Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

Marooned Hearts — (Continued from page 87) youth who had two passions in life — his yacht and Marion. 7\nd the next society heard was of a trip to Japan on the Sea Cull, with its owner, his fiancee and her motlier aboard. Meanwhile, "It's been one year exactly," wrote Paul Carrington in his diary, sitting in his palm-thatched hut and looking out over the shimmering blue fields of the Pacific, "and I have not seen a human face in all that time. My experiments are progressing so well that another three years ought to complete them, and successfully, please God. If they shall save a single human life, it will be my atonement " The pen fell from his fingers, he leaned forward with a roaring in his ears not of the surf. "It's — not true, of course," he whispered ; "she's a thousand miles away, playing golf in imported tweeds " The girl in the doorway leaned heavily against the lintel. The thing .she wore had been a silk crepe evening gown once, but now hung about her in sodden wisps, leaving her arms and bosom bare. Her hair was dark with sea-water, and she was laughing softly, senselessly. "He thought — that I was more afraid — of the ocean than of — him, the sailor with the pockmarked face" — she shuddered, as at some memory, incredibly vile — "and the other boats were gone — so I was drowned ..." Paul Carrington caught her as she fell. "God, why did You let this woman come here?" he groaned. "Hasn't she done me harm enough already?" But, hate her as he did, he was a doctor first of all. When Marion Ainsworth opened her eyes, it was to see the face she had dreamed of so often bending above her, but she had never dreamed that his eyes could be so mercilessly cruel. She tried to rise. "I — did not pick my route, Paul." Her lips quivered in a painful smile. "The yacht — was wrecked. One of the sailors took me in a boat. We lost the others, and" — a burning blush swept her whiteness a moment — "I had to choose between that man — and the sea, so I jumped overboard. I suppose the tide swept me ashore here, but — I'll go now " He laughed harshly. "Go? Where? We're marooned here together, you and I. My steam yacht broke from its moorings, six months ago, in a tropic storm. We may be picked up at any time, or we may spend our lives on this island." They looked at one another long. Her lips quivered into speech. "You — have never forgiven me, Paul ?" "I do not forgive easily," the man answered briefly. "Make no mistake. I shall build you a hut close enough to mine for your protection, and I shall draw a line upon the ground between. That line shall separate our lives as tho it were an ocean lying between us. You have destroyed my life once. I came here to piece the broken bits together, l^nd — you shall not destroy it again." (Nineiij-one) In the long weeks that followed she saw no sign of relenting. He built her, as he had promised, a hut, and, as he had promised, he drew a line between their worlds. On the one side he worked silently over his retorts and glass slides, apparently not seeing her, never speaking ; his face a grim, grey mask hiding his thoughts from her wistful, seeking gaze. If she could have known them, they might have gone far toward easing the pain that lay always under her heart. Frivolous she had been, thoughtless and selfish, but she had loved this man, and now that she had lost him she was like one who, having lost life, still remains forlornly alive. And he? The glass slides under his fingers were meaningless now. He still thought that he hated her and raved against her in his diary, yet her slim loveliness would not let him be. He dreamed, tossing on his restless bed, of the cool softness of her lips. He turned his eyes resolutely away from the sight of her, clad in a woven garment of reeds and drifting, light as sea-foam on the beach — and he saw her always before him. What the end might have been there is no guessing, hut the sailor with the pockmarked face played god of the machine. For days he had hidden like a wild beast in the jungle growth, watching, with hot eyes of desire, the wdiite wonder of Marion's body dipping, morning and evening, in a sheltered pocket of the sea. Since his boat had drifted ashore and landed him marvelously near the woman he had craved, he had been waiting for his moment, and presently he thought that it had come. But he had not reckoned on Paul. In the white glare of the tropic noontide the two men fought, while the woman watched breathlessly, as it was in the beginning. The sand beneath their laboring feet was trodden red when at last Carrington flung the other at full length on the beach, and stood above him, bruised, bleeding, exultant. "Get to your boat," he told the cringing creature at his feet, contemptuously, "and steer away from this island. If you try to crawl back here I'll kill you! You'll probably drown, but I warn you that's better than what I would do to you I" The sailor did not try to rise. He squirmed away on his stomach, an abject thing of fear, hke a monstrous black slug, leaving two for whom, strangely, the world was changed. The past had slipped from them like discarded garments and their naked souls stood face to face. "How strong you are!" marveled the woman soul. "I was fighting for you," answered the man. He held out his arms, and unquestioningly she went into them, and the world followed time into the limbo of things that were not. and there were only themselves under the sky, themselves and the murmurous mother sea. 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