CHAPTER XIV

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Another fortnight passed and still no sign from the great wide world beyond the seas. The days came and went with monotonous regularity. According to the notches on Grace's shell calendar, which she had made carefully with each rising and setting of the sun, they were now well on toward the end of September. Three long months had gone by since that terrible night when the hurricane drove the ill-fated _Atlanta_ on the reef.

Would a ship never come? This question Grace had asked herself almost hourly until gradually the belief came firmly rooted in her mind that they would never be rescued, that she was doomed to spend the rest of her life in this unknown, out of the way island, her grief-stricken parents believing that she had been drowned when the _Atlanta_ went down. If any of the survivors reached land, as she supposed some of them did, the news would have been instantly cabled to America, and her name would be listed among the missing. No doubt her father had long given her up for dead. It would never occur for him to come in search of her. Nor was there much chance of a passing vessel ever seeing the smoke from the signal-fire. As Armitage had said, they were probably hundreds of miles out of the shipping track. In all probability no human being had ever set foot on that islet before.

Yet she never quite lost courage. Each day she made her weary pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Hope and eagerly scanned the horizon. Only disappointment awaited her. There was never anything in sight to bring joy to her heart.

They kept the big signal-fire going just the same. Night and day it burned, sending its flaming message of distress over the vast waste of heaving waters. It was never permitted to die down. Fresh fuel was piled on until the flames leaped high in the air or the thick black smoke went curling up in a long, straight column to the sky. Either the smoke or the blaze must be seen miles away at sea. Any moment some ship might turn out of her course and come to investigate.

Otherwise they seldom discussed the chances of rescue. By mutual consent it seemed to be a tabooed topic. Armitage never failed in his self-appointed task; he kept the fire going with a plentiful supply of driftwood, but that was all. He never voluntarily mentioned the signal-fire or the prospects of getting away, and intuitively she knew that it was a subject that was distasteful to him. If he took the pains to keep up the fire, he did it for her sake. She understood that, and she was mutely grateful to him for it. In return, she was considerate for his feelings. She avoided speaking of her desire for a ship to arrive. Occupied with their daily tasks, they never broached the subject. When he went up the hill to attend to the fire he was always alone, and she tactfully selected a time when he was occupied about the encampment to make her daily climb to Mount Hope.

What if help did not come? Could they--he and she--go on forever living together like this? She was an intelligent girl. She knew that the present relations between herself and Armitage were artificial, and based wholly upon the conventions of organized society. But they were unnatural relations, contrary to the laws of nature. In her heart she knew that she cared more for this strange, silent man than she dared to admit. Yes, he was the man of her day-dreams, the man she had waited for, the man she could love. She did not ask what he had been. She only knew him as he was. She loved him for what he was. He was poor, he was not what the world calls of gentle birth, yet he had qualities that in her eyes raised him above all men more favored by fortune. He was one of nature's noblemen. Some great secret sorrow had wrecked his life, but it had not taken from him his sweetness of character, his beauty of face and mind, his manly courage, his courtesy to a lonely, helpless woman. She loved the rich tones of his voice, the sad, wistful gaze in his fine eyes when they looked silently into hers. She knew of what he was thinking. She knew the dread that was on his heart--the dread of a misfortune a hundred times worse than any that had yet embittered his life. The dread that one day, sooner or later, the ship would come to carry away from him forever the woman who had once more made life seem worth living.

One morning Grace was sitting sewing, deftly plying the fish-bone needle which Armitage had made for her. She was making a desperate effort to patch up, for the hundredth time, her old battered ball-dress, which now, reduced to shreds, scarcely covered her decently. Armitage, no better off as regards attire, was stretched out on the sands near her, watching her work. It was a domestic scene. Any stranger chancing to pass that way would have taken them for a young married couple, the man evidently a fisherman, the woman, his wife, doing the household mending. A short distance away was their cabin, and on the fire close by the iron saucepan in which a savory mess was cooking for their noonday meal. Nothing was lacking to make the picture of connubial felicity complete.

Some such thought occurred to Armitage, for suddenly he blurted out:

"Do you believe in marriage?"

She looked up in surprise.

"Do I believe in marriage?" she smiled. "What a singular question. Of course I do."

"What do you understand by marriage?" he persisted.

Grace thought for a moment and then readily replied:

"Marriage is a contract entered into by a man and woman by which they become husband and wife."

Nodding assent, he went on:

"That is to say, a contract entered into between themselves?"

"Not exactly," replied Grace hesitatingly. "Rather I should say an act before a magistrate or a religious ceremony by which the legal relationship is sanctioned by the law and church."

"Then, without such act or ceremony, you would not consider a marriage binding or right?"

"No," answered Grace emphatically.

He remained silent a moment, and then he said:

"But suppose a man and a woman loved each other and wished to enter into the married state, and yet were so placed that it was impossible for their union to have the sanction of either the law or church, what then?"

Grace laid down her work and, shaking her head, looked gravely at her interlocutor:

"It is difficult to answer such a question offhand," she said. "I think it would depend altogether on the circumstances and chiefly on the personal views of those directly concerned. Some people scoff at marriage. Among them are many of my own sex. They regard marriage merely as a time-honored, worn out convention which really means nothing. They get married, of course, not because they believe in it as an institution, but as a matter of form, because their mothers did it before them, because it is the thing to do. But not unreasonably, they argue, that nowadays when it is so easy to obtain a divorce on the most trivial pretext, there is not much left about marriage that is sacred and binding."

He listened attentively. When she ceased speaking, he asked quietly:

"And what is your view? Do you indorse these opinions?"

