Women alone know how much
attraction there is in the respect which
a master shows them.
Balzac.
The derelict did not afford them much
amusement or information. The waves soon beat
her to pieces on the savage rocks. Apparently
she had been a ship plying between Western ports,
probably San Francisco and Honolulu. In the wreckage
washed up there were a few pounds of rice, and some
brooms of what they believed to be sugar-cane.
There was nothing else.
“Not even a lemon!” Robin
said disconsolately. “Think of living all
one’s natural life not only ten, but ten thousand
miles from a lemon.”
Adam laughed sympathetically.
“It’s like a yachting party I remember;
we found that the boat we had engaged had been taken
by somebody else, and our set had to be divided.
Later in the evening we discovered that we had all
the sugar and the other crowd all the lemons. ’’Twas
ever thus from childhood’s hour, I’ve
seen my fondest hopes decay: I never wanted something
sour, but what molasses came my way.’ Never
mind, dear. We will go and plant our sugar, and
by the time it is ready to sweeten anything, a whole
cargo of lemons may have floated into harbor right
at our door.”
They crossed the ranges to the western
coast, where there was lower ground, better fitted
to the supposed requirements of rice and cane, and
had a good deal of amusement out of their ignorance,
neither of them having more than a misty idea about
either rice or sugar before they reach the stage to
be served together.
It was quite late when they were through
and camped for supper. Remembering their trip
of a few weeks previous, that now seemed so long ago,
Adam said, “Are you too tired to sing, dear?
It is so long since I have heard you.”
She stood up and thought for a moment,
and then putting back her loosened hair began with
Bourdillon’s “The night has a thousand
eyes,” and sang on and on. At last, turning
to Adam with a little fond gesture, and altering the
words slightly, she sang:
“Like a laverlock in
the lift, sing, O bonny bride!
All the world was Adam once,
with Eve by his side.
What’s the world, my
lad, my love? What can it do?
I am thine, and thou art mine;
life is sweet and new.
If the world have missed the
mark, let it stand by,
For we two have gotten leave,
and once more we’ll try.”
“‘Once more,’”
Adam repeated. “Once more, my darling!
Oh, life is sweet and new for us; we can afford to
lose the world! When will you come to me, love,
when?”
She shook her head with a little wilful
laugh, and all the glistening glory of her hair fell
about her like a wedding veil.
“Wait,” she said; “wait
a little. The flax is not nearly ready for spinning
yet; can a bride forget her attire? Besides, how
can we be ” she paused, and let her
silence fill the gap, “when I know we neither
of us know any ceremony more dignified than hopping
over a broomstick?”
They started homeward, walking slowly
through the dimly lighted mountain gorges, talking
the ineffable nonsense that lovers never weary of.
As they came to a brook that rushed noisily down the
ravine, Adam stepped across, and held out his hand
to her.
Wait a moment, he said, just where you are, dear, and say
this with me:
“’Over running water:
my love I give to you, my life I pledge to you, my
heart I take not back from you while this water runs.
“’Over running water:
every seventh year, at this time of the year, at this
hour of the night, I will meet you here to renew my
troth; death alone to relieve me of this vow.’”
“Is that all?” she asked
wonderingly. “Over running water, while
this water runs, while there is any snow in the mountains,
or rivers upon land, or waters in the seas, or clouds
in the skies, when the world is old, and the sun burned
out, and time grows weary, I shall love you still,
always and forever. What is it all about, love?”
He clasped her close, and did not answer at once.
“Don’t you know that old Irish troth,”
he said, “which would have been enough, even
in that hard, unromantic world of ours, to have made
you legally my wife, if said over any Scottish stream?
I thought you knew; you are sure I would not trick
you? You know I could not?” He put her head
back on his shoulder and looked into her shining eyes.
It seemed to him he could not bear even a look of
reproach. She raised her hands almost as if she
were placing an invisible crown upon his head, and
let her arms fall about his shoulders.
“Then I am your wife while living water runs?”
“Forever and forever,” he replied.
“Oh, wait, wait just a little,” she answered.