CHAPTER XXIX.

BRITOMARTE’S NEW HOME.

Before the end of the autumn Britomarte’s house was completed. A rough house it was, indeed; not at all like those of the north temperate zone, yet possessed of some advantages peculiar to itself.

Its architect was limited in the matter of hand tools and of building materials; for the first he had to depend upon the carpenter’s box rescued from the wreck, and for the second upon the cocoa-palm trees and the mountain rocks.

Its site was selected in front of the cocoa-palm grove, facing the sea, and looking westward toward their native hemisphere.

Its plan was simple enough, and had first been drawn by Justin upon paper. It was a low, square, spacious house, all of one story, to keep it safe from destruction by the tornadoes that sometimes visited the island.

It contained four large rooms, separated by two long passages that ran, one from front to back and the other from end to end, crossing each other at right angles in the centre of the house, so that each room was completely divided from the others. It had four doors, one at each extremity of the two passages. The rooms had each two windows in the outer walls, and two doors opening into the passages.

The walls were built of the long, straight, smooth trunks of the cocoa-palm tree, which, in the absence of a sawmill, formed the very best substitutes for planks. The roof was made of transverse poles cut from the trunks of very young trees and covered with the broad, strong, feathery palm leaves, laid one over another in rows, and kept down by other transverse poles securely fastened. This rustic roof afforded a complete protection against the rain and the wind.

The kitchen chimney was built of fragments of rock joined with a strong cement made by mixing the sap of the cocoa tree with lime burned by Justin from the shells and bones collected from the island.

There were no floors, except the ground, which was leveled and beaten hard. The walls inside were made smooth by a rude plastering of moistened soil packed in between the logs. And then both floor and walls were covered with the cement, that gave them the appearance of cream-colored stone.

I said the house fronted west. The windows of the two front rooms only were glazed with glass, taken from the sashes in the cabin of the wreck. They had also shutters. The two back rooms had shutters only.

The northwestern front room was the family parlor. It was neatly fitted up with the furniture rescued from the saloon of the wreck. It had a red carpet on the floor, a centre table and a lamp, a side table and bookshelves, a sofa, a rocking-chair and four common chairs, and lighter articles too numerous and trivial to mention.

The southwestern front room was Britomarte’s bedchamber, which was also shared by Judith. It was daintily fitted up with furniture saved from the ladies’ cabin and berths of the wreck. It had a neat carpet on the floor, white curtains at the windows, and two little white beds, in opposite corners. It had also a chest of drawers surmounted by a looking glass, flanked by a workbox and a dressing case; a washstand provided with a white china basin, ewer and soap dish, only a little the worse for being knocked about in the wreck; a low chair, a footstool, a little candlestand, and other small conveniences.

The southwestern back room was Justin’s sleeping apartment. It was fitted up with severe simplicity. The windows were not even glazed, but were only provided with rough wooden shutters; the hard floor was bare; the bed was a narrow mattress laid upon a rude bedstead; the washstand was a broad wooden shelf, with a tin basin and a stone pitcher; the chair was a three-legged stool, and the wardrobe a few strong pegs driven into the walls, upon which he hung his clothes. All these primitive articles of furniture were of his own manufacture, from fragments of the wreck.

This rude seaside dwelling place was fenced in by a low wall made by driving short stakes, cut from the cocoa tree, closely together into the ground after the manner of a stockade; and two rude gates, one front and one back, gave entrance and exit to the premises.

At the back of the yard there was a small storehouse, or pantry, built to keep a limited supply of provisions—the great bulk of their provisions being still kept in the mountain grottoes, where they could best be preserved.

A few tropical vines had been transplanted from the thicket at the base of the mountain to the soil in front of the house, and had readily taken root, and were now trained up to festoon and shade the windows and doors.

At the end of the first autumn month all was ready.

It was on a certain Wednesday afternoon that our friends first took possession of their new home.

Justin, having seen the women established, went to his outdoor work, which was just now the transplanting of some young fruit trees that he had raised in a nursery from the seeds, and that now needed to be set out.

Britomarte took her needlework—some shirts that she was neatly repairing for Justin—and seated herself beside the front window of her bedchamber, looking out to the western sea, and across toward her own native land.

It was a novelty and a delight—perhaps the greatest novelty and the greatest delight of the whole change—to be able to sit sewing at an open window, and looking out upon the land, sea and sky.

Heretofore, since she had been on the island, she had not been able to do so.

Her grotto had been a beautiful place—a wood-nymph’s bower, a fairy queen’s palace; but it had no windows, and its lofty skylight, though it illuminated the whole place, afforded no outlook whatever, and gave but a limited glimpse of the sky. When she had sat there and sewed her vision had been bounded by the walls of solid rock, which had given a prison aspect to her dwelling place.

Now all this was changed.

