Next morning Hazel rose at daybreak as usual, but found himself stiff inthe joints and with a pain in his back. The mat that hung at the openingof Helen's cave was not removed as usual. She was on her bed with aviolent headache.
Hazel fed Ponto, and corrected him. He was at present a civilized dog; sohe made a weak rush at the boobies and noddies directly.
He also smelled Tommy inquisitively, to learn was he an eatable. Tommysomehow divined the end of this sinister curiosity, and showed his teeth.
Then Hazel got a rope, and tied one end round his own waist, and oneround Ponto's neck, and, at every outbreak of civilization, jerked himsharply on to his back. The effect of this discipline was rapid; Pontosoon found that he must not make war on the inhabitants of the island. Hewas a docile animal, and in a very short time consented to make one of"the happy family," as Hazel called the miscellaneous crew that besethim.
Helen and Hazel did not meet till past noon; and when they did meet itwas plain she had been thinking a great deal, for her greeting was so shyand restrained as to appear cold and distant to Hazel. He thought tohimself, I was too happy yesterday, and she too kind. Of course it couldnot last.
This change in her seemed to grow, rather than diminish. She carried itso far as to go and almost hide during the working hours. She made off tothe jungle, and spent an unreasonable time there. She professed to becollecting cotton, and it must be admitted she brought a good deal homewith her. But Hazel could not accept cotton as the only motive for thissudden separation.
He lost the light of her face till the evening. Then matters took anotherturn; she was too polite. Ceremony and courtesy appeared to be graduallyencroaching upon tender friendship and familiarity. Yet, now and then,her soft hazel eyes seemed to turn on him in silence, and say, forgive meall this. Then, at those sweet looks, love and forgiveness poured out ofhis eyes. And then hers sought the ground. And this was generallyfollowed by a certain mixture of stiffness, timidity and formality toosubtle to describe.
The much-enduring man began to lose patience.
"This is caprice," said he. "Cruel caprice."
Our female readers will probably take a deeper view of it than that.Whatever it was, another change was at hand. Since he was so exposed tothe weather on the reef, Hazel had never been free from pain; but he haddone his best to work it off. He had collected all the valuables from thewreck, made a new mast, set up a rude capstan to draw the boat ashore,and cut a little dock for her at low water, and clayed it in the fullheat of the sun; and, having accomplished this drudgery, he got at lastto his labor of love; he opened a quantity of pearl oysters, fed Tommyand the duck with them, and began the great work of lining the cavernwith them. The said cavern was somewhat shell-shaped, and his idea was tomake it out of a gloomy cavern into a vast shell, lined entirely, roofand sides, with glorious, sweet, prismatic mother-of-pearl, fresh fromocean. Well, one morning, while Helen was in the jungle, he made a cementof guano, sand, clay and water, nipped some shells to a shape with thepincers, and cemented them neatly, like mosaic almost; but in the middleof his work he was cut down by the disorder he had combated so stoutly.He fairly gave in, and sat down groaning with pain. And in this stateHelen found him.
"Oh, what is the matter?" said she.
He told her the truth, and said he had violent pains in the back andhead. She did not say much, but she turned pale. She bustled and lighteda great fire, and made him lie down by it. She propped his head up; sheset water on to boil for him, and would not let him move for anything;and all the time her features were brimful of the loveliest concern. Hecould not help thinking how much better it was to be ill and in pain, andhave her so kind, than to be well, and see her cold and distant. Towardevening he got better, or rather he mistook an intermission for cure, andretired to his boat; but she made him take her rug with him; and, when hewas gone, she could not sleep for anxiety; and it cut her to the heart tothink how poorly he was lodged compared with her.
Of all the changes fate could bring, this she had never dreamed of, thatshe should be so robust and he should be sick and in pain.
She passed an uneasy, restless night, and long before morning she awokefor the sixth or seventh time, and she awoke with a misgiving in hermind, and some sound ringing in her ears. She listened and heard nothing;but in a few moments it began again.
It was Hazel talking--talking in a manner so fast, so strange, so loud,that it made her blood run cold. It was the voice of Hazel, but not hismind.
She drew near, and, to her dismay, found him fever-stricken, and pouringout words with little sequence. She came close to him and tried to soothehim, but he answered her quite at random, and went on flinging out thestrangest things in stranger order. She trembled and waited for a lull,hoping then to soothe him with soft words and tones of tender pity.
