Foul Play by Dion Boucicault (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

and then you will trust me with your secrets, when I have shown myself unworthy to be trusted with anything. Keep your secrets, and I’ll try and keep faith; ay, and I shall keep it, too, as long as there’s life in my body.”

“Can’t you keep faith without torturing me, who love you?”

Helen’s bosom began to heave at this, but she fought bravely. “Love me less, and respect me more,” said she, panting; “you affront me, you frighten me. I looked on you as a brother, a dear brother. But now I am afraid of you— I am afraid “

He was so injudicious as to interrupt her, instead of giving her time to contradict herself. “You have nothing to fear,” said he; “keep this side of the island, and I’ll live on the other, rather than hear the name of Arthur Wardlaw.”

Helen’s courage failed her at that spirited proposal, and she made no reply at all, but turned her back haughtily, and went away from him, only, when she had got a little way, her proud head drooped, and she went crying.

A coolness sprang up between them, and neither of them knew how to end it. Hazel saw no way to serve her now, except by flying weighted ducks, and he gave his mind so to this that one day he told her he had twenty-seven ducks in the air, all charged, and two-thirds of them weighted. He thought that must please her now. To his surprise and annoyance, she received the intelligence coldly, and asked him whether it was not cruel to the birds.

Hazel colored with mortification at his great act of self-denial being so received.

He said, “I don’t think my worst enemy can say I am wantonly cruel to God’s creatures.”

Helen threw in, deftly, “And I am not your worst enemy.”

“But what other way is there to liberate you from this island, where you have nobody to speak to but me? Well, selfishness is the best course. Think only of others, and you are sure not to please them.”

“If you want to please people, you must begin by understanding them,” said the lady, not ill-naturedly.

“But if they don’t understand themselves?”

“Then pity them; you can, for you are a man.”

“What hurts me,” said Hazel, “is that you really seem to think I fly these ducks for my pleasure. Why, if I had my wish, you and I should never leave this island, nor any other person set a foot on it. I am frank, you see.”

“Rather too frank.”

“What does it matter, since I do my duty all the same, and fly the ducks? But sometimes I do yearn for a word of praise for it; and that word never comes.”

“It is a praiseworthy act,” said Helen, but so icily that it is a wonder he ever flew another duck after that.

“No matter,” said he, and his hand involuntarily sought his heart; “you read me a sharp but wholesome lesson, that we should do our duty for our duty’s sake. And as I am quite sure it is my duty to liberate you and restore you to those you— I’ll fly three ducks tomorrow morning instead of two.”

“It is not done by my advice,” said Helen. “You will certainly make yourself ill.”

“Oh, that is all nonsense!” said Hazel.

“You are rude to me,” said Helen, and I am not aware that I deserve it.”

“Rude, am I? Then I’ll say no more,” said Hazel, half humbly, half doggedly.

 

His parchment was exhausted, and he was driven to another expedient. He obtained alcohol by distillation from rum, and having found dragon’s blood in its pure state, little ruby drops, made a deep red varnish that defied water; he got slips of bark, white inside, cut his inscription deep on the inner side, and filled the incised letters with this red varnish. He had forty-eight ducks in the air, and was rising before daybreak to catch another couple, when he was seized with a pain in the right hip and knee, and found he could hardly walk, so he gave in that morning, and kept about the premises. But he got worse, and he had hardly any use in his right side, from the waist downward, and was in great pain.

As the day wore on, the pain and loss of power increased, and resisted all his remedies; there was no fever to speak of; but Nature was grimly revenging herself for many a gentler warning neglected. When he realized his condition, he was terribly cut up, and sat on the sand with his head in his hands for nearly two hours. But, after that period of despondency, he got up, took his boat-hook, and, using it as a staff, hobbled to his arsenal, and set to work.

Among his materials was a young tree he had pulled up; the roots ran at right angles to the stem. He just sawed off the ends of the roots, and then proceeded to shorten the stem.

But meantime Helen, who had always a secret eye on him and his movements, had seen there was something wrong, and came timidly and asked what was the matter.

“Nothing,” said he, doggedly.

“Then why did you sit so long on the sand? I never saw you like that.”

“I was ruminating.”

“What upon? Not that I have any right to ask.”

“On the arrogance and folly of men; they attempt more than they can do, and despise the petty prudence and common sense of women, and smart for it; as I am smarting now for being wiser than you.”

“Oh,” said Helen; “why, what is the matter? and what is that you have made? It looks like—oh, dear!”

“It is a crutch,” said Hazel, with forced calmness; “and I am a cripple.”

Helen clasped her hands, and stood trembling.

