The day after the young apprentice had played his violin to the
shellbacks and listened to the Papuan Rajah's eulogies over his playing,
old Everard was sitting in his bungalow swearing like the much-maligned
trooper. He was holding out his gouty foot whilst his daughter poured
cool water upon it.
"What the devil are yer doing!" he yelled, as the girl, who had done
exactly as she had been told to do, stood half-paralysed with fear over
her parent's outburst. Then the ex-sailor picked the ointment pot up and
rubbed the swollen foot himself. As Gabrielle looked on and mentally
thanked her Maker that her father had only one foot, he finished up by
grabbing a chair and pitching it across the room, careless as to what it
might hit. A fierce look came into the girl's eyes, her face was hotly
flushed. For a moment the old man opened his mouth in surprise, really
thinking she meant to hurl the chair back at him. She looked for a
moment like a beautiful young savage. Then she turned and rushed from
the bungalow.
"Come back, you blasted little heathen!" roared old Everard as he stood
up on his wooden leg; then he gave a fearful howl as his gouty foot gave
him another twinge. His face was purple with passion. "I'll break her
b---- neck when she comes back, I will. She's like her mother, that's
what she is."
The ex-sailor's wild sayings meant nothing. He had been genuinely fond
of his wife. Like most men who have choleric tempers, his hot words had
no relation to his true feelings. Gabrielle's mother had been dead for
many years. Although she had dark blood in her veins, she had been a
very beautiful woman. Indeed an eerie kind of beauty seems to be the
natural heritage of women who are remotely descended from a mixture of
the dark and white races. And this striking beauty is most noticeable in
those half-castes who are descended from the Malayan types, a
superstitious people, of wild, poetic, passionate temperament. There was
some mystery concerning Gabrielle's mother: she had flown from Haiti to
Honolulu in some great fear. Everard had met her because it was on his
ship that she had stowed away; but she had never divulged the cause of
her flight from the land where she had been born. All that Gabrielle
knew was that her mother's photograph hung on her bedroom wall, a sad,
beautiful face that gave no hint of her dark ancestry. Gabrielle had
been the tiny guest who had unconsciously caused her natural host to
depart from this life--for her mother had died during confinement.
Gabrielle Everard felt that loss as she walked beneath the palms; but,
still, she felt glad that her father's violence had inspired her with
sufficient courage to beat a hasty retreat, careless of the parental
wrath when she at length returned home again. "Perhaps he'll be so full
of rum when I get back that he'll have forgotten," was her sanguine
reflection. Then she pulled her pretty, washed-out blue robe tight with
the sash, and murmured: "The old devil! Good job if he pegged out!"
As the girl's temper subsided the savage look on her face faded away.
Like a gleam of sunrise across the lagoons at dawn, the laughing
expression of her blue eyes slowly returned. The firm resolve of the
lips also disappeared. Her mouth was again a rosebud of the warm,
impassioned South, a mouth that easily claimed twinship with the beauty
of the luring eyes, which looked warm with desire as the lips
themselves. She wore her loose blouse very low at the neck, so low that
the sun had delicately touched the curve of her breast. But she was only
an undeveloped woman as yet. Her ideas of the great world were vague and
shadowy. She knew little of what lay beyond her own surroundings, of
men's ways, the terror of cities, human frailty, and the force and
passion of human tragedies. All the ribaldry, the hints thrust upon her
by the rough sailors since she had entered her teens, had been quite
lost on her undeveloped mind. Her whole idea of life and its mysteries
had come to her out of a few old books. They were books that had been
left at her father's homestead by a ship's captain when Gabrielle was a
child. This captain's ship had gone ashore in a typhoon off
Bougainville, and its wreck could still be seen lying on the barrier
reefs about a mile from the shore.
Who could foresee the wondrous potentialities that lay within the pages
of those books which the old skipper had carelessly thrown aside?--what
dreams they would some day awaken in a girl's heart, giving her strength
to combat the desires that came with volcanic-like force on the
threshold of womanhood? For, true enough, the heroes and heroines of
those old books mysteriously leapt from the thumb-torn, yellow pages and
seemed to struggle in their effort to help her regain her better self.
