Chapter 29

_THE OTHER SURRENDER_

The first few days and nights after this episode found Ridgeway despairing and unhappy, but as time removed the sting from defeat, his hopes began to flounder to the surface again, growing into a resolution, strong and arrogant. He devoted himself to her tenderly, thoughtfully, unreservedly. There was something subtle in his gallantry, something fascinating in his good humor, something in everything he did that attracted her more than it had before. She only knew that she was happy when with him and that he was unlike any man she had known.

There were times when she imagined that he was indifferent to the shock his pride had received at her hands, and at such times she was puzzled to find herself piqued and annoyed. A little gnawing pain kept her awake with these intermittent fears.

She became expert in the art of making garments from the woven grass. Her wardrobe contained some remarkable gowns, and his was enlarged by the addition of "Sunday trousers" and a set of shirt blouses. They wore sandals instead of shoes. Each had a pair of stockings, worn at the time of the wreck, but they were held in sacred disuse against the hoped-for day of deliverance.

One day, late in September, after the sun had banished the mists from the air and the dampness from the ground by a clear day's process, they wandered down between the gateposts to the beach where they had first landed with Pootoo. The sun was sinking toward the water-line and they sat wistfully watching it pass into the sea. For nearly five months they had lived with the savages, for the greater portion not unhappily, but always with the expectation that some day a vessel would come to take them back to civilization.

"It has not been so unpleasant, after all, has it?" she asked. "We have been far more comfortable than we could have prayed for."

"I should enjoy seeing a white man once in a while, though, and I'd give my head for this morning's Chicago newspaper," he answered rather glumly.

"I have been happier on this island than I ever was in my life. Isn't it strange? Isn't it queer that we have not gone mad with despair? But I, for one, have not suffered a single pang, except over the death of our loved ones."

"Lord Huntingford included," maliciously.

"That is unkind, Hugh. I am ashamed to say it, but I want to forget that he ever lived."

"You will have plenty of time to forget all you ever knew before we die. We'll spend the rest of our days in that nigger village back there. If I should die first I suppose you'd forget me in a week or so. It--"

"Why, Hugh! You know better than that! Why do you say such disagreeable things?"

"I'm not worth remembering very long," he said lamely. She smiled and said the statement threw a different light on the question. Whereupon he did not know whether to laugh or scowl.

"This dear old island," she cried, looking toward the great rocks lovingly. "Really, I should be sorry to leave it."

"When the ship comes, I'll go back to America, and you may remain here if you like and be the only Izor in the business." He said it in jest, but she looked at him solemnly for a moment and then turned her eyes out to sea. She was reclining on her side, her hand supporting her head, her elbow in the sand. He sat five feet away, digging holes in the sand with an odd little walking stick. One of her sandalled feet protruded from beneath the hem of her garment, showing ever so little of the bare, white, fascinating ankle.

"I should despise the place if I had to live here a day without you," she said simply.

"What do you mean?" She did not answer at once. When she did, it was earnestly and without the least embarrassment.

"Can't I make you understand how much you are to me?" she asked without a blush. "You are the best, the noblest man I've ever known. I like you so well that I do not know how I could live if I did not have you to talk to, if I could not see you and be with you. Do you know what I did last night?"

He could only shake his head and tremble with the joy of feeling once more that she loved him and did not understand.

"I prayed that we might never be taken from the island," she said hurriedly, as if expecting him to condemn her for the wish. He rolled over on his back, closed his eyes, and tried to control a joyous, leaping heart. "It was so foolish, you know, to pray for that, but I've been so contented and happy here, Hugh. Of course, I don't expect we are to live here always. They will find us some day." He opened his eyes and hazarded a glance at his face. She smiled and said, "I'm afraid they will."

There was but the space of five feet between them. How he kept from bounding to her side and clasping her in his arms he never knew; he was in a daze of delight. So certain of her love was he now that, through some inexplicable impulse, he closed his eyes again and waited to hear more of the delicious confession.

