and oh, so-o-o cold when you are dying in it slowly, an inch at a time," and she shivered again at the recollection.
"You must try to forget all about it."
"I shall never forget it. That is not possible. The memory of it is frozen into my soul. What noise is that?" she asked, listening intently with her hand uplifted.
"It's a great cloud of sea-birds that haunts the island. All the wrecks come ashore at that end, and they live there most of the time."
"It is like the wailing of lost souls."
"Right, miss!" broke in Macro. "That's what it is. They're only birds, mebbe, but there's the souls of the dead inside 'em, an' sometimes they're fair deevils when they come screaming round in a storm."
"I could believe that,—the souls of the dead without a doubt."
"Suppose we turn to something pleasanter," suggested Wulfrey. "Perhaps you will choose out the things you think most suitable from all that the mate brought over from the wrecks?"
"From the wrecks?" ... and she glanced at him doubtfully with a little shiver. "It does not sound too nice."
"We will bring them up. You will see them better here," and they spread the deck with Macro's latest importations.
"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" murmured she, as she turned them over with curious fingers, and held them up to adjudge their style and make. "But they are things of the days before the flood! ... They are too amazing! ... They are wonderful beyond words!"
"Could ye no alter them to your needs, mebbe?" suggested Macro hopefully.
"Perhaps—with needle and thread and scissors. But have you these?"
"Mebbe I can find 'em for ye. There's the cargoes of hunderds o' ships out there. Ye can find a'most anything if ye look long enough. And mebbe there's newer things if I can light on 'em."
"And some shoes and stockings, think you? I would be very glad of them. It feels strange to go with bare feet."
"I'll find 'em if there's any there."
"It is very good of you. I thank you. Could I perhaps come too?"
The idea evidently appealed strongly to him. He looked at her eagerly, and hesitated, but finally said, "It's no easy getting there. There's over six miles' walk through the sand, then near a mile of wading up to your neck in the water, and sometimes a bit of a swim, all according to the tide. Some day, mebbe, I'll mek a bit raft to tek ye across from the point there—just to see what it's like. But ye want these things and I'll get along quicker alone."
"I thank you all the same. It will be for some other time then," and Macro let himself down on to his raft and paddled away to the spit. She stood watching him till he landed and set off at speed towards the point.
"He is truly good-hearted," she said, as he disappeared. "He is not all English?"
"He is from the islands off the west coast of Scotland, but he confesses to a strain of Spanish blood also."
"And why confesses? It is not, I suppose, his own doing. One confesses to a fault. Is a strain of foreign blood a sin in your eyes then, Monsieur le Docteur?" she asked, with pointed emphasis.
"By no means. I should have said he rejoices in it."
"We English—British, I should say,"—with a fleeting gleam of a smile—"are too apt to look upon all foreigners as of lower breed than ourselves, which is quite a mistake and leads to much misunderstanding. Every nation has distinctive qualities of its own, is it not so?"
"Undoubtedly. And unless one knows them by personal experience one should not pass judgment. I must confess to being nothing of a traveller."
"How came you here?" she asked abruptly.
"I was bound for America—or Canada, with the intention of settling out there. It looks now, according to the mate, as though this strip of sand has got to suffice us for the rest of our lives."
"Really?" ... with a startled look. "Is there no getting away then? Does no one ever come here?"
"None but dead men, if they can help it, apparently. You were an exception to the rule. So were we. We have none of us any right to be here alive."
"If I had some shoes and stockings, and some proper clothes, I believe I could be quite happy here," she said. "That is if one has not also to starve."
"There is no need to starve. The island is over-run with rabbits. There are fish in the lake here if only we could catch them, and out there among the wreckage are all kinds of things—casks of pork and beef, and coffee, and rum, and flour—enough to last us for hundreds of years."
"It is a most excellent retreat."
"If one were sick of the world. But you surely are too young to have arrived at that stage."
"One may be young and yet be sick of one's world.... Sometime I will tell you.... Now, if you please, I will take a few of these things and you will show me your pool and I will wash them——"
"Oh, I'll do all that for you——"
"Not at all. Besides, with your permission and if you will leave me quite alone, I would like also to wash in fresh water. I too shall never feel quite dry until I have done so."
