“I’ve never been able to care for things in reason. I wanted perfection.
Music, love, I longed to lose myself in them, but couldn’t, because
always something jarred, and then I grew cold. My cousin Charlotte used
to laugh at me. She had a sweet voice. Not perfect, though, and
sometimes it would irritate me to madness to hear the flaws that most
people didn’t even notice. And yet even at sixteen Charlotte was dearer
to me than any other creature on earth.
“Then I came out to Taku, and I met Lulukuila. She was beautiful beyond
anything I had ever dreamed. She made other women look clumsy beside
her. She stayed overnight at my uncle’s, and next day an escort came
from the old chief, her father—six savages in pandanus kilts and
necklaces. Those creatures came to take the very flower of womanhood
back to uncivilized surroundings. I can’t tell you how horrible it
seemed to me. And so I married her.”
Cartwright jumped up, and began walking up and down. After a while he
switched off on another tack.
“Her voice was as perfect as her face,” he said, “and her sense of pitch
was absolute. Those first days we used to go out to the point where the
pavilion stands, and sit looking out over the reefs, and I thought I’d
found happiness at last. I liked to hear her answer a certain note that
the sea sounds in the reefs yonder when the tide is right. She would
take up the note an octave higher, and it was thrilling, the perfection
of her pitch. I sent home for the piano, imagining that it would be a
bond between us. I thought I’d teach her the songs Charlotte and I used
to sing together.
“But she hated the piano,” Cartwright brought out in a muffled voice. “I
suppose I was rather a fool over it at first. I was so hungry for
familiar music. Lulukuila couldn’t bear the music I’d grown up with. It
brought out alien traits in her, gusts of passion, fits of moodiness.
Octaves, those she’d listen to. Once when I filled in an octave she
jumped up and caught my hands. I remember yet how she looked.
“‘You are drawn by the many voices,’ she said. ‘There should, be only
one for you.’
“She went off to the pavilion then, and when I went to find her she was
singing, following that sound the surf made on the reefs. The perfection
of her pitch made me shiver. I began to hate it then. I saw that
Lulukuila was going to destroy my pleasure in the music I had loved. She
was robbing me—”
I don’t believe Cartwright was talking to any one in particular by this
time. His voice dropped, and I missed a lot till I heard him mention his
cousin. He stopped then, and looked at me for the first time.
“My uncle threw me over when I married Lulukuila,” he said, “but when my
cousin Charlotte came out from England she made her father come over with
her. She brought Davidson too—good sort, Davidson.
“I must have been homesick, for the sight of them seemed to wake me from
a nightmare. I remember we were very jolly at dinner. Afterward
Charlotte and I sang. I was thinking how good it was to hear the music
of home again, when I caught sight of Lulukuila’s face in a shaft of
light that reached out to where the rest were sitting. Her face was
white, and her teeth were biting her lip.
“Charlotte stopped playing just then, and asked me why I had broken into
the octave. The chord, she said, was so much prettier. I couldn’t tell
her that it was Lulukuila’s interval haunting me. I hadn’t even known I
was singing an octave,” Cartwright added with a sudden laugh. Then he
went on.
“We didn’t sing any more, but went out to join the others. Lulukuila
wasn’t there. I was just asking Davidson where she had gone, when I
heard a splash down by the lagoon. All in a flash I remembered how her
face had looked in the lamplight, and I started off down the path. . . .
I got there too late.”
After a while he began muttering in a disconnected sort of way. “She had
her way. I’ve never touched the piano since. Surely I have the right
now, though, now Charlotte’s coming back—a little happiness.”
“That’s the thing to think of now, sir,” I says, wondering if I should
call his man or leave him to talk himself out. “You weren’t to blame for
what happened. Think of your cousin now.”
“My cousin, yes,” Cartwright murmured. He pulled himself up with a sharp
breath.
“I’m afraid I’ve been talking an uncommon lot,” he said in his ordinary
tone. “It’s late. You must be wanting to turn in.”
We commented on the sultriness of the night as we parted. The stars were
hidden in a sort of murk, and the air had grown so still that the beetles
bumping against the banana leaves overhead startled one like the crack of
artillery.
