The Master Knot of Human Fate

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"What is it?" he asked curiously.

"That is to enable us to make light of our troubles," she replied
solemnly. "Or, for thy more sweet understanding it is, or at least I
hope it will be, yeast. I found a Twin Brothers yeast cake, and from
it, behold the brethren! I know that raised bread is unhealthy, and
that to get the worth of your money you ought to eat the bran also,
and that the best bread, from the hygienic standpoint, is made from
wheat-paste, and is about the consistency of sole leather; but even if
yeast does shorten our lives, I don't know that I shall give it up on
that account."

The planting of their crops took several weeks, and was very hard
work, for neither of them was an expert farmer. When the corn and
wheat came up there were almost no weeds, and the stand was better
than usual for sod land; but they were kept busy warding off the
horses and cattle that preferred the fresh young corn and wheat to the
indifferent natural grass.

"I thought," she said wearily, after driving away the intruders for
the third time,--"I thought fences were a sign of civilization, but
they seem to be the first necessity of the wilderness."

She was sitting on a rock, fanning her flushed face with her sombrero,
when Adam came to her assistance.

"You should have waited," he said. "I was coming, but I had to hitch
the team." He turned and looked at her, and laughed boyishly. "The run
hasn't hurt you," he said; "you look like a wild rose. I believe I
shall call you so; may I? I can't call you by the old name."

She colored hotly, then turned quite pale, and there was a touch of
reserve in her voice as she answered rather too indifferently, "If you
choose, still I think, O Adam Crusoe, that Friday or Robinson would be
a better name."

"We'll compromise on Robin," he said. "A rose by any other name is
just as sweet."

"I wish we had a fence," she said turning the subject hastily.

"We have," he answered. "If we were to build one ourselves, it would
have to be of rocks, but Nature has provided a magnificent stone
barrier. We have only to drive the animals we are not using through
the gateway, and fasten that little wooden concern after them. There
is good pasture outside, and if we need them we can go after them.
Lassie will look after Daisy and Lily, won't you, little dog? I will
go and open the gate and drive them through. You help Lassie keep
those two back."

She stood undecidedly, and he turned and said gently, "I will come
back without passing through the gateway. I will never pass it without
you. I wouldn't dare. Now see how nicely Lassie will conduct this
round-up."

As he went toward the gateway, her eyes followed him with a look he
would hardly have comprehended, it was so full of relief and
gratitude. He understood and reassured her without noticing her fears
or smiling at her weakness. Every day and many times she thanked God
that, of all the men who might have been left by this modern deluge,
it was Adam who had been with her and was with her in this terrible
experience.

III

It might be months, or years, or days, I kept no count,--I took no
note.

BYRON.

They had been on the island nearly four months. The corn was waving in
the soft breeze, and the sun shone down hotly. Indoors sweet corn was
boiling in the same pot with new potatoes, while in an improvised
milk-boiler on coals, at one side of the fireplace, peas were
simmering. The table was spread, and there was white bread and jersey
butter and raspberries. Adam, with Lassie's puppies crawling over him,
sat in the doorway, and watched Robin put the finishing touches to
their Sunday dinner.

His apparel was somewhat picturesque, and he had a brown and
thoroughly healthy look. Robin was dressed in a costume of blue
denims. The skirt was rather short, and the waist was a blouse,
finished at the throat with a broad collar that turned away from a
neck still white in spite of much sunlight. Their months of roughing
it had not harmed them, and only the intense sadness in Adam's eyes,
the pathetic droop of Robin's mouth, when they thought themselves
unobserved, told a story different from that of pastoral content.

Their meal was unusually silent. Sometimes they fell into long lapses
of silence; there was so much not to say. In all the weeks of the past
they had worked, almost feverishly, allowing as little time as
possible for thought, and never speaking of what was oftenest in their
minds. Much of the time Adam seemed to be in a dream, only half
realizing the flight of time, that made hope more and more hopeless.
Robin said nothing. One would not seek to console the sky with phrases
if all the stars were wiped out. She half reproached herself at times
for the peace, the something akin to happiness, that had crept into
her life. She had long before grown very weary of the world and all it
had to offer.

She was stung at the sight of Adam's quiet face, with the repressed
suffering that had somehow touched it with a beauty it had not
possessed, and she said impetuously, "Let us go out, Adam; let us go
quite away somewhere, and talk. There is so much I want to ask you,
but I have not dared."

