He told her the truth, and said he had violent pains in the back and head. She did not say much, but she turned pale. She bustled and lighted a great fire, and made him lie down by it. She propped his head up; she set water on to boil for him, and would not let him move for anything; and all the time her features were brimful of the loveliest concern. He could not help thinking how much better it was to be ill and in pain, and have her so kind, than to be well, and see her cold and distant. Toward evening he got better, or rather he mistook an intermission for cure, and retired to his boat; but she made him take her rug with him; and, when he was gone, she could not sleep for anxiety; and it cut her to the heart to think how poorly he was lodged compared with her.
Of all the changes fate could bring, this she had never dreamed of, that she should be so robust and he should be sick and in pain.
She passed an uneasy, restless night, and long before morning she awoke for the sixth or seventh time, and she awoke with a misgiving in her mind, and some sound ringing in her ears. She listened and heard nothing; but in a few moments it began again.
It was Hazel talking--talking in a manner so fast, so strange, so loud, that it made her blood run cold. It was the voice of Hazel, but not his mind.
She drew near, and, to her dismay, found him fever-stricken, and pouring out words with little sequence. She came close to him and tried to soothe him, but he answered her quite at random, and went on flinging out the strangest things in stranger order. She trembled and waited for a lull, hoping then to soothe him with soft words and tones of tender pity.
_"Dens and caves!"_ he roared, answering an imaginary detractor. "Well, never mind, love shall make that hole in the rock a palace for a queen; for _a_ queen? For _the_ queen." Here he suddenly changed characters and fancied he was interpreting the discourse of another. "He means the Queen of the Fairies," said he, patronizingly. Then, resuming his own character with loud defiance, "I say her chamber shall outshine the glories of the Alhambra, as far as the lilies outshone the artificial glories of King Solomon. Oh, mighty Nature, let others rely on the painter, the gold-beater, the carver of marble, come you and help me adorn the temple of my beloved. Amen."
(The poor soul thought, by the sound of his own words, it must be a prayer he uttered.)
And now Helen, with streaming eyes, tried to put in a word, but he stopped her with a wild Hush! and went off into a series of mysterious whisperings. "Make no noise, please, or we shall frighten her.
There--that is her window--no noise, please! I've watched and waited four hours, just to see her sweet, darling shadow on the blinds, and shall I lose it for your small talk? all paradoxes and platitudes! excuse my plain speaking--Hush! here it comes--her shadow--hush!--how my heart beats. It is gone. So now" (speaking out), "good-night, base world! Do you hear? you company of liars, thieves and traitors, called the world, go and sleep if you can. I _shall_ sleep, because my conscience is clear.
_False accusations!_ Who can help them? They are the act of others. Read of Job, and Paul, and Joan of Arc. No, no, no, no; I didn't say read 'em _out_ with those stentorian lungs. I must be allowed a _little_ sleep, a man that wastes the midnight oil, yet brushes the early dew. Good-night."
He turned round and slept for several hours as he supposed; but in reality he was silent for just three seconds. "Well," said he, "and is a gardener a man to be looked down upon by upstarts? When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman? Why, where the spade was. Yet I went through the Herald's College, and not one of our mushroom aristocracy ('bloated ' I object to; they don't eat half as much as their footmen) had a spade for a crest. There's nothing ancient west of the Caspian. Well, all the better. For there's no fool like an old fool. A spade's a spade for a' that an a' that, an a' that--an a' that--an a' that. Hallo! Stop that man; he's gone off on his cork leg, of a' that an a' that--and it is my wish to be quiet. Allow me respectfully to observe," said he, striking off suddenly into an air of vast politeness, "that man requires change. I've done a jolly good day's work with the spade for this old buffer, and now the intellect claims its turn. The mind retires above the noisy world to its Acropolis, and there discusses the great problem of the day; the Insular Enigma. To be or not to be, that is the question, I believe. No it is not. That is fully discussed elsewhere. Hum! To diffuse--intelligence--from a fixed island--over one hundred leagues of water.
"It's a stinger. But I can't complain. I had read Lempriere, and Smith and Bryant, and mythology in general, yet I must go and fall in love with the Sphinx. Men are so vain. Vanity whispered, She will set you a light one; why is a cobbler like a king, for instance? She is not in love with you, ye fool, if you are with her. The harder the riddle the higher the compliment the Sphinx pays you. That is the way all sensible men look at it. She is not the Sphinx; she is an angel, and I call her my Lady Caprice. _Hate her for being Caprice!_ You incorrigible muddle-head. Why, I love Caprice for being her shadow. Poor, impotent love that can't solve a problem. The only one she ever set me. I've gone about it like a fool.
What is the use putting up little bits of telegraphs on the island? I'll make a kite a hundred feet high, get five miles of rope ready against the next hurricane; and then I'll rub it with phosphorus and fly it. But what can I fasten it to? No tree would hold it. Dunce. To the island itself, of course. And now go to Stantle, Magg, Milton, and Copestake for one thousand yards of silk--_Money! Money! Money!_ Well, give them a mortgage on the island, and a draft on the galleon. Now stop the pitch-fountain, and bore a hole near it; fill fifty balloons with gas, inscribe them with the latitude and longitude, fly them, and bring all the world about our ears. The problem is solved. It is solved and I am destroyed. She leaves me; she thinks no more of me. Her heart is in England."
Then he muttered for a long time unintelligibly; and Helen ventured near, and actually laid her hand on his brow to soothe him. But suddenly his muttering ceased, and he seemed to be puzzling hard over something.
The result came out in a clear articulate sentence, that made Helen recoil, and, holding by the mast, cast an indescribable look of wonder and dismay on the speaker.
The words that so staggered her were these to the letter:
"She says she hates reptiles. Yet she marries Arthur Wardlaw."
