Part 8 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+p 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p.

XIII

Every s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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.