Chapter XII: Book IV: Love in a Mist (3)

She was satisfied in her own mind now that he was dead. If he had been alive he would certainly have come. Well, she would not be long in following him.... Without him she had no desire to live ... even if she could struggle on alone, which was very doubtful ... better to join him quickly than to drag on miserably all by herself on that lonely bank, and go crazy in the end.

She sobbed herself asleep, her last wish that she might never waken. She had eaten nothing since the morning, and then only a hasty scrap that had no taste in it. The fire had gone out.... It did not matter. She would go out herself as soon as might be.... A woful end to all their golden hopes and happiness.

Morning found her still lying spent and hopeless on her bed, comatose, neither asleep nor awake, simply careless of life and even of the fact that the wind had fallen at midnight and that the new day had broken soft and clear.

Then, in her dream-weariness, she heard a voice in the outer room--or thought she did--but all her senses were dulled except the sense of loss and heartache. People, she knew, heard voices when they were going to die.

"Avice!"--the voice of God calling her--the sweet voice of death. She was ready to go.

"Avice! Where are you?"--and a tapping on the wall of her room.

How like Wulfrey's voice! Perhaps he was permitted to be the messenger,--a gracious thought--a joyful thought.

She rose painfully, stiff with weakness and long lying, stumbled to the doorway, stood leaning her hands against the sides, and peered, white-faced and awe-stricken, through the curtains into the room. Then, with a broken cry, she threw up her hands and fell forward into Wulf's arms.

When she came to herself she was lying on a blanket outside the house and he was bathing her forehead and kissing her. She lay looking up at him in wonder, out of eyes almost lost in the mists and darkness of her suffering. She raised a hand and touched his face.

"Are you real? Are you alive?" she whispered doubtfully.

He proved it with hot kisses. His eyes swam with pity for her sufferings. Her face and eyes told him all the story.

"By God's mercy we are both alive, dear. It might have been otherwise.... You have suffered sorely."

"I thought you were sent for me ... the angel of Death. And it was so good of them to send you and not a stranger.... But it is better to have you alive," and happy tears welled weakly out of her eyes and rolled down the white cheeks.

"I believe you have eaten nothing since I went. Lie still and I will get you something," and he jumped up and went inside, lighted the fire quickly, and presently was sitting by her side, feeding her with warm rum and water, for she was icy cold, and some bits of the cakes she had made three days before.

"You ought not to have starved yourself like that," he remonstrated.

"I was sure you were dead and I had no wish to live.... You will never go out there again...."

"Not in the break of a storm anyway. We must go to the storehouse sometimes, but we'll make sure of our weather in future."

"I wouldn't have minded if I'd been with you."

"I would. It was ghastly out there in the night," and he told her how he had lived in the big case of curtains, and how the pile heaved and writhed like a wounded sea-serpent under the tide and the gale. And how he had brought back some flour after all, though it had been no easy job as there was no wind to help him.

"It is dear flour," she said. "It nearly cost us our lives. I would sooner live on raw meat another time."

LVII

That was their sorest trial of the winter. Often, over the fire of a night, they talked of it and told one another all there was to tell of their feelings and their fears, and their love burned the brighter for its tempering.

But Avice was soon herself again, and as the Spring quickened all about and in them, the bitterness of the experience gradually faded out of their recollection and only the brightness was left.

And then there was so much to interest one everywhere that the days were hardly long enough for all there was to see and do.

First, seals--mothers and babies galore. Those sandy beaches of the northern coast seemed a favourite basking place and nursery, and Avice could creep along behind the sandhills, and crawl up among the wire-grass, and peep over, and she never tired of watching them. There was something so human in the way the babies snuggled up to their mothers when they were hungry, and still more in the way the mothers looked down at their nurslings.

And the baby-rabbits. They were almost as entrancing as the seals, but far shyer and more difficult to spy upon.

For the simple lifting of a head among the sparse tufts of grass set the hollow below alive with tiny bobbing white scuts, whose terrified owners tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get below ground. Avice would not hear of rabbit-meat in those days. She said the very thought of it made her feel like a cannibal.