He looked up with such a hurt expression that she went on quickly,
"Not that; I mean I couldn't. I have been afraid to put things in
words. They grow so much more real then. But now I am afraid to keep
my thoughts longer."

They went past the wheat and corn fields, through a narrow canon that
led them to a valley they had never seen before. It was very
beautiful, and the play of the sunlight on the high walls of rock, the
murmur of the stream below them, the trembling aspens, the white peaks
in the distance, made a scene worthy their attention, but they were
blind to it.

They sat down on a broad stone seat; presently Adam said, "Now, tell
me; tell me how it seems to you."

"No," she answered, "you must tell me. What has happened to us, Adam?
Where are we, and why were we left?"

"God knows," he said reverently.

"Do you think it possible," she said slowly, "that we are dead?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he broke out, with a return to something of his
old childlike impatience. "Sometimes I think it is all a dream, and
directly I shall wake up and find myself in my dingy old law office.
But you are not a dream. These mountains are not a dream. Lassie
barking down below there is not a dream; and these callous spots on my
hands are real enough in all conscience, and no dream could last so
long. Sometimes I think we have been hypnotized and carried off and
left on an island somewhere. Sometimes--do you remember the man who
computed the vast number of 'mysterious disappearances,' and formed a
theory that the earth was being sorted out before the opening of the
last vial, or some such stuff? Do you think we can be simply another
disappearance?"

"I don't know," she said. "It seems easier to believe that, easier to
believe anything than that the whole world has disappeared."

"Then I think sometimes," he went on, "that there are evil powers,--I
know this sounds as if I had lost my mind, and maybe I have, I'm not
sure of anything,--but it seems as if there might be an explanation if
we believed in genii who have power over us. Perhaps you and I, who so
often found fault with the poor old earth, are being punished by
banishment from it. Perhaps we are being prepared for some great work.
I haven't very much religion, and yet I suppose I do believe in a
divine purpose back of things, a directing power that wastes nothing.
I have tried to think why this thing should come upon us, you and me,
of all the world; and while it seems an evil thing, a terrible and
overwhelming disaster, when I realize that it might have befallen me
alone, then just the fact that you are here makes it seem almost good.
Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said quickly. "I have felt just so. When, at first, I felt
as if I should curse God and die, I had only to remember you to fall
on my knees for thankfulness. Even if a dozen other people had been
left instead, no one would have understood as you have. Oh, I would
infinitely rather be alone with you than in the utter loneliness of
the society of a lot of men and women who would drive me mad with
their complaints and inefficiency. I don't know whether it is a dream,
or heaven or hell, or the work of some black magic; I only know that
if it is a punishment it has been commuted, in that you share it. And
yet how selfish that sounds, as selfish as love itself. I ought to
wish you were in a better, happier place, where you could carry out
your ambitions--" She stopped, and her eyes filled.

"Don't mind," he said grimly. "If that is selfishness, I am selfish to
the core. I have gone over the whole list, and I don't know any one I
would rather sacrifice to companionship with me in this exile than
you. My parents were old; they could never have borne the shock. My
sisters would be unhappy without their families; my women friends
could none of them have met the exigencies of such an existence as you
have; and as for men, by this we would all have been barbarians
together. You have kept me sane and alive, for that matter."

"But are we sane?" she said slowly, "I think I could stand it if I
only knew we were sane and alive. It is the feeling that I don't know
anything, that this valley, these mountains, may fade like the
baseless fabric of a dream. And sometimes I think that it may be real,
all real but you, and that I shall find myself here all alone, dead or
alive, sane or mad. God! how horrible it is!"

"That thought has never troubled me," he said. "Whatever has put us in
this dream together will keep us together to the end. You have not
wanted me to go far away from you, so we have worked together; I have
even let you do work that was unfit for you because I knew you would
prefer it. You were more frank about it, but you didn't feel any more
strongly than I did. I couldn't, I can't bear to have you out of my
sight."

"Have you ever thought that it may be so?" she asked hesitatingly.

"What? That it isn't a dream, and that we are sane and alive? Yes, I
have thought of that too. If it be true, how universal is the
destruction? We know now, pretty well, from the time that has
passed,--by the way, how long is it?" He stopped with a sudden dazed
look, and turned to her.