He assisted her down to the other raft, through a break they had long since made in the side for that purpose, and paddled ashore. There he showed her the pool they had set apart for washing, and told her he would come back for her at whatever time she chose.
"In two hours, please," and he went off into the sand-hills.
But his mind stubbornly refused to interest itself in rabbits. He dropped down on the sunny side of a hummock and let his thoughts run on this most surprising addition to their company. What could possibly explain her,—young, beautiful, of undoubted birth and breeding, yet ready to renounce the world, of which her twenty years or so had apparently given her a surfeit, and to welcome the chance of a hermit life?
It was a puzzle beyond any man's understanding. All his thinking led him only towards shadowy possibilities. And these the thought of her sweet face and clear frank outlook rejected instantly as libels on her fair fame, which he, with no more knowledge than he now had, yet felt himself prepared to defend with all his might against the whole world. If that girl was not all that she seemed and that he believed her to be, he would never trust his own judgment again.
All the same, it was very amazing, and she filled his thoughts to such an extent that the rabbits hopped fearlessly about him as he sat thinking of her; and it was long after the two hours before he came to himself, and rewarded their temerity by knocking a couple on the head and striding away back to find her.
She was sitting waiting for him, with a fresh-water brightness in her face, her hair coiled loosely round her head, and her washing still drying in the sun. She hastily bundled up her things at sight of him and came along to meet him.
"I began to fear you had forgotten me," she said.
"Very much to the contrary. It was our dinner I came near forgetting," and he dangled the rabbits before her. "You feel better for the fresh water?"
"Oh, very much better. And now I am hungry. When does your friend come back?"
"Not till evening as a rule. If he can lay hands on what you want he may come sooner to-day."
"And you—do you never go out there with him?"
"Oh, sometimes. But it doesn't attract me as it does him."
"Why then?"
"We are differently made, I suppose;—which is perhaps a good thing. He delights in finding things out there. I go out only for necessaries."
"What does he find—besides strange old clothes?"
"Oh, heaps of things—treasure. There are the cargoes of very many ships out there. They have been accumulating for hundreds of years, I suppose."
"And it does not attract you?"
"Not in the slightest."
"You are, perhaps, rich."
"I have enough, and I have my profession,—and little chance apparently of making any use of either."
"Ah..." and presently, "As to that, am I wrong then in thinking that if you had not been here I would most likely not have been here either?" and the wind and the sun had whipped a fine colour into her face.
"You would, perhaps, not be very far wrong."
"I remember it dimly, and in broken bits, like a horrible dream,—the crash, the terrible noise of the waves, the shouting and the screaming. It was the Captain himself who tied me to that mast when everything was going to pieces. And when the waves washed over me, and I felt myself slowly dying, I would have loosed myself if I could, to make an end. It was terrible to be so long of dying. And the cold of the sea!—oh, it was a horror," and she shivered again at the remembrance... "Then I died.... And then—long long afterwards—I found myself coming slowly back to life, and beginning to get warm again, with prickly pains like pins and needles all over me——"
"That was your blood beginning to flow again."
"——I felt warm hands rubbing me—rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. They must have rubbed for years, and, all the time, I was slowly coming back. They were very warm and soothing. And at last they rubbed me back to life."
"What was the name of your ship?"
"The 'Ben Lomond,' from Glasgow to New York, and the Captain was John MacDonald. It was a large ship and full of passengers. It is terrible to think of them all gone but me.—Oh, terrible!—terrible!"
"Might I ask your name—since we are like to be neighbours for the rest of our lives?"
"I am Avice Drummond," she said, with a quick glance at him. "And you?"
"Wulfrey Dale."
"And the mate?"
"Sheumaish Macro,—or Hamish, I'm not sure which."
"It is the same. He is a good man?—to be trusted?"
"I have no reason to think otherwise, but I have only known him since we landed here. He is chock full of superstition——"
"That is the Highlander in him."
"A bit hot-blooded too, and apt to boil over."
"That is the Spaniard."
"And he's crazy after the spoil out yonder."
"The Highlander again. It is, as you say, perhaps just as well you do not care for it, or you might have quarrelled."
"He is welcome to it all as far as I am concerned."