And lastly,--birds. They were coming back in flights. The eastern point seemed their chosen ground, but closer at hand stray families were found, and importunate babies were being fed by the cold-eyed mothers with whom, a few months later, they would be waging the fierce battle for food. But Avice never took to the birds as she did to the seals and rabbits. She could never forget what they would grow into--brigands and fighters and cold-blooded raucous screamers at all times.

Now and again they lived on the 'Jane and Mary' for a week by way of a change, and fish was always obtainable whether they were afloat or ashore.

The clear fire of their love waxed ever stronger, devoured the days and weeks and months, and refined and fused them all into golden memories without one smallest speck of alloy. More devoted lover never woman had, nor man a sweeter mistress. Never was princess of the blood--without a bar across her scutcheon--held in loftier esteem or shown it more gallantly. Never, in word or act, did he offend her sense of right in the smallest degree; yet she could set his heart leaping and his blood racing by a touch--and she knew it.

Sometime,--when he believed it right--she knew he would ask more of her. It was inevitable. She had known it from the beginning. And she had no fear of it. Love such as theirs knows nothing of fear.

They were not playing at love. They loved with all the white fire of passionate devotion which loses sight of self in the one beloved. For better, for worse; in life, in death, she was wholly his. With the ardour of the Spring in her blood, and the love-light in her eyes, she waited for him to speak.

LVIII

Time came when, according to her calendar, he had been there full twelve months and she just about nine. And as to prospect of escape, or further addition to their company, they were in exactly the same position as when they came.

Whenever they discussed that matter, she said, "Still, I came ashore alive."

And he always said, "You were the miracle. Besides you were nine-tenths dead."

She wondered when he would ask the next step of her, and how he would do it. Her answer was ready--herself. Still, something of extra fragrance--something ineffably sweet and delicate--would cling to it for ever, or be for ever just that much lacking, according to the manner of his asking.

But she believed his great love would choose the proper chord and strike it with strong and gentle fingers.

And it did.

They were sitting in the firelight one night, when a more than usually pregnant silence fell on them. The depth of their feeling for one another expressed itself not infrequently in these long delicious pauses in their talk, when that which was in them was all too sacred for words. Her Northern blood, of which she was proud, prevailed as a rule over the Gallic strain, which she held in light esteem, and made for undemonstrativeness in any outward display of feeling. But she felt to the depths, and when she did permit the brakes to slip, the wheels struck sparks.

He also was more doer than talker. Hence those long sweet silences, when she lay with her head in his arm in the coloured firelight, and the gentle play of his hand on her hair was more to them both than all the words in the world.

But this night there was more in the silences that fell on them. In both their hearts the high-charged thoughts and feelings of many months were converging to a point. The quickening of the Spring was in their blood.

His hand slipped suddenly down from her hair and clasped on both of hers where they lay in her lap. His voice as he spoke was deep with emotion. It thrilled her to the depths. She felt the hot pulses in his hand leaping and throbbing. His words were very simple, as became a matter so vital. Deepest feeling needs no garnishment.

"Dearest, you have honoured me with your trust and love"---- Her hands turned and clasped his fervently.

"Every hair of your head is precious to me. I would not knowingly offend your feelings in any smallest thing.... We are here, cut off from our kind, it may be, for ever.... We are as alone here with God, as Adam and Eve were in The Garden.... You make my Paradise. You can perfect it.... Will you?..."

And for answer she put up her arms, and drew down his face, and kissed him passionately, and clung to him as if she would never let him go.

"I thank God for so precious a gift," he said, clasping her to him so that she felt his heart pounding inside as furiously as her own.

"Heart ... soul ... body ... all yours!" she whispered, and he kissed her hair, because her face was hidden, and clasped her closer still.

"It is the ordained crown of our love," he said presently, when their first blinding whirl of emotion was over. "I cannot see that we offend any law of man's, for here we are beyond the law. God's law we are surely keeping.... And, so as not to act on simple impulse I have thought that we would let another month go by before..." and he kissed her rosy face again.

"But why?"

"Perhaps you have not thought it all out as I have----"

"But I have ... I knew it must be so...." and the joy in him was very great.

