“THE shell-gods moan in the valley, and your shadow dances!” said
Hawahee to Sestrina a few days after his midnight visit to her.
What do you mean, Hawahee?” said Sestrina as she gazed long and
earnestly at her solitary companion. A strange look, as though of
fright, was in his eyes. His handsome face was pallid. Sestrina took his
hand. He made no sign that she risked contagion by doing so, but stood
quite still. Then he placed one arm gently over her shoulder and said,
“Sestra, come and see, follow me.”
Sunrise was peeping over the ocean’s horizon, bathing the illimitable
miles with liquid gold; like divine thrills of soundless sound from the
bugles of eternity calling réveillé over the new day’s birth,
transcendent hues, rich harmonics of colour, swept, thrilled with
unheard music, the infinite horizons of the sailless seas. “How
beautiful breathe the gods when Pelé’s eyes stare from the east,”
whispered Sestrina as she stared from the hill-top, and like some
goddess with an imaginary goblet in her outstretched hand, dipped it
into the golden foams of the sunrise, and drank it with her lips and
eyes!
“’Tis the great Atua’s hand painting the skyline of the new day with the
colours of the old sunsets,” said Hawahee as he too turned and gazed on
the ocean’s eastern skyline. Then they both turned away, and walking
beneath the breadfruits, passed down the little slope that led into the
deep leafy glooms of the valley.
As they approached the temple they heard the shell-organ moaning soft
and low, Lydian strains and mournful monotones, some as faint as the
murmurs of a sea-shell.
As they stood within a few feet of the pagan temple, Hawahee said:
“Look, Sestra, art thou not beautiful as thy shadow dances?” As Hawahee
spoke he pointed towards the shades of the mighty buttressed banyan that
stood just to the left side of the temple.
“I can see nothing,” said Sestrina as she gazed in astonishment in the
direction where Hawahee declared he saw the figure of a beautiful woman
dancing—her own shadow—so he said.
Sestrina stared again. She could only see a moulting, dilapidated, large
grey and red-winged parrot calmly preening its feathers as every now and
again it gazed curiously at them from its high perch. Hawahee gave a
startled look. He seemed to have suddenly come to his senses; for he
looked round quickly and said, “’Tis only fancy, come away! come away!”
He almost pulled Sestrina as he beckoned her to hasten from that spot.
Slowly they both walked back, neither of them speaking one word to the
other.
This incident greatly worried Sestrina. All day long she went about her
domestic duties in an absent-minded way, reflecting deeply. “Perhaps his
mind is ill. I remember reading in books, long years ago, that men and
women become strange and have peculiar fancies—mad, I think they call
the complaint. I will go and watch him. He may harm himself through his
desire that afflicts him. Sooner than harm should come to him, I would—”
She would not allow her thoughts to go further, but seeing that the sun
was low, a great fear suddenly possessed her—she ran down the slopes to
go in search of Hawahee. Where had he been all day? she thought as she
stood on the shore. Seeing no sight of him on the isle, a terrifying
fright seized her heart. For the first time during the long years, a
faint realisation of how she would feel were she left perfectly alone on
the isle came to her. In her new terror she put forth her hands and
screamed as though in appeal to the dumb, bright sky: “Hawahee! Hawahee!
Where are you? Come to me, Sestra calls you!”
Inclining her head she listened eagerly, but only the faint echo of her
voice answered from the palm-clad hills. As she stared about her, she
suddenly observed a dark object moving in the jungle on the elevation
where the lepers were buried. The joy of life returned to her. Her feet,
winged with hope and fear, sped towards that small necropolis. She
suddenly stopped short. Her joy had turned to fear and wonder. What was
Hawahee doing? Why dig on that spot, just as he had dug when the lepers
died, one by one? She stared again. Sure enough, he was busily digging a
hole exactly next to the last grave which he had dug when Rohana died.
The next moment she had rushed out from the shadows.
“Why are you digging? Who has died, since ’tis only we, you and I, who
dwell on this world?” she cried, her voice full of anguish.
“I make my own grave, Sestra, surely I must die some day,” murmured
Hawahee as he suddenly stayed his hand, and rubbed his eyes as though he
had just awakened from a strange dream. Then he hung his head as though
in shame that he should cause the girl such grief.
“Come back to the palavana (homestead),” said Sestrina. And Hawahee
followed her like an obedient child.
