TWO days after Sestrina had surprised Hawahee before her image, he came
to her and said: “Wahine, thou and I have tarried too long on this
cursed isle, dwelling in the anguish of our secret desires.”
“Yes, Hawahee,” murmured the lonely woman as she hid her face and
stirred the bubbling, sweet-scented poi-poi (taro and yam stew).
“I have thought deeply and long, Sestra mine, and feel ’twill be well to
build a raft so that we may float away together over the seas, you and I
alone, sweet goddess of my soul; shall it be?”
Sestrina heard the note of resolve in the man’s voice. Her heart was
thrilled with a great hope. She did not realise the dangers of being
cast away on those infinite waters on a raft, at the mercy of the
elements and the hot merciless light of the tropic suns. Often during
the first lonely years of their castaway life, Sestrina had suggested to
Hawahee that they could build a boat and try and float away to the
shores of the great world again. Hawahee had even, for the girl’s sake,
agreed to make the attempt, but Sestrina had dissuaded him when she
remembered that he would only be captured and sent to Molaki if they
_did_ arrive safely on the shores of the civilised world again.
“Hawahee, I long to leave this isle. None need ever know that you once
had the dreadful kilia,” she murmured, as she turned her head and gazed
tenderly into the face of the sad-looking man who stood awaiting her
reply.
The first confusion that had come to her through Hawahee’s presence had
disappeared. A great future with a maze of possibilities had flashed
into her hopeful brain. For a moment she stood stirring the poi-poi,
speechless with joy.
“And the shell-gods—would you leave them—’twould be—” She stopped.
A shadow had passed across Hawahee’s face. In a moment she felt that she
had foolishly reverted to a subject that might be the cause of dashing
her hopes to atoms. She too, revered the shell-gods, but what were their
solemn moanings when compared to the beautiful world of the past, and
the memories of her girlhood?
With a sweep of her hand, so to speak, she had swept the mighty heathen
gods to perdition. “Curse the shells, curse the gods, I hate the moaning
shells,” was her mental ejaculation.
But Sestrina’s fears were groundless, Hawahee had no intention of
swerving from his resolve to build a raft and leave the isle.
“Beloved Sestra, do not fear: the shells and the gods will still moan on
in the temple of the valley when we are far away and helpless on the
great waters.”
How strange is human nature with all its habits and old faiths and
long-nursed beliefs!
The next moment a flood of sympathy came to Sestrina’s heart—her
jealousy of the gods had vanished—she felt a great wave of sorrow come
to her soul in the thought of the poor shells moaning in the valley and
she and he so far away!
“Hawahee, we shall be happy when we are out on the great water?”
“Sestra, we will; and see, already the hands of the gods are painting
the colours of the sunset with gold and the warm blood of my desires;
’tis a sure sign that they will not be angry.”
Sestrina sprang into his arms, and then turned her head and saw a great
flood of crimson and gold staining the vast storied window of the remote
western skyline.
“Thanks to great Langi for this hour!” murmured Hawahee.
Then Sestrina went on with her cooking and the Hawaiian stole away into
the shadows to pray before his shell oracles. After chanting his prayers
into those deaf ears, he passed out of the temple and stole into the
shadows and stood before Sestrina’s stone image.
Why did he gaze so solemnly, so silently on that form and face that
represented all that was divine, all that was beautiful with innocence
and immortal loveliness to his pagan imagination? What had happened that
even a heathen’s eyes should fill with tears as he bent and knelt before
the cold stone and gazed up into the wide-lidded eyelids? Why did he,
for the first time, place his warm arms around the cold grace of that
bloodless thing? Who can tell, who can whisper one word, one murmur that
can explain the deep mysteries of the human soul’s aspirations for the
loveliness which mortals call innocence and beauty and truth? Who? Why
is the sweetest nectar, in the divinest vintage that was ever squeezed
from creation’s mighty wine-press of toiling suns and stars, bitter to
the soul’s taste, bringing nought to sad mortals but the despair of
shattered dreams and disillusionment?
The soulful Hawaiian poet rose to his feet and placed his lips in sorrow
against the grace of the cold bosom; he placed his warm fingers amongst
the chill fingers of the shape’s outstretched hand and cried aloud—like
a weeping child! He had placed a withered flower that had faded in the
statue’s reality—in Sestrina’s hair—in the small, cold hand’s palm.