"All the same, dear, we will not enter into that high estate without your very fullest consideration.... And if you should find any reason or instinct against it I shall abide by your decision."

"I am all yours. I shall not change."

"From what the mate said I imagine this island may pertain to Nova Scotia. It is possible that Scottish law runs there.... We can take one another for man and wife and place it on record...."

"How?"

"We have books with fly-leaves. Among the sand-hills you will find all the quills you want. The birds are some use after all.... Anyone can make a pen ... and ink we can always get even though it is red.... All we need for a good Scots marriage is a pair of witnesses."

"Seals, rabbits, birds...."

"They cannot testify.... All we can do," he said thoughtfully, "if, by God's mercy, we ever leave this place is to regularise ourselves by proper marriage ashore as soon as we land. But the prospects of getting away seem very small, I'm afraid."

"We have been very happy here. We can still be very happy here," she said contentedly.

So amazing is this great power of Love in covering all deficiencies of outward circumstance.

LIX

The days slipped past, and each day he watched her quietly for slightest sign of compunction, or retraction. And if such had come to her, sore though he might have felt, and bereaved of the perfect unfolding of the fair flower of their love, he would have choked the feeling down, trampled on it, buried it so that she would have seen no sign of it in him. For he recognised to the fullest what a mighty thing this was that he was asking of her.

But she understood him perfectly, fathomed his fears, was on the look-out for his quietly-questioning looks, and met them with clear full-eyed serenity and a face rosy at times with anticipation.

"You need not fear for me," she laughed softly, one night as she lay in his arm before the fire. "I shall not change."

He clasped her closer. "I could not blame you if you did. From every worldly point of view you would be right----"

"What have we to do with worldly points of view? We are out of it all. We are here alone, and like to be. And we are doing right in our own eyes."

"I would risk my soul on what seems right to these pure eyes," and he bent and kissed them warmly.

"Ten more days!" she murmured, and nestled closer, with her head on his breast so that she could feel the strong beating of his heart.

"It says 'Avice!--Avice!--Avice!'" he said quietly. "It is full of Avice," and she pressed still closer.

So the great day came, the greatest day either of their lives had known.

Wulf had found sleep impossible. His heart, full-charged, felt like to burst its mortal bounds. He rose quietly in the dark and went out into the soft twilight of the dawn--to greet the coming of the perfect day. And she, as impossible of sleep as he, heard him in spite of all his caution, and laughed softly to herself for very happiness in him and in herself. And when he had gone, she thanked God for this great gift of a true man's love, and for that in herself which responded to it so fully.

She had not a doubt nor a fear. The smallest of either would have barred her from him. But there was not the smallest shadow between them. Their hearts were one. It was meet and good that their lives should be one also. Wulfrey paced the beach out there and found the silent darkness soothing to his bounding senses.

It was late April. The air was sweet and fresh. The sea just breathed in its sleep and no more. The water rippled silently up the hard sand with scarce a murmur. The darkness of the eastern sky thinned as he paced and watched. There came a soft suffusion of light there. It throbbed and grew. A faint touch of carmine outlined a cloud above it. The darkness seemed to fade and melt out of the sky. All the tiny clouds above him turned their faces to the east and flushed rose-red with the joy of the new day.

He climbed a hill and caught the first golden gleam of the rising sun. His eyes shone, and his face. In his eyes two suns were reflected. But there was only one sun. And they were two and now were to become one. The Perfect Day had dawned.

And just as she, lying in her bed with her face in her hands, had thanked God for His goodness, so he. He flung his right hand up towards the sun in the brightening sky and said deeply, "My God, I thank Thee for this day and most of all for her!"

And, down below, he saw her coming out of the house towards him.

He sprang down to meet her, caught her hands, and looked right down through her eyes into her heart, and was satisfied.

LX

Arm in arm they paced the beach till the sun was well up, and their bank of sand shone in the flood of golden light as it had never shone before,--fresh and sweet as if but new-created.

A light wind had come with the sun. The small waves came hurrying in as though they were invited guests. At sight of the wedding-party they broke into crisp white laughter, curled themselves over in league-long sickles of tenderest lucent green, and raced up the sands to their feet in long soft swirls of liquid amber, laced with bubbles and edged with creamy foam.