Directly Hawahee entered his hut, he rubbed his eyes and remembered what
a strange thing he had done. Tears were in his eyes as he thought of
Sestrina’s grief. “I have brought pain to her heart, Sestra, the flower,
the light of my soul, the goddess of my soul’s misery! Surely the gods
of the valley have deserted me that they should make me feel that I was
as one dead, for did I not go and dig my grave by the side of Rohana’s
sleep, and my other comrades who dwell in Langi? ’Tis the madness of
desire, the long darkness and thirst which has made me forget I still
breathe the light.”
As the sad Hawaiian reflected, he drew up the sleeve of his jerkin so
that he might examine the leper patch on his arm. “Aue!” he exclaimed as
he gazed on his arm, astounded! “’Tis dry! and hardly to be seen! O
Atua! O Pelé! can it be that thou hast spared me? Kauhilo, blessed be
thy name, and the pure fires of thy mountains.[2] In the fires of
loveliness, O Kauhilo, thou hast surely purified my body! My body is
sweet as are the flowers of the forest, and warm as the sunlight afloat
on the seas. My desires! My desires! they shall be a blessing and not a
curse on the woman I love.”
Footnote 2:
Just as the ancient Greeks gave Cyclops and his vassals, Hephaestus,
etc, abodes in the volcanic mountains, abodes which were supposed to
be the workshops of the Olympian Gods, the Hawaiians believed that
Pelé, Kauhilo, Atua and their vassals, had their abodes in the
volcanoes of Hawaii.
In the deep gratitude which he felt towards his gods, his eyes filled
with tears. Once again he pressed the muscles of his arms, and, sure
enough, the leper patch was dry—cured! He rose to his feet. He pulled
the delicately woven tappa shirt half over his shoulders, and then gazed
on his full chest. The flesh was soft, full-looking, like a woman’s, the
throat’s perfect curves and lines full of manly grace, and of the
splendid flush of health. The physical characteristics of his race were
shown to splendid advantage by his god-like figure, the symmetry, the
muscular beauty of his body’s strength. As he stood there, framed in his
hut’s tall doorway, his fine, clear eyes gazing on his pagan stars in
gratitude, he might easily have been mistaken for some god-like figure
expressing manly beauty, wondrously done in smooth-veined gold-brown
marble. In his ecstasy over his discovery, Hawahee lifted his arms and
prayed aloud. He thought of all that his discovery meant to him. Already
the shadow of night lay over the isle. In a frenzy of delight he rushed
from his homestead. Again he waved his arms to the sky.
As he lifted his hands and called to Atua, and Pelé, and Kauhilo he
looked what he was—a pagan praying to the stars.
Then he lay prone and beat his hands on the ground. Again he rose to his
feet, and, rushing down the valley, knelt before the wonderful stone
figures that were the great hope and pagan joy of his spiritual-dreaming
life. He lifted his arms in fervent prayer to Atua, and gazed in an
awestruck way up at Kauhilo’s eternal sidelong glance, and then again
into great Pelé’s face and the eyes that gave their immutable stare into
the leafy shadows. Rising from his knees, he again paid obeisance to the
gods of his own creating, and then rushed out into the shadows close by
and prayed again!
The great grey dawn came stealing over the Pacific: Hawahee was still
awake. He had only slept an hour or so. The wonder of his discovery had
driven sleep from his mind. Again he leapt from his couch. Again he
stood outside by his hut, in the soft light of the breaking day, and let
the sunrise gleams fall like liquid flame on his muscular form.
“Atua, O Pelé, O Kauhilo! I thank thee!” he cried aloud as he stared in
delight on the perfect smoothness of his muscular flanks, his bosom and
the healthful glow of his body! Hastily pulling on his tappa-robe, he
ran down the slope, away once more to pray to his gods!
Such was Hawahee’s delight when he left Sestrina and found he was full
of health.
In the meantime, Sestrina wept. Directly she saw Hawahee disappear in
his hut she hastened away over the slopes and filled in the grave which
he had dug for himself! Then she had returned in sorrow to her lonely
habitation. That same night, as Hawahee prayed in the frenzy of delight
over his discovery, Sestrina knelt alone in her chamber, praying to the
great White God of her childhood. Then, remembering, she bowed her head
and prayed to the gods of the temple.
“O Hawahee, thou art now all the world, all of life and light to me,
therefore I cannot desert the gods thou prayest to,” she murmured, as
she thought of the grave he had dug.
She was still awake when dawn sent a glimmer of silvery light over her
couch and along the wooden walls, touching the faded faces of the past.