"It was the first of May," she said softly. "Now it is nearly the last
of August."

"Four months!" he said in a shocked tone. "I did not realize it; I
must have been worse stunned than I thought. In that case it seems as
if there can't be anything left of this continent, unless it be
detached peaks here and there, where other mountain ranges have been.
There may be other men and women waiting as we wait for a sail, a
sign, a message, and they do not know any more than we do whence it is
to come. The alteration in the climate has convinced me that the
waters on our West are those of the Pacific; it has been so warm and
pleasant. I have tried to imagine what kind of a winter we may expect,
or will the winter of our discontent be made glorious summer--"

"By three crops of strawberries, like California?" she interrupted.

"Perhaps," he said, smiling. "As to the East, that may be the
Atlantic, or the Gulf; it seems more probable that it is the latter.
The St. Lawrence district was said to be the oldest section of this
continent, and it is reasonable to suppose the earth's crust thickest
there, and along the mountain ranges. I suppose the continent has gone
to make another layer, a stratum, on top of the pliocene, and after
awhile the waters will subside, or some volcanic action will raise up
a new continent. If there are any ships anywhere, on any seas, they
will search every degree of latitude and longitude. Our flag floats,
did float, all over this globe; if it still flies anywhere, we shall
see it again."

"If I did," she said irreverently, "I should feel sure we were in
heaven. It was beautiful before, but what wouldn't it mean now, Adam?
But have you any one left on earth; if this continent is all gone, who
would look for you? There are people of my blood, or there were, but
they did not even know of my existence."

"There is not a soul," he answered. "Indeed, in this country it would
have been one chance in ten million. You might have done it," he said,
half jestingly, "but you are here."

"Yes," she echoed; "I am here. Adam, how long will it be before you
are satisfied that no one is left, no one in the sense of any
civilized people, with a country and means of circumnavigation?"

"A year," he answered, "perhaps more, but a year anyhow. I shall not
give up hope until then."

IV

How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be earth
Insensible! How glad would lay me down
As in my mother's lap!

MILTON.

The corn hardened, and the wheat ripened, and was harvested in truly
primeval fashion. Adam cut the wheat with a scythe, and Robin followed
him, binding it as best she could. They shocked it together, and then
began hauling it to the barn with the horses and bob-sleds, their only
vehicle. The stacking was weary work and progressed slowly. Adam
watched his co-worker toil over the sheaves, and then took them from
her and pitched them on the stack haphazard.

"You shall not bother over it any more," he said, "not if we live on
hominy all winter. Have you ever been in Mexico? Well, Hawaii was
called the land of poco tempo, but Mexico was the land of manana.
There isn't any work there for the work's sake. I mean there wasn't,
and we can take a lesson from them. We need not hurry; the legislature
will not meet this winter, and there will be no grand opera before
spring. Daisy and Lily shall do our work for us. We will find a bit of
hard, smooth ground, and then we will not muzzle the cows that tread
out the grain."

"Willingly," gasped Robin, climbing down from her slippery eminence on
top of the load of grain; "but do you think we are going to have any
winter?"

"That is pre-eminently one of the things that no fellow can find out,"
he answered. "In a dream you are likely to have any kind of weather,
and on a submerged planet we have no precedents at hand to tell us
what to expect. By replanting the vegetables right along we have had a
perpetual crop. As long as we have this kind of weather things will
grow, and I suppose we would better let them. Shut in as we are, it
doesn't seem likely that any very fearful winds are apt to trouble us;
and if there is a wet season, on this slope we shall have good
drainage. If the worst comes to the worst, there's the tunnel. Could
you make that cheerful and homelike?"

Robin smiled rather sadly. "It will do to put the grain in," she said,
and they walked on silently.

The spot finally selected for the threshing floor was brushed as clean
as twig brooms would make it, and the wheat spread out upon it. Adam
and Lassie drove the cows over it leisurely, and between times Adam
experimented on a flail. When he finally had one that answered the
purpose, and found he could use it without fracturing his skull, the
cows were released, and he went on with the work. Seated on a boulder
close by, her sombrero tipped well over her eyes, Robin fanned the
grain, and converted it into a coarse cracked wheat with a venerable
coffee-mill.

