On returning home, they passed close to their own village which
seemed unusually noisy.
Half-way across the Settlement John came to meet them in charge of
Naomi, the shining light among Jellybrand's converts. John was armed
to the teeth, a shaped coco-nut husk upon his head and a wooden spear
in his hands.
"Mother," he called out, on sighting them, "there was a deaded man
took out of one kennel, only they have tooken him away to Heaven now
and everybody are very angry about it."
"You appear to have been seeing life during our absence, John," said
Cyprian, as Ferlie questioned Naomi.
"One man make himself dead," that lady explained pleasantly.
"'Nother village angry with his family."
The Settlement, when they reached it, appeared also, to be on the
defensive. Little Jellybrand, bustling about with a shot-gun, which
Cyprian instinctively recognized as a more dangerous weapon to its
owner than to anything he aimed it at, explained that James Snook
had, indeed, hanged himself from one of the stilts of his hut, having
had trouble of some sort with his family while not in particularly
good health. One of his sons had, lately, caught an evil spirit and
launched it triumphantly on the deep in a small model canoe. The
canoe landed its invisible occupant near the hut of an enemy's
village and, hence, these furious preparations to meet a revengeful
raid.
Three members of the Mission village's aristocracy, Scarecrow,
Kingfisher and Captain Johnson, one of whom wore a bowler hat, green
with age, and another, a child's tam-o'-shanter, legacies both of
passing traders, had painted their faces scarlet and prepared
quarter-staves dipped in pig's blood. Helmets of coco-nut husk were
being rapidly distributed.
"W-we have these troubles periodically, w-would you believe it?" said
Jellybrand. "There is no cause for alarm, but one has to show that
the Mission is quite able to defend itself, should the raiders come
on here. I am shutting up all my children in the Mission School and
shall patrol outside it to-night w-with a loaded weapon."
He waved his gun valiantly at Cyprian and then let it off
accidentally within a yard of Friend-of-England, who despite his
elephantiasis, leapt lightly into the air.
"That ought to teach them to keep away from a loaded gun," the
Defender of the Young remarked placidly, having ascertained that no
one had received a pellet in the back.
"Young Brown has been detailed off to parade your house to-night, Mr.
Sterne, and he will rouse you if your assistance is required."
Young Brown, a veteran of sixty, roused nothing but Cyprian's bitter
enmity by the tumult of his snoring outside the bathroom door.
Luckily, the quarrel petered out in the village, where there was
enough noise to attract every ghost in the cemetery, and as one party
was getting the worst of a species of warfare worthy of Tweedledum
and Tweedledee, the women interfered and separated the combatants
with dahs. Whereupon, all broken fingers were displayed and
bandaged, and the enemy remained on to feast with the raided party,
returning peacefully homewards after a couple of days.
"Mr. Toms," the Government agent of doubtful nationality, made a note
in his diary that, "James Snook, elder and landowner of Car Nicobar,
committed suicide by hanging himself, owing to domestic troubles with
his children, whom his ghost will, no doubt, exceedingly trouble."
* * * * * *
A few days later, the padre fell upon Ferlie and the children when
they were sunning themselves in a sand-pit, clad in sea-weed, bathing
costumes and shells. He, literally, fell upon them sliding down the
soft slope and subsiding gracefully into Ferlie's lap, hitting
Cyprian en route, a swinging blow with the cord of what the latter
called the "wedding garment." He asked them if they would care to
drive with him into the interior to view a moonlight festival that
night. He made the suggestion rather wistfully as though aware that
these twain needed no outside excitement to keep them interested in
one another.
Ferlie, her conscience pricking, tendered him radiant thanks. After
his departure Cyprian demurred.
"It's a track through the jungle where a Red Indian would knock his
shins every five minutes, and if the blighter intends driving us out
behind Slippery Sam at night, I prophesy that you will spend the
small hours of the morning sitting in a cactus hedge and consigning
him elsewhere."