She lay still, her eyes staring into the great sorrow of her dreams as
the first gleam of sunrise touched her couch, and her ears heard the
chatterings and melodious whistlings of the cockatoos and parrots. The
music of the birds called her back to herself. She at once rose and
swiftly attired herself in the picturesque costume which Hawahee, with
such artistic toil and love, had weaved. Stealing from her chamber, she
ran outside her doorway and stood like a graceful nymph in the cool
morning air. Her face was strangely flushed, her eyes feverish-looking,
as she gazed into the shadowy depths of the orange trees and smelt the
damp of the gloom that were illuminated with flowers. Glancing around,
she spied the calabash wherein Hawahee kept the fermented orange and
lime juice which he so carefully made for himself. For often he, too,
could not sleep.
“It brings sweetest sleep to my brain, O Sestra,” he had said.
And so the pagan girl dipped the coco-nut-shell goblet into the
calabash, and filling it to the brim, drank twice! Thoughts of Hawahee
and their mutual sorrow commenced to haunt her mind. “O Atua, O great
Pelé, why am I denied this man’s caress—and yet—” and as she spoke she
hesitated and dropped her eyes as some old memory seemed to steal on the
soft dawn’s breeze, coming to her as though from far beyond the seas.
She placed her fingers into her ears as though to stay the hidden
voices—for she had heard strange whisperings that night as Hawahee gazed
in joy on the full grace of his graceful form and dreamed of the
solitary woman who slept near him.
“Why not gaze into his eyes as I have longed to gaze in other eyes? Why
not feel the lovely, strong clasp of the arms of love? Have I not
secretly longed for such love—and have I not heard the hidden voices of
his dreams steal to me across the moonlit yam patch? Why have the gods
given me this strange desire? Am I different to the women who walk the
great living world that I am separated from by those far-away skylines
of the ocean and by cruel fate. O Atua, O Pelé, do I not remember the
old things of my childhood, of the longings and sweet, kind ways of the
world of the past? Was I not a child once, and did not my head lay on
the bosom of a mother who was beautiful in the virgin light of pure
motherhood?”
And, as Sestrina reflected, she worked herself into a kind of pagan
frenzy over the rebellious thoughts that began to haunt her.
“I am beautiful, O Pelé,” she cried. She ran down the shore. Throwing
her hair wildly about her shoulders she stared out to sea and began to
sway and chant in a strange manner. She gazed enraptured at her image in
the lagoon. “How rounded my limbs are, how full and soft. O Hawahee, how
happy am I in the thought of your praise.”
She gazed on her image again and swerved, vanity ashine in her eyes, to
see her mass of glittering hair rippling down the shadowy shoulders,
falling below her waist as she unclothed, ready to leap into the cool
lagoon’s water. Her eyes were bright with passionate thoughts. She
turned about and stared on the great shining seas. She drank in the
tropical loveliness of the isle as she had never done before. The
crimson glory of the tropic flowers gave her a strange thrill of
delight. All the spiritual beauty of the forest had vanished! She only
saw the warm colours, the hot sunlight and smelt the sensuous exotic
odours of the bee-sucked crimson petals of the hibiscus and flamboyant
blossoms. The pagan spirit that had suddenly awakened in her soul made
her clap her hands in ecstasy as she gazed up at the bright-plumaged
birds that sped across the sky. The huge-trunked breadfruit trees that
stood by the shore were still her wise old friends as they leaned their
richly tasselled leafy arms over her, nearly to the lagoon’s sandy bank,
and sighed. The next moment she had leapt from the waters and stood in
their shades.
“O wise old trees of the forest, you are happy, and so why should I be
sad?” she murmured as she stared at the big leafy heights and thought
how Hawahee had told her that they were the reincarnations of mighty
gods who had fallen in the past through having mortal desires!
She gave a silvery peal of laughter. She took forth her little bamboo
flute from the folds of her rami (skirt). There beneath the sighing
breadfruits, she placed the reed to her lips and piped like Pan in his
leafy solitudes. Wherefrom came the sweet plaintive notes of the magical
melody which she piped? Hawahee had never taught her that melody! She
opened her eyes wide in wonder. She rose and ran back to the lagoon’s
side, and, gazing on her knees in the water, spied the yet unhealed cut
which she had received when she fell in the hollow. Throwing her head
backward, she placed her arms up over her shoulders so that her head
could rest on her hands as she gazed at the sky. Then with eyes half
closed, she murmured dreamily: “Hawahee! Hawahee! I am but a woman!”