_"Dens and caves!"_ he roared, answering an imaginary detractor. "Well,never mind, love shall make that hole in the rock a palace for a queen;for _a_ queen? For _the_ queen." Here he suddenly changed characters andfancied he was interpreting the discourse of another. "He means the Queenof the Fairies," said he, patronizingly. Then, resuming his own characterwith loud defiance, "I say her chamber shall outshine the glories of theAlhambra, as far as the lilies outshone the artificial glories of KingSolomon. Oh, mighty Nature, let others rely on the painter, thegold-beater, the carver of marble, come you and help me adorn the templeof my beloved. Amen."
(The poor soul thought, by the sound of his own words, it must be aprayer he uttered.)
And now Helen, with streaming eyes, tried to put in a word, but hestopped her with a wild Hush! and went off into a series of mysteriouswhisperings. "Make no noise, please, or we shall frighten her.There--that is her window--no noise, please! I've watched and waited fourhours, just to see her sweet, darling shadow on the blinds, and shall Ilose it for your small talk? all paradoxes and platitudes! excuse myplain speaking--Hush! here it comes--her shadow--hush!--how my heartbeats. It is gone. So now" (speaking out), "good-night, base world! Doyou hear? you company of liars, thieves and traitors, called the world,go and sleep if you can. I _shall_ sleep, because my conscience is clear._False accusations!_ Who can help them? They are the act of others. Readof Job, and Paul, and Joan of Arc. No, no, no, no; I didn't say read 'em_out_ with those stentorian lungs. I must be allowed a _little_ sleep, aman that wastes the midnight oil, yet brushes the early dew. Good-night."
He turned round and slept for several hours as he supposed; but inreality he was silent for just three seconds. "Well," said he, "and is agardener a man to be looked down upon by upstarts? When Adam delved andEve span, where was then the gentleman? Why, where the spade was. Yet Iwent through the Herald's College, and not one of our mushroomaristocracy ('bloated' I object to; they don't eat half as much as theirfootmen) had a spade for a crest. There's nothing ancient west of theCaspian. Well, all the better. For there's no fool like an old fool. Aspade's a spade for a' that an a' that, an a' that--an a' that--an a'that. Hallo! Stop that man; he's gone off on his cork leg, of a' that ana' that--and it is my wish to be quiet. Allow me respectfully toobserve," said he, striking off suddenly into an air of vast politeness,"that man requires change. I've done a jolly good day's work with thespade for this old buffer, and now the intellect claims its turn. Themind retires above the noisy world to its Acropolis, and there discussesthe great problem of the day; the Insular Enigma. To be or not to be,that is the question, I believe. No it is not. That is fully discussedelsewhere. Hum! To diffuse--intelligence--from a fixed island--over onehundred leagues of water.
"It's a stinger. But I can't complain. I had read Lempriere, and Smithand Bryant, and mythology in general, yet I must go and fall in love withthe Sphinx. Men are so vain. Vanity whispered, She will set you a lightone; why is a cobbler like a king, for instance? She is not in love withyou, ye fool, if you are with her. The harder the riddle the higher thecompliment the Sphinx pays you. That is the way all sensible men look atit. She is not the Sphinx; she is an angel, and I call her my Lad
yCaprice. _Hate her for being Caprice!_ You incorrigible muddle-head. Why,I love Caprice for being her shadow. Poor, impotent love that can't solvea problem. The only one she ever set me. I've gone about it like a fool.What is the use putting up little bits of telegraphs on the island? I'llmake a kite a hundred feet high, get five miles of rope ready against thenext hurricane; and then I'll rub it with phosphorus and fly it. But whatcan I fasten it to? No tree would hold it. Dunce. To the island itself,of course. And now go to Stantle, Magg, Milton, and Copestake for onethousand yards of silk--_Money! Money! Money!_ Well, give them a mortgageon the island, and a draft on the galleon. Now stop the pitch-fountain,and bore a hole near it; fill fifty balloons with gas, inscribe them withthe latitude and longitude, fly them, and bring all the world about ourears. The problem is solved. It is solved and I am destroyed. She leavesme; she thinks no more of me. Her heart is in England."
Then he muttered for a long time unintelligibly; and Helen ventured near,and actually laid her hand on his brow to soothe him. But suddenly hismuttering ceased, and he seemed to be puzzling hard over something.
The result came out in a clear articulate sentence, that made Helenrecoil, and, holding by the mast, cast an indescribable look of wonderand dismay on the speaker.
The words that so staggered her were these to the letter:
"She says she hates reptiles. Yet she marries Arthur Wardlaw."
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