tensed muscles in the directions that would increase the cramp. In
his bout the preceding year with the affliction, he had learned,
lying in bed and reading when seized, to relax and bend the cramps
away without even disturbing his reading. But now he did the thing
in reverse, intensifying the cramp, and, to his startled delight,
causing it to leap into his right calf. He cried out with anguish,
apparently lost control of himself, attempted to sit up, and was
washed under by the next wave.
He came up, spluttered, spread-eagled on the surface, and had his
knotted calf gripped by the strong fingers of both Ida's small
hands.
"It's all right," she said, while she worked. "No cramp like this
lasts very long."
"I didn't know it could be so savage," he groaned. "If only it
doesn't go higher! It makes one feel so helpless."
He gripped the biceps of both her arms in a sudden spasm,
attempting to climb out upon her as a drowning man might try to
climb out on an oar and sinking her down under him. In the
struggle under water, before he permitted her to wrench clear, her
rubber cap was torn off, and her hairpins pulled out, so that she
came up gasping for air and half-blinded by her wet-clinging hair.
Also, he was certain he had surprised her into taking in a quantity
of water.
"Keep away!" he warned, as he spread-eagled with acted
desperateness.
But her fingers were deep into the honest pain-wrack of his calf,
and in her he could observe no reluctance of fear.
"It's creeping up," he grunted through tight teeth, the grunt
itself a half-controlled groan.
He stiffened his whole right leg, as with another spasm, hurting
his real minor cramps, but flexing the muscles of his upper leg
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into the seeming hardness of cramp.
The opium still worked in his brain, so that he could play-act
cruelly, while at the same time he appraised and appreciated her
stress of control and will that showed in her drawn face, and the
terror of death in her eyes, with beyond it and behind it, in her
eyes and through her eyes, the something more of the spirit of
courage, and higher thought, and resolution.
Still further, she did not enunciate so cheap a surrender as, "I'll
die with you." Instead, provoking his admiration, she did say,
quietly: "Relax. Sink until only your lips are out. I'll support
your head. There must be a limit to cramp. No man ever died of
cramp on land. Then in the water no strong swimmer should die of
cramp. It's bound to reach its worst and pass. We're both strong
swimmers and cool-headed--"
He distorted his face and deliberately dragged her under. But when
they emerged, still beside him, supporting his head as she
continued to tread water, she was saying:
"Relax. Take it easy. I'll hold your head up. Endure it. Live
through it. Don't fight it. Make yourself slack--slack in your
mind; and your body will slack. Yield. Remember how you taught me
to yield to the undertow."
An unusually large breaker for so mild a surf curled overhead, and
he climbed out on her again, sinking both of them under as the
wave-crest over-fell and smashed down.
"Forgive me," he mumbled through pain clenched teeth, as they drew
in their first air again. "And leave me." He spoke jerkily, with
pain-filled pauses between his sentences. "There is no need for
both of us to drown. I've got to go. It will be in my stomach, at
any moment, and then I'll drag you under, and be unable to let go
of you. Please, please, dear, keep away. One of us is enough.
You've plenty to live for."
She looked at him in reproach so deep that the last vestige of the
terror of death was gone from her eyes. It was as if she had said,
and more than if she had said: "I have only you to live for."
Then Sonny did not count with her as much as he did!--was Barton's
exultant conclusion. But he remembered her in Sonny's arms under
the monkey-pods and determined on further cruelty. Besides, it was
the lingering opium in him that suggested this cruelty. Since he
had undertaken this acid test, urged the poppy juice, then let it
be a real acid test.
He doubled up and went down, emerged, and apparently strove
frantically to stretch out in the floating position. And she did
not keep away from him.
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"It's too much!" he groaned, almost screamed. "I'm losing my grip.
I've got to go. You can't save me. Keep away and save yourself."
But she was to him, striving to float his mouth clear of the salt,
saying: "It's all right. It's all right. The worst is right now.
Just endure it a minute more, and it will begin to ease."
He screamed out, doubled, seized her, and took her down with him.
And he nearly did drown her, so well did he play-act his own
drowning. But never did she lose her head nor succumb to the fear
of death so dreadfully imminent. Always, when she got her head
out, she strove to support him while she panted and gasped
encouragement in terms of: "Relax . . . Relax . . . Slack . . .
Slack out . . . At any time . . . now . . . you'll pass . . . the
worst . . . No matter how much it hurts . . . it will pass . . .
You're easier now . . . aren't you?"
And then he would put her down again, going from bad to worse--in
his ill-treatment of her; making her swallow pints of salt water,
secure in the knowledge that it would not definitely hurt her.
Sometimes they came up for brief emergences, for gasping seconds in
the sunshine on the surface, and then were under again, dragged
under by him, rolled and tumbled under by the curling breakers.
