THE next day Hawahee walked into the space of Sestrina’s palm-sheltered
kitchen, and said: “Sestra, I have made these things for you.” Sestrina
gazed in surprise and delight on the delicate articles which the
Hawaiian had placed on her wickerwork table. For Hawahee had, with great
patience and artistic toil, weaved a beautiful tappa bodice and
tasselled rami (native skirt) for her, and had also plaited pretty
sandals for her feet. She examined the primitive, but picturesque,
garments with great delight. The old skirt which she had made from the
bundle of tablecloths which had been found in the _Belle Isle’s_ cuddy
was very much tattered, and there was no more cloth left.
“Aloah, oh, Hawahee, ’tis good of you,” she said, as she stooped forward
and picked up a beautifully plaited pair of sandals. “Why, you have made
two pairs of sandals!”
Hawahee, who had been standing near with smiling face over the girl’s
delight, gave a startled jump forward and snatched the second pair of
sandals from her hands, as though he had not intended the second pair
for her, and had placed them in the parcel by mistake. Sestrina gazed in
wonder. Not once in all the years of their castaway life had she seen
Hawahee look so worried and confused. “Why had he taken the second pair
of sandals from her like that? Why look so shamefaced, so worried, as he
stood there with his head bowed as though in guilt, and then slipped the
sandals into the folds of his native jerkin? If the sandals were not
meant for her feet, who was her rival on that uninhabited isle, where
only she and Hawahee dwelt? They could not be meant for Pelé, for the
goddess had feet four times the size of her own.” And as Sestrina stood
wondering, Hawahee stalked away, went across the small slope and entered
his vine-covered homestead.
“How foolish of me. He means to present them to me some other day, when
these are worn out,” Sestrina murmured, as she gazed in delight on the
tiny, delicately weaved sandals which she still held in her hand.
Just before sunset on that same day, Sestrina came back from her swim in
the lagoon and stood before Hawahee, who at once stopped chopping
firewood and gazed upon her. A deep light shone in Sestrina’s eyes as
she stood before the Hawaiian arrayed in the tappa bodice, rami and
sandals.
On seeing the light in the girl’s eyes Hawahee’s eyes also brightened,
the lines of care at once smoothed from his brow. The next moment
Sestrina blushed deeply and realised, for the first time, that, however
hard a woman strives to conceal the secret thoughts of her heart, her
eyes must give her away.
“I have placed the things on, you see, Hawahee,” she murmured, as she
dropped her glance and gazed down at her sandalled feet.
“Thou hast grown more beautiful than I dreamed, Sestra,” said Hawahee,
as he gazed on the perfect symmetry of his lone companion’s form. True
enough the loose picturesque bodice, short-sleeved and low in the
shoulders and again below the throat’s fullness, and the skirt, also,
had been artfully devised so that the beauty of her figure should please
Hawahee’s eyes. The flush of health, the oval, dimpled face, the coral
red lips and lustrous eyes might well have brought the light of
admiration to the eyes of men placed in less loneliness than that which
passed over the Hawaiian’s solitary days. Perhaps it was the glory of
Sestrina’s mass of hair that made her look like some wonderful picture
that represented the zenith of woman’s physical loveliness. But the
perfect beauty of Sestrina gleamed in the earnest, spiritual light of
her eyes, the expression on the tremulous mouth, and the calm pure brow.
It was a lovely face. The Fates seemed to have meditated deeply over her
soul’s welfare when they fashioned that faultless face and remembered
all that destiny had planned, and the temptation that would beset her
path. As she stood there, the winds tossed her disordered hair till the
tresses fell in confusion over her face, hiding her own confusion as
they floated out and went rippling down far below her waist. A great
fire was burning in the Hawaiian’s eyes as he continued to gaze upon
her. Sestrina returned the gaze in a steady glance. She began to see how
the man felt for her. He put forth his hand, and taking her soft fingers
in his own placed them near his lips, then immediately dropped her hand
again. It was a long, long time since he had touched her; for though she
had often approached him, he had ever warned her of the danger she ran.