Slippery Sam, a one-eyed horse, by whose exertions the padre proudly
made his rounds, was nearly as great a danger to the community as his
shot-gun.
Jellybrand had bought him, cheap, of a trader because his one eye,
making him nervous, he was a consistent kicker.
However, though there happened to be a brilliant moon which silvered
the palms and blackened their shadows to thick treacley pools,
Slippery Sam, with Ferlie behind the driver and Cyprian perched on
the back seat of the rocking tonga, appeared that evening to be in
spiritual rather than spirited mood.
"He's really a very nice horse," Jellybrand's mild accents assured
them, "and w-would you believe it?--he loves ripe coco-nuts."
"I saw you picking yours to-day, Padre," said Ferlie. "What do you
expect to make off your plantation?"
He sighed. "It's only an experiment of mine. I am so anxious to
have a chancel lamp. One that burns perpetually, you know. My Party
is coming on so at Home. All the Anglo-Catholic churches have them,
I am told. It is so unfortunate that I can only afford a night-light
in a glass. I have pasted red paper over the glass, as you have
probably noticed. It isn't altogether impressive as a substitute,
but it pleases the children."
"Of whom you are the most childish," thought Cyprian; but aloud he
said, "do you seriously think that, if your Mission left the natives
in peace for one year, there would be a Christian left in the islands
at the end of that time?"
"The Lord is mindful of His own," returned Jellybrand reproachfully.
"One puts one's trust in the rising generation. But the mothers
_will_ hide the children at census times, lest the Government spirit
them away to school!"
"Wise women!" muttered Cyprian; but the speaker, unhearing, went on:
"I have had twelve babies born this year and baptized them all.
Twelve among the Converted! It is God's will to provide the
children."
"You can call it that if you like," Cyprian admitted. And Ferlie,
uncertain that he was going to behave well throughout the drive,
plunged into a dissertation on sweet potatoes.
Another mile and a half and the road became exciting enough for
private prayer. All at once, a darksome pit yawning at the feet of
Slippery Sam, he freed himself of his master's mild restraint by a
coolly-timed kick at a vital piece of harness where he had been led
by knowledge of Nicobarese psychology to expect the feeble
co-operation of a bit of frayed string with his leather shackles, and
proceeded to crop by the wayside.
"I am afraid we will have to get out," regretted the padre's dulcet
tones.
From a hedge that was, luckily, not cactus, Ferlie succumbed to the
retort courteous.
"I am out," she said.
No word came from Cyprian, and she was just wondering whether one of
them ought not to be lowered, like Sinbad, into the pit in search of
his mangled bones, when an angry pattering announced his arrival from
the dark behind them.
"Why, where did we shed you?" in amazement.
"Half a mile back," he stormed. "I howled like a maniac, but you
were engrossed in invoking your patron saint, and the padre, Slippery
Sam."
They continued their way on foot down paths wherein they feared much
evil, between patches of moonlight, bursting brightly enough through
the interlacing branches to have enabled them to read a letter.
Weird sounds guided them to a ring of scantily-clad revellers round a
bonfire and a young lady, attired in rings of silver wire which
crawled up her legs and arms, impeding free movement.
The Chief of the family, who introduced himself as "Captain Tin
Belly," told them that the girl was _mafai_ or bewitched, and there
to be fêted. She had been very ill and was inspired by convalescence
to prophesy on the heels of an extraordinary dream.
Thus, also, were witch-doctors licensed, but if the aspirant to that
honour was, later, doomed a failure he was again relegated to private
life.
Mr. Toms, who had arrived at the festivities, proved a useful
interpreter.
"This lady was cured by English prescription," he told Ferlie. "That
which you doubtless use, when Eno's Salts are added to water with
some turpentine and powdered camphor. They gave twice a day for
belly-ache."
Wild chanting heralded another procession from a neighbouring
village, the members of which beat a pig-skin drum and bore aloft the
corpse of a sacrificial pig, while indignant squealing from the rear
betrayed the whereabouts of more pigs, bound for burnt offering.
