The Master Knot of Human Fate

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Adam's scanty wardrobe was transferred to pegs in one corner of the
room, one or two stools were set first here, then there, until Robin
was sure the best effect had been secured, and when all was done that
they could accomplish with the means at hand, and the morning-glory
blossoms came peeping in at the window, the room was by no means
unattractive.

Then Robin's housewifely soul took refuge in house-cleaning, and she
scrubbed and arranged and re-arranged, while Adam repaired or invented
furniture, until inside and out their little domain was as perfect as
they could make it.

Between them there had again fallen one of those long silences they
dreaded, but seemed powerless to prevent. As the voice of the
turtledove was lifted in the plaintive notes of nesting time, Adam
harrowed three acres of the plowed land and planted it in wheat and
corn. The perennial garden was flourishing, and there was nothing to
do. Adam said so one day, with an air of calm finality.

Robin regarded him uneasily. The time had not yet come when he could
sit down and write, though she had brewed an excellent ink, and the
paper waited on the desk in his room. She considered for a moment,
then said brightly, "Don't you remember what Myron used to say? How
when his friends got rich they first built a beautiful house, and then
went abroad for three years? Let us go traveling; wouldn't you like
it?"

The alacrity with which he acquiesced proved how well he liked it, and
he started out at once to get the burros, and make ready for the
expedition.

Robin baked and prepared as well as she could.

"It's a good thing I had a Southern grandmother," she soliloquized, as
she put her beaten biscuit in the Dutch oven and pulled the coals over
it. "And it's a good thing my mother crossed the plains and learned
how to make biscuit in the mouth of her flour sack, and," as she
rolled out some crackers, "it is a blessed good thing I went to
cooking-school, but I wish that, instead of being so particular about
the knobs on the candlesticks, the Pentateuch had given Sarah's recipe
for making cakes with honey. Not that I have any honey, but I am sure
we shall find some on this trip."

When they were all ready, and the burros stood waiting at the door,
with Lassie jumping wildly about them, Adam wrote a placard which he
stuck in the framework of the door. The stock had been turned loose on
the mountain-side, and the house and stables secured as well as
possible against any storms that might arise. The kittens had
possession of one of the sheds. The puppies were to accompany them.

Robin had put on her long unused shoes, and a new gown that she had
made out of a dark blue serge found hanging in her room. Adam looked
at her approvingly from under his wide sombrero. She turned back,
after going a few paces, and read the card.

WAIT!

APRIL 5th.

Back in two weeks.

Look for smoke.

As she passed into the canon that hid their home from sight, Adam saw
her brush her hand across her eyes.

IX

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis
all barren."

STERNE.

They traveled a due west course, crossing the two ranges, wending
their way through dim defiles and along precipitous canons, until they
saw the sea. Here its mood was summer-like. Even in the short time
that had elapsed it had worn itself a broad, smooth beach, and wide
tracts of land between the sand and the base of the mountains proved
that the earth had been thrown up, or that the water had receded. They
had not looked upon the ocean before for many months.

They picketed the burros on the rank, salt grass, and built their
camp-fire early, and while Robin set the potatoes baking, and began
her supper preparations, Adam went scouting along the coast. In less
than half an hour he came back with a quantity of clams which he threw
down before her as proudly as if they had been foreign battle-flags.
She gave a little feminine shriek of delight.

"Now I know why we brought that inconvenient iron pot," she said;
"bring it here, please."

Adam brought it, and watched her slice up onions and potatoes and stir
in the various ingredients.

"It is going to be the best chowder you ever tasted," she said, "even
if we haven't any bacon. When you write the veracious tale of our
adventures, Adam, don't put in how many things we ate."

"They might think it a voracious tale if I did," he answered, dropping
some more butter into his mealy potato. "Do you remember how the Swiss
Family were always worrying for fear they wouldn't have enough to
eat?"

"Yes, and how they went out and killed an elephant for breakfast, and
a herd of wild pigs for dinner, and had a buffalo apiece for supper.
And don't you remember how, when the boa constrictor killed one of
their zebras, little Fritz asked pathetically if boas were good to
eat?"

They laughed over their supper, and then having made sure that they
were out of reach of the tide, and the fire would keep, and the rifle
was close at Adam's elbow, they spread their blankets and said "good
night." It had been an exciting day.