One book was Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_; another, Christina
Rossetti's poems; _The Arabian Nights_ and Hans Andersen's fairy tales.
That old captain (he must have been old by the dates in the books) had
brought many valuable cargoes across the world, but he dreamed not that
his most wonderful cargo was the magic in the books that he was destined
one day to leave behind him in the Solomon Isles!
To a great extent old Everard's daughter was the embodiment of the
principles and idealisms that were in those faded volumes: in her
imagination Bunyan stood there beneath the palms, seeing God in those
tropic skies; Hans Andersen drank in the mystery of sunset on the
mountains, and Christina Rossetti laid a visionary hand on the tiny,
shaggy heads of the native children who had rushed from the forest's
depths and had started gambolling at Gabrielle's feet. She hastened on.
"Awaie!" she cried to the dusky little creatures, who looked up at her
in a bewildered way, as though they had seen a ghost. "Ma Soo!" they
wailed, as they sped away, frightened, into the shadows of the forest. A
wild desire entered Gabrielle's heart; she half bounded forward, as
though to rush after those tiny forest ragamuffins. She felt like
casting aside her civilised attire, so that she too might race off,
untrammelled, into those happy leafy glooms. The cry of the
yellow-crested cockatoo, the deep moaning of the bronze pigeons and iris
doves in the bread-fruits seemed to feed her soul with unfathomable
music. As she passed by a lagoon she saw her reflection in the still
depths. The dark-toning water made her appear almost swarthy; her
bronze-gold hair looked quite black. It was only a momentary glance, but
that glimpse was enough to strike a wild feeling of terror into her
heart, reminding her that she was connected by blood to the dark races.
At that thought her heart trembled: to her it was as though God had
suddenly thumped it in some inscrutable spite. In a moment she had
recovered. The strange dread of she knew not what vanished. Once more
she gave a peal of silvery laughter, and even went so far as to wave her
hand to the crowd of dark, handsome native men who were hurrying by on
their way back from the plantations.
As she meandered along she began to think over all that had happened on
the festival night when she had suddenly felt that strange impulse and
astonished the natives by jumping on to the festival _pae pae_ and
dancing before them all. She rubbed her eyes. "I can't think that I
really did such a thing; I feel sure it must have been a dream." Then
she remembered that her gown was torn and one of her slippers lost when
she had arrived home in her father's bungalow. "It must have been true.
Fancy me doing such a thing! I wonder what _he_ would have thought." So
she reflected over all she had done. Then she began to reassure herself
by recalling how she had often, when only ten years of age, danced on
the _pae pae_ with the pretty tambu maidens. And, as she remembered it
all, she gave an instinctive high kick and burst into a fit of laughter;
then she said to herself: "I'm a woman now and really must not do such
things!" She started running down the forest track, and as she passed by
the native village the handsome emigrant Polynesian youths waved their
hands and cried: "Talofa Madimselle!" One handsome young Polynesian,
gifted with superb effrontery, ran forward and stuck a frangipani
blossom in her hair. This by-play made the tawny maids who were
squatting on their mats by the village huts jump to their feet and give
a hop, skip and a jump through sheer jealousy.
Once more Gabrielle had passed on and entered the depths of the forest.