The great dance of the evening was executed to hand-clapping,
accompanied by a low monotone introducing here and there odd English
phrases, culled from the Converted, in compliment to the foreigners
present.
"Where-is-my-hat-safe-in-the-arms-of-Jesus-give-
him-more-pig-God-save-the-King," one man sang piously in passing
Ferlie.
"Is Delilah the _hors d'[oe]uvre_ or only the dessert?" asked
Cyprian, watching the hoisting of the Amazon in silver armour to an
honourable situation beside the dead pig.
Mr. Toms announced that she would now heal people by her touch and
the art of shampooing.
"Plenty little cannibalism in the islands," he reassured them
cheerfully. "When discovered in the past, on Camorta Island, for
secret rites, it very punishable. The Nicobarese a simple people and
a musical."
"One had guessed as much," said Cyprian, putting his hands to his
ears as the chorus grew deafening.
Captain Tin Belly presented them each with a plaited palm-leaf box
from a shrine bristling with votive bananas. The boxes were not the
same size and the discovery seemed to worry him; he measured them
several times in the faint expectation that one would grow in the
process.
On the way home, with Slippery Sam consistently practising the
double-shuffle, Ferlie asked: "Padre, do you never grow tired of
smiling at them and appreciating their customs, and settling their
infantile disputes? Don't you often give up hope?"
His pathetic pink-rimmed brown eyes were glorious with vision as he
answered: "I never grow tired of praying for them; and then one hopes
again."
As Cyprian said afterwards to Ferlie, "One can hypnotise oneself into
any state of semi-imbecility through prayer."
He remained restlessly convinced that whether or no the islands were
going to bring him any closer to Ferlie's visions they were not going
to bring him any closer to her God.
Nor to the God of the Reverend Gabriel Jellybrand.
* * * * * *
An incident which occurred during the following week seemed to
confirm that impression.
Ferlie never forgot that evening; the last which spelt peace for them
for many a long day.
The children had built a camp-fire on the edge of the jungle; not for
warmth, but because it was a good way to dry the wet things of
juvenile adventurers who had been assisting at fish-spearing or
canoe-racing throughout the day.
Mr. Toms and Friend-of-England would often join them in the murmuring
twilight and the elder folk drew near also, when he and the old
Nicobarese spun little stories and island legends for John's benefit.
The favourite, related again on this particular occasion, was the
story of Shoan and the Mermaid.
It had, originally, been invented by the traveller, De Roepstoff, who
knew that the cachelot lived in Nicobarese waters and that, according
to the natives, the mermaid is the whale's daughter. De Roepstoff,
re-visiting the islands years later, had the tale re-told him as one
of their own.
Mr. Toms related it now in English, periodically assisted by
Friend-of-England in Nicobarese.
"Come all Nicobarese and foreigners, old and young, men and women,
boys and girls, youths and maidens, and listen to a story.
"There was formerly a man by the name of Arang, whose wife had borne
(him) three sons and three daughters. He made himself a nice house
and possessed much property. One day he went out on the sea with his
eldest son, called Shoan, and wanted to fish with hook and line.
"Strong wind got up and heavy sea sprung up. Then it happened that
one of the outriggers of the canoe broke and both sank into the sea.
"Arang was drowned, but the boy crawled up on the back of the canoe
and cried: "'What shall I do? My father is dead; what am I to do?'
"Whish! It is the whale arriving.
"'Why are you crying, child?'
"'Oh, my father is dead; I cannot survive; how shall I get home?
(lit.: 'there is no road.') What am I to do? My father is dead.'
"'Sit down on my back. I know the road,' said the whale.
"'Oh no, I will not,' said the boy. 'I am afraid. I do not know the
road as my father is dead.'
"But after a while Shoan did sit on the back of the whale.
"Whish! Off they went, quickly, swiftly! The whale is the chief of
the sea. At sight all got afraid of him.
