THE sad Hawahee was strangely happy that day in the thought that
Sestrina had smiled over his perfidious spying on her! Sestrina could
hear him singing his pagan melodies as he chopped firewood on the huge
log by the yam patch. Hawahee’s mind was full of glorious schemes for
the future. Since he had discovered that the leprosy spot was almost
cured, the outlook of his life had completely changed. He had decided to
tell nothing about his wonderful discovery to Sestrina until he had
quite made his plans for the future. He felt assured that his castaway
companion loved him from the soul as well as the flesh. There was no
denying that the heathen melodies he sang were cheerful strains, lacking
all the sombre beauty of those chants he had sang till Sestrina’s heart
had ached. And so the long hot tropic day was full of anticipation and
happiness for Hawahee as well as for Sestrina.
When the sun had set and the shadows were thickening the stars over the
seas, Sestrina stole from her chamber. She knew that Hawahee had gone
down to the shell-temple to pray to his beloved gods. As she passed by
the bamboos on the ridge of the little hill to the right of the valley
she looked seaward. Even the big, calm, bright moon seemed to stare with
curiosity as it peered gently over the sea’s horizon, its lovely eye
sending a searchlight stream of ethereal beams over the dark palms of
the isle. Away she ran! In a few minutes she was creeping along in the
shadows of the palms by the temple of shells. The winds were blowing
softly, only a faint murmur came from the shell-organ. Still she crept
nearer, and then half in fright she peered round the portal’s edge and
stared into the great rocky sacred interior. Hawahee was not there! Only
the great unlidded stone eyes of Pelé and the gods gazed in their solemn
immobility on her fearful intrusion. Where was Hawahee? She could
distinctly hear him chanting—she knew that he was worshipping some one.
She pushed the feathery pulu leaves aside and peered, her eyes staring,
fascinated by the sight she saw. Hawahee knelt with hands upraised
before the carven, beautiful form of insensate stone! Again she gazed on
the wonderfully raised crown of hair that rippled down to the cold
lovely grace of the stone shoulders. He was singing, chanting some
melodious melody for the deaf ears—so beautifully shaped, like rosy
pearl shells of the ocean—she heard him whisper words of passion as he
gazed into the wide-open, wonder-lidded, delicately lashed stone eyes!
She saw the warm glow of his own. A thrill of uneasy joy tinged with
uncanny fright seized her heart as she watched. She remembered Hawahee’s
long absences from her side, when he told her he was away in the forest
busy mat-weaving! She gazed down the veined marble-like limbs and on the
artistically chiselled ankles and perfect sandalled feet—they were shod
with the second pair of sandals—the sandals which Hawahee had given her
by mistake when he presented her with the rami and tappa-weaved bodice.
Even she gazed in ecstatic admiration on that wonderful carven shape of
herself. The veined limbs, the curves, the symmetrical hues of the
rounded flanks were perfect! In the inherent modesty of her nature, a
tiny tinge of resentment came to her, a warm blush suffusing her face,
as a nervous wonder leapt into her mind. How had the impassioned
sculptor been able to achieve such perfect detail? In a flash she
thought of her morning bathings in the lagoon when Hawahee was supposed
to be far away on the other side of the isle seeking seagulls’ eggs. She
thought of his marvellous power of seeing her dreams and hearing the
hidden voices of the soul—perhaps he had the power of seeing her
visionary shape?
She swiftly forgave. A great love and tenderness for the kneeling
worshipper swept through her soul. She knew how true he was to his gods.
“Truer than I am!” she murmured as she watched and knew how easily she
herself would have fallen had Hawahee been a godless man.
“Hawahee!” she cried.
In a moment the worshipper turned round. He stood as though riveted to
the ground in his shame and surprise. He looked like some big child
caught in some sinful act wherefrom there was no escape.
“Sestra! Aue! O forgiver me!” he murmured, lapsing into pidgin English
in his shame.
“Hawahee, am I sweeter in the stone than in the flesh? Is my loveliness
only divine in the curves and lines of your own mind and its creationary
work?” she cried, a great wave of jealousy sweeping into her heart as
she stared on her breathless, bloodless rival. And still the
solemn-looking fanatic did not fly to the warm, living arms that were
outstretched in appeal as she spoke.