Passing along by the banyan groves on the outskirts of the villages she
suddenly came across a cleared space surrounded by giant
mahogany-trees--a kind of natural amphitheatre. Between the tree trunks
stood several huge wooden idols with glass boss eyes and hideous carved
mouths. They seemed to grin with extreme delight at the adoration they
were receiving from the twelve skinny hags and three chiefs who knelt
and chanted at their wooden feet. Gabrielle stood still, fascinated by
the weirdness of that pagan scene. Again and again the hags and chiefs
jumped to their feet and prostrated themselves before the carved
deities. "_Tan woomba! Te woomba, tarabaran, woomba woomba!_" they
seemed to moan and mumble as the stalwart chieftains jumped to their
feet, wagged their feathered head-dresses, thrust forth their arms and
chanted into the idols' wooden ears. The largest centre idol seemed
actually to grin with delight as it listened to the mumbling of the
chiefs. Gabrielle stared, awestruck, as she listened, and the hags,
leaping to their feet, danced wildly and shook their shell-ornamented
_ramis_ (loin chemises), making a weird, jingling music as the shells
tinkled. Then they lifted their skinny arms and bony chins to the forest
height and mumbled weird chants of death. Gabrielle had seen many
similar sights in Bougainville, but never before had she quite realised
the full meaning of that strange chanting, or of the sorrow that impels
heathens to fashion an effigy with a fate-like grin on its curved wooden
lips so that it could stand before them as some material symbol of the
Unknown Power! As Gabrielle watched, two of the chiefs turned their
heads, recognised her, and gave their sombre salutation: "Maino
tepiake!" And still the hags chanted on.
Then Gabriello heard a faint mumbling coming from the belt of mangroves
that grew by the lagoons near by. She was astonished to see six tambu
maids appear, attired in full festival costume, which consisted of a
kind of sarong fashioned from the thinnest tappa cloth. The girls had
large red and black feathers stuck in their head-mops and Gabrielle knew
by this that someone had died in the village and was being borne to the
grave. They were walking slowly, carrying their mournful burden between
them. It was an old-time tribal funeral. As the coffin-bearers arrived
in front of the idols they laid their burden down. Gabrielle
instinctively crossed herself when she saw the wan face of the dead
mahogany-hued Broka girl. It was a sad, curiously beautiful face, for
death had toned down the old wildness of the living features. The
reddish, coral-dyed hair had fallen forward on to the pallid brown brow
and gave a pathetic touch to that silent figure. On the forehead was the
plastered scarlet mud cross, a sign that the girl had died in
maidenhood. She was stretched out on a long, narrow death-mat that had
handles, something after the style of an ambulance stretcher, but
fashioned in such a way that when the primitive hearse of dusky arms
moved forward the corpse regained a sitting posture. The effect was
gruesome in the extreme, for the head of the corpse, being limp, fell
forward or wobbled as the mourners passed along the narrow mossy track.
Through entering into the spirit of the proceedings Gabrielle at once
gained the sympathy of those pagan mourners. For she too crept behind
the procession as it moved along among the pillars of the vast primitive
cathedral. The thick foliage of the giant bread-fruits, the buttressed
banyans and towering vines, that ran here and there like symphonies of
green, scented the forest depth. And when the wind sighed it seemed to
be some moan from infinity, as though that moving procession and the
forest itself stood on the deep inward slopes of some vast sea. Only the
remote wide window, through which the stars shone by night and the
sunsets marked the close of each tropic day, was visible between the
colonnades of tree trunks, as there it shone--the far-away western
horizon. Suddenly the procession stopped. The six tambu maidens had
begun to chant an eerie but beautiful pagan psalm as they approached the
grave-side; then they laid their burden gently down. The weeping hags
and chiefs stood looking up into the branches of the tall coco-palm. It
was there that the girl's body was to rest till her bones whitened to
the hot tropic winds. Along one of the lower branches they had fashioned
a grave-mattress of twigs and leaves, jungle grass and tough seaweed,
the whole being fastened on to the branch by strong sennet. It was a
weirdly fascinating sight as they stood there voiceless and began
hurriedly to perform the last sacred rites over the dead girl. The
tallest of the mourners, an aged chief, who had a naturally melancholy
aspect, besides both his ears being missing, took a bone flute from his
lava-lava and began to blow a weird _Te Deum_. Gabrielle could hardly
believe her eyes as the tambu maidens started to whirl their bodies in
perfect silence to the sound of the wild man's piping. Only the jingle
of the _rami_ shells, tinkling in exact _tempo_ to the wailing fife
(made out of the thigh-bone of some dead high priest), told her that
those girls were whirling rapidly in the forest shadows. The hags and
chiefs had already fallen prone on their stomachs, so that they could
perform the lost mysterious rite. This rite necessitated them rising
repeatedly to their knees so that they might take in a deep breath and
blow their stomachs out, balloon-like, to enormous proportions. The
contrast was weird in the extreme when their bodies receded and subsided
into a mass of wrinkles. This strange rite took about five minutes to
perform. It was a rite that was supposed to blow the sins of the dead
away ere the spirit entered shadow-land.