"The flying fish flew in all directions; the turtle dived down
suddenly; the shark sank down (below) his fin; the sea-snake dug
himself into the sand; the ilu danced along the sea; the dugong
hugged her young one; the dolphins fled, for they were afraid of the
whale.
"Thus (sped) the two. By and by, they arrived at the country of the
whale. It was a big domed house. The walls were of red coral, the
steps were made of tridachua.
"In the house they saw the daughter of the whale, whose name was Giri.
"'Do you like this boy?' said the whale.
"'All right, let him stay,' said Giri.
"'Do you like to stay, Shoan?'
"'I am willing to stay here.'
"Then Shoan became the servant of Giri.
"Giri's face was like that of a woman; below she was shaped like a
fish-tail; her breast was the colour of mother-o'-pearl; her back was
like gold; her eyes were like stars; her hair like seaweed.
"She said to Shoan, 'What work do you do?'
"'I collect coco-nuts in the jungle.'
"'Never mind, we have no coco-nuts, but what other work can you do?"
"'I can make boats.'
"'We do not want boats, (but) what other work do you know?'
"'I know how to spear fish.'
"'Don't! You must not do it, (for) we love the fish. My father is a
chief among the fish. Never mind; comb my hair.'
"Shoan remained. He combed her hair. They (used) to joke together,
and they married.
"Said Shoan: 'How is it, wife, that you do not possess a
looking-glass, although your face is so nice?'
"'I want a looking-glass; look out for one.'
"'In my parents' house in the village there is one looking-glass
(but) I do not know the road.'
"'Never mind! I know the road; sit on my back and I will bring you
near the land. I cannot walk in your country but do (I pray you)
return quickly.'
"Then Shoan returned to the village. He came to (lit.: "saw") his
father's house.
"'Who is there?' said his mother.
"'It is I, Shoan.'
"'No (you are not). Shoan died with his father on the sea.'
"'Look at my face. I am Shoan, your son.'
"He came up into the house. When they heard (about it) all the
people (of the village) came. They asked many questions and Shoan
answered. He told the story about the whale, and the story of his
marriage with Giri. The people laughed and said he was telling lies.
Shoan got so angry. He ran away with the looking-glass. The people
went after him and speared him, and thus killed Shoan.
"Giri stops in the sea near the coral banks, and she sings and calls.
In the night, when the moon is high, fishermen hear a sound like
singing and crying of a woman. They ask other people (about it) and
wonder, for they do not know (about) Giri. Giri will not return
alone (that is why) she sings and calls out, 'Come (back), Shoan!
Come back, Shoan....'"
Ferlie used to love to think she could hear the voice of Giri, crying
loudest when the nights were happiest, since the Grey Lady of Sorrow
loves best to walk in quiet places which have once known laughter and
love.
She and Cyprian lingered after the tale was finished and the children
in bed, dreamily feeding the red heap of dying logs with grass and
leaves and rousing little spurts of angry blue flame.
To them came Jellybrand to crouch, rather exhaustedly Ferlie thought,
in the violet shadow; his chin thrust forward; his thin shoulders
hunched.
"It is difficult," he said presently, "to know quite how to act when
immorality creeps unexpectedly into my small garden."
Cyprian glanced up at him sharply, but his ferrety eyes were
fanatically searching the embers for an answer to the question
troubling him.
"The Nicobarese are really a moral people. The w-women have equal
rights w-with the men; in fact, being so necessary for the
continuance of the race, they are really considered more valuable
than the men. And, though among the Unconverted, a divorce can
easily be arranged by the co-respondent's paying the injured husband
a fine of pigs, one seldom hears of such a disastrous necessity."
There was a pause, during which Ferlie cleared her throat nervously.
Then Cyprian sat upright. "And by this you are leading up to tell
us, Padre...?"
"That there is a couple of professing Christians, living in sin in
the midst of the Mission," said Jellybrand dejectedly.
