CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE very name of Arthur Wardlaw startled Helen, and made her realize howcompletely her thoughts had been occupied with another.
But add to that the strange and bitter epigram! Or was it a merefortuitous concourse of words?
She was startled, amazed, confounded, puzzled. And, ere she could recoverher composure, Hazel was back to his problem again; but no longer withthe same energy.
He said in a faint and sleepy voice: "'He maketh the winds Hismessengers, and flames of fire His ministers.' Ah! if I could do that!Well, why not? I can do anything she bids me--
_Graeculus esuriens coelum jusseris ibit."_
And soon after this doughty declaration he dozed off, and forgot all histrouble for a while.
The sun rose, and still he slept, and Helen watched him with undisguisedtenderness in her face; undisguised now that he could not see it. Erelong she had companions in her care. Ponto came out of his den, andsniffed about the boat; and then began to scratch it, and whimper for hisfriend. Tommy swam out of the sea, came to the boat, discovered, Heavenknows how, that his friend was there, and, in the way of noises, dideverything but speak. The sea-birds followed and fluttered here and therein an erratic way, with now and then a peck at each other. All animatednature seemed to be uneasy at this eclipse of their Hazel.
At last Tommy raised himself quite perpendicular, in a vain endeavor tolook into the boat, and invented a whine in the minor key, which tells ondogs: it set Ponto off in a moment; he sat upon his tail, and delivered along and most deplorable howl.
"Everything loves him," thought Helen. With Ponto's music Hazel awoke andfound her watching him, with tears in her eyes; he said softly: "MissRolleston! There is nothing the matter, I hope. Why am I not up gettingthings for your breakfast?"
"Dear friend," said she, "why you are not doing things for me andforgetting yourself is because you have been very ill. And I am yournurse. Now tell me what I shall get you. Is there nothing you couldfancy?"
No; he had no appetite; she was not to trouble about him. And then hetried to get up; but that gave him such a pain in his loins he was fainto lie down again. So then he felt that he had got rheumatic fever. Hetold her so; but, seeing her sweet anxious face, begged her not to bealarmed--he knew what to take for it. Would she be kind enough to go tohis arsenal and fetch some specimens of bark she would find there, andalso the keg of rum?
She flew at the word, and soon made him an infusion of the barks inboiling water; to which the rum was added.
His sweet nurse administered this from time to time. The barks used wereof the cassia tree, and a wild citron tree. Cinchona did not exist inthis island, unfortunately. Perhaps there was no soil for it at asufficient elevation above the sea.
Nevertheless with these inferior barks they held the fever in check. Butthe pain was obstinate, and cost Helen many a sigh; for, if she camesoftly, she could often hear him moan; and, the moment he heard her foot,he set to and whistled, for a blind; with what success may be imagined.She would have bought those pains, or a portion of them; ay, and paid aheavy price for them.
But pain, like everything, intermits, and in those blessed intervals hismind was more active than ever, and ran a great deal upon what he calledthe Problem.
But she, who had set it him, gave him little encouragement now to puzzleover it.
The following may serve as a specimen of their conversation on that head.
"The air of this island," said he, "gives one a sort of vague sense ofmental power. It leads to no result in my case. Still, it is an agreeablesensation to have it floating across my mind that some day I shall solvethe Great Problem. Ah! if I was only an inventor!"
"And so you are."
"No, no," said Hazel, disclaiming as earnestly as some people claim; "Ido things that look like acts of invention, but they are acts of memory.I could show you plates and engravings of all the things I have seemed toinvent. A man who studies books instead of skimming them can cut a dashin a desert island, until the fatal word goes forth--invent; and then youfind him out."
"I am sure I wish I had never said the fatal word. You will never getwell if you puzzle your brain over impossibilities."
"Impossibilities! But is not that begging the question? The measure ofimpossibilities is lost in the present age. I propose a test. Let us goback a century, and suppose that three problems were laid before the menof that day, and they were asked to decide which is the most impossible:1st, to diffuse intelligence from a fixed island over a hundred leaguesof water; 2d, to make the sun take in thirty seconds likenesses moreexact than any portrait-painter ever took--likenesses that can be soldfor a shilling at fifty per cent profit; 3d, for New York and London toexchange words by wire so much faster than the earth can turn, thatLondon shall tell New York at ten on Monday morning what was the price ofconsols at two o'clock Monday afternoon."
"That is a story," said Helen, with a look of angelic reproach.
"I accept that reply," said Hazel. "As for me, I have got a smattering ofso many subjects, all full of incredible truths, that my faith in theimpossibility of anything is gone. Ah! if James Watt was only hereinstead of John Hazel--James Watt from the Abbey with a head as big as apumpkin--he would not have gone groping about the island, writing onrocks, and erecting signals. No; he would have had some grand and boldidea worthy of the proposition."
"Well, so I think," said Helen, archly; "that great man with the greathead would have begun by making a kite a hundred yards high."