As soon as this ritual was completed two of the chiefs climbed the
grave-palm and then, hanging in a marvellous way by their feet, they
leaned earthwards and gripped the dead girl's coffin-mat by the sennet
handles. One old woman (the mother probably) rushed hastily forward, and
lifting the corpse's hand kissed it. Then the living limbs of the weird
grave-elevators went taut as, still with their heads hanging downwards,
they clutched the coffin-mat and slowly pulled the dead figure foot by
foot off _terra firma_ towards the sky! In a few moments the dead girl
lay lashed to the bough of her strange grave, high up in the forest
coco-palm. Suddenly the mourners had all vanished! Even Gabrielle felt
some of the fright that haunted the souls of those wild people. They had
hurried away because it was known that directly the forest wind blew
across the new-made grave the soul of the dead departed for shadow-land
and must not be tainted by the breath of the living. After seeing that
sight Gabrielle hurried away also. She trembled as she stepped at last
out of the forest shadows into the glory of the sunlight. She seemed to
realise at that moment that the sun was the visible god of the universe,
the rolling orb that woos the world, creating the green happiness of the
woods and bills. She saw the migrating birds going south as she lifted
her eyes. Perhaps she felt the winged poetry of the birds on their
flight to the southward, hurrying away like symbols of our own brief
days. Her eyes were very concentrated as she sighed and then jumped
carelessly on to a springy banyan bough and began to sing one of her
peculiar songs. Suddenly she ceased to sing, and a startled look leapt
into her eyes as she turned her head. She had even let her swinging legs
fall stiff so that the old blue robe might fall and hide her pretty
ankles. Then she gave a merry peal of laughter that frightened the life
out of a decrepit cockatoo. "Cah-eah! Whoo-cah!" it shrieked as it left
its high perch and flapped away. Hillary looked up and threw a coco-nut
at it and missed by a hundred yards. It was he who had disturbed the
girl. As the apprentice stood before her she blushed softly, as though
her bright eyes and face mysteriously reflected the sunset fire that
shone on the sea horizon to the westward.
Hillary metaphorically rubbed his hands over his luck. He had strolled
over the hills for no other reason than to get clear of his growling
landlady, who had begun to give hints over delayed rent. Nor was the old
half-caste woman to be blamed, for many white youths from "Peretania"
arrived in the Solomon Isles crammed with hopes and promises and little
cash! Besides, the evening was the only time fit for a quiet stroll
without being charged by myriads of sand-flies and other winged,
tropical things. Though Gabrielle had hinted to him that she generally
took her walks by the lagoons, he had gathered that she was usually busy
at the twilight hours getting her father's tea, polishing his wooden
leg, etc. Consequently, Hillary's face was aglow with pleasure as he
approached the girl. In his confusion he lifted his cap and bowed as men
bow to maids in civilised communities. Gabrielle, who was unused to such
gallant manners, was delighted. She even gave a little nod in response.
It was a most fascinating bit of "court etiquette" on her part, for she
had learnt it from her French novels. Hillary, who had especially
noticed and loved the girl's wild, rough, fascinating ways, was charmed
at Gabrielle's tiny bit of "put-on." It would have been impossible to
reproduce the expression of his face as he flung himself down in the
fern-grass close to Gabrielle.
The girl who was again swinging to and fro on the banyan bough, looked
sideways like a parrot on the apprentice's face, wondering why he looked
so confused. Hillary always felt shy when she looked at him with those
childish, big eyes.
