It, and Other Stories Part 10

The worst kind of remembering is remembering what you've forgotten. I got redder and redder. It didn't seem as if I could tell Ivy; but I did.

First I says, hopeful:

"Have you forgotten anything?"

She shakes her head.

"I have," says I. "I've left my rifle, but I've got plenty of cartridges. I've got a box of candles, but I've forgotten to bring matches. A nice, thoughtful husband you've got!"

V

The beasts knew.

There was land just around the first turn of the world--land that had what might be hills when you got to 'em and that was pale gray against the sun, with all the upper-works gilded; but it wasn't big land. You could see the north and south limits; and the trees on the hills could probably see the ocean to the east.

They were funny trees, those; and others just like them had come down to the cove to meet us when we landed. They were a kind of pine and the branches grew in layers, with long s.p.a.ces between. Since then I've seen trees just like them, but very little, in florists' windows; only the florists' trees have broad scarlet sashes round their waists, by way of decoration, maybe, or out of deference to Anthony Comstock.

The cove had been worked out by a brook that came loafing down a turfy valley, with trees single and in spinneys, for all the world like an English park; and at the upper end of the valley, cutting the island in half lengthwise, as we learned later, the little wooded hills rolled north and south, and low spurs ran out from them, so as to make the valley a valley instead of a plain.

There were flocks of goats in the valley, which was what made the gra.s.s so turfy, I suppose; and our own deer and antelopes were browsing near them, friendly as you please. Near at hand big Bahut, who had been the last but us to land, was quietly munching the top of a broad-leafed tree that he'd pulled down; but the cats and riffraff had melted into the landscape. So had the birds, except a pair of jungle-fowl, who'd found seed near the cove and were picking it up as fast as they could and putting it away.

"Well," says I, "it's an island, sure, Ivy. The first thing to do is to find out who lives on it, owns it, and dispenses its hospitality, and make up to them."

But she shook her head and said seriously:

"I've a feeling, Right," she says--"a kind of hunch--that there's n.o.body on it but us."

I laughed at her then, but half a day's tramping proved that she was right. I tell you women have ways of knowing things that we men haven't.

The fact is, civilization slides off 'em like water off a duck; and at heart and by instinct they are people of the cave-dwelling period--on cut-and-dried terms with ghosts and spirits, all the unseen sources of knowledge that man has grown away from.

I had sure proofs of this in the way Ivy took to the cave we found in a bunch of volcano rock that lifted sheer out of the cove and had bright flowers smiling out of all its pockets. No society lady ever entered her brand-new marble house at Newport with half the happiness.

Ivy was crazy about the cave and never tired of pointing out its advantages. She went to house-keeping without any of the utensils, as keen and eager as she'd gone to it on the poor old _Boldero_, where at least there were pots and pans and pepper.

We had grub to last a few weeks, a pair of blankets, the clothes we stood in, and an axe. I had, besides, a heavy clasp-knife, a watch, and seven sovereigns. The first thing Ivy insisted on was a change of clothes.

"These we stand in," says she, "are the only presentable things we've got, and Heaven only knows how long they've got to last us for best."

"We could throw modesty to the winds," I suggested.

"Of course you can do as you please," she said. "I don't care one way or the other about the modesty; but I've got a skin that looks on the sun with distinct aversion, and I don't propose to go through a course of yellow blisters--and then turn black."

"I've seen islanders weave cloth out of palm fibre--most any kind," I said. "It's clumsy and airy; but if you think it would do----"

"It sounds scratchy."

"It is, but it's good for the circulation."

Well, we made a kind of cloth and cut it into shapes, and knotted the shapes together with more fibre; then we folded up our best and only Sunday-go-to-meeting suits and put the fibre things on; and then we went down to the cove to look at ourselves in the water. And Ivy laughed.

"We're not clothed," she said; "we're thatched; and yet--and yet--it's accident, of course, but this skirt has got a certain hang that----"

"Whatever that skirt's got," I said, "these pants haven't; but if you're happy I am."

Well, there's worse situations than desert-islanding it with the one woman in the world. I even know one man who claims he was cast away with a perfect stranger that he hated the sight of at first--a terribly small-minded, conventional woman--and still he had the time of his life.

They got to like each other over a mutual taste for cribbage, which they played for sea-sh.e.l.ls, yellow with a pink edge, until the woman went broke and got heavily in debt to the man. He was nice about it and let her off. He says the affair must have ended in matrimony, only she took a month to think it over; during that month they were picked up and carried to Honolulu; then they quarrelled and never saw each other again.

"Ivy," said I one day, "we'll be picked up by a pa.s.sing steamer some day, of course, but meanwhile I'd rather be here with you than any place I can name."

"It's Eden," she said, "and I'd like to live like this always. But----"

"But what?"

"But people grow old," she said, "and one dies before another. That's what's wrong with Eden."

I laughed at her.

"Old! You and I? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Ivy Bower."

"Right Bower," says she, "you don't understand----"

"How not understand?"

"You don't understand that Right Bower and Ivy Bower aren't the only people on this island."

She didn't turn a fiery red and bolt--the way young wives do in stories.

She looked at me with steady, brave, considering eyes.

"Don't worry, dear," she says after a time; "everything will be all right. I know it will."

"I know it too." I lied.

Know it? I was cold with fright.

"Don't be afraid," said she. "And--and meanwhile there's dinner to be got ready--and you can have a go at your firesticks."

It was my ambition to get fire by friction. Now and then I got the sticks to smoke and I hoped that practice would give me the little extra speed and cunning that makes for flame. I'd always been pretty good at games, if a little slow to learn.

VI

You'd think anxiety about Ivy'd have been the hardest thing to bear in the life we were living; and so it would have been if she'd showed any anxiety about herself. Not she. You might have thought she was looking forward to a Christmas-box from home. If she was ever scared it was when I wasn't looking. No--it was the beasts that made us anxious.

At first we'd go for long walks and make explorations up and down the island. The beasts hid from us according to the wild nature that's in them. You could only tell from fresh tracks in damp places that they hadn't utterly disappeared. Now and then we saw deer and antelopes far off; and at night, of course, there was always something doing in the way of a chorus. Beasts that gave our end of the island the go-by daytimes paid us visits nights and sat under the windows, you may say, and sang their songs.

It seemed natural after a time to be cooped up in a big green prison with a lot of loose wild things that could bite and tear you to pieces if they thought of it. We were hard to scare. What scared me first was this: When we got to the island it was alive with goats. Well, these just casually disappeared. Then, one morning, bright and early, I came on the big python in the act of swallowing a baby antelope. It gave me a horrid start and set me thinking. How long could the island support a menagerie? What would the meat-eaters do when they'd killed off all the easy meat--finished up the deer and antelopes and all? Would they fight it out among themselves--big tiger eat little tiger--until only the fittest one survived? And what would that fittest one do if he got good and hungry and began to think that I'd make a square meal for him--or Ivy?

I reached two conclusions--and the cave about the same time. First, I wouldn't tell Ivy I was scared. Second, I'd make fire by friction or otherwise--or bust. Once I got fire, I'd never let it go out. I set to work with the firesticks right off, and Ivy came and stood by and looked on.