It was out, and Ferlie sighed a little tired sigh. So, even here,
they were to meet with criticism. She was past interesting herself
as to how he had guessed. She hoped Cyprian would be patient with
him. But Cyprian, blinking rapidly in a manner that foreboded battle
answered: "I should have thought that what you may call 'living in
sin' was nobody's business but their own."
Little Jellybrand looked his amazement at this unsympathetic
attitude, from one to the other.
"How can it not be my business?" he asked in a hurt voice. "I am
here to see that they set a good example to one another. And these
were two of my own children. I baptized them with my own hands."
This naïve admission drew a choking laugh from Ferlie. As the padre
turned his astonished face towards her Cyprian exclaimed impatiently:
"Good Lord, man! Are you referring to two of the natives?"
"Who else could I be referring to?"
Ferlie, with a final gulp of relief, rushed to the rescue. "It's all
right, Padre. We were stupid. Please tell us more."
Encouraged again, he confessed that he was having great trouble with
two actual communicants in the Mission--Naomi and Kingfisher.
Naomi was, virtually, the wife of Young Brown. She had played her
star part in the most complete Wedding Mass, decked out in the
scarlet robes of the Mission calico, two years ago, amid the general
rejoicings of a family much enriched by Young Brown's substantial
dowry of pigs and pandanas. The pair had no children, and, a
twelve-month later, Kingfisher, who had been showing marked interest
in the Bible Class regularly attended by the young wife, was brought
forward by her for enrolment in the True Fold.
The toiling priest had thanked Heaven before the paper swathed
night-light for this unexpected windfall in addition to the slow
fruits of his labours.
Some months after the baptism Naomi produced a son whom Young Brown's
common-sense did not permit him to regard as an answer to prayer,
and, on his refusal to lay claim to the child, Naomi and Kingfisher
had boldly taken unto themselves a hut on the outskirts of the
Settlement, whence neither consistent appeals to their better nature
nor the threat of excommunication could dislodge them.
"This is my man," was all Naomi had to say about it. And confronted
with the Woman's Credo her Father-in-God found himself helpless.
"The villagers consider that I ought to be able to put a curse on
them," he complained worriedly. "The Mission is losing prestige by
my very patience and I fear a great deal of harm may be done to the
Cause. I am wondering whether I should appeal to the Chief
Commissioner at Port Blair, since the Nicobars, being under his
jurisdiction as well as the Andamans, he would be able to have the
couple tried and sentenced for bigamy."
Cyprian took his head in his hands.
"Oh, my hat!" he groaned. "If I were the Chief Commissioner, Padre,
I would have you locked up for a dangerous lunatic. Living in sin!
Had they ever heard the word before you taught it them? By what
authority do you keep a healthy young female animal tied, for
sentimental reasons of your own introduction here, to a man who is
incapable of giving her a child? Anyone sane would tell you that the
Law was made for man and not man for the Law. Let the poor
unfortunates alone, for God's sake."
Painfully, Jellybrand replied to him.
"There was a Man whom many accounted insane, but Him only do I serve
and from Him do I take my authority. And He said: 'Thou shalt not
commit adultery'."
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Cyprian threw a stone shatteringly into the fire. It lay there
unaffected by the ruin of hot ashes.
"These people are not Jews any more than we are. Why should any of
us follow the letter of the Jewish Law?"
"Hear how He amplified it to the multitude upon the mountain who were
not Jews," said the Padre, and a hectic spot burnt on each cheek-bone
as he recited: "'Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time,
thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you that whosoever
looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with
her already in his heart.... But I say unto you, that whosoever
shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
committeth adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced
committeth adultery.'"
Cyprian rose disturbingly, trampling the smouldering branches under
his feet and kicking the stone back into the cool dewy forest.
"I am going to bed," he said. "I prefer logic to theology. And my
logical conclusion is that anyone who applies the word 'sin' to these
folks would be quite prepared to try a tiger before twelve good men
and true, and hang him, for devouring a human intruder in his jungle."