"I'm going to clear out of this God-forsaken place soon," he said, as he
found his voice. Then he continued: "It's marvellous how a girl like you
can exist in this infernal hole, full of tattooed savages."
She only stared at him as he rambled on, and wondered why he attracted
her so. Then she laughed like a child, and looking him straight in the
face said: "You are very different to the other men I've seen round
these parts." Hillary felt himself redden as she stared into his eyes;
she looked critically for a moment and said: "Different coloured eyes
too!" Then she added artlessly: "Do you drink rum?"
"On cold nights at sea," Hillary responded, as he stroked his chin and
felt amused at the girl's remarks.
And still the girl sang on as he watched her. She looked like a faery
child as she sat there swinging on the banyan bough, the music of her
voice ringing some elfin tune into his ears. There was a look that
reminded him of Keats's _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_. Indeed, the
apprentice half fancied that she was some visionary girl sitting there
singing to him from a banyan bough in the Solomon Isles. And as the
sea-winds drifted in and made a kind of moaning music in the ivory-nut
palms their murmurings seemed to sing:
"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful--a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
"I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
"I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried: 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'"
A strange bird that neither knew the name of began to whistle its
evening song and broke the spell. "I wish that damned bird hadn't come
and spoilt everything," was Hillary's most emphatic mental comment.
Gabrielle had stopped singing. "Do you love the songs of birds, Miss
Everard?" he said as he looked at her and gave an inane smile.
"I do this evening," she replied, then quickly added: "It's the tribal
drums, that horrible booming and banging in the mountains, that I hate
to hear!"
"Fancy that!" said Hillary, somewhat surprised, as he listened to the
distant echoes--it was the tribal drums up in the native village beating
the stars in.
"I was just thinking how romantic that distant drumming sounded; the
people in the far-off cities of the world would give something to hear
that primitive overture to the night, I can tell you," said he.
"Fancy that! Why----" said Gabrielle, as she over-balanced and fell from
the bough in considerable confusion at his feet. Hillary made a grab as
though she had yet another sheer depth to fall.
"Oh, allow me!" he exclaimed, as he picked her novel up. The girl
whipped her robe down swiftly and hid the brown, ornamental-stockinged
calves that a few months before had been exposed by short skirts to the
gaze of all those who might wish to stare. Gabrielle blushed as she
rearranged her crimson sash. She was dressed in a kind of Oriental
style, in a sarong, opened at the sleeves to about one inch above the
elbows. The crimson sash was tied bow-wise at the left hip; a large
hibiscus blossom was stuck coquettishly in the folds of her hair, making
her small white ear peep out like a pearly shell. Her _retrousse_ nose
had a tiny scratch on it where a bee had stung her the day before.
"Why, you've scratched your arm!" exclaimed Hillary, taking advantage of
the delicate situation by gently pulling back the sleeve of her sarong
and boldly wiping a tiny speck of blood away from the soft whiteness
that had been pricked by a cactus thorn. Gabrielle put on a look of
extreme modesty, notwithstanding that she had danced on a heathen _pae
pae_ a few nights before.
"Your eyes are different colours, one brown and one a beautiful blue!"
she suddenly exclaimed for the second time as she burst into a merry
peal of laughter.
The young apprentice reddened slightly. "I can't help that I did not
make my own eyes, did I?" he said.
For a moment the girl stared earnestly at his face, then said: "Well,
you needn't mind, really. I reckon they look fine!"
"Don't you get full up of wandering about this heathen locality?" said
Hillary, changing the conversation. "Nothing but palm-trees, parrots,
and brown men and tattooed women roaming about gabbling _tabak_ and
worshipping idols."
Gabrielle laughed. "Don't you care for the natives? I think they're
amusing; especially at the festival dances," she added after a pause.
"Well, I don't object to the festivals; they're original and decidedly
attractive. I was charmed by seeing a Polynesian maid dance like a
goddess over a Buka village two nights ago."