It was past midnight, and the moon was waning when Adam was wakened by
Lassie's cold muzzle against his face. He sat up and called to Robin.
There was no answer, and her blankets lay tossed on the other side of
the fire. He started up and listened. At first he heard only the sound
of the sea; then there came mingled with it the clear notes of her
glorious voice. Holding Lassie in check he went down to the beach.

Robin stood well out on the shimmering sand, the waves lapping softly
almost at her feet, and he heard the plaintive music, and caught the
words,--

"Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove, Far away,
far away, would I fly, and be, and be at rest."

Her voice quivered when she came to the words, "In the wilderness
build me a nest," but she sang on, and Adam recalled the words of hymn
after hymn, anthem after anthem, for she sang nothing else. He heard
the bitter cry of the De Profundis, Handel's triumphant "I know that
my Redeemer liveth," and then she began, "He watching over Israel
slumbers not nor sleeps."

His eyes filled, and he saw the tents of his regiment. She had written
by every mail, and across her letters, at the top or bottom, she had
put those five bars from "Elijah." Though he did not believe it, for
he had not the early Hebrew ability to see Israel in his own race, and
the to be spoiled Philistine in every Filipino, it had comforted him
in that sickening campaign. Surely, surely if he, an American
"non-com," had spared a Filipino now and then, He watching over Israel
had not been less merciful.

Her voice died away; it was the first time she had sung that year,
though she was a very perfectly trained musician. Indeed in the old
days, Adam had first sought her acquaintance because of her music.

Adam returned to the camp; he knew instinctively that she preferred to
keep this to herself. He was lying quite still when she came back, and
controlled every muscle when she bent over him. She regarded him
intently for a moment, then went to her blankets with a heavy sigh
that Adam knew was for him. She had sung out her own sorrows.

Their vigils seemed to do them both good, for they shook off their
melancholy tendencies, and before the end of the first week their tour
was beginning to be thoroughly enjoyable. They did not find cocoanuts
and bananas, but they did find plenty of strawberries, and long,
prickly vines that would be covered with raspberries, and wild grapes
and choke-cherries and currants, which they planned to transplant, for
though the Western coast was more beautiful, and in some respects more
convenient than their hedged in valley, they preferred the valley.
Already it had come to mean home.

They traveled about fifty miles southward, to the end of the island,
making desultory trips up into the mountains to see if anywhere, on
land or sea, there was a friendly wreath of smoke, and every night
their watch-fire glowed from the highest peak in their vicinity. The
island narrowed to a single range, detached peaks rising here and
there from the sea. As they rounded the southernmost point, Adam said,
"We ought to name it; that remarkable Swiss family always named
places."

Robin looked at the bare, stone walls rising sheer above the waves
three hundred feet, and her lip curled.

"Let us call it the Cape of Good Hope," she said.

"In the name of wonder, why?" asked Adam, and she answered, "Because
we are past it," and then would have given anything to have recalled
the bitter words.

The Eastern coast was wilder and more picturesque, but the traveling
was correspondingly slower. Something in the formation of the coast
caused a terrific surf, and at many places there was scarcely any
beach, and they found themselves compelled to climb along trails that
made even the burros dizzy.

When they had been absent ten days, Robin said, "I begin to feel like
a grandmother; no, I don't mean that I feel so old, but that I begin
to long to see the chicken and cat-children, and the new calf,
and--everything."

Adam laughed, "I have been thinking we ought to hurry; that place of
ours is growing so entrancingly lovely in memory that last night I
dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls!"

They were not to reach home without at least one adventure, however. A
day or so later, as they toiled up a painfully steep ascent, Lassie
sounded the note of alarm, and catching up the rifle, Adam ran ahead.
As he rounded a point in the rocks, he came upon a Rocky Mountain goat
engaged in combat with a cinnamon bear. The bear was hardly more than
a cub, and was carrying off one of the kids. The goat, horns down, was
fighting viciously, though weak from loss of blood.

It would be interesting to know what one wild animal thinks when
another wild animal, from its point of view, comes to the rescue. Adam
carried a lariat over one arm. In an instant it flew through the air,
dropping over Bruin's shoulders. He released the kid, and tumbled
backward over the cliff, as much with surprise as by the force of the
jerk on the rope, taking that treasured article with him.

