The Island of Regeneration | Page 6

called. There were answering echoes from the
jagged crag behind her, but when these died away, there was silence,

unbroken save by the queer babbling, chuckling noises of the man.
She looked at him with a sudden sinking of the heart. Had this godlike
creature roaming the woods, this Faun of the island, been denied a
brain, articulate speech? Was she doomed to spend the rest of her life
alone in this Paradise of the Pacific with a harmless madman forever by
her side? What a situation was that in which she found herself?
She was a highly specialized product of the greatest of universities. In
science and in philosophy she was a master and a doctor. She should
have had resources within herself which would enable her to be
independent of the outside world, a world in which her experience,
self-bought, had been bitter, in which the last few weeks had been one
long disillusionment. And yet she was now overwhelmed with a
craving for companionship, for articulate speech, as if she had never
looked into a book or given a thought to the deep things of life. If this
man beside her would only do something, say some thing, be
something rather than a silent satellite for ever staring in wonder. If she
could only solve the mystery of his presence, answer the interrogation
that his very existence there alone presented.
Her future, her present, indeed, should have engrossed her mind. What
she was to do, how she was to live, the terrible problems in which his
presence on the island involved her, should have been the objects of her
attention; they should have afforded food for thought to the keenest of
women. She simply forgot them in her puzzled wonder at him. It would
have been much simpler from one point of view if she had found the
island uninhabited, and yet since the man was human and alive, in spite
of her judgment, her heart was glad that he was there.
She motioned to him to sit down and then she sat in front of him and
studied him. He looked as little like a fool as like a knave. She could
indeed detect no evidences of any intellectual ability, but she thought,
as she studied him keenly, that he possessed unlimited intellectual
possibilities. There was a mind back of those bright blue eyes, that
broad, noble brow, but it seemed to her a mind entirely undeveloped, a
mind utterly latent. Here was a soul, she thought, half in fancy, half in
earnest, that was virgin to the world. Howsoever wise, howsoever

deeply learned she might be, she was face to face with this primeval
norm.
Could she teach this man anything? He seemed tractable, reverential,
deferential now. Knowledge was power. Would it be power with him?
Could she open those sealed doors of his mind, what floods would
outpour therefrom, of power, of passion? Would she be swept away? It
mattered not. She must try. The impulse seized her to begin now.
Fixing her dark eyes upon him, she pointed directly at him with her
finger.
"Man," she said clearly and emphatically.
He was always looking at her. He had scarcely taken his eyes from her
since she had seen him in the tall grass by the shore, but at her gesture
and word his eyes brightened. There was that little wrinkling of the
brow again which she had noticed, outward and visible sign of an
inward attempt at comprehension.
"Man!" she said passionately. "Man," she repeated over and over again.
And then the unexpected happened. After in numerable guttural
attempts, her unwitting pupil managed to articulate something that bore
a distinct resemblance to the clearly cut monosyllable.
"Man!" he said at last.
It was a tremendous step in evolution, almost too great for any
untutored human brain, for at once the man before her received a name,
and the idea of name as well. In that instant, on that heaven kissing hill,
he was differentiated from all the rest of creation forever. His
consciousness, hitherto vague, floating, incoherent, indefinite, was
localized, given a habitation and a name. He knew himself in some way
to be.
"Man!" he cried, growing more and more confident with every
repetition and more and more accurate in catching the very intonation
with which she spoke.

"Man!" he cried, laying his hand upon his breast. "Man."
He leaped to his feet and stretched out his arms. The doors were open a
little space. Ideas were beginning to edge their way through the crack.
"Man! Man! Man!" he said again and again, looking eagerly at her.
She rose in turn and patted him on the shoulder encouragingly as she
might a dog. And again the touch, the third touch that she had given
him,