She sat sewing at a cheerful, open, white-curtained window, letting her eyes rove, whenever she raised her head, freely over land and sea and sky, with a buoyant sense of liberty and—a touching sense of gratitude also!

Who was it that had changed her life so happily? Nay, who had saved, sustained and blessed her life, ever since she had been cast, a helpless creature, on this desert island?

Justin Rosenthal, a man, one of the common enemy, one of the hated sex, one of the despots, the oppressors and despoilers of women!

They spent their first evening in the new house, around the center-table in the parlor. The lamp was not lighted; for the windows were open, and the full moon was shining so splendidly as to make all the land and sea and the sky almost as bright as noonday—quite as bright as a London day.

It was a new delight to Britomarte, on rising in the morning, to be able to throw open a window shutter and gaze out upon the broad expanse of sea and sky; another to eat breakfast in a large parlor, with the cheerful light of the morning sun shining in at the eastern windows; and still another to change from room to room and enjoy the aspect of each in turn.

“Sure this is house-kaping at lingth, ma’am, isn’t it? It’s having a home iv our own, ‘if it’s iver so homely,’ as the song says. It’s domestic happiness intirely, so it is,” said Judith, as she was assisting Miss Conyers to set the bedchambers in order.

“We have to thank Heaven and Mr. Rosenthal for it all, Judith.”

“Sure, and so I do, ma’am. And day and night I wish myself was a praist so I could marry you two togither, an’ faix it’s the only thing I’m unable to do for ye.”

After breakfast every day Justin went out to his outdoor work. He set out a large number of young fruit trees that he had raised from the seed—plum, peach and apricot trees. Their cultivation upon this new soil, in this new climate, was an experiment which only time could decide to be a success or a failure.

His next work was to gather in and store the late crops of grain.

By the time this was done the wet season set in with great severity; and the castaways were confined for the most part to indoor occupations.

But they were not idle.

Justin would not lumber up the women’s apartments—as he called the parlor, kitchen and best bedchamber—with any of his cumbersome working materials; but he gathered them all into his own Spartan room, and there he busied himself through the first wet days with grinding, mending and arranging his tools; and then he took a great quantity of palm leaves that he had collected during the dry months and he occupied himself with stripping them up and weaving their fibres into mats of every description—large, thin mats to lay before the doors to wipe shoes upon in muddy weather, and small fine mats to put on the table to set dishes on.

As these mats were completed he delivered them over to Judith to be stored or to be used. The girl was especially delighted with the door mats, which she declared would save her a “dale iv scrubbing;” and she was profuse in her expressions of gratitude to Justin, whom she declared to be always saving her life entirely with his thoughtfulness.

After having made a quantity of mats of all sorts, Justin commenced the manufacture of baskets. First he made a fine large clothes basket, which became the pride of Judith’s life; and then a dozen or more of fruit and vegetable baskets of all sizes; and, lastly, a workbasket for Britomarte, on which he expended his finest materials, and all the taste, skill and ingenuity he possessed. It was a miracle of convenience, if not of beauty. It was rather large and oval in form; the middle space long enough to contain a good-sized garment folded up; and all around that middle space little divisions like smaller baskets, to hold buttons, hooks and eyes, cord, tape, thread, etc., and to keep them separate and in order; each little division had its little movable top; and the whole basket had its cover and its handle. I have been particular in describing this little affair, because its invention was a work of love, and its usefulness every woman among my readers will appreciate.

Britomarte valued it not upon account of its beauty or its usefulness so much as because its every mesh and fibre had been woven by those beloved hands that were dearer to her than all others; yes, deny it to herself as she might, dearer to her than all others upon earth!

Judith was in rapture with the basket.

“It’s a beauty iv a basket! a darlint iv a basket! a little angel iv a basket! And sure meself wishes I was clever at the nadle, so I could use one, too. But faix if I can manage to put a patch in an ould tablecloth, it’s as much as meself can do,” she said.

“Never mind, Judith. You can weave, and that is what neither Miss Conyers nor myself can do. I shall make another attempt at the construction of a loom this winter; and I think between my recollections of my grandmother’s loom and your suggestions, I shall be able to construct one.”

“Ah, thin, if ye’d only do that same, sure I could waive beautiful cloth out iv the lovely cotton and woolen yarn I carded and spun last winter, or last wit season—if that’s winter—though I’m thinking it’s hot as the dhry season itself; and faix I can’t tell winther from summer in this haythen iv a climate.”

Justin kept his word with Judith and labored with the loom, putting it together and taking it to pieces, doing and undoing his work, hammering and tinkering at it all day long—when he had nothing better to do—for, in fact, the experiment of loom building was not sufficiently full of promise of success to justify the wasting upon it time that might be more profitably employed.

In the evening he joined Britomarte in the parlor, and read aloud, while she sewed and Judith knitted.

Thus passed their indoor life during the wet season.