Suddenly her hair was outblown, for a great wind swept over the seas.
The next moment she had dropped her arms and was staring with startled
eyes, for the winds had swept down the valley. She could hear the gods
of the temple in the valley moaning deeply. “What have I been dreaming?
Why have such thoughts come to me?” she cried.
Hastily, and with trembling hands, she replaced her disordered hair,
rearranged her rami, and placing her hands over her eyes, hid them in
shame. She ran up the shore, ran as though in fright from herself! She
hastened to attend her domestic duties. In a few moments the yams and
fish were cooked and placed in the platters.
“He is late this morning,” she muttered, as Hawahee made no appearance.
Then she heard footsteps; it was as though Hawahee had heard her
thoughts, for there he stood by the kitchen porch. Sestrina gazed on her
lonely comrade in wonder. He looked very happy. The lines of sorrow had
left his brow, and his eyes were full of joyous light!
“Sestra, you are late this morning; how is it? Did you not sleep well,
wahine?”
Sestrina blushed deeply, and trembled inwardly in the thought that
perhaps the strange man before her had read her thoughts, had heard the
yearnings of her soul. “Why did he smile so wistfully and with such
tenderness? Why was his face suffused with a great warmth, as though
colour of the jungle-peonies had left their rosy flush on his cheeks?
Why did his eyes gleam with a wondrous light as though he had scanned
the heavens and sighted the angels amongst the stars? Why?”
As soon as Hawahee had breakfasted, he rose from the table and said:
“Sestra, I will away to weave my mats, and shall not see you to-day.”
And saying this, the Hawaiian, with his soul full of fervent joy over
his deliverance from the leprosy, went into the valley to spend the day
in prayer. For Hawahee was truly a holy man.
That same night, whilst Hawahee slept, Sestrina made up her mind to go
off to the shell-temple and pray to the gods. Rising from her couch she
hastily attired herself in the much worn tappa-robe and went to the
door. She looked out into the night and glanced fearfully about her. The
winds were blowing wildly, and she could hear the seas thundering as
they rebounded on the outer reefs. The deep strain of superstition in
her nature was intensified by the ocean’s monotone and the distant
moaning harmonies of the shell-altar. She had heard those strange
shell-murmurs for more than a thousand nights, till at last they chimed
to her ears like voices of the infinite.
Taking advantage of the wild moaning of the palms as a gust of wind
swept across the isle, she swiftly ran by Hawahee’s silent hut. In a few
minutes she had reached the solitudes of the valley. Approaching the
temple, a great fright seized her heart. She could hear the gods, those
wonderful oracles that had been fashioned by the toil of Hawahee’s
superstitious imagination, moaning loudly. In the darkness of the
valley, alone with the terror of her own imagination, the big
shell-mouths had spiritual voices.
For a moment she stood quite still, afraid to approach that pagan temple
of the valley. A falling dead leaf touched her shoulder; she gave a
startled jump and almost screamed in fright. “Why should I fear since
Hawahee prays so fervently; what is the matter with me?” she thought.
The next moment she had entered the portals of the temple.
In a moment she fell on her knees before the mighty oracles. With lifted
hands she gazed up at Pelé’s changeless face. Was it some wild fancy of
the brain, or did Pelé’s large, pearl-white eyes gaze on her kneeling,
supplicating figure in sorrow? Yes, as the curved, wide rose-flushed
shell-lips moaned a deep contralto note of sympathy.
“O goddess Pelé, O Atua, and great Kauhilo, send the deepest oblivion to
my heart, sweep the far-off past away! I would only wish to remember
Hawahee, the one whose loving hands fashioned the solemn wonder of your
presence.” And as Sestrina knelt and appealed to the gods, they suddenly
ceased their moanings—each voice stopped; then a violent gust of wind
swept through the banyan heights and Atua’s voice alone moaned a deep
angry warning-note to the pagan girl’s ears. Rising to her feet in the
terror of her superstition, for she imagined the gods were cursing her,
she rushed from the temple. In her fright she ran up the left slope, and
ran into the leafy shadows almost behind the temple. She turned to the
right and passed under the shade of the banyans through which the
moonlight glimmered.
She suddenly stopped, stood rigid, with hands up-raised, electrified, as
though to ward off some terror—there before her, standing in the shade
of the buttressed banyan, stood a figure; she stared on herself! She
stood before a figure of carven coral stone, chiselled to resemble her
nearly naked form, a marvellous work of heathen art, the lips, the brow,
the expression perfect, even to the immovable eyelids. The massed crown
of hair looked real! It was as though it had been carved with a needle.