“Sestra, ’tis beautiful; see the shoulders, the face, the brow, the
hair, and the lips of my goddess—Sestra! ’Tis the divine beauty of
thyself, thy soul’s calm beauty in stone,” he murmured, as he pointed to
the wonderfully chiselled face that seemed to stare from the shadows in
stony sorrow and fright at its bright-eyed startled living shape.
Sestrina felt that she stood gazing upon herself—divine, divested of the
mortality of the flesh. Yes, there she stood, expressing in loveliest
grace and perfect form all that Hawahee had created, made of her by the
lovely creative-light of his imagination!
“Oh, Hawahee!” she cried.
The tall worshipper gazed first at the unchangeable grace, the cold
splendour of his mind’s materialised art, then he stared at the warm,
living eyes of the jealous woman that fronted it!
“Can you not make a stone figure of thyself, O Hawahee? For ’tis only in
stone that I should seem to truly love thee!” said Sestrina, a wrathful
gleam in her eyes.
In a moment Hawahee had clasped her in his arms. Again and again their
lips met. And still the gods moaned on in the shadows close by. And
still Sestrina wondered why she looked so luring in stone, so
beautifully unattainable, and why she felt so jealous of stone lips and
arms which could never give their fruits to a lover’s appeal.
“Sestra, forget not the presence of the gods.”
“No, Hawahee!” said the woman, as she too felt the subtle command and
warning mystery of the deep moaning voices of the gods—not six yards
from where they stood.
“How loudly they moan! Hawahee, I curse the winds of the valley,”
murmured Sestrina as she stood there with her arms clinging over the
strong shoulders of the man who had worshipped her image. Her face was
uplifted, a startled look in her eyes, as Pelé moaned to the wind’s deep
breath.
“Say not such things, O Sestra, sweet wahine, love of mine! Listen; I
have a plan in my heart that will outwit the gods; but Sestra, you too
must pray well; and in a very little while we shall be able to fall into
each other’s arms far away from the power of the gods that I have made
out of the reverence of my soul’s sorrow. Maybe, O Sestra, I know that
the great White God of Langi is a kind god, but still, Atua, Kauhilo,
and Pelé have been kind to me—I am cured of the kilia (leprosy). ’Tis
the gods who have done this thing to me, so how can I sin in their
sight?”
“Cured! Hast thou no fear of anything?” Sestrina gasped. She could say
no more, so deep was her surprise and happiness in the thought that her
sad comrade should be cured of the kilia.
“Outwit the gods, O Hawahee!” she murmured as she looked about into the
shadows with awestruck eyes. Then they kissed again.
“Let us be calm, for if it is true, this that you say, we have
eternities of happiness before us.”
She well knew that Hawahee was strong and brave and that when he said he
could outwit the gods he must have some wonderful plan in his mind.
“Let us away from here,” said Sestrina.
Hawahee through long habit turned to pay obeisance to the lone, lovely
figure that stood staring in splendid blindness from the shadows.
Sestrina noticed the spontaneous act. “Hawahee,” she murmured softly, a
note of deep sorrow in her voice, “I do not mind; kneel before the
beauty and innocence of myself, the loveliness that your noble mind has
created out of me; kneel to the innocence of my girlhood, the heaven of
innocence that was mine when I once prayed and confessed to a dim,
grey-headed old priest named Père Chaco.”
Hawahee gazed into her eyes as she ceased speaking.
“Why are the tears falling, why can I hear the poetry and all the
loveliness of the stars in the big sky, the innocence and beauty of the
flowers and the melancholy of the sunsets at Pelé’s altar, why? O
Sestra, why does the music of your voice sound so?”
Sestra made no reply, but to Hawahee’s astonishment, moved four steps
forward and flung herself down on her knees before the sorrowful,
divine-looking carven cold stone image of herself—and wept bitterly.
That same night Sestrina knelt in her chamber and prayed to the heathen
gods and to the great White God of Langi. Then she stood up and stared
through the small window-hole and heard the hidden voices murmuring in
the great speech of her soul. Her thoughts went out over the seas. She
heard the roosting cockatoos, in the palms outside, give a dismal,
startled screech, and even Rohana croaked as though in fright, “O Atua!
O Pelé!” as she sent her thoughts across the oceans, away through the
dim starry skylines that surrounded her island world. Then she sobbed as
she lay in bed. She thought of the past. And as she lay alone in her
silent chamber she heard the soft, quivering murmurings of Hawahee’s
dreams coming across the orange-scented hollow from his lonely hut. “O
Hawahee, ’tis love of the flesh and not of the soul!” she cried.