"I will make you a Mexican mill, when I get through with this," said
Adam, "but you cannot use it, because it is too hard work; I shall
have to be the miller. It is a rather simple affair, and dates from
before the days of Noah; it is made with two stones, sandstone
preferred, the lower of which is hollowed out bowl-fashion, with a
hole in the centre; the upper stone is rounding, and fits in the bowl,
and has a hole in it about four inches from the edge, in which a stout
wooden handle is inserted, with which to turn it. The two stones are
ground together until they become smooth. Then they are placed on four
other stones as rests, and a blanket or cloth is spread underneath to
catch the meal. The grain is poured around the edge of the upper
stone, and works down. It makes a very tolerable flour."

"How handy you are!" she said. "Isn't it a good thing we hadn't
civilized the whole world to such a degree that only patent high-grade
flour was used? Where should we be now without the simple devices of
the good people of the Stone Age, and their survivors on whom we
looked down with so much scorn?"

The snapping of the corn was an easier matter, and it was piled in the
tunnel till they should be ready to shell it. Then Adam did what he
called his "fall plowing," and left the bare brown sod to lie fallow.

So far as possible, they had retained the manners and customs of the
world that had left them. There was a tolerable supply of clothing,
and a good deal more household linen than could have been expected.
Robin concluded that the owners of the cabin had not been long
married, and the bride, knowing to what kind of a place she was
coming, had thought more of her house than of herself. All the
feminine garments had to be re-fashioned. Robin made her skirts short
enough for mountain climbing, and dreading the time when her one pair
of shoes should give out, she wore sandals fashioned from yucca leaves
by Adam's clever fingers. As the hair-pins lost themselves, she
braided her hair in a long queue, the curling ends of which fell far
below her waist.

The little house was kept as neat and clean as if it were headquarters
for all the labor-saving inventions in the world, and their meals were
as well served as if a corps of servants had been in attendance. They
were simple, and often a little monotonous, as meals must be where
there is nothing save what grows on one's own plantation. They had no
tea, coffee, sugar, spices, or foreign fruits. However, the hardship
of manual labor and plain food would cure most cases of dyspepsia, and
they did not suffer.

One day early in December, Robin woke to the consciousness of a steady
drip, drip of rain, accompanied by an indescribably mournful wind. In
the other room she heard Adam piling on the logs, and shivered.
Perhaps the winter had come. It had been hard enough when there was
plenty of work, and the free outdoor life; if they should become
prisoners, how should they, how would _he_ endure it? She dressed
quickly, and met his cheery "good-morning" in kind, and over their
breakfast they discussed the possibility of this storm being the first
of many. They decided that they must get the corn into such shape that
the tunnel would be available for the hapless cattle, or even for
themselves, if need be.

"We will go up there and shell corn all day," said Adam. "It isn't
really cold, and you can wrap up a bit. I wish I had thought to take a
lot of stone into the tunnel to build a bin at the end to put the corn
in. I don't know how we are to manage it."

She disappeared into the bedroom and came back presently with a few
grain sacks. When Adam opened the door he was nearly ready to abandon
his plan.

"You will be wet through," he said; "I cannot let you go."

"Then you cannot go either," she answered.

"But I must," he said. She was standing by him, hardly reaching his
shoulder, the sacks over her head. Catching her up in his arms, he
banged the door behind them, and ran up the slope to the tunnel, where
he deposited her laughing, and shaking the water from her curly hair.
As he had said, it was not cold, and they sat down near the mouth of
the tunnel, turned the tops of their sacks back over corncobs, and
shelled the corn in silence. At last a little sigh from Robin made
Adam look up quickly. Her hands were bleeding.

"Robin," he cried angrily, "how can you be so cruel! I don't want you
to do this work; there is no need. I forgot to watch you; besides, I
know you are tired. You did not sleep last night; I heard you moving
about."

"Then you did not sleep either," she responded quickly.

He flushed through the tan, and scooping some dry leaves together into
a bed, took off his coat and folded it for a pillow.

"Lie down and rest a little now," he said, "while I go down to the
house and see what I can find for lunch. Then you can have a good
sleep this afternoon."

