Nedra Part 36

Don't you know why I have forced myself to be unhappy during the past few weeks? Can't you see why I am making you unhappy, too, in my struggle to beat down the something that has driven everything else out of my mind?"

"Don't talk so, Hugh; it will be all right. Come home now and I will give you some wine and put some cool bandages on your head. You are not well." She was so gentle, so unsuspecting that he could contain himself no longer.

"I love you--I wors.h.i.+p you! That is why I am cruel to you!" he burst out. A weakness a.s.sailed him and he leaned dizzily against the tree at his side. He dared not look at her, but he marvelled at her silence. If she loved him, as he believed, why was she so quiet, so still?

"Do you know what you say?" she asked slowly.

"I have said it to myself a thousand times since I left you at the temple. I did not intend to tell you; I had sworn you should never know it. What do you think of me?"

"I thought you called it love that sent you to Manila," she said wonderingly, wounding without malice.

"It was love, I say. I loved her better than all the world and I have not forgotten her. She will always be as dear to me as she was on the night I lost her. You have not taken her place. You have gone farther and inspired a love that is new, strange, overpowering--infinitely greater, far different from the love I had known before. She was never to me what you are. That is what drives me mad--mad, do you hear? I have simply been overwhelmed by it."

"I must be dreaming," she murmured.

"I have tried to hide it from myself, but it has broken down all barriers and floods the world for me."

"It is because we are here alone in this island--"

"No, no! Not that, I swear. It would have come sooner or later."

"You are not like other men. I have not thought of you as I see you now.

I cannot understand being loved by you. It hurts me to see that you are in earnest. Oh, Hugh, how sorry I am," she cried, laying her hand upon his arm. His heart dropped like lead. He saw that he had been mistaken--she did not love him.

"You are learning that I am not the harlequin after all," he said bitterly.

"There is no one in all the world so good and strong and true."

"You--you _will_ love me?"

"You must not ask that of me. I am still Lady Huntingford, a wife for all we know. Yet if I loved you, I would tell you so. Have I not told you that I cannot love? I have never loved. I never shall. Don't look like that, Hugh. I would to G.o.d I could love you," she exclaimed. His chin had sunk upon his breast and his whole body relaxed through sheer dejection.

"I'll make you love me!" he cried after a moment's misery in the depths, his spirits leaping high with the quick recoil. His eager hands seized her shoulders and drew her close, so close that their bodies touched and his impa.s.sioned eyes were within a few inches of hers of startled blue. "I'll make you love me!"

"Please let me go. Please, Hugh," she murmured faintly.

"You must--you shall love me! I cannot live without you. I'll have you whether you will or no," he whispered fiercely.

She did not draw back, but looked him fairly in the eye as she spoke coldly, calmly, even with a sneer.

"You are master here and I am but a helpless woman. Would you force me to forget that you have been my ideal man?"

"Tennys!" he cried, falling back suddenly. "You don't think I would harm you--oh, you know I didn't mean that! What must you think of me?"

He put his hand over his eyes as if in deep pain, and, turning away, leaned against the tree unsteadily. With his first words, his first expression, she knew she had wronged him. A glad rush of blood to her heart set it throbbing violently.

She could not have explained the thrill that went through her when he grasped her shoulders, nor could she any more define the peculiar joy that came when she took a step forward and placed her hands gently, timidly on his arm.

"Forgive me, Hugh, I must have been mad to say what I did. You are too n.o.ble--too good--" she began in a pleading little quaver.

"I knew you couldn't mean it," he exclaimed, facing her joyously. "How beautiful you are!" he added impetuously. He was looking down, into that penitent face and the cry was involuntary. She smiled faintly and he raised his arms as if to clasp her to his breast, come what may. The smile lingered, yet his arms dropped to his sides. She had not moved, had not taken her eyes from his, but there was an unrelenting command in the soft words she uttered. "Be careful. I am always to trust you, Hugh." He bowed his head and they walked slowly homeward.

CHAPTER XXIX

_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 gra.s.s.

Her wardrobe contained some remarkable gowns, and his was enlarged by the addition of "Sunday trousers" and a set of s.h.i.+rt 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 pa.s.s 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 s.h.i.+p 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 embarra.s.sment.

"Can't I make you understand how much you are to me?" she asked without a blush. "You are the best, the n.o.blest 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."