The Isle of Retribution/Chapter 18
XVIII
Ned was spared the misery and despair that overswept Doomsdorf's cabin the first night of his imprisonment. His master dropped him on the floor by the stove, and there he lay, seemingly without life, the whole night through. Even the sound of the wind could not get down into that dim region of half-coma where he was: he heard neither its weird chant on the cabin roof, or that eerie, sobbing song that it made to the sea, seemingly the articulation of the troubled soul of the universe. He did not see the snow piling deeper on the window ledge; nor sit straining in the dreadful, gathering silence of the Arctic night. The promised reward of food was not his because he could not get up to take it.
Yet he was not always deeply insensible. Sometimes he would waken with a knowledge of wracking pain in his muscles, and sometimes cold would creep over him. Once he came to himself with the realization that some one was administering to him. Soft, gentle hands were removing his wet, outer garments, rolling him gently over in order to get at them, slipping off his wet shoes and stockings. A great tenderness swept over him, and he smiled wanly in the lantern light.
Since he was a child, before the world was ever too much with him, no living human being had seen him smile in quite this way. It was a smile of utter simplicity, childishly sweet, and yet brave too,—as if he were trying to hearten some one who was distressed about him. He didn't feel the dropping tears that were the answer to that smile, nor feel the heart's glow, dear beyond all naming, that it wakened. To the girl who, scarcely able herself to stand erect, had crept from her warm cot to serve him, it seemed almost to atone for everything, to compensate for all she had endured.
“Lenore?” the man whispered feebly.
But there was no spoken answer out of the shadow at the edge of the lantern light. Perhaps there was the faint sound, like a gasp, almost as if a terrible truth that was for an instant forgotten had been recalled again; and perhaps the administering hands halted in their work for one part of an instant. But at once they continued to ply about him, so strong and capable, and yet so ineffably gentle. It couldn't be Lenore, of course. No wonder,—Lenore had suffered grievously from the events of the past night. In his half-delirium it occurred to him that it might be his mother. There had been times in the past, when his mother had come to his bedside in this same way, with this same gentleness, during his boyhood sicknesses. But he couldn't remain awake to think about it. His wet, clinging clothes had been removed, and blankets, already warmed, were being wrapped about him. He fell into deep, restful sleep.
But it ended all too soon. A great hand shook him, snatching him into a sitting position, and a great, bearded face, unspeakably terrible in the weird, yellow light of the lantern, showed close to his own. “Up and out,” he was shouting. “It'll be light enough to work by the time you have breakfast. Out before I boot you out.”
He meant what he said. Already his cruel boot was drawn back. Ned's conscious world returned to him in one mighty sweep, like a cruel, white light bursting upon tired eyes. The full dreadfulness of his lot, forgotten in his hours of sleep, was recalled more vividly than ever. It wasn't just a dream, to be dispersed on wakening. Even yesterday's blessed murk of unreality, dimming everything and dulling all his perceptions, was gone now that he was refreshed by sleep. His brain worked clear, and he saw all things as they were. And the black wall of hopelessness seemed unbroken.
Yet instantly he remembered Lenore. At least he must continue to try to shelter her—even to make conditions easy as possible for Bess. His love for the former was the one happiness of his past life that he had left; and he didn't forget his obligation to the latter. Bess was already up, building up the fire at Doomsdorf's command, but Lenore, with whom she had slept, still lay sobbing on her cot.
Ned pulled on his clothes, scarcely wondering at the fact that they were hanging, miraculously dry, back of the stove; and immediately hurried to Lenore's side. He forgot his own aching muscles in distress for her; and his arms went about her, drawing her face to his own.
“Oh, my girl, you mustn't cry,” he told her, with a world of compassion in his tone. “I'll take care of you. Don't you know I will?”
But with tragic face Lenore drew back from his arms. “How can you take care of me?” she asked with immeasurable bitterness. “Can you stand against that brute?”
“Hush!”
“Of course you can't. You're even afraid to speak his name.”
“Oh, my dear! Don't draw away.” The man's voice was pleading. “I was just afraid he'd take some awful punishment from you. Of course I'm helpless now”
“Then how can you take care of me?” she demanded again, for a moment forgetting her despair in her anger at him. “Can you make him let me stay in bed, instead of going out to die in this awful snow? Death—that's all there's here for me. And the quicker it comes the better.”
She sobbed again, and he tried in vain to comfort her. “We'll come through,” he whispered. “I'll make everything as light as I can”
But she thrust off his caressing hands. “I don't want you to touch me,” she told him tragically. “You can't make things light for me, in this living hell. And until you can protect me from that man, and save me, you can keep your kisses. Oh, why did you ever bring me here?”
“I suppose—because I loved you.”
“You showed it, in taking me into this awful land in an unsafe boat. You can keep your love. I wish I'd never seen you.”
Just a moment his hands dropped to his sides, and he showed her the white, drawn visage of utter despair. Yet he must not hold these words against her. Surely she had cause for them; perhaps she would find him some tenderness when she saw how hard he had tried to serve her, to ease her lot. Her last words recalled his own that he had spoken to Bess aboard the Charon: if he had railed as he had to Bess for such little cause, at least he must not blame Lenore, even considering the fact of their love, in such a moment as this. He had brought her from her home and to this pass. Save for him, she would be safe in her native city, not a slave to an inhuman master on this godless island.
He looked down at her steadfastly. “I can't keep my love,” he told her earnestly. “1 gave it to you long ago, and it's yours still. That love is the one thing I have left to live for here; the one thing that's left of my old life. I'm going to continue to watch over you, to help you all I can, to do as much of your work as possible; to stand between you and Doomsdorf with my own life. I've learned, in this last day, that love is a spar to cling to when everything else is lost, the most important and the greatest blessing of all. And I'm not going to stop loving you, whether you want me to or not. I'm going to fight for you—to the end.”
“And in the end I'll die,” she commented bitterly.
Doomsdorf reëntered the room then, gazing at them in amused contempt, and Ned instinctively straightened.
“I trust you're not hatching mutiny?” the sardonic voice came out.
“Not just now,” Ned answered with some spirit. “There's not much use to hatch mutiny, things being as they are.”
“You don't say! There's a rifle on the wall”
“Always empty”
“But the pistol I carry is always loaded. Why don't you try to take it away from me?” Then his voice changed, surly and rumbling again. “But enough of that nonsense. You know what would happen to you if you tried anything—I've told you that, already. There's work to do to-day. There's got to be another cabin—logs cut, built up, roof put on—a place for the three of you to bunk. That's the work to-day. The three of you ought to get a big piece of it done to-day”
“Miss Hardenworth? Is she well enough? Couldn't she help your wife with the housework to-day?”
“It will take all three of you to do the work I'll lay out. Lenore can learn to do her stint with the others. And hereafter, when you address me, call me 'Sir.' A mere matter of employer's discipline”
Because he knew his master, Ned nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir,” he returned simply. “One thing else. I can't be expected to do real work in this kind of clothes. You've laid out furs and skins for the girls; I want to get something too that will keep me warm and dry.”
“I'm not responsible for the clothes you brought with you. You should have had greater respect for the North. Besides, it gives me pleasure, I assure you, to see you dressed as you are. It tones up the whole party.”
Stripped of his late conceit that might otherwise have concealed it from him, Ned caught every vestige of the man's irony. “Do I get the warm clothes?” he demanded bluntly.
“When you earn them,” was the answer. “In a few days more you'll be running out your traps, and everything you catch, at first, you can keep. You've got to prove yourself smarter than the animals before you get the right to wear their skins.”