Hazel lost his self-control for a moment, and cried out in a voice of agony, “A useless cripple. I wish I was dead and out of the way.”

Then, ashamed of having given way before her, he seized his crutch, placed the crook under his arm, and turned sullenly away from her.

Four steps he took with his crutch.

She caught him with two movements of her supple and vigorous frame.

She just laid her left hand gently on his shoulder, and with her right she stole the crutch softly away, and let it fall upon the sand. She took his right hand, and put it to her lips like a subject paying homage to her sovereign; and then she put her strong arm under his shoulder, still holding his right hand in hers, and looked in his face. “No wooden crutches when I am by,” said she, in a low voice, full of devotion.

He stood surprised, and his eyes began to fill.

“Come,” said she, in a voice of music. And, thus aided, he went with her to her cavern. As they went she asked him tenderly where the pain was.

“It was in my hip and knee,” he said. “But now it is nowhere; for joy has come back to my heart.”

“And to mine, too,” said Helen; “except for this.”

 

The quarrel dispersed like a cloud under this calamity. There was no formal reconciliation; no discussion. And this was the wisest course, for the unhappy situation remained unchanged; and the friendliest discussion could only fan the embers of discord and misery gently, instead of fiercely.

The pair so strangely thrown together commenced a new chapter of their existence. It was not patient and nurse over again; Hazel, though very lame, had too much spirit left to accept that position. But still the sexes became in a measure reversed— Helen the fisherman and forager, Hazel the cook and domestic.

He was as busy as ever, but in a narrow circle; he found pearl oysters near the sunk galleon, and, ere he had been lame many weeks, he had entirely lined the sides of the cavern with mother-of-pearl set in cement, and close as mosaic.

Every day he passed an hour in paradise; for his living crutch made him take a little walk with her; her hand held his; her arm supported his shoulder; her sweet face was near his, full of tender solicitude; they seemed to be one; and spoke in whispers to each other, like thinking aloud. The causes of happiness were ever present; the causes of unhappiness were out of sight, and showed no signs of approach.

And, of the two, Helen was the happiest. Before a creature so pure as this marries and has children, the great maternal instinct is still there, but feeds on what it can get—first a doll, and then some helpless creature or other. Too often she wastes her heart’s milk on something grown up, but as selfish as a child. Helen was more fortunate; her child was her hero, now so lame that he must lean on her to walk. The days passed by, and the island was fast becoming the world to those two, and as bright a world as ever shone on two mortal creatures.

 

It was a happy dream.

What a pity that dreams dissolve so soon! This had lasted for nearly two months, and Hazel was getting better, though still not well enough, or not fool enough, to dismiss his live crutch, when one afternoon Helen, who had been up on the heights, observed a dark cloud in the blue sky toward the west. There was not another cloud visible, and the air marvelously clear; time, about three quarters of an hour before sunset. She told Hazel about this solitary cloud, and asked him, with some anxiety, if it portended another storm. He told her to be under no alarm—there were no tempests in that latitude except at the coming and going out of the rains—but he should like to go round the Point and look at her cloud.

She lent him her arm, and they went round the Point; and there they saw a cloud entirely different from anything they had ever seen since they were on the island. It was like an enormous dark ribbon stretched along the sky, at some little height above the horizon. Notwithstanding its prodigious length. it got larger before their very eyes.

Hazel started.

Helen felt him start, and asked him, with some surprise, what was the matter.

“Cloud!” said he; “that is no cloud. That is smoke.”

“Smoke!” echoed Helen, becoming agitated in her turn.

“Yes; the breeze is northerly, and carries the smoke nearer to us; it is the smoke of a steamboat.”

 

CHAPTER XLV.

BOTH were greatly moved; and after one swift glance Helen stole at him, neither looked at the other. They spoke in flurried whispers.

“Can they see the island?”

“I don’t know; it depends on how far the boat is to windward of her smoke.”

“How shall we know?”

“If she sees the island she will make for it that moment.”

“Why? do ships never pass an unknown island?”

“Yes. But that steamer will not pass us.”

“But why?”

At this question Hazel hung his head, and his lip quivered. He answered her at last. “Because she is looking for you.”

Helen was struck dumb at this.

He gave his reasons. “Steamers never visit these waters. Love has brought that steamer out; love that will not go unrewarded. Arthur Wardlaw is on board that ship.”

“Have they seen us yet?”

Hazel forced on a kind of dogged fortitude. He said, “When the smoke ceases to elongate, you will know they have changed their course, and they will change their course the moment the man at the masthead sees us.”

“Oh! But how do you know they have a man at the masthead?”

“I know by myself. I should have a man at the masthead night and