"They haste to the wedding, to pay their tribute to the only bride they have ever set eyes on," said Wulf, as they stopped to watch them. "And each one is glad to give his life for a single peep at her."

"Foolish little waves," laughed she. "I am going to make their very close acquaintance presently. How beautiful the sea is this morning!"--as her eyes travelled out to the wide blue sweep beyond, with its dapple of purple shadows.

"The most beautiful sea and the most wonderful morning that ever was," he asserted heartily. "But it is only a beginning. There will be many more like it. And still better."

"I am so glad it is so sweet a day. A dull one would have troubled me."

"But it could not possibly have been anything else."

"Oh, but it could."

"In mere outward accident perhaps. But I've got the sun inside me. I wonder it doesn't show through."

"It does," she laughed joyously. "You are all aglow."

"And never man had better reason. I would not change places with all the kings of all the earth rolled into one."

"Nor I with all the queens. We are happier here by far with nothing but ourselves."

"Ourselves, and our Love, and infinite Hope. Now let us go and eat. My bride must not starve. That would be a bad beginning. Did you sleep?"

"Not a wink. I heard you go out."

"And I was pluming myself on not having made a sound."

While she was making cakes he busied himself making a pen out of a quill he had picked up on the beach, and she smiled when she saw what he was at.

"And the ink?" she asked.

"I've got it all ready. I always carry some with me in case of need," at which she knitted her brows prettily and looked puzzled.

After breakfast she said, "Now you must leave me for a couple of hours. I am going to thank the waves for their good wishes and then I shall go to the fresh-water pool."

"You will be very careful.. You won't get yourself drowned."

"I will be very careful. And you!"

"I will go across to the spit. But when we are wed----"

"Yes--then!" she nodded rosily, and he kissed her and went off past the fresh-water pools, and splashed through the narrows that joined their lake to the smaller one, and so to the shore and into the sea, for the last time alone.

He waited till he was sure she had done with their bathing-pool, and then ran across and plunged into it, for the salt water braces, but sticks and never makes one feel so clean as fresh.

She was still busy with the princely brush and comb when he came on her, and his heart leaped again at her fresh and radiant beauty.

She had clothed herself all in spotless linen, swathed about her in that marvellous fashion of which she held the secret to perfection. To his rejoicing eyes she appeared half angel, half Vestal Virgin, yet all bewitching human girl, and, best of all, his bride.

"Be thankful you're a man, and delivered from this," she said, her eyes shining through the glorious veil at his visible joy in her.

"I'm thankful I'm a man, but I wouldn't have you relieved of that for half the world. I glory in it," and he bent and kissed it. "For a moment I thought you were an angel."

"Perhaps I am."

"I know you are. But, thank God, you're human too! Men don't wed with angels.... I must go and dress myself also," and he disappeared into the house.

When, in due course, he came out, gallantly clad in a long blue coat with flap-pockets, and figured vest, and white silk knee-breeches, and stockings to suit, she first stared and then laughed.

"My faith, but we are fine!" said she. "But, in truth, I like you best as I have known you best. Do you marry in a dead man's clothes?"

"Not if I know it. Sooner in my rags. But, to the best of my belief, these belonged to your friend the Duke of Kent. Macro would have them, but little he dreamed of the high use to which they would be put. I borrow them for the occasion. His Highness would make no objection I am sure."

"I am sure he would not, and they become you well. But still I like you best as I have known you best."

"I will doff them presently. But you are so like a queen that I did not like to come to you like a beggar."

In his hand he had brought the Prayer-book, with the quill in a certain place.

He stepped up to her and lifted her hand to his lips.

"You do not repent you of this we are about to do?"

"I shall never repent it," she said, with dancing eyes.

"Please God, and as far as in me lies, you shall never have cause to repent it.... We are here, our two selves, with none to witness this that we do but God.... We are doing what we believe to be right for our own great happiness and well-being.... It would suffice, I believe, for a Scots wedding, simply to declare ourselves man and wife. But I have thought it would please us both to do something more. We are not entering upon this new estate lightly or without due thought.... It will, I know, be to both our minds and comforting to both our hearts, to think that in our loneliness here we have done all we could to supply the deficiencies for which we are not to blame."