Inside I found Simmons, Cartwright’s servant, tapping the barometer.
“It’s fallen uncommonly fast,” Simmons said to me. “Just as it did
before the hurricane five years ago.
“The hurricane!” I said. “Did it do much damage?”
“Not to speak of,” Simmons said. “Some of the native huts were swept
away when the water backed up into the lagoon, but the people had time to
get up here. There’s no saying what might have happened if the water had
come up two feet higher.”
“I hope there isn’t going to be a hurricane this time,” I said, thinking
of Molly.
“I hope so, I’m sure,” says Simmons, in an undertaker’s voice.
It took more than a falling barometer to put me off sleep those days, and
I was off sounder than usual that night. I waked at last in a bedlam of
sound, wailing of wind, cracking of branches, and the thunder of surf
from the barrier reef.
“It’s the hurricane that owl Simmons was wishing on us,” I thought. I
struck a match to find my clothes, but a gust of wind puffed it out. I
was just trying for the third time, when Simmons came in, carrying one of
the two ship’s lanterns Cartwright kept by the outer door.
“Do you know where Mr. Cartwright is?” Simmons says.
“I? No. Isn’t he in bed?”
Simmons shook his head. “I’m afraid he’s gone down to the pavilion. He
began to worry about the piano. I see the other lantern’s gone. I must
go after him.”
“I’ll come with you, then,” I said. “Just hold the light while I find my
clothes.”
Ordinarily that Yorkshire face of Simmons had no more expression than a
granite slab, but he looked human enough now. If he cared for any
earthly creature it was Cartwright. I’d not been in the house three days
without finding that out.
I had a start as we passed through the big room, for the floor was
covered with figures stretched out like corpses on the mats. “From the
huts on the beach,” Simmons explained. “That’s what makes me think it’s
going to be a bad storm.”
He braced himself to hold the door open for me, and added in a sudden
shout as the roar of the storm came about us: “A little harder than last
time, and the pavilion would go.”
The path to the pavilion ran just above the coral shingle along the foot
of the ridge. Ordinarily it was ten feet above high tide, but as we
struggled on, hugging the bank to keep from being blown flat by the wind,
I could catch a glimpse of creaming, sullen-looking water not two yards
away. Slipping up quietly it was, and the soundlessness of its rising
was more uncanny than all the bustle and roar on the reefs outside.
We had a struggle to get on, and Simmons hung on to me to keep me from
being blown into the lagoon. I began to wish I hadn’t come, and I
thought of the peaceful mission house in Taku and of Molly.
“Mr. Cartwright’s there,” Simmons says suddenly in my ear. “I see his
light. Hang tight. The wind’s worse out here.”
And it was. An awful clap came, driving us to our knees. I saw a huge
bulk crash down between us and the pavilion. The light disappeared.
“The breadfruit tree,” said Simmons, in a hoarse voice. He clawed his
way over the fallen branches and I managed to follow, shivering to think
of what a misstep would do for me. At last we made out Cartwright
struggling in the wreckage brought down by the fallen tree.
“You, Simmons?” he cried. “Quick! Give a hand with this piano. We must
get it to higher ground.”
His voice sounded sane enough, but it was the speech of a crazy man. The
only path up the ridge was a mere goat trail, fully exposed to the wind.
And Cartwright was suggesting our carrying the piano up that! Simmons
jerked his lantern up to Cartwright’s face. There was wildness with a
vengeance. But my word! How beautiful he looked with his fair, tossed
hair, and his eyes purple black with excitement.
“It’s you we’ve come for, sir,” Simmons says to him. “The water’s
backing up fast. There’s no time to lose.”
“We must save the piano first,” Cartwright says insistently. A lull had
fallen, and his voice sounded very clear. Simmons made a desperate
gesture.
“It’s gathering for worse,” he muttered. I took a hand.
“If that wind comes up again we’ll have to scramble to save our skins,” I
shouted. “It isn’t humanly possible for us to move the piano. Come,
sir, while there’s time!”