"Would he? Well, he was quite capable of it."
"Yes; and rubbed it with phosphorus, and flown it the first tempest, andmade the string fast to--the island itself."
"Well, that is an idea," said Hazel, staring; "rather hyperbolical, Ifear. But, after all, it is an idea."
"Or else," continued Helen, "he would weave a thousand yards of somelight fabric, and make balloons; then he would stop the pitch-fountain,bore a hole in the rock near it, and so get the gas, fill the balloons,inscribe them with our sad story and our latitude and longitude, and sendthem flying all over the ocean--there!"
Hazel was amazed.
"I resign my functions to you," said he. "What imagination! Whatinvention!"
"Oh, dear no," said Helen slyly; "acts of memory sometimes pass forinvention, you know. Shall I tell you? when first you fell ill you wererather light-headed, and uttered the strangest things. They would havemade me laugh heartily, only I couldn't--for crying. And you said thatabout kites and balloons, every word."
"Did I? then I have most brains when I have least reason, that's all."
"Ay," said Helen, "and other strange things--very strange and bitterthings. One I should like to ask you about, what on earth you could meanby it; but perhaps you meant nothing, after all."
"I'll soon tell you," said Hazel; but he took the precaution to add,"provided I know what it means myself."
She looked at him steadily, and was on the point of seeking theexplanation so boldly offered; but her own courage failed her. Shecolored and hesitated.
"I shall wait," said she, "till you are quite, quite well. That will besoon, I hope; only you must be good, and obey my prescriptions. Cultivatepatience; it is a wholesome plant; bow the pride of that intellect whichyou see a fever can lay low in an hour. Aspire no more beyond the powersof man. Here we shall stay unless Providence sends us a ship. I haveceased to repine. And don't you begin. Dismiss that problem altogether;see how hot it has made your poor brow. Be good now, and dismiss it; orelse do as I do--fold it up, put it quietly away in a corner of yourmind, and, when you least expect, it will pop out solved."
(Oh, comfortable doctrine! But how about Jamie Watt's headaches? And whyare the signs of hard thoughts so much stronger in his brow and face thanin Shakespeare's? Mercy on us, there is another problem.)
Hazel smiled, well pleased, and leaned back, soothed, silenced, subdued,by her soft voice and the exquisite touch of her velvet hand on his hotbrow; for, woman-like, she laid her hand like down o
n that burning browto aid her words in soothing it. Nor did it occur to him just then thatthis admonition, delivered with a kind maternal hand, maternal voice,came from the same young lady who had flown at him like a wild-cat withthis very problem in her mouth. She mesmerized him, problem and all; hesubsided into a complacent languor, and at last went to sleep, thinkingonly of her. But the topic had entered his mind too deeply to be finallydismissed. It returned next day, though in a different form. You mustknow that Hazel, as he lay on his back in the boat, had often, in ahalf-drowsy way, watched the effect of the sun upon the boat's mast; itnow stood, a bare pole, and at certain hours acted like the needle of adial by casting a shadow on the sands. Above all, he could see prettywell by means of this pole and its shadow when the sun attained itsgreatest elevation. He now asked Miss Rolleston to assist him in makingthis observation exactly.
She obeyed his instructions, and the moment the shadow reached itshighest angle, and showed the minutest symptom of declension, she said,"Now," and Hazel called out in a loud voice:
"Noon!"
"And forty-nine minutes past eight at Sydney," said Helen, holding outher chronometer; for she had been sharp enough to get it ready of her ownaccord.
Hazel looked at her and at the watch with amazement and incredulity.
"What?" said he. "Impossible. You can't have kept Sydney time all thiswhile."
"And pray why not?" said Helen. "Have you forgotten that once somebodypraised me for keeping Sydney time; it helped you, somehow or other, toknow where we were."
"And so it will now," cried Hazel, exultingly. "But no! it is impossible.We have gone through scenes that-- You can't have wound that watch upwithout missing a day."
"Indeed but I have," said Helen. "Not wind my watch up! Why, if I wasdying I should wind my watch up. See, it requires no key; a touch or twoof the fingers and it is done. Oh, I am remarkably constant in all myhabits; and this is an old friend I never neglect. Do you remember thatterrible night in the boat, when neither of us expected to see themorning--oh, how good and brave you were!--well, I remember winding it upthat night. I kissed it, and bade it good-by. But I never dreamed of notwinding it up because I was going to be killed. What! am I not to bepraised again, as I was on board ship? Stingy! can't afford to praise onetwice for the same thing."
"Praised!" cried Hazel excitedly; "worshiped, you mean. Why, we have gotthe longitude by means of your chronometer. It is wonderful! It isprovidential! It is the finger of Heaven! Pen and ink, and let me work itout."
In his excitement he got up without assistance, and was soon busycalculating the longitude of Godsend Isle.