"I am of his country. I can understand how he feels. It is the old riever spirit in him finding its opportunity."
XXVIII
He was vitally conscious of her proximity to him as they paced through the soft sand towards the raft. The sight of her pink toes popping in and out from under her blanket-skirt quickened his blood. He knew without looking when she glanced round at him now and again, as when he had asked her name.
He had not thought that the feeling of a woman's eyes upon him could stir him to such an extent, no matter how wonderful they might be in their depths of eloquent darkness. He knew all about women,—physically, organically, professionally, and still held woman in reverence. Experience had taught him also that in reality he and his fellows knew very little about them beyond merest surface indications,—that there were in most women, perhaps in all, deeps beyond man's sounding, heights beyond his attainment,—a general elusiveness mysteriously comprehensive of feelings, instincts, passions, emotions, nerves, moods, humours, vapours, which a wise man accepted without expecting ever fully to understand.
That this shapely girl in her swathed blankets should affect him to such an extent that he was actually conscious of a superb new joy in living, of an absolute rejuvenescence, of a vitalising of all his energies, was a very great surprise to him. He could feel the blood running redder in his veins. His heart beat more briskly than it had done since he landed on the island.
But after three months of nothing but Macro and rabbits and screaming birds, it was not to be wondered at after all, he reasoned to himself. Life had been running on a low level. There had been nothing to lift them above the mere satisfaction of their bodily necessities. Eating, sleeping, getting through the days had sufficed them.
And here, into that rough husk of a life, had suddenly come a soul, to animate them both to higher things, even though it were no more than the ministering to her more delicate necessities.
Even Macro was feeling it, and was toiling out yonder, not for himself but for her. Without doubt life was immensely more worth living than it had been two days ago.
It was a joy even to cook for her, though he had always detested the preparation of food. To know beforehand what one was going to eat was sufficient to reduce one's appetite. To superintend a meal through all its stages, from raw to ready, put anything beyond the mere filling of an internal void out of the question.
But cooking for himself and cooking for her were matters of very different complexion, and he found himself considering culinary enterprises which surprised him greatly.
"You will let me help," she said, when they had climbed on board, and she saw him setting to work on the rabbits.
"Can you make biscuit?"
"If there is anything to make it with," so he provided her with flour and water and a frying-pan, and tackled his own repulsive job, looking forward to the best-made biscuit they had had since they came ashore.
"You have no butter—lard—dripping—fat—nothing?" she asked.
"There is some fat pork. We stew it with the rabbit as a rule."
"Get me some and I will render it down and we shall have much better cakes. Men never know how to cook unless they are trained to it. You have no seasonings of any kind—no? Nor salt?"
"Not a scrap."
"We might find something on shore there. I saw many little plants. We will search next time we go."
Yes, indeed, even the repellent cooking took on quite a new aspect and became a joyous pastime in her company, and they presently sat down to such a meal as he had not tasted since he left Liverpool. Many a more abundant one he had had, but none with such a flavour to it, and that was due entirely to the deft white hands that had helped to prepare it.
Meals hitherto had been in the nature of necessary nuisances. He and the mate had often sat eating without a word between them, and with perhaps less enjoyment in it than the rabbits out there among the sandhills. But, henceforth, meals would be feasts full of delight because of this stranger girl, whose presence would be salt and savour and seasoning to the poorest of fare.
"And he—the mate,—when does he eat?" she asked suddenly, after they had begun.
"Not till he gets back,—at night-fall as a rule. It's a good long way, you see, and he likes to spend all his time working."
"I hope he will find me some shoes,—and some needles and thread. Then I shall feel much happier.... And you really think we shall never get away from here?" she asked, quite cheerfully.
"If we could prevail on Macro to think of building a boat, instead of amassing treasure-trove, we might at all events try it. Nova Scotia is but a hundred miles away, he says,——"
"So close?"
"But he seems to think it a risky voyage, and so far we have come across no tools with which to build. You see, they are not things likely to come ashore."
"For myself, I believe I could be quite content to live here," she said again.
"For ever?—Never to get back to the larger life of the world as long as you lived?"
"Ah—that! ... I do not know.... It is a very hollow life after all, that larger life of the world."