“O Atua, O Pelé, goddess of beauty and innocence, why is my heart
afflicted? Why are the visionary shadows of my unhappy soul when shaped
into cold stone, sweeter than the realities I touch with living desire,
sweeter than the wines of love, sweeter than the touch of passionate
lips?”
And there, with his head inclined, the tall, handsome, noble-looking
fanatic, listened, awaiting a reply! But only the solemn moan of the
gods came to his ears as he gazed once more at the image of his soul’s
desire, and then stole away into the shadows.
* * * * *
Sestrina laughed like a happy child to herself as she lay in bed that
night and thought of all that Hawahee had said. She could hear the
white-ridged combers charging the shore reefs below, and they seemed to
be calling, “Come on! Come! out to our wide waters that sweep away
through the skylines to the great shores where the lights of the cities
gleam.”
“I’ll see the great world again! I’ll gaze into the lovely eyes of
memory—the long, long memory! O Atua, O Pelé!” she cried; and then she
remembered—she felt a great shame sweep through her, and immediately
called out, “O great White God, God of my childhood, God of the white
men, and his God!—he of long years ago.” Then she sighed and shed tears.
“Have they forgotten me? Has he forgotten? No, ’tis I who forgot! I who
have been faithful in the soul through all the long years. O God of my
childhood, you! you _know_ that I have been faithful in my soul to the
past!”
Ah, sad, beautiful Sestrina.
* * * * *
Day by day Hawahee toiled over the raft. He had gathered many boards
together and had fixed them side by side with the _Belle Isle’s_ old
hatchway. With native dexterity he had lashed each plank to the deck and
had framed a little bulwark. Then he made small lockers.
“What are they for?” said Sestrina, who kept running to and fro like a
happy child, giving all the help she could to Hawahee as he toiled over
the craft that was to take them on that great voyage out into the
trackless seas.
“It is for food and water, for we must take much water and food with us,
Sestra,” said Hawahee as he dropped his rough tools and gazed across the
infinite expanse of tropic ocean. No wonder he sighed as he gazed on the
dim wastes and the encircling skylines, the only dim, blue hope of that
wide world of water.
“That will do for to-day, Sestra. I am tired and will go and bathe in
the lagoon and so refresh my body,” said Hawahee as he dropped his
tools.
“So am I, Hawahee,” murmured Sestrina.
In a few moments they had both passed up the beach and had retired to
their separate huts. They had already had their supper, for Hawahee was
in a hurry to get the raft finished, and so had made up his mind to work
till sunset each night.
Directly Sestrina had passed out of sight, Hawahee went down to the
lagoon to bathe. In a few moments he stood in the cool water. His heart
was full of happiness in the thought that a chance of a new life _did_
lie before him and Sestrina. Then he stood gazing towards the aftermath
of the dead day as though he had suddenly died, and in some inexplicable
way still stood rigid, upright, with the water to his waist, staring at
the sky! What had done this, brought this awful change to Hawahee’s face
and eyes? It was nothing more than a stinging feeling in his back where
the salt water was smarting. He gave a gasp and partially recovered.
Then he placed his tappa-robe on, pulling it over his shoulders in a
mechanical way as though he was moving in a dream.
Walking along the sand bank of the lagoon, he pulled the robe down and
stared again on his imaged shoulder. It was true enough, no mistake!—a
great leper patch had broken out! In his grief he ran up the shore, and,
throwing himself on the ground, beat his hands and forehead on the
stones till they were stained with blood. For several minutes the
nobility of his character faded away and left him a frenzied, savage
fanatic.