"Fancy you liking to see native girls dance!" said Gabrielle, giving a
roguish glance.
"Well, I do; there's something so fascinating and poetic in the way they
do it all," Hillary responded.
Gabrielle readjusted the flowers in her hair, then said: "Would you like
to see me dance?"
"Dear me, I certainly should!" exclaimed the young apprentice, his eyes
betraying the astonishment he felt over her question.
"Shall I dance?" Gabrielle repeated.
"What! Now!" he exclaimed. He lit his cigarette twice over, wondering if
she were laughing at him or really meant that she would dance there on
the spot.
Before he could say another word Gabrielle had risen to her feet and was
dancing before him. He blew his nose, coughed, put on an inane smile and
then fairly gasped in his astonishment and admiration. Her tripping feet
softly brushed the blue forest flowers and tall, ferny grass that
swished against her loose robe. Hillary's embarrassment had changed to a
tremendous interest in the originality of the dancer before him. He
clapped his hands in a kind of obsequious way for an encore as she
swayed in a most fascinating manner, her hair tumbling over her
shoulders, her eyes shining, one hand holding up the fold of her
sarong-like robe, just revealing her brown stocking above the left
ankle. "Well, I'm blessed!" he breathed. She had begun to hum a weird
melody; her right hand was outstretched, uplifted as though she held a
goblet of wine and would drink a toast to some pagan deity.
He looked at the sunset; he half fancied that it had always been staring
from the ocean rim, and would never set! And as he looked at the dancing
figure she really did seem to hold a goblet in her outstretched
hand--full to the brim--with the gold of sunset that touched the
landscape and was glinting over her tumbling hair and eyes.
"The Solomon Isles! The Solomon Isles!" was all that he could breathe to
himself as she stared at him, a strange fixed look in her eyes. A
cockatoo fluttered down to the lowest bough of the bread-fruit tree,
looked sideways on her swaying figure, slowly flapped its blue-tipped
wings in surprise and chuckled discordantly.
"Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!" chimed in Hillary, as he clapped his hands,
stared idiotically and felt like hiding behind the thick trunk of the
bread-fruit.
"Well now! You dance perfectly!" he gasped. Gabrielle had ceased
tripping. She looked embarrassed and had begun to coil up her tumbling
tresses.
"Worth chewing salt-horse and hard-tack on a dozen voyages to have seen
what I've seen!" was the apprentice's inward reflection.
"Do the girls in England dance like that?" she said in an eager,
frightened way.
"Oh no, not as well as you've danced. Blest if they do!" said he. That
last remark of hers made him realise that girl before him was half-wild
and had danced before him as a child might ere it became self-conscious.
"Fancy meeting a beautiful white girl, half-wild! It's thrilling! I
wonder what will be the end of it," mused Hillary, as he stared on that
strange maid whom he had chanced upon so suddenly.
Suddenly she said: "I'm no good at all; you may think I am, but I'm
not."
"Aren't you?" murmured Hillary, somewhat taken aback.
"You're a clever girl. Not many girls can quote the poets and rattle off
verses as you can. I suppose your father's an educated kind of man and
has a good library?" he added after a pause.
Gabrielle's hearty peal of laughter at the idea of her father possessing
a library made the frightened parrots flutter in a wheel-like procession
over the belt of shoreward mangroves. Then she said: "Well, my father
has got a lot of books, but they really belonged to a ship's captain--a
nice old man who lived with us years ago, when I was a child." Then she
added: "His ship was blown ashore here in a typhoon and when he went
away he left all his books behind him in Dad's bungalow. I've learned
almost all I know from those books." Saying this, she pointed with her
finger towards the shore, and said: "From the top of that hill you can
see the old captain's ship to-day: it's a big wreck with three masts.
Father told me that the old captain often got sentimental and went up on
the hills to stare through a telescope at his old ship lying on the
reefs."
"How romantic! So I've to thank the old captain that you can quote the
works of the poets to me," said Hillary. Then he added: "But still,
you're a clever girl, there's no doubt about it."