"To grow old here," he said thoughtfully, emphasising his points with slowly nodding head. "To be the last one left alive perhaps.... To be all alone, sick, starving, dying slowly in the dark, unable to lift a finger...."
"I would drown myself if it came to that. It sounds horrible.... Perhaps, after all, we had better build the boat and get away."
"But I don't know that we can. I know nothing about boat-building even if I had the tools, and Macro won't turn to it till he has raked through the wreckage, and that will take him about a hundred years. It grows with every storm, you see."
"We must make him."
"And the tools?"
"We must find them."
"Two difficult jobs, perhaps impossible ones. You might perhaps prevail on Macro, but even he can do nothing without tools.... But, if I may venture to say so—it is surely early days for you to have discovered the hollowness of life, and to feel ready to spend the rest of it on a sandbank. Life should hold more in it than that for you."
She looked meditatively across at him for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind. "It is natural you should wish to know.... I will tell you.... It is a somewhat sorry story, but I think you will understand.... My name told you nothing?"
"Nothing—except that it was a very pretty name."
"I feared it would. It is natural, I suppose, to imagine that the whole world knows of one's misfortunes. Have you ever heard of the Countess d'Ormont?"
"The name is familiar to me in some way," he said, staring at her in surprise at the trend this was taxing.
"But I cannot recall——"
"And the Comte d'Artois——"
"Of course!" he nodded. "Now I remember——"
"The Countess d'Ormont was Margaret Drummond, my mother. My father is Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois, brother of the poor King, Louis, whose head they cut off; and I hate and detest him for his treatment of her.... She is dead, my poor dear one! ... She believed at first that she was properly married to him, and I have no doubt she was—in London. He is a poor thing, but he was very fond of her, for a time.... I was born at Chantilly. It was before his quarrel with the Duc de Bourbon, and we lived in Paris and elsewhere according to his caprice. When my mother learned all the truth, and that in Paris she was not legally his wife, it broke her heart, I think. I never remembered her but as sad and troubled. Except on my account she was not sorry to die, I know. I was in Paris all through the Red times, and saw—oh, mon Dieu,—the horrors of it all!—things I could never forget if I lived to be a thousand.... In London we were all very badly off.... But he liked to have me with him, and poor Mme de Polastron was very good to me, but she was a strange, strange woman.... Her death was a great blow to him ... and a great loss to me. He was really very badly off there, and I did not like the people he had about him,—de Vaudreuil, de Roll, du Theil, and the rest, and I made up my mind to seek my own life elsewhere. And that is about all."
"And you have friends in America—relatives perhaps?"
"My mother's people, in Virginia. They have prospered there.... The new life out there, where all men are equal, appeals to me. Now you understand why I would not have cared very much if Mr Macro had not brought me ashore and if you had not rubbed me back to life. I seem to have no place in the world. I hate the aristocrats for what my mother suffered at their hands, and I hate the others for the terrible scenes I passed through as a child. These things are stamped into my heart and brain for ever. And that is why this lonely island, far away from it all, seems better to me than any place I know."
"You would grow tired of it."
"I could never grow as sick of it as I did of what I have left. It is not perhaps a very full life, but neither is it hollow and heartless. You I can trust, and Mr Macro also. It is lonely, but it is sweet and peaceful——"
"Wait till you see it in a storm."
"Storms are nothing when you have seen Paris drunk with blood. Ach!—the horror of it!" and she flung out her hands in a gesture full-charged with terrible memories, and then pressed them over her eyes as though to blot it all out.
"Well, we will do all in our power to make things comfortable for you, for as long as we have to stop here.... For your sake I hope it will not be long. Life should hold more for you than this," said Wulfrey, and mused much on the beautiful stranger and her strange history, and wondered what the future held for them all.
The mate came back when it was growing dark, very tired and in none too good a humour at the poverty of his finds. The results of a hard day's work, so far as he disclosed them, were a number of rusty sail-maker's needles which he had found in a chest, and half a dozen pairs of shoes, sodden almost out of semblance to leather.
Miss Drummond, however, was delighted and thanked him heartily.
"You will lend me a knife, and out of some of your beautiful silks I will make a new dress. I shall like that better than wearing any of those ancient ones which belonged to the dead."
