The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
WEEK-ENDING IN PARADISE
It was a strange setting to Ben after that of the year past. Heavy ship's timbers overhead; a civilized seat supporting him; real crockery, knives and forks and a steaming breakfast from the galley-stove; the grace Sally always insisted on, even on shipboard; and kindly voices saying, "Come fill up your plate Ben," "Please pass that," and all the familiar expressions of daily human intercourse.
It seemed as if ages had passed since, in some long for gotten existence, he had felt the exhilaration of a ship's rise and fall on the water, heard the shuffle of feet on deck, and the ring of ship's bells. And all the while, above the rough seafaring talk of the men beside him, rose the voice of the girl like a melody feathering their full-throated chorus.
"Sliced bacon, fried spuds, and hot coffee, look pretty poor, I'll bet—eh Ben?"
"They look good to me, Captain Harve, and especially this briar-pipe and real matches," he replied, just a little wistfully. How odd and yet how homelike the colloquialisms sounded after the long silences! How easily his own lips fell into them! And how good was human companionship, the sharing of confidences, especially with the one whom he cared for more than all else in the world!
There wasn't much space between Ben's seat and Sally's. The girl ate little herself. Somehow, women seem to feed their own spiritual flames best by stoking the physical fires of their mates. And with the avidity of the woman long denied the right to care for a loved one's needs, she was filling Ben's plate, with more than even his appetite, whetted by ranging the hills at sunrise, could take care of.
After breakfast, Ben called the mate aside. He suddenly recollected that there was such a custom in the world as shaving.
"Can you lend me a razor and some civilized duds, so I'll look like a human once more?"
"That is hardly a proper courtin' rig," the other commented, "With them bushwhacker whiskers a Maori wench 'ud kiss you for her mate."
And he gave the castaway a jocular dig in the ribs, but the Captain came to Ben's rescue, taking him into his own cabin. Then, observing the toughness of the unwelcome beard, he actually ordered hot water from the galley.
Hot water, soap that floated, razor, and strop! All these hair-splitting conveniences of civilization! For a man fresh from the wilds the shock was almost overpowering.
Even when, a little later, the boy and girl sat before his hut, and he wore the cleanest of white duck, the crude moccasins still encased his feet. Had he even attempted the heavy shoes Captain Brent had lent him, he would have been lamed for life. Still, it was a considerable improvement, for, shorn of its auburn thicket of beard, the pleasant lines of the jaw now emerged, clean-cut and firm as of old, though the eyes had a strained, far away look, as if he were trying to grasp the real happiness that had come to him after the long wait, and could not. He was slower than ever of speech.
That look went straight to Sally's heart—it told so eloquently of the loneliness and despair of the past year. So she strove to cheer him, her laughter and raillery rippling lightheartedly under the waving palms, and by the waters of the spring, until the little "gab-birds," the brilliant parokeets with their Joseph's coats of many colours, jabbered harshly to each other, asking what it was all about.
"So I let Stell' get in the machine—she has a crush on Phil, you know—and she rode off proud as that chesty peacock on his lawn. And Ben, I'd bet a box of Huylers to a five cent bag of Comby's horehound drops, she let him kiss her when they got to that stretch of road in the pines— But there, that's mean. Stell's all right."
Yes there had been a plump, good-natured girl, always flirting with the boys, and there were such things as Comby's horehound drops, and Huyler's bonbons, and high-powered machines called automobiles. And however phantasmagorical their existence seemed in this green island paradise, there surely was, sitting before him, cross-legged on a bed of crumbled fern, a girl with black hair, with the sea's own wave in it, and a middy blouse and a scarlet tie—and in her dancing eyes gleams like the wave-crests, or phosphor flashes on the midnight sea—and in them, too, a look of love for him. And on that whimsical girlish mouth there flashed, in and out between her banterings, a look of sympathy and tenderness that was meant for him alone.
Again she asked the question: "How did you ever stand it, dear?" Only once in the old life had she ever so called him, and that was by the Lighthouse, and then very shyly. Today endearments came readily to her lips.
The words came far less easily to his, in this tête-à-tête under the palms. Hungrily he drank in each note, thinking how like they were to the lighter ones of the waterfall back in the mountain, which he had called "Sally's Bridal Veil." He must show it to her in the morningtête-à-têteand the mystery! It was the first time that day that he had thought of it, and it had been so much in his mind.
Then he found speech.
"I didn't dare lose my nerve. I made myself believe that I'd get back sometime, though I never dreamed of this!"
In the silence that followed, he sighed, which was an unusual thing for a husky chap not "long" on self-pity. But it was like the sigh of one long thirsting and parched—after a full draught that brings a Heavenly relief. Then for more earthly solace, he filled the heavy-bowl pipe, the lighting of which the girl accomplished with a skill born of long practice in waiting on "her menfolks." She had always "liked to see men smoke"—for the pleasure it gave them and—some times for the reprieve she gained for herself from uncertain tempers. But a rare pleasure and privilege it was now—this and all the other little attentions for this boy. So she watched him with a contentment that quite equalled his, as he puffed, puffed, away, and dreamily continued:
"Mother used to say, 'work is a blessing.' I never was lazy exactly, but I never realized she was right until I was cast away here. There wasn't so much necessary work to do, besides getting food and making shelter when the storms came, but I made up things to do. It was better than going crazy."
"My brave boy," and Sally bent over and kissed him. Then, with that pardonable vanity in women, the most beautiful of all vanities in the world, she asked:
"And did thinking of me help, Ben?"
She received the answer she wanted. It made her own cup of happiness overflow.
"Well—I just guess—if it hadn't been for you!"
A little later she asked:
"Ben, whatever are those nicks in that circle of palms?"
"Can't you guess? There are twelve of 'em— Count the nicks."
The girl rose and with her pretty finger reckoned their number.
"Thirty, thirty-one—why that's your calendar."
"Yes, they're my date-palms—though they're really cocoas. Gee, I've forgotten today's."
He cut in the thirteenth palm, then asked her:
"Want to see where I live?"
"Oh, Ben, let's." At the little girlish nod of assent he smiled tenderly—it was so like old times—the stout-hearted woman whom God had given back to him was still, and always would be, partly a child, whom he must care for and protect.
"Why this is a beautiful house, how ever did you build it?" she cried.
"With these. This is a spade, you see. Pretty crude but it did the business. All you ve got to do is to take a limb of a tree and shape it with a knife, split it at this end, sharpen a flat stone by rubbing it against another, then fasten it in the cleavage. Liana vines make good ropes—and there you are. Of course the spade got loose from the handle sometimes, but I didn't need to hurry."
"And this is your hammer and your axe—and my, but this is a beautiful sitting room and real chairs and cocoanut bowls!" then shyly—"I wouldn't mind keeping house in that cute little place."
For answer, he put his arms around her. There, in the little one-room hut built of tropical trees, the westering sun shining in the doorway, their lips met, not in the old boy and girl kiss of first love but the maturer sealing of their promise after long years of waiting.
Across Rainbow Bay and far beyond, the sun changed the liquid sapphire of the waters to rippling gold as he paused on the brink, and the Captain's cheery hail rang through the grove.
On the beach, Spanish Dick was turning Ben's brace of wild birds on a spit over a fire, whose rosy flickerings added a warm human touch to the wilderness of tropical colours all around them.
As they were finishing the last morsels Ben said to Sally:
"Oh, Sally. I didn't tell you but this island has a mystery"