“And desert it again?” he asks with a strange little smile. “You’re
asking too much of me, old chap. What about Charlotte?”
“She won’t care a hang about the piano!” I could have stamped my foot at
him. “It’s you she’ll be worrying about. Don’t be an ass.” That shows
how beyond myself I was, that I could speak to him that way. A long,
ominous roll shook the silence.
“It’s the surf coming over the reefs,” Simmons says in a hushed voice.
“By Jove, you’re right!” Cartwright exclaims, throwing back his head.
His voice was boyish and energetic. “Come on, we must make a dash for
it.” And jerking up the lantern he fairly herded us through the tangle
to the cliff.
There the gale broke loose on us again. We lay flat on our faces,
clinging for dear life to the stems of the stout little pandanus palms.
It was like a beast, that wind. It sucked the breath from our mouths, it
pounded us and shrieked at us and mocked us till we were half dead from
the sheer, cruel force of it. We could scarcely think. Once I had a
vision of those huddled figures on the mats, and wondered if the house
was still standing, and once I thought of Molly, and hoped she was saying
a prayer for me. Then all thought was wiped out as, with a shaking of
the very cliff, the surf came racing into the lagoon, sending the spray
up fifty feet, and drenching us where we lay.
“The piano!” Cartwright shouted, struggling to get up. Simmons hauled
him down, crying to him that it was no use to think of the piano.
Cartwright staved quiet a moment till another of those uncanny silences
fell.
“Now we can go down,” Cartwright said pleadingly. “I can’t lose my
chance of happiness again. The piano—”
The words died on his lips. Through the thunder of the surf came a
single long-drawn note, clear and unearthly sweet.
“B flat,” I said, scarcely knowing that I spoke. Cartwright gave a wild
laugh.
“You hear it? The voice from the reefs. Why doesn’t Lulukuila answer?”
Well, I can only tell you what happened next, and you may believe it or
not. From below us there came another note, making a perfect octave.
Never before or since have I heard anything so exquisite or so horrible.
Then there was a hideous discord—and silence.
“Lulukuila!” Cartwright cried. “She is taking it from me—my only chance
of happiness—”
And before we could stop him he was gone.
We tried to follow him, but the wind caught us again at the edge of the
ridge. I’d have been over and lost if it hadn’t been for Simmons. I
think I must have fainted from the shock of it. There’s a blank about
there, though the rest of the night seemed centuries long.
The wind stopped at sunrise, and we made our way home along the ridge,
looking down on a beach swept clean of every human mark, pavilion, grove,
native huts and all. The house was still standing, but in a wreck of
fallen branches and torn lianas. Scared servants and ashen-faced women
and children came out to meet us, and began asking for their master.
Simmons, granite faced as ever, did not answer them, but pushed on down
to the beach.
Cartwright had come home ahead of us. He was lying on the shore,
unscarred except for a faint streak of blue across one temple. He looked
beautiful as some sleeping creature of the sea. The wreck of the piano
was just above him. Simmons’ composure gave way when he saw that.
“You’ve broken the thing he loved, and you’ve killed him, too. I hope
you’re satisfied at last!” he snarled, shaking his fist at the lagoon. I
wondered if he was talking to Lulukuila. It was a terrifying
outburst—from a man like Simmons.
Next morning they came over from Taku to look for us. The sea was
smiling as ever, and the little launch came dancing over the rose and
amethyst water as if there never had been a storm to ruffle it. I caught
sight of Molly first, then I noticed another woman, sitting between her
and Davidson. As she leaned forward to search the shore I was startled
with the likeness of her face to Cartwright’s. Yet there was a
difference. Her beauty was gracious and human, and—well, comfortable is
the only word I can think of for it.
As they came near the beach she saw just Simmons and me and the staring
natives. She cried out sharply and swayed a little. I saw Davidson put
his arm out as if he would shield her from a blow. Faithful fellow,
Davidson, and he got his reward at last.
It was Cartwright’s Charlotte, and Cartwright was not there to meet her.
Lulukuila had seen to that.
_Margaret Adelaide Wilson_.