“Wahine! Sestra! come to me! I am clean! I am clean!” he wailed as he
realised what the discovery meant to him, and to the woman he really
loved—unless be deceived her, told her nothing about his dreadful
discovery. In a few moments the natural bravery and nobleness of his
soul came to his assistance. He rose to his feet, and lifting his poor
hands to the sky, called in terrible fervour and anguish to the old gods
of his boyhood. He trembled as he stood there, staring first out to sea
and then in the direction of Sestrina’s homestead. But all was silent,
Sestrina had heard nothing. The next moment he had rushed down the
slope; he was on his way to the _heiau_ (temple). It was a terribly sad
sight as he stood in the gloom of that big pagan aisle and with lifted,
bloodstained hands, appealed to the goddess Pelé, Atua and Kauhilo. But
their immutable sightless eyes and hollow ears brought no comfort to the
stricken man’s soul as the wide, reddish shell-mouths moaned while the
wind swept down the valley. Only the goddess Pelé seemed to gaze from
her sombre immobility in sorrow upon the miserable man as he stood there
with lifted hands and grief-distended eyes. In the flood of bitterness
that came to him, he ran from the presence of those heathen deities and
knelt under the palms just outside the temple. “O White God of Langi,
Maker of the seas, the stars, the birds and all the wonders and beauty
of the universe, and the wondrous clays which I have moulded into the
great gods of shadowland, be merciful unto me, a poor heathen untutored
savage of the wilds.” And as he moaned on in this wise the night winds
caught the words and swept them away! Again he rose to his feet, and,
running a few steps, sought the spot where the stone image that
resembled Sestrina stood. He wrung his hands in despair as he bowed his
head before the moulded grace of the perfect, veined limbs. Then he
turned his head and hid his face in his hands. A great fear had swept
into his soul; he felt that he might be unable to control his passions,
so great was the beauty of the figure before him. “Sestra, I am like to
betray thee! I, Hawahee the leper, might make thee unclean. I, who love
thy shape, might cast the reality of your loveliness as a loathsome
object into the grave by the side of Rohana, Steno and the rest.” In the
terror of his thoughts and the possibility that he had lost Sestrina for
ever, he leaned forward to embrace the passionless grace of that
symbolical form which his imagination had incarnated, endowed with his
soul’s ideas. In the agony of his unsatisfied imagination, he embraced
the air. The winds wafted the rich odours of the breadfruits to his
nostrils. Again he leaned forward and gazed through the dusk with
burning eyes at that beautiful figure which he had fashioned with the
warm fingers of a wondrous creative impulse, till he had actually robed
the stone form with the glamour of a beauty almost divine. He forgot his
gods. Only the shape appealed to his staring eyes, the divinity, the
spiritual light of his soul strangely seemed to fade. What had happened?
Had he drunk too deeply of the pagan’s starry heavens, of the foaming
sunsets and Sestrina’s eyes? Was it only sorrow, that almighty alchemist
who transmutes mortal dross into purest gold, that had saved Hawahee and
Sestrina from falling into the lap of atheistical luxury and
warm-scented dreams?
“Sestra, O love of mine! Wahine, thou whom I have fashioned from the
moaning ocean’s coral stone, teach me to be brave, I am a leper,
unclean! unclean!” he wailed.
The sight of the form’s graceful beauty, the parted lips, the sensuous
curves of the shape, the symmetrical loveliness of the outstretched arm
and the hand still holding the faded flower, overwhelmed his senses. He
sprang towards the silent shape—. His material self seemed to swoon into
the grace of soulless stone! He gave a startled cry! Lo, the figure’s
outstretched arm had softly closed, held Hawahee in the grip of a
passionate clasp! His impassioned lips met the lips of the shape—they
were warm; the bosom heaved! The lips spoke: “Hawahee, thou shalt
worship me. I, at least, care not for leprosy, or for—”
“Sestra! your arms—your arms are warm! The eyes I made have light as
beautiful as the stars in them. O Pelé, what hast thou done?—forgive!
forgive!”
“Hawahee! save me, the light fades—I fall!” wailed the trembling statue.
The giant banyans sighed. The heathen worshipper of stone folded the
image of his dreams to his breast. His astounded, overwhelmed senses
swam before the bright gaze of eyes that pierced his soul with darts of
fire. The same wind that made the deep voices of the gods loudly moan,
blew shadowy hair and gossamer drapery about his form and face. Their
lips met in the sting of passion and some fear! Like fright the winds
moaned as the beautifully moulded arms clutched the worshipper, and the
faded flower that had once adorned Sestrina’s hair, dropped from the
hand to the forest floor.
Even the winds stayed their breath as though in grief over mortal
frailty and sorrow.
* * * * *
“Sestra! where are you?” said Hawahee, as he groped about as though lost
in the dark of his own mind. He realised! He broke away. He fled down
the valley, and like one demented vanished in the gloom of the banyans.
And Sestrina, who through her subterfuge had heard the truth about
Hawahee’s sorrow and grief over his leprosy, fell prostrate to the
ground again, and beating her hands amongst the flowers, moaned and
wept. The next minute she rose, and running into the shadows, knelt
before the stone shape, the rival she had outwitted, and cried like a
child before its cold, passionless purity.