He spoke with very great emotion. She rejoiced in this fresh evidence of the heights and depths of his nature and his essential goodness of heart, though indeed she had not needed it.

Her great dark eyes, fixed on his, were abrim with happy tears.

"So," he continued, "We will read together the Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony in this Prayer-book, and then we will inscribe on the front leaf of it the fact that this day we have become man and wife. We will sign our names to it, and we can do no more to comply with man's law.... Is that your will, my dear?"

"Yes."

"Then here we will kneel and wed," and down they knelt in the sand, with a clear sky and bright sun above, and the blue sea that held them captive dancing and laughing in front; and holding the book between them he read the Service aloud in a deep and reverent voice.

Parts of it were of course somewhat incongruous to their situation, but he would not slur or miss a word. The statement that they were gathered together in the face of this congregation almost provoked her to an explosion. For out of the corner of her eye, as she followed his reading, a slight movement on the side of an adjacent sandhill showed her a rabbit, sitting up and watching them with critical attention, and it looked to her just like the frowsy old female in black she had seen hovering about the skirts of a wedding in a London church.

And there were parts that brought the colour to her face, though she was familiar with them. Applied to oneself they seemed to hold new point and meaning.

However, he read bravely on. No one interfered to show any just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, nor had either of them any confession of impediment to make.

At the "Wilt thou----?" he answered heartily, "I will." And waited for her to do the same when her turn came.

When it came to--"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?"--he answered boldly,--"God."

Then they took hands and plighted their troth, reciting the words in the book.

But when it came to the putting on of the ring there came an interlude not provided for in the Marriage Service.

He had duly provided a plain gold wedding ring.

"Where did you get it?" she asked with a look of surprise.

"I found it among Macro's treasures."

"It must be some dead woman's, then. I would sooner not. Can we not leave that out? Will it make any difference?"

"No, dear. It will make no difference to our being truly wed."

"Then please go on without it."

So they left the ring out and read on to the end together.

He closed the book and drew her to him as they knelt, and kissed her as his wife.

"Now," he said, lifting her up. "We will put on record the most wonderful thing that has ever happened on this island, and then we will go home and prepare the marriage-feast.... I wonder now if James Elwes, M.A., late of Brasenose College, Oxford, is aware of the high use to which his Prayer-book is being put,"--as he pointed to the name inscribed on the fly-leaf, and turned over to the blank on the other side.

"Do you think they know?"

"I do not see why not. But as we never knew him, nor he us, it is possible he is not present."

And suddenly those words at the beginning of the Marriage Service assumed a new and mighty significance for her. "In the face of this congregation" might mean more than she had ever dreamed of. Perhaps her mother had been there---- If she had, if she should be here now--it, was somewhat startling to think of--she would be glad, for she would know how good and true a man this was.

But he was busily writing, and at the sight she cried, "Oh!"--for the writing was red and the ink was drawn from a little jag he had made in his arm.

"In blood," she said, with a touch of dismay.

"It could not be put to better use," he laughed. "It is all at your service ... to the very last drop.... How begin better than by setting down here that we are one till death?"

"What you said made me think that perhaps my mother had been with us----"

"I am sure she was, and mine too.... They will both approve, you may be sure.... Here is what I have written--

"'I, Wulfrey Dale, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Avice Drummond to be my lawful wedded wife.' And for you, 'I, Avice Drummond, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Wulfrey Dale to be my lawful wedded husband.' Now I will sign.... And you will sign there ... and I will add the date as far as we know it ... and our present place of abode--Sable Island."

He held the book till the writing was dry, then kissed her signature. "It is the first time I have set eyes on your handwriting," he said. "It is like yourself--clear and strong and true ... Mistress Dale,"--with a smiling bow, as he handed her the book,--"your marriage-lines! You will like to keep them."

"And the pen, please," she said, holding out her hand for it, and wrapping it and the book in a fold of her white robe. "These will be more to me than all the treasures of the world."

He put his arm round her and they went slowly home--man and wife.