It took some time to capture the wounded animals, bind up their hurts,
and get them down the pathway leading to the beach. For there was a
beach, the best one they had found on the Eastern coast, and as they
put the goat and her kids down in the grass, Adam said tentatively,
"If you are not afraid, I can go home and get the horses and the
sleds. It isn't a great way, and I believe I can be back in three
hours,--I'm sure I can if the beach goes as close to our park as I
think."

Robin acquiesced, and as soon as he was gone began gathering
driftwood. When she had quite a little heap she made a fire with the
coals they carried in the pot. It is doubtless more romantic to build
a fire by striking flint rocks together, but a pot of coals has its
uses in a matchless universe. Then she found a long, stout club, and
put one end in the fire, where it smouldered sullenly.

"There now," she said conclusively, "if my bear acquaintance calls, I
will present him with 'the red flower.' I didn't learn the 'Jungle
Books' by heart for nothing."

Meanwhile Adam was striding over the beach at a rate that brought him
to the little cove and the high wall of rocks that shut them in on the
south in a little over an hour. Two of the pups had gone with him, and
they raced on ahead, as he came in sight of the house. Everything
seemed to have an air of welcome, and the horses whinnied joyfully
when he called them from the gateway.

The pathetic placard was still there, and he crumpled it in his hand,
and went in and opened the windows. He milked one of the cows, and
gathering some green stuff in the garden started back with the team
and the sleds. Once down the steep decline, and over the rocks at the
south, they went on rapidly.

Although he had wasted no time, it was past one o'clock when he saw
her familiar figure afar off. She hurried to meet him. They had not
been separated so long before that year, and realized the unconscious
strain in the sudden revulsion. They said nothing of this, however,
though they clasped hands for a moment. Then Robin spoke to the
horses, and stroked their necks, as they bent their heads and rubbed
against her affectionately.

She had spread their table on a broad, flat rock, but before they had
their own meal, she warmed some of the milk, and they gave the kids
their first lesson in drinking out of a bucket. Afterward it took but
a few moments to strike camp. The burros were already packed, and the
goat with her kids, all hobbled, were placed in the sled, and the
cavalcade started on its way.

X

Cling to thy home! If there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and a shelter for thy head,
And some poor plot, with vegetables stored,
Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board,
Unsavory bread, and herbs that scatter'd grow
Wild on the river-brink, or mountain-brow;
Yet e'en this cheerless mansion shall provide
More heart's repose than all the world beside.

LEONIDAS.

"Do you know, Adam," said Robin, when they had walked a mile in
silence, "do you know that you are a fraud?"

"Well, yes," he responded, "but I didn't know you knew it. Is the
discovery recent?"

"Never mind about dates, but tell me why you didn't use the rifle
instead of the lariat? What did you take it for?"

"I took it for your peace of mind. I didn't use it for several good
and substantial and sentimental reasons. To reverse them, this last
year I have grown to understand your horror of killing things. We have
done very well without sacrificing any of our dependents; in fact, it
would seem like murder to slaughter the animals about us. And it's
such a little world it seems a pity to kill off any of its
inhabitants. To tell the truth, I hope the bear got away all right.
This is maudlin, I know, but I don't want my hand first to bring death
on all there is left of earth. Incidentally,--there are no
cartridges."

He stopped the horses, while Robin readjusted the kids to make them
more comfortable, and took the lame one in her arms, then they moved
on.

Presently she said, "I am so glad of these kids!"

There was so much enthusiasm in her voice that Adam laughed and asked
why, and she answered:--

"Like you, I have sound and sentimental reasons. The sound one is that
we shall need their fleece unless,--why, goodness gracious, Adam,
there is a baking-powder can of flax in the dresser, and I never
thought till this moment that we can plant it."

"True," answered Adam, "but given flax or fleece, what would you do
with it?"