For though the leper-spot had almost healed, he knew the dreadful
scourge lurked in his body.
“Ah, wahine, I thank the gods for giving such a one as you to dwell here
with me in my sorrow,” murmured Hawahee as he sighed and stared seaward.
“Then, why have you placed the flag out again? Do you want me to leave
you for ever?” queried Sestrina as she hung her head, pleased to say
something as the Hawaiian’s glowing eyes once more stared upon her.
Sestrina had referred to the tappa-cloth signal flag which had flown for
years from the dead palm top out on the promontory’s edge. For Sestrina,
acting on a sudden impulse, had a week before, run out to the
promontory’s edge and climbing the palm had taken the flag down!
“No, I would not lose thee, beloved Sestra; but still, I feel worried
and much sad in the thought of the day which must come—when I am not
here!”
“Not here!” said Sestrina, great alarm in her voice.
“The gods may take me, wahine. For thou as well as they know that the
palms grow on and the seas roll for ever, but man departs.” So saying,
Hawahee sighed deeply and broke a piece of firewood on his knee. Then
continuing, he said: “Wahine, thou art a woman and I a man, and your
beauty sears my heart with thoughts that bring grief to the soul when I
hear the mouths of the gods warn me from their temple in the valley as I
lie sleepless in the night. And, Sestra, I see that too in your eyes
which tells me that I may speak this way to you.”
Sestrina listened with bowed head. She knew what the Hawaiian meant. And
so, through the innocence and natural modesty of her life and her deep
reverence for Atua, Pelé and Kauhilo, she was enabled to calmly take the
Hawaiian’s hand and say: “Dear Hawahee, we will kneel together and pray
deeply before the shell-altars asking that we may be made strong in the
hour of temptation.” Then, as she leaned forward and examined a small
blue flower that grew by the kitchen door, she said in a tremulous,
hesitating voice: “I too, at times, feel that thou art more than a dear
brother to me. And I say, O Hawahee, this feeling troubles me, since I
know it is the love of the flesh and not of the soul.”
“Since ’tis only love of the flesh and not of the soul, I will leave
thee and attend to the yam patch,” said Hawahee with a catch in his
throat. Then he strode away with deep sadness in his heart.
Sestrina gazed tenderly after him. Then she sat down by her kitchen door
and wept.
In a little while Sestrina rose and wandered down to the shore. As she
stood by the tropic, silent sea, her mind went back, far away into the
past. Once more she looked fondly into the memory of eyes that had long
years ago fired her girlish mind with romantic dreams and feverish
delight. It was a strange, deep, solemn memory that came to the girl.
The years of hopeless longing had imparadised her past. It was as though
sorrow and remembrance had, through some spiritual alchemy of the mind,
transmuted her memory of other days till now her past sparkled as the
spiritual light of carbon shines when the forces of nature have changed
it to the diamond’s light divine. It was the light never seen on sea or
land, and as vivid to Sestrina as the imaginative flash of a great
poet’s mind when he fancies he remembers the old stars that shone over
the primeval seas before creation. Sestrina not only possessed this
poetic imagination, but she also could hear the whisperings of her own
thoughts ere they left her and faded like exiled music into the spaces
around her!
Through living for years under the magnetic, spiritual fervour of
Hawahee’s weird personality, Sestrina’s mind had gradually reflected,
caught the weird light, the wonderful spiritual telepathy which enabled
the Hawaiian castaway to converse with her in her sleep, as he lay alone
in his silent hut beyond the yam patch!