They heard his footsteps mounting the wooden stairs of the bungalow
blurred black against a starry horizon. From the distance stole the
sound of breakers on the coral reefs; the children's hammocks were
just visible under an ingenious canopy of mosquito-netting.
"And will you also go away?"
The question was asked more to himself than to Ferlie, but she
replied to it gently; she, who hated hypocrisy from the depths of a
soul which felt plunged into it.
"No, Padre. I understand what you feel. I belong to a Church much
criticized for its adamant attitude towards such logic as is
Cyprian's."
"You cannot think," he told her in a broken voice, "w-what it has
meant to me to have you two here. Merely to w-watch you both makes
me less lonely. It used to be my dream, before I vowed myself to
celibacy, that one day a w-woman might stand to me, even me, in the
same relationship that you stand to him. I could be tempted to pray
for it, even now."
She shivered slightly.
"And God would reply that you know not what you ask," she said, so
low that he did not catch the words, and went on speaking: "But
sometimes I have thought that, in spite of the perfect unity between
you, w-which turns this self-chosen isolation into an Utopia of
contentment, there is yet something troubling you; something deep and
painful. Forgive me if I am mistaken. Living apart, as I do--I have
deliberately chosen Mission work, you know, though Colonel Maddock
offered to help me to a Living--one's instincts become sharpened,
like a dog's when someone it knows is in trouble."
Then Ferlie made a resolve she would have found impossible to justify
but, in after-life, found it impossible to regret. Peter had always
condemned her as doctrinally unsound, and wondered that the Church
could not see it.
Perhaps the Church did see it but was wiser than Peter in its utterly
trained patience.
Poor Cyprian, who, in these lost islands, could not escape the
pursuit of the Men in Black.
* * * * * *
Every Saturday evening the communicants of the toy church arrived in
a complacent body, turn-about to kneel under the struggling
night-light and receive mild directions from their harassed shepherd,
balanced on the harmonium stool behind a yard of green baize, as to
the speedy restoration of unlawfully-acquired coco-nuts and pigs
illicitly retained in huts to which they did not belong. Most
defrauded neighbours could be certain of recovering the fowl that was
lost, before the metal bell was jerked by Young Brown for Sunday Mass.
That Ferlie should contemplate lending herself to such a farce acted
as the final blister on Cyprian's already irritated spirit. Having
divulged her intention, he let fall a few dangerous remarks; quite
clever remarks most of them. She only turned on him the straight
grey look he was learning to accept as impervious to outside
influence.
"I understand that you were going to preserve an open mind on all
these subjects with a view to embracing my ideas?"
"How does this affect your ideas, Cyprian?"
"I fail to see what support you can expect from that religious maniac
in our affairs."
"I am not requiring either his support or his advice over _our_
affairs."
"In the name of Heaven what are you requiring from him?"
"If you did not require it yourself--in the name of Heaven--you would
know."
"Ferlie, will you promise to resist the temptation to confide in him,
just because he wears a last century's fashion in angelic uniform?"
His tone roused her to real anger.
"There are things which you are not at liberty to say to me. Every
human soul knows of shadowed places within its circle which even the
angels dare not enter."
He got up, took some native fishing-tackle off the window-sill and
made for the door.
"I won't intrude again. If you'll not be needing the boat to-day for
the children, I suppose you can have no objection if I take
Kingfisher, my fellow-sinner, and go fishing."
She saw the pair of them from her window, plunging into the jungle,
while she was washing Thu Daw.
The little chap was beginning to say whole sentences in English,
though he seldom honoured anybody but John with his conversation.
Drearily, Ferlie blamed herself for the reticence which had prevented
her from attempting to make clear her reasons for admitting territory
from which all but Divine Love must be locked out. She was steadied
by that conviction. And Cyprian would come back. She must try and
satisfy him before seeking satisfaction anywhere herself.