"I'm secretly wicked, down in the very depths of me."
"No! Surely not!" gasped the apprentice as he stared at the girl.
Then he smiled and said quickly: "What you've just said is proof enough
that you're not wicked. You're imaginative, and so you imagine that you
have limitations that no one else has. If anyone's wicked it's me, I
know," he added, laughing quietly.
"I've got the limitations right enough, that's why I feel so strange and
miserable at times."
"Don't feel miserable, please don't," said Hillary softly as he blessed
the silence of the primitive spot and the opportunity that had arisen
for his direct sympathy.
"You must remember that we all have our besetting sins, and that the
majority of us think our besetting sin is our prime virtue," he said.
"I've been all over the world but never met a girl like you before," he
added in a sentimental way.
"I can take that as the reverse of a compliment," said Gabrielle,
laughing musically.
"Believe me, Gabrielle, I would not say things to you that I might say
in a bantering way to other girls I've met. I dreamed of you when I was
a child, so to speak. It seems strange that I should at last have met
you out here in the Solomon Isles, that we should be sitting here by a
blue lagoon in which our shadows seem to swim together."
"Look into those dark waters," he added after a pause.
Gabrielle looked, and as she looked Hillary became bold and placed his
hand softly on her shoulder, amongst her golden tresses that tumbled
about her neck. And Gabrielle, who could see every act as she stared on
their images in the water, smiled.
"It's a pity you're so wicked," said Hillary jokingly. Then he added
suddenly: "Ah! I could fall madly in love with a girl, like you if only
I thought I were worthy of you.--What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing," said Gabrielle. Hillary noticed that she had become pale
and trembling.
"Why, you've caught a chill!" he said in monstrous concern, though it
was 100 deg. in the shade and the heat-blisters were ripe to burst on
his neck.
"Dad thinks everything that he does is quite perfect," Gabrielle said,
just to change the conversation, for the look she saw in the young
apprentice's eyes strangely smote her heart.
"Of course he does," said Hillary absently.
The girl, looking eagerly into his face, said: "You know quite well that
you play your violin beautifully, I suppose?"
"I'm the rottenest player in the world."
The girl at this gave a merry ripple of laughter and said: "Now I _do_
believe in your theory, for I've heard you play beautifully in the grog
bar by Rokeville. You played this"--here she closed her lips and hummed
a melody from _Il Trovatore_.
"Good gracious! you don't mean to tell me that you hover about the
Rokeville grog shanty after dark?" exclaimed Hillary.
Gabrielle seemed surprised at his serious look, then she burst into
another silvery peal of laughter that echoed to the mountains.
Hillary looked into her eyes, and seeing that eerie light of witchery
which so fascinated him, felt that he had met his fate.
"If I can't get her to love me I'm as good as dead," was his mental
comment. Even the music of her laughter thrilled him. Then she rose from
the ferns, and sitting on the banyan bough again started to swing to and
fro, singing some weird strain that she had evidently learnt from the
tambu dancers in the tribal villages.
"It seems like some wonderful dream, she a beautiful girl with flowers
in her hair, sitting there singing to me," thought the apprentice.
Then she looked down at him, gave a mischievous peal of laughter, and
said: "Oh, I say, you are a flatterer! I almost forgot who I really was
while you were saying those poetic things about me!"
"Don't laugh at me, I'm serious enough," Hillary responded, as he looked
earnestly at the swaying figure. Heaven knows how far Hillary might have
progressed in his love affair had not the usual noisy interruption
occurred at the usual crucial moment. Just as he felt the true hero of a
South Sea romance--sitting there in a perfect picture of ferns and
forest flowers, sunset fading on a sea horizon, dark-fingered palms
bending tenderly over his beloved by a lagoon--with a rude rush out of
the forest it came! It was not a ferocious boar, or revengeful elephant;
it was a bulky, heavily breathing figure that seemed the embodiment of
prosaic reality. It was attired in large, loose pantaloons, belted at
the waist, a vandyke beard and mighty, viking-like moustachios drooping
down to the Herculean shoulder curves.