He was gone several minutes, and when he came back with some
sandwiches in a tin bucket, and a dozen scarlet radishes dripping in
his hand, he stopped appalled. Robin was at the extreme end of the
tunnel, sitting on the ground, laughing and crying and talking
extravagant nonsense. Had she really gone mad, at last? Adam put down
the bucket, and walked toward her unsteadily. She did not stir, but
went on chattering in the same absurd way, until she saw him; then she
cried excitedly, "Oh, look! it's kittens, real little tame kittens,
though their mother won't come near me yet. She is over in that
corner."

Adam saw her green eyes, and though distrustful she was not
unfriendly. Emptying the bucket, he ran down to the sheds, and came
back with some milk which he poured into the top of the pail, and set
down before the kittens. They lapped it eagerly, and as the two human
beings withdrew discreetly, the cat crept out of her corner and joined
in the feast. When it was over, Robin took possession of one tiny ball
of fur, and Adam of another, while they made their own meal. Then
Robin curled up among the dead leaves, and slept like a child.

It was growing dusk when Adam awoke from his day-dreams. The tunnel
looked like a small grain elevator. On one side Robin still slept, but
the old cat was nestled contentedly at her feet, and the kittens were
playing sleepily over her.

"What is she dreaming?" Adam asked wearily. "All day I have sat here
and dreamed dreams that can never come true. I know it; I feel it. I
told her a year, but I am as sure now as I shall be in six years, that
there is no hope. The watch-fire is out to-night,--the first night in
eight months. I shall re-light it for her sake; not that she is any
more deceived than I, but she will be happier to believe me still
hopeful. What will be the end of it all? How can it end?"

"The same old way," came a sleepy voice from the leaves, "with the
'got married and lived happily ever after' formula." She sat up and
rubbed her eyes, and stretched lazily, to the discomfort of the
kittens, who retreated hastily. As she struggled to her feet and a
knowledge of her surroundings, her face changed pitifully, and she sat
down again and cried miserably.

"Oh, it was so real!" she sobbed. "I can see it now. We were back in
the old house, in the library, don't you remember it? and Walter was
at the piano, and Louis had just asked me how to finish his last
story. Did I answer out loud? Oh, which is the dream, for that was as
real as this!"

Adam stood and watched her. He tried not to think of that apropos
answer. He heard the beating, steady patter of the rain, and the
lowing of the cows, and there was not even a star in heaven to look at
him from its accustomed place with a friendly, twinkling promise for
the future. There was nothing left. So far as he was concerned, the
earth was without form and void. There was nothing to wait or hope
for. There was nothing to live for, neither cheerful yesterdays nor
confident to-morrows. What was the use in living? He looked down at
the slender creature lying outstretched almost at his feet, shaken
with the agony of long-repressed grief, and then at his long, muscular
hands. How little it would take to end it all for both of them! A mist
came over his eyes and he stooped, his hands outstretched toward her
white throat. They fell on the rounded curve of her shoulder. He
checked the caress as he checked the other impulse and shook her
instead.

"Let us go home," he said.

They went into the storm.

V

Why wilt thou take a castle on thy back
When God gave but a pack?
With gown of honest wear, why wilt thou tease
For braid and fripperies?
Learn thou with flowers to dress, with birds to feed,
And pinch thy large want to thy little need.

FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

The next morning dawned clear and warm, and Adam, coming in with his
milk-pails, held out his hand to Robin. There were three ripe
strawberries.

"See," he said, "they are the harbingers of spring, or a California
climate, and either way makes our gain. California without fogs and
fleas is heavenly enough for most people."

Nevertheless, they completed the shelling of the corn, and made a bin
for it at the end of the tunnel, removing the cat family to the house,
where Lassie viewed their advent with jealous eyes. One day when they
had been hulling corn for nearly a week, Adam sat down and began
laughing. "Do you know how much corn it takes to plant an acre?" he
asked.

"No," said Robin, blankly. "I know something about the number of
kernels to the hill,--'one for the cutworm, and one for the crow, and
one for something-or-other else, I forget what, and one to grow.'
Why?"

"It takes eight quarts to plant an acre. We have raised about thirty
bushels to the acre, which is very well for sod. That will make over
fifteen thousand pounds of meal and hominy, and will feed us for seven
years, even if we eat six pounds daily. Unless there is a winter
season, when we must do something for the animals, there is not the
slightest use in planting more than an acre. As to the wheat, even
with a light yield, there would be fifteen hundred pounds to the acre.
We have fresh vegetables all the time, and there will be any quantity
of potatoes and cabbage and beans."

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