"Spin it," she answered sententiously. "Of course you think I can't,
but it happens that I once lived, when I was a little girl, very near
to an old woman. I don't refer to her age, but her ideas. She carded
and spun and wove and dyed all the family clothing. She made her own
soap and wouldn't have a stove in the house. She had eight children,
too, and they all of them turned out badly. I used to go there off and
on; I think she looked on me as a kind of sinful amusement. Anyhow,
she told me the world was going to ruin, and the women were poor
'doless' creatures, who couldn't spin a hank of yarn, or gin a pound
of cotton, or heel a sock. She shook her head over me when she found I
couldn't knit, but she set a garter for me at once, and during the
seven or eight years that I went by her door on my way to school she
taught me all those marvelous accomplishments. I daresay I have
forgotten them."

"What are the sentimental reasons?" asked Adam.

She looked at the kid as it nestled against her shoulder.

"I have a fancy," she said, "that Nannette and her children are going
to minister to a mind diseased, and help pluck a rooted sorrow from
the brain. The world was getting too healthy. Has it ever struck you
that we have neither of us been sick for a day this year? I have had
to mother the chickens, but there has been no suffering. I'm not glad
to have pain come into the world, but it is good to be able to
alleviate it. We will put Nannette in a sling till her leg has a
chance to set, and by the time it is well she won't want to leave us.
As for the kids, I expect they will be like the plague of frogs, and
we shall find them in our beds and our ovens and our kneading troughs.
Oh, Adam, there is the house! Doesn't it look dear and homey?"

She put the kid back on the sled, and ran on, pointing out this and
that, the growth of the corn, the afternoon radiance, till they
reached their doorway. Then there were a thousand things to do. First
Nannette was made comfortable in the stable; then the chickens were
summoned to a meal of yellow corn, and when Lassie drove the cows into
the barnyard, each was congratulated in turn upon her calf, and those
interesting, if wobbly, bovine infants were carefully inspected. After
supper they sat down before the fire, very tired, but the nearest
happy they had been in a year. The dogs were lying about them, and the
thump, thump of first one tail and then another told the story of
canine content, while the kittens walked over them impartially.

"What a strange thing human nature is!" Adam said. "The only thing
needed to make our life perfect is that it shall not last. The moment,
if that moment ever comes, when it is real no more, it will become
ideal."

"I know," she said dreamily. "Things in the world used to be too good
to be true. This must cease to be, to be good at all."

XI

Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none.
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

POE.

"It is the first of May," said Adam. "It is a year ago to-day. Shall
we pass the gateway?"

"Not now," answered Robin. "Wait till afternoon. I am so busy this
morning."

She was sitting at the table teaching half a dozen little chickens to
appreciate hard-boiled egg. The wounded kid was lying in her lap, one
arm was about it, and an adventurous kitten looked over her shoulder.
As she tapped on the board with one slender forefinger, the chickens,
hearing their mother's bill, began picking up the fragments of egg.
She had rounded out wonderfully in a year, and Adam realized for the
first time that she was a very beautiful woman.

"Suppose," she went on, "you begin your book to-day. Write your
description of a year ago. It will never be so plain again. There is
plenty of time before we go. Besides, if it is a dream, we shall want
the written record to show what dreams may come."

Adam hesitated a moment, then went to his desk. She had said truly,
the events of that day would never again be so clear, and as he began
to record them they marshaled themselves before him, until he found
himself writing with a dramatic power that fascinated and amazed him.

It must have been some time afterward that Robin stole in and set a
glass of milk, some biscuit and strawberries, down on the desk beside
him and then went out, taking the dogs with her. He did not notice
another sound until she called him to supper.

While he did the evening work Robin dressed herself in the garments
she had worn the year before. As soon as she could make others she had
put them aside, awaiting the awakening or the rescue.

The heavy cloth skirt and the silk waist were put on with a strange
reluctance. Years ago the old doctor in "The Guardian Angel" said our
china became our tombstones, but surely our garments may become the
graveyards of our emotions, and hold sharp or sweet remembrances long
after they are past wearing. In spite of some tan Robin found the face
that looked back at her from her mirror infinitely more attractive
than it had been the year before.

Adam started a little when he saw her. Then he drew her hand through
his arm, and they went to the gateway. As he opened the gate she
turned and looked back. The sun was behind the mountains, and the
shadows were long and dark. They heard the sounds of the various
creatures settling into quiet for the night, and Adam sent back all
the dogs but Lassie. They went slowly and wistfully. Robin stooped and
kissed Prince on his white forehead. As Adam closed the gate, she said
half fearfully, "Shall we ever see them again?" But he did not answer.
He took her hand and led her to the boulder.