"What the blazes!" gasped Hillary, as he looked over his shoulder and
saw that massive personality step out from underneath the forest palms.
The strange being wore an antediluvian topee and an extraordinary,
old-fashioned, long-tailed coat. The atmosphere of another age hung
about him. A colt revolver stuck in his leather belt seemed to have some
strong link of kinship with the grim determination of its owner's mouth.
"What-o, chum! How's the gal?" Saying this, the new-comer put forth his
huge, thorny palm and emphasised his monstrous presence by bringing it
down smash!--nearly fracturing Hillary's spine.
"What-o, friend from the great unknown!" came like an obsequious echo
from the young apprentice's lips as, recovering his breath, he saw the
humour of the situation. Hillary well knew that it was wise to return
such Solomon Island civility as affably as possible. At that first
onslaught Gabrielle had jumped behind Hillary's back when he had sprung
to his feet. No one knows how long that new-comer had stood hidden
behind the palm stems before he came forth. Anyhow, he rubbed his big
hands together in a mighty good temper, chuckling to himself to think
his presence should be so little desired. He bowed to the girl with
massive, Homeric gallantry. Then, as they both stared with open-mouthed
wonder, he put his hand up and, twisting his enormous moustache-end on
the starboard side, courteously inquired the route for the equivalent of
the South Sea halls of Olympus. It was then, and with the most
consummate impertinence imaginable, that he gave them both the full view
of his Herculean back and put forth his mighty feet to go once more on
his way, bound for the wooden halls of Bacchus--the nearest grog shanty.
Such a being as that intruder on Gabrielle's and Hillary's privacy might
well seem to exist in the imagination only, but he was real enough. That
remarkable individual was only one of many of his kind who, having left
their ship on some drunken spree, roamed the islands, seeking the
nearest grog shanty, after some drunken carousal in the inland tribal
villages.
As that massive figure passed away he left his breath, so to speak,
behind him. It seemed to pervade all things, sending a pungent flavour
of adventure over forest, hill and lagoon. Indeed, the faery-like
creation into which Hillary's imagination had so beautifully transmuted
Gabrielle--vanished. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he muttered. As for
Gabrielle, she looked as though she was half sorry to see that handsome
personality go. His big, grey eyes had gazed at her with an
unmistakable, yet not rude, look of admiration. Indeed, before he strode
away he gazed at Hillary as though with a mighty concern, as though he
would not hesitate to redress wrongs done to fair maids who had been
lured into a South Sea forest by such as he.
"Do you know him?" gasped the apprentice as the man went off; but the
astonished look in the girl's eyes at once convinced him that the late
visitor was a stranger to Gabrielle as well as to himself. It all
happened so suddenly that he wondered if he had dreamed of that
remarkable presence. But the frightened cockatoos still giving their
ghostly "Cah! Cah!" over the palms were real enough. And as they both
listened they could still hear the fading crash of the travelling feet
that accompanied some rollicking song, as the big sea-boots of that
extraordinary being beat down the scrubby forest growth as they
travelled due south-west.
Gabrielle little dreamed as she stood there listening how one day she
would hear that intruder's big voice again, and with what welcome music
it would ring in her ears.
Gabrielle laughed quietly to herself as the intruder passed away and
seemingly left a mighty silence behind him. She had seen many men of his
type in her short day, not only in Rokeville, but out on the ships that
anchored in the harbour. She had also seen stranded sailors at
Gualdacanar, at Ysabel and at Malaita, where her father had taken her on
a trip a year or so before. Such men stood out of the ruck, quite
distinct from the ordinary run of beachcombers, who were usually
stranded scallawags, seeking out the tenderfoots who would stand them
drinks in the nearest grog bar. Hillary saw that new-comer as some
mighty novelty in the way of man; to the young apprentice the late
intruder was something between a Ulysses and a Don Quixote. And
Hillary's conception of the man's character