"You're very welcome, miss. I broke into more'n a score of chests and boxes and not a blessed stocking among the lot. And them shoes are pretty bad, but they were best I could find."
"I will rub them with fat and they will return all right, and the needles will come bright with sand. I shall do very well now. Thread I can get from a piece of your linen. I thank you very much. Now you will eat some of my cakes."
"Best cakes ever I tasted," he said with a full mouth. "Takes a woman to cook properly. And best day's work I done since I got here, fishing you out the water."
"Perhaps—I am not yet sure, but I thank you all the same. When will you begin to build a boat for us to get away in?"
"Ah! ... Building a boat needs tools. What for do you want to get away so quick? You're but just got here."
"At present I am content. But—for always? I am not sure."
"Doctor, there, is always wanting to get away. But he knows we can't build a boat without tools. An' I put it to him—has he so much as set eyes on a tool out yonder since we come ashore?"
"I can't say I have, but then I haven't seen as much of the wreckage as you have. There may be any amount of——"
"Oh, ay, there mebbe! But so far we haven't struck 'em, an' it's no good talking o' boats till we got the tools."
"We will look for them," said The Girl confidently.
"Oh, ay, ye can look for 'em, and mebbe sometime a boat'll come ashore ready-made, or one that we can make shift to patch up. Meantime we've got all we want here and there's plenty more for the getting out yonder. So be content, say I, miss, for by rights the Doctor and me ought to be two clean-picked white skeletons out there on the pile, an' you ought to be a little white corp tumbling about on yon spar for the birds to peck at."
"Are there skeletons out there?" she asked with a shiver.
"Heaps."
"I think I will not go. I have seen so much of Death. I would forget it for a time."
"Ye'll meet him sure if ye try to get across from here in any boat we could build," growled the mate, and filled his pipe and his pannikin.
XXIX
Next morning Macro went off as usual to the wreck-pile, and Miss Drummond set to work on her dressmaking. Wulfrey hoisted up out of the hold for her such pieces of silk and linen as she required, and scoured a couple of the smallest needles with sand till they were usable. Then, with the sharpest knife he could find among their stock, he cut out on the deck, under her direction, various lengths and designs which to him were meaningless, but replete with possibilities from her point of view.
But when, presently, she saw him preparing to go ashore for water and rabbits, she threw down her needle and said, "I will go also. You will not mind?"
"On the contrary, I shall mind very much. I shall feel honoured by your company. It is a pleasure to have someone to talk to again," and he helped her down on to the raft, and thought how much less interesting shoes were than little naked feet.
"Do you not then talk much with Mr Macro?"
"Sometimes, and sometimes we hardly spoke all day."
"You quarrelled?"
"Hardly that, but ... well, we had not very much in common, you see. His mind was always full of his discoveries out there, and one got rather tired of it at times."
"I do not think I shall like him as much as I thought."
"Why that? I'm sorry if I have said anything that seems to reflect on him in any way."
"I am used to judging for myself. It is a look that comes into his eyes at times,—like a horse when it is going to bite. No,"—with a decided little nod,—"I shall not like him as much as I hoped; and I am sorry, for I ought to feel grateful to him for pulling me out of the water."
"I'm glad you are feeling grateful for being alive, anyway," he said, with a smile. "That is better than being doubtful about it."
"It is better to be alive than dead. And if we have to live here all our lives—very well, we must put up with it. And if you and he die, and I am left all alone, and get old and sick, as you said yesterday, I will make an end of myself. I was thinking about it all night except when I was sleeping."
"I'm sorry to have troubled you so. We will hope for better things. Anyway I have no intention of dying for some time to come, if I can help it."
"You must not," she said, with sudden deep earnestness. "I count it God's good mercy that you are here, for I can trust you."
"I am used to being trusted," he said quietly.
"I know. I can see it.... If I had been all alone ... with nobody but him ... But, no! I could not..."
"I don't know that there is any harm in him."
She sat nodding her pretty head meaningly.... "You have not seen men loosed from all restraints as I have. I was but a child and did not fully understand. But I see their faces and their eyes still, fierce and wild and hungry for other than bread. When men are answerable to none but themselves they become wild beasts and devils."
"It is a hard saying."