For some time past, Sestrina had awakened and listened in fright and
wondered whether she dreamed; for she could hear mysterious,
unfathomable, hidden voices, and instinctively seemed to know that they
were deep thoughts haunting Hawahee’s mind as he dreamed in his silent
hut over the slope. From those things which Hawahee said to her at
times, she knew he had such power, but it was a revelation to her to
find that she too possessed so wonderful a gift. It had worried her mind
at first. She put the cause down to her own religious fervour and the
long years of listening to the murmuring shells of the ocean and the
deep bass voices of Kauhilo, Atua and Pelé. Sometimes she would stand on
the shore and dream till a strange feeling seemed to exalt her soul,
some ecstasy of melancholy that made her feel a wondrous kinship with
the universe around her. At such moments she would gaze seaward and
dreaming, fancy that her meditations had strangely taken wing! And,
incredible as it may seem, the hovering sea-birds, far out over the
ocean, would suddenly speed away as though something unseen had suddenly
touched their wings! Yes, out there on the vast ocean solitude! It can
only be supposed that in some simple, but mysterious, unexplainable way,
the girl’s yearning, passionate thoughts really _did_ take shape, and in
spiritual air-waves left her soul and flew away, went roaming the seas
and passed through the dim ocean horizons of her solitary isle to seek
and speak to those whom she had loved in the half-forgotten past.
And so Sestrina was not greatly surprised when Hawahee came back, after
his sudden departure for the yam patch, and said: “Who is this man who
haunts your dreams so much by night, Sestra, he whose eyes dwell in the
bosom of your imagination, aye, so deeply that the gleam sears my lonely
soul like fire?”
Sestrina, who had often lain on her lonely couch and listened with
unbounded astonishment to the soft passionate murmurings of Hawahee’s
sleepless nights, made no reply, but hung her head like a child ashamed.
“Tell me, Sestra. Though I have asked the gods to keep my deeper
thoughts from you, they have surely let you hear those voiceless words
that tell of my love, all that my sorrowing soul feels for you.”
Then Sestrina, gazed down at her new sandals, and said: “Sometimes I
have heard strange voices in the night that told me strange things, and
these voices frighten me; what does it all mean, Hawahee?”
“What hast thou heard, O Sestra mine?” said Hawahee as he too turned his
face away and sighed.
And then Sestrina, seeing the man’s sorrowful expression, said with the
brevity of a woman’s quick wit, “Perhaps ’tis only your prayers which I
have heard, for the winds blow soft in the night and could easily drift
stray, sad words from your lips to my ears.”
“Ah, wahine, Sestra mine,” murmured that strange, handsome Hawaiian as
he gazed steadily away from the girl as though he dare not trust himself
to gaze into the dark, unfathomable lustre of her soulful eyes.
Then once again he spoke: “Tell me, Sestra, who is he that haunts your
slumbers when the winds sigh in the palms and Pelé’s voice echoes down
the valley’s hollows?”
“He is one whom I met long years ago, one who said he loved me,” and as
Sestrina said this, she turned her eyes away, for they were full of
mist. But Hawahee had seen.
“I am a leper, the hated of the White God’s people.” His voice was full
of bitterness. Never had Sestrina heard him speak in such a manner
before.
“Remember the gods, Pelé and Atua,” whispered Sestrina as she gazed
tenderly, helplessly on the man. As she stood there and the soft winds
caressed her tresses, blowing them about her face and over her
shoulders, the man’s eyes burned with the light of a soft, hungry fire.
Sestrina turned away for a moment and stirred the cooking cakes over the
galley fire, then she sat down on her stool, and looking straight into
Hawahee’s face, said in a petulant voice, “So you would like me to be
rescued from this isle and taken back to the great world that I have
half forgotten, eh?”
“Wahine, why say these things,” replied Hawahee, who well knew why
Sestrina spoke so. Then he looked intently into the girl’s face and said
in a mournful voice, “Ah, Sestrina, I would you were as jealous as you
imagine you are. You know well enough that I wish thee to remain on this
isle.”
“Then, why have you gone and placed the flag on the palm top again after
I went and took it down? A ship may pass, and were the flag seen, men
would surely take me away,” said Sestrina, as she dashed her coco-nut
goblet at Hawahee’s feet.