"Then we shall leave the prettiest land in the world, a land where show and pomp are not to be found, where nature reigns without the touch of sham, and go back to a world where all is deceit, mockery, display. I love everything on this island," she cried ecstatically. He said nothing, so she continued: "I may be an exile forever, but I feel richer instead of poorer away off here in this unknown paradise. How glorious it is to be one's self absolutely, at all times and in all places, without a thought of what the world may say. Here I am free, I am a part of nature."

"Do you think you know yourself fully?" he asked as quietly as he could.

"Know myself?" she laughed. "Like a book."

"Could you love this island if you were here alone?"

"Well, I--suppose--not," she said, calculatively. "It would not be the same, you know."

"Don't you know why you feel as you do about this God-forsaken land, Tennys Huntingford?" he demanded, suddenly drawing very near to her, his burning eyes bent upon hers. "Don't you know why you are happy here?" She was confused and disturbed by his manner. That same peculiar flutter of the heart she had felt weeks ago on the little knoll attacked her sharply.

"I--I--I'm sure--I am happy just because I am, I dare say," she faltered, conscious of an imperative inclination to lower her eyes, but strangely unable to do so.

"You love this island because you love me," he whispered in her ear.

"No, no! It is not that! Please don't be foolish again, Hugh. You will make me very unhappy."

"But you do love me. You love me, and you do not know it," he said, thrilled with exultation. She looked at him wonderingly, a half scornful, half dubious smile flitting over her face.

"I will try to be patient with you. Don't you think I know my own mind?" she asked.

"No; you do not," he said vigorously. "Let me ask you a few questions, and I beg of you, for your own sake and mine, to answer them without equivocation. I'll prove to you that you love me."

"Who is to be the judge?" she asked merrily. She trembled and turned cold as he took her hand in his and--she was not merry.

"First, is there another man in the world that you would rather have here? Answer, dear." The blood mounted to her cheek at the term of endearment.

"Not one," she answered firmly, trying to smile.

"Have you never thought--be honest, now--that you don't want to leave the island because it would mean our separation?"

"Yes, but--but it would be the same with anybody else if I cared for him," she exclaimed quickly.

"But there is no one else, is there?" She looked at him helplessly. "Answer!"

"Oh, Hugh, I--it would not be right for me to encourage you by answering that. Please let us go back to the village," she pleaded.

"Well, I know there is no one else. Tell me that you don't want to leave me because we should drift apart in the big world," he persisted.

"I had thought of that," she said so low that he could barely hear.

"You have prayed that Grace may be alive. What would it mean to you if she should be alive and we should be reunited?"

"I--I don't know," she muttered blankly.

"Would you be willing and happy to give me up to her?"

"I never thought of that," she said. Then a terror leaped to her eyes and her breast heaved as with pain. "Oh, Hugh, what would that mean to me? I could not give you up--I could not!" she cried, clasping his hand feverishly in both of hers.

"Would you be glad to see us married, to see us living together, to see children come to us? Would you be happy if I forgot you in my love for her?" he went on remorselessly, yet delightedly.

"You couldn't forget me," she whispered, faint and trembling now. "You don't mean to say I never could be near you again!" There was dismay in her face and a sob in her voice.

"Oh, occasionally, but in a very formal way."

"I believe I should die," she cried, unable to restrain herself.

"You admit then that you want me for yourself only," he said.

"Yes, yes I do, Hugh! I want you every minute of my life!"

"Now you are beginning to know what love is," he breathed in her ear. His eager arm stole slowly around her shoulders and, as she felt herself being drawn close to him irresistibly, a sweet wonder overwhelmed her. The awakening had come. With singing heart she lifted her hands to his cheeks, bewitched by the new spell, holding his face off from her own while she looked long and yearningly into his eyes. A soft flush crept over her brow and down her neck, her eyes wavered and melted into mirrors of love, her lips parted, but she could not speak. The clasp tightened, his face came nearer, his words sounded like music in her enchanted ears.

"Have I proved that you love me, darling?" "I never knew till now--I never knew till now," she whispered.

Their lips met, their eyes closed, and the world was far, far away from the little stretch of sand.