Left alone with his thoughts, he wondered what the rising sun would bring in its train. He reviewed the events of the last twenty-four hours. Iris and he—Miss Deane, Mr. Jenks, to each other—were then undiscovered in their refuge, the Dyaks were gathered around a roaring fire in the valley, and Mir Jan was keen in the hunt as the keenest among them. Now, Iris was his affianced bride, over twenty of the enemy were killed and many wounded, and Mir Jan, a devoted adherent, was seated beside the skeleton in the gloom of the cavern.
What a topsy-turvy world it was, to be sure! What alternations between despair and hope! What rebound from the gates of Death to the threshold of Eden! How untrue, after all, was the nebulous philosophy of Omar, the Tentmaker. Surely in the happenings of the bygone day there was more than the purposeless
"Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go."
He had, indeed, cause to be humbly thankful. Was there not One who marked the fall of a sparrow, who clothed the lilies, who knew the needs of His creatures? There, in the solemn temple of the night, he gave thanks for the protection vouchsafed to Iris and himself, and prayed that it might be continued. He deplored the useless bloodshed, the horror of mangled limbs and festering bodies, that converted this fair island into a reeking slaughter-house. Were it possible, by any personal sacrifice, to divert the untutored savages from their deadly quest, he would gladly condone their misdeeds and endeavor to assuage the torments of the wounded.
But he was utterly helpless, a pawn on that tiny chessboard where the game was being played between Civilization and Barbarism. The fight must go on to the bitter end: he must either vanquish or be vanquished. There were other threads being woven into the garment of his life at that moment, but he knew not of them. Sufficient for the day was the evil, and the good thereof. Of both he had received full measure.
A period of such reflection could hardly pass without a speculative dive into the future. If Iris and he were rescued, what would happen when they went forth once more into the busy world? Not for one instant did he doubt her faith. She was true as steel, knit to him now by bonds of triple brass. But, what would Sir Arthur Deane think of his daughter's marriage to a discredited and cashiered officer? What was it that poor Mir Jan called himself?—"a disgraced man." Yes, that was it. Could that stain be removed? Mir Jan was doing it. Why not he?—by other means, for his good name rested on the word of a perjured woman. Wealth was potent, but not all-powerful. He would ask Iris to wait until he came to her unsoiled by slander, purged of this odium cast upon him unmerited.
And all this goes to show that he, a man wise beyond his fellows, had not yet learned the unwisdom of striving to lift the veil of tomorrow, behind whose mystic curtain what is to be ever jostles out of place what is hoped for.
Iris, smiling in her dreams, was assailed by no torturing doubts. Robert loved her—that was enough. Love suffices for a woman; a man asks for honor, reputation, an unblemished record.