“Attend to thy dreams, and not to the flag!” said Hawahee, as he kicked
the coco-nut goblet, and behaved like an angry schoolboy. Then seeing
how foolishly they were behaving, the Hawaiian forced a smile to his
lips, and with a bitter note trembling in his voice, said: “Sestrina,
should you be taken away on a ship I could easily die. One thrust with
this knife into the heart that worries about you, and I would be at
rest.”
Sestrina gazed in consternation into Hawahee’s flashing eyes. A great
shadow fell on her heart. She well knew that Hawahee was in earnest when
he said such things. “I would sooner dwell on this isle for ever than
such an end should come to you after all your kindness to me,” she
murmured as she gazed up into the man’s face, deliberately revealing the
tears that came swiftly to her eyes.
Hawahee’s heart was thrilled with a sweet yet sad joy as Sestrina spoke.
His eyes brightened. And as Sestrina stood up and touched him softly on
the shoulder, her tresses, blown by the wind, touched his face, sending
a deep thrill through him. His voice became musical and deep with
subdued passion. “Beloved wahine, ’tis strange that I have been blind to
your wondrous beauty of the flesh till now.”
“It is,” murmured Sestrina in her embarrassment, not knowing what she
was saying at the moment. Then she smiled, and Hawahee smiled also as
the girl glanced down on her pretty sandalled feet.
“The gods will not be angry, Sestrina, if we only speak as lovers. Pelé
knoweth my heart well, and no anger would come to her heart if we
imagine only our love for one another. For I say unto thee, that the
love of the imagination is greater than the reality,” so spake Hawahee
as in the religious fervour of his soul he tried to seek comfort for his
own sad thoughts.
Sestrina, thinking that Hawahee, who spoke so nobly, might see the
passionate light that gleamed in her eyes, walked to the shade of the
small banyan tree, and said: “Hark, the great strange birds are singing
in the breadfruits, yonder.” And as Hawahee and Sestrina gazed over the
small slope by the kitchen outhouse, they saw the big crimson winged
birds, that had arrived at the isle a week before, and who ever since
had settled on the trees by their home at sunset, croaking, chanting
weird, sometimes dismal notes.
“Yes, the birds have come,” murmured Hawahee. Then he gazed softly into
Sestrina’s face, and seeing the dark rings beneath her tired eyes, he
whispered, “Sestra, sweet sister, you are tired and must go to rest.”
Then with well simulated calmness he strode slowly across the patch,
away from the loveliness that made his heart stray from the gods in the
valley. Sestrina, who had always been so neat in her domestic affairs,
forgot to wash the wooden platters and coco-nut-shell goblets ere she
retired into her primitive chamber. It was a neatly furnished chamber
that Hawahee had built and arranged for her. Long ago they had pulled
the first frail shelter down. The couch was made of well dried wood and
fastened with strong sennet. The bed mattress was made of tappa-cloth
and stuffed with the softest seaweed. On the wall were one or two
pictures which had been saved from the wreck. Just over her bed hung the
faded photographs of her mother and the Catholic priest, Père Chaco,
which she had taken from the palace in her hurried flight from
Port-au-Prince ten years before.
For a long time Sestrina could not sleep. Womanhood had given birth to
strange thoughts in her worried mind. “Had not Hawahee been a noble
friend through the long years of sorrow?” And as she reflected, she felt
anger for the gods enter her heart that they should have a deeper place
in Hawahee’s heart than she appeared to have. Then, again, she
remembered, and sighed over her deepest dreams. “Why not give her love
to Hawahee and make him happy? What had the gods done for him or for
her? What mattered anything in that terrible isolation of an isle set in
apparently endless seas?” And as the castaway girl dreamed on, the winds
swept up the shore and all the palms resounded as though with one voice.
Again she can hear the moaning of the shells in the valley. Once more
the terror of superstition seizes her heart. “O Pelé! Atua! Kauhilo!
forgive me for such thoughts,” she cried.
And as the music of the winds soothed her soul, slumber touched her
eyes, and she stole off into those isles of troubled dreams that are
washed by the lulling, soundless seas of sleep.