Far as the eye could reach they saw what they expected to see. Half a
mile away the sea rolled in on a tolerably level beach; here it
thundered and roared against a sheer cliff. Among the rocks they could
see the nests of many wild-fowl, and gulls flew by them. They sat down
on the rock and waited until midnight. Then they went home. The dogs
received them obstreperously, and the kid from its corner bleated
faintly. Robin bent over it anxiously, then warmed some milk and fed
it. When Adam came in with some fresh water she was swinging slowly to
and fro in the rocker, singing softly an absurd nursery song:--

"Sleep, baby, sleep.
The stars they are the sheep;
The big moon is the shepherdess;
The little stars are the lambs, I guess.
Sleep, baby, sleep."

"It needed to be cuddled," she said in as matter-of-fact a voice as if
all lambs were sung to sleep regularly. "You know dear old Professor
Carter said there would have been no wild animals if we hadn't made
them so; but now, if you will, you can put her with Nannie."

When he came back she had gone into her room. There was nothing more
for either of them to say. There was nothing to do, except to hope for
a sail, since they no longer hoped for an awakening.

XII

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

GEORGE ELIOT.

The work on the book progressed rather slowly. Often Adam had to refer
to Robin when his memory was at fault. At first she had gone away, to
leave him alone with his work, but as he referred to her more
frequently, she sat with him, sewing while he wrote, a frame of
morning-glories back of her, or reading with the keen enjoyment of one
who renews a pleasure long foregone. When he seemed to be going on
smoothly, she sometimes stole away and gave herself up to long hours
with her violin.

One afternoon she tapped on his casement. His work was lagging, and he
rose gladly and went out with her. They walked up the path and through
the gateway to their boulder, and sat down.

"Talk to me," said Adam.

She shook her head. "About what, most worshipful seigneur? For I am
but a worm of the dust before thee, and all my tales are of the homely
tasks of baking and brewing. Naught is there worthy to be set down in
thy book." Then, with a sudden change of manner, "Oh, Adam, there are
eighteen new chickens to-day! The Plymouth Rock hen stole a nest, and
they came off this morning. And there is some news too. The flax is in
bloom. It is so pretty."

"When do you expect to weave your first linen?" asked Adam.

"Oh, I don't know, but it is good to know there will be some to weave.
Do you remember Andersen's story of the flax? I was thinking of it
this morning as I pulled out some weeds, and how when it was pulled up
and cut and hackled, it said: 'One cannot always have good times. One
must make one's experience, and so one comes to know something;' and
when it is woven and cut up and made into garments, it still says, 'If
I have suffered something, I have been made into something. I am
happiest of all. That is a real blessing. Now I shall be of some use
in the world, and that is right, that is a true pleasure.'"

"If one only knew he was to be of some use," Adam said wearily; "if we
could see the justification of our suffering."

"Then we should be as gods," answered Robin. "I like the song of the
flax, 'content, content;' and when the linen is worn out, it is again
tortured and beaten until it becomes paper whereon an eternal word is
written. I used to wonder why Andersen was given to children; not that
I wouldn't have them read him, but he is one of the profound thinkers
of the world. No one had Andersen clubs, or professed to find deep and
wonderful esoteric truths in his stories, but they are there. Do you
remember my girls' club down on--I don't think there were any streets,
but the inhabitants called the place 'Kerry Patch'?"

"Why, no," said Adam, "I didn't know you had one; why didn't you tell
me?"

"That was ever so long ago, ages and ages,--when you came to see--"
She paused a little, and then spoke the personal pronoun that tells
the whole story, for a woman can say "him" in such a way as to betray
unspeakable heights of adoration or abysses of loathing. She went on
slowly. "You were not one of my friends then; how could you be, if
there existed anything in common between you two? That sounds
dreadful, but you know all about it so well that subterfuges are
useless."

"To tell the truth, I never cared anything about him at all," Adam
answered quickly. "Like a good many others, I was enthusiastic over
your voice. He asked me to the house to hear you sing, and I went, and
was glad of the chance. And you have never sung for me once this
year."

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