Although she struggled and tore herself from his grips, in the
times he permitted her freedom she did not attempt to swim away
from him, but, with fading strength and reeling consciousness,
invariably came to him to try to save him. When it was enough, in
his judgment, and more than enough, he grew quieter, left her
released, and stretched out on the surface.
"A-a-h," he sighed long, almost luxuriously, and spoke with pauses
for breath. "It is passing. It seems like heaven. My dear, I'm
water-logged, yet the mere absence of that frightful agony makes my
present state sheerest bliss."
She tried to gasp a reply, but could not.
"I'm all right," he assured her. "Let us float and rest up.
Stretch out, yourself, and get your wind back."
And for half an hour, side by side, on their backs, they floated in
the fairly placid Kanaka Surf. Ida Barton was the first to
announce recovery by speaking first.
"And how do you feel now, man of mine?" she asked.
"I feel as if I'd been run over by a steam-roller," he replied.
"And you, poor darling?"
"I feel I'm the happiest woman in the world. I'm so happy I could
frightened for a time. I thought I was to lose you."
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Lee Barton's heart pounded up. Never a mention of losing herself.
This, then, was love, and all real love, proved true--the great
love that forgot self in the loved one.
"And I'm the proudest man in the world," he told her; "because my
wife is the bravest woman in the world."
"Brave!" she repudiated. "I love you. I never knew how much, how
really much, I loved you as when I was losing you. And now let's
work for shore. I want you all alone with me, your arms around me,
while I tell you all you are to me and shall always be to me."
In another half-hour, swimming strong and steadily, they landed on
the beach and walked up the hard wet sand among the sand-loafers
and sun-baskers.
"What were the two of you doing out there?" queried one of the
Outrigger captains. "Cutting up?"
"Cutting up," Ida Barton answered with a smile.
"We're the village cut-ups, you know," was Lee Barton's assurance.
That evening, the evening's engagement cancelled, found the two, in
a big chair, in each other's arms.
"Sonny sails to-morrow noon," she announced casually and irrelevant
to anything in the conversation. "He's going out to the Malay
Coast to inspect what's been done with that lumber and rubber
company of his."
"First I've heard of his leaving us," Lee managed to say, despite
his surprise.
"I was the first to hear of it," she added. "He told me only last
night."
"At the dance?"
She nodded.
"Rather sudden, wasn't it?"
"Very sudden." Ida withdrew herself from her husband's arms and
sat up. "And I want to talk to you about Sonny. I've never had a
real secret from you before. I didn't intend ever to tell you.
But it came to me to-day, out in the Kanaka Surf, that if we passed
out, it would be something left behind us unsaid."
She paused, and Lee, half-anticipating what was coming, did nothing
to help her, save to girdle and press her hand in his.
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"Sonny rather lost his . . . his head over me," she faltered. "Of
course, you must have noticed it. And . . . and last night, he
wanted me to run away with him. Which isn't my confession at all .
. . "
Still Lee Barton waited.
"My confession," she resumed, "is that I wasn't the least bit angry
with him--only sorrowful and regretful. My confession is that I
rather slightly, only rather more than slightly, lost my own head.
That was why I was kind and gentle to him last night. I am no
fool. I knew it was due. And--oh, I know, I'm just a feeble
female of vanity compounded--I was proud to have such a man swept
off his feet by me, by little me. I encouraged him. I have no
excuse. Last night would not have happened had I not encouraged
him. And I, and not he, was the sinner last night when he asked
me. And I told him no, impossible, as you should know why without
my repeating it to you. And I was maternal to him, very much
maternal. I let him take me in his arms, let myself rest against
him, and, for the first time because it was to be the for-ever last
time, let him kiss me and let myself kiss him. You . . . I know
you understand . . . it was his renunciation. And I didn't love
Sonny. I don't love him. I have loved you, and you only, all the
time."
She waited, and felt her husband's arm pass around her shoulder and
under her own arm, and yielded to his drawing down of her to him.
"You did have me worried more than a bit," he admitted, "until I
was afraid I was going to lose you. And . . . " He broke off in
patent embarrassment, then gripped the idea courageously. "Oh,
well, you know you're my one woman. Enough said."
She fumbled the match-box from his pocket and struck a match to
enable him to light his long-extinct cigar.
"Well," he said, as the smoke curled about them, "knowing you as I
know you, and ALL of you, all I can say is that I'm sorry for Sonny
for what he's missed--awfully sorry for him, but equally glad for
me. And . . . one other thing: five years hence I've something to
tell you, something rich, something ridiculously rich, and all
about me and the foolishness of me over you. Five years. Is it a
date?"
"I shall keep it if it is fifty years," she sighed, as she nestled
closer to him.
GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.
August 17, 1916.
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Footnotes:
{1} See Dibble's "A History of the Sandwich Islands."
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