"No, I do not," she replied, meeting his steady gaze frankly. "I believe in marriage. I think it is the noblest gift that civilization has bequeathed to the human race. It marks the great divide between man and the brute. More than that, it protects the woman who is, naturally, the weaker, and, above all, it protects the offspring."

"You are right," he rejoined quickly, "yet isn't it curious that man seems happiest under monogamy, which is directly contrary to nature. Man is naturally polygamous."

"Ah, but that is only brute love. It rests on nothing tangible. Like a tiny flame, it is extinguished by the first adverse breath of wind. Man thinks he is polygamous. But that is only the beast in him--the beast with which his better and higher nature is ever at war. The superior man learns to control his appetites, the baser man indulges them, and therefore is nearer to the tailed ancestry from which he originally sprang. That is not love as I understand it."

He leaned quickly forward.

"How do you understand love?" he asked, in low, eager tones.

Grace smiled, and, poutingly, she protested:

"Why do you question me in this way?"

Slightly raising himself on one hand, he drew nearer to her and looked steadily up into her face until the boldness of his gaze embarrassed her. Her cheeks reddened, and she lowered her eyes.

"What do you know about love?" he demanded hoarsely.

"Every woman knows or thinks she knows," she replied, with affected carelessness.

He was silent for a moment, and then he went on:

"Suppose a woman--say a friend of yours--loved a man, with all the strength of her heart and soul. Suppose special conditions made her legal union with that man impossible. Would you forgive her if her great love tempted her to give herself to that man, or would you insist that she should suffer and make him suffer--alone?"

She listened with averted face. Well she knew the purport of these questions. But her face remained impassive, and her voice was calm as she replied gently:

"No woman may sit in judgment over another woman. No woman can tell positively what she might do under all circumstances. The temptation might be such that even a saint would succumb. That reminds me. Do you know the story of the Abbess of Jouarre?"

"No," replied Armitage; "what is it? Tell it me."

He settled down more comfortably in the sand to listen. Grace smiled, and took up her sewing again.

"It's a story that made a deep impression on me," she said. "It was during the bloodiest days of the French Revolution. On the Place de la Concorde a hundred lives were being sacrificed on the guillotine daily to appease the savage fury of the populace. Among the aristocrats sentenced to death and who awaited in the Temple prison their turn to be summoned to the scaffold was a chevalier, scion of one of the proudest families of France and an Abbess, a woman of gentle birth, both of whom had been denounced to the Revolutionary tribunal. They had known and loved each other as children, and they met in prison for the first time since the Abbess had taken her vows. Closely associated within the dungeon's grim walls they soon discovered that time had not killed their youthful infatuation. In the shadow of death the Abbess was willing to admit that she had loved the chevalier all these years, that she had prayed for him and carried his image in her heart. He clasped her in his arms and, pleading his unconquerable passion, he urged her to forget her vows and give herself to him. Kindly, but firmly, she withdrew from his embrace and gravely recalled him to a sense of duty. She declared that being now the affianced bride of Heaven, it was forbidden for her to even think of earthly ties or joys. But the chevalier refused to listen to reason or to calm his ardor. He insisted that such love as theirs was sacred, and that her vows to the Church did not bind her, now that she was about to die. In another few hours they would both be dead. Her duty, during the short time she had yet to live, was to yield to the promptings of her heart rather than to heed the dictates of her conscience. Their union, he said, would be a marriage before God, and after their earthly death they would be united forever in Heaven. The Abbess listened. Her great love gradually gained the mastery over her moral scruples. Her opposition weakened. The chevalier took her again in his arms."

Grace ceased speaking. Armitage, his face betraying more and more interest, waited for her to continue.

"That is not all," he said interrogatively.

Grace shook her head.

"No, now comes the tragedy of it." Continuing, she went on: "The next day the prison doors were thrown open, and brutal jailers read out the lists of names of those prisoners who that morning must ride in the fatal death-cart. Among the first summoned was the chevalier. Tenderly he bade the Abbess farewell. Death he hailed with joy, for it marked the beginning of their coming felicity in another and better world. He disappeared, and the Abbess awaited her turn. Other names were called, but hers was not among them. The jailer stopped reading and turned to depart. The Abbess tremulously asked when her hour, too, would come. The jailer answered: 'You go free--by order of the Tribunal.'"

Again Grace was silent. Armitage seemed lost in thought. Presently he said:

"And the Abbess--what became of her?"

"She had to bear her cross for her great sin. Her punishment was worse than death. Not only had she broken her vows and offended Heaven, but she was separated forever from the man to whom she had given her love. Cursed by the Church, shunned by everybody, she wandered miserably from village to village, leading by the hand a little child."

Armitage was silent for a few minutes, and then he said:

"You were reminded of this story by some remark you had previously made: What was it?"

"I said in answer to your hypothesis as to what a woman would or would not do for a man she loved, that even a saint might succumb, given certain circumstances. The Abbess was a saint. Yet she sinned."

"I don't think I would call that a sin," objected Armitage. "The real sinner was the judge who pardoned her."

"Why not the chevalier who tempted her?" rejoined Grace.

He made no answer, but remained looking steadfastly at her. Then rising abruptly to his feet, he began to pace nervously up and down the sands. His face was pale, his eyes flashed, the muscles around his mouth twitched. He gave every sign of being under an intense emotional strain. There was something to be said, and he dare not say it. It was a novelty for him to find himself lacking in courage. At any other time he would have faced a tiger about to spring; he would have looked without flinching into the muzzle of a leveled rifle. But at that instant he quailed like a craven--he dared not tell this girl that he loved her and wanted her for his wife.

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