"But it is true. I have seen it."
"And women?"
"They are as bad, but in a different way. Oh, they are terrible."
"And you and I and Macro here? To whom are we answerable?" he asked, to sound her to the depths.
"He is answerable to you," she said quickly. "You and I are answerable to one another, and to God, and to ourselves—to all that has made us what we are. I do not think you could trespass outside all that, any more than I could."
"I do not think I could. I am honoured by your confidence in me."
He helped her ashore, and they filled the buckets at the pools, and then she expressed a wish to see something more of this sandbank where they might have to pass the rest of their lives.
So they threaded their way among the hummocks to the northern shore, and, at the first green valley they came to, she went down on her knees and examined carefully the nestling growths on which the rabbits fed, and found among them certain pungent little plants which she thought might serve for flavouring, and they gathered enough to experiment with.
The firm smooth tidal beach, with the ripples creaming up it in sibilant whispers tempted her to bare feet, and she handed him her shoes and splashed along as joyously as a child.
"It is a most delightful island," she said. "I do not think I would ever tire of it."
"Oh, yes, you would. It is all just the same, you see. You can walk on and on like this and round the other side for forty or fifty miles, and every bit of it is just like the rest."
"I think it is beautiful."
"It gets monotonous in time. The only diversion is the pile of wreckage down yonder. That is constantly changing and growing."
"And discovering more skeletons! It feels odd to think that I should have been one myself if you two had not happened to be here."
"I'm sure it feels very much nicer to be comfortably clothed with flesh," and glancing at her supple grace and entrancing bare feet and ankles, he found himself profoundly grateful for the facts of the case. The thought of her as a skeleton was eminently distasteful to him.
"Yes, it is better. Dead bodies and bones have always had a horror for me; but not the simple fact of being dead, I think.... I do not think I would be afraid to die—if it were not very painful. But ... well, the thought of my dead body is horrid to me. I would not like to see it."
"You're not likely to be troubled to that extent anyway."
"No, one is at all events spared that. But why do you talk of such unpleasant things when the sun is shining and the waves are sparkling? Tell me about yourself. All you have told me so far is that you are a doctor, and that your name is Wulfrey Dale. I never heard the name Wulfrey before. And that you were going out to Canada when you were wrecked here. Why were you going out?"
He would have liked to be as frank with her as she had been with him. But that was impossible. Another woman's good name was too intricately interwoven with his story, and the whole matter was so open to misjudgment. If he tried to explain he must either label that other woman as murderess or himself as an incapable doctor, and he chose to do neither. He wished she had not asked, but found it only natural that she should desire to know all about him.
"I have nothing much to tell," he said. "I come from Hazelford, in Cheshire. My father had the practice there and when he died I succeeded to it. But the wander-spirit seized me. I wanted a larger sphere. The new world called, and I came,—as it turns out to a still smaller place——"
"But we are not going to stop here all our lives. We must build that boat and get away."
"We will live in hope, anyway, but for that we are dependent on Macro, and he's not an easy man to drive."
"We will see," she said confidently. "How do you catch your rabbits?"
"Every one of these little valleys is full of them. As soon as you appear they all bolt for their holes and in the panic they tumble over one another and you pick them up."
"I am always sorry to kill things, and they are so pretty," she said, as they crept cautiously up the side of the nearest hummock. "But they are very good and I suppose one must eat."
"Or starve. Now—see!" and he jumped down into the hollow, which scurried into life under his feet, and came back in a moment with a couple of rabbits which he had already knocked on the head.
"Poor little things!" she said, stroking the soft fur.
"They were dead before they knew it.... Our lake ends there," he said, pointing it out to her from where they stood on top of the hummock. "But the island goes on and on, all just the same as this as far as you can see."
"It looks very lonely ... but I like it," and she sat long, with her hands clasped round her knees, gazing out over the wandering yellow line of sandhills, and the slow-heaving seas which broke in white-fringed ripples along the beach.
"And you left no ties behind you there in England?" she asked suddenly, showing where her thoughts had been.
"No ties whatever. Friends in plenty, but nothing more. When my father died I was quite alone in the world."
She nodded fellow-feelingly, and they sauntered back in a somewhat closer intimacy of understanding and liking for one another.