The raised skeins of slenderest stone were artistically left so that the
carven ringlets should fall over the shoulders. It was a wonderful
emblematical figure of love’s highest achievement in sculptural poetic
art. The figure resembled the astonished girl so much, that could one
have seen the two figures standing there in the moon-touched gloom, it
would have been impossible to tell which knew the warm breath of life
and which was the sculptured, soulless stone!
Hawahee had carved her image, made a goddess of her, so that he might
kneel to her beauty, her cold loveliness, in secret! Every curve from
the brow down to the perfect feet was exact. She stared again and
trembled—the lips moaned! The Hawaiian fanatic had—and from what
infinite selection and choice?—placed a shell in the mouth. It was a
sad, sweet-linked, long-drawn note of melancholy that the shadowy mouth
of the pagan girl’s stone shape gave forth.
“Hawahee! Hawahee!” she cried in the momentary sorrow that came as she
realised why the sad leper had made that figure. In a flash she realised
that he knelt before that deaf, eyeless resemblance of her body so that
he could appeal in secret to the woman he loved, could kneel in some
half-divine passion without contaminating her own sad reality!
Only for a moment did she stand there staring in astonishment, face to
face with the beautiful immobility of her stone self. The next moment
she had turned aside, had fled in her terror.
Down the valley’s side she ran. When she arrived outside her dwelling
she was gasping for breath. She looked over her shoulder fearfully, then
ran inside her lonely chamber, for she could hear the loud moanings of
the gods and fancied they were racing in hatred after her!
No sleep for Sestrina that night! Her brain teemed with wild fancies as
she lay on her couch thinking, thinking. The wonder of the figure she
had seen behind the temple haunted her soul. For the first time for
years she felt the terror of her own loneliness, in the dark, alone in
that tiny dwelling, on an isle set in the boundless solitudes of the
Pacific Ocean. As the first weird atmosphere, through seeing that shape,
began to wear off, she rose from her couch, sat up.
“He shall not know that I have discovered it!” she murmured, as
thrilling waves of strange indignation, of passion, and of sorrow for
the Hawaiian came to her. She hardly knew what to think of it all. Then
the curiosity of the feminine nature asserted itself. “I will watch him!
I will see the meaning of it all!” And in this sudden resolution, she
lay her head on the pillow again and fell asleep.
Dawn swept over the Pacific seas, bringing the splendour of the tropic
day in its train. Sestrina was up with the birds. She saw the first
etherealised impression of the sunrise come, as the great artist,
Eternity, held the brush of Time in his unerring hand and swept the
ocean skyline with a daub of liquid gold. Sestrina saw that daub twinkle
like lightning as it ran in its splendid overflow and trickled across
the tremendous dark heaving canvas—the Pacific Ocean.
Once more she carefully turned the cooking yams, then she turned her
head—Hawahee stood before her.
“Sestra, I have been sleepless the last two nights,” he said, as the
castaway woman remarked on his early appearance.
Then Sestrina turned her eyes from his face, for she did not wish him to
see the curious wonder that she knew must be visible in her eyes. It was
then that Hawahee said: “Sestra, dear wahine, I have gathered no
sea-birds’ eggs at all the last two mornings, but have wandered by the
shore, watching the dawn and the morning’s gold steal over wide waters
and brush all the lagoons with soft fire.”
As Hawahee said this, Sestrina looked swiftly into his eyes. Why did his
lips smile so tenderly and yet in so _knowing_ a manner? She suddenly
remembered how she had the morning before gazed on her image in the
lagoon, had danced to her shadow and chanted! She blushed hotly at the
thought that Hawahee had been on the shore side instead of far away
seeking the morning seagulls’ eggs, and had spied on her during her
strange madness. Hiding her face in her hands, she said: “I hate you!”
Hawahee, who had seen and heard so much, only smiled. “Why this shame,
Sestra?” he said as he gazed at her. Sestrina was still trembling in her
confusion. Then he continued: “’Tis true that I saw you; do you deny me
the brief happiness that the Fates inspired you to give unto my soul at
the breaking of the day?”
At hearing these words, and the tender note of Hawahee’s melancholy
voice, Sestrina’s shame vanished. She half smiled to herself as she
looked up at the tall, dignified man before her and thought of her stone
shape behind the temple. And Hawahee smiled too, and was pleased that
she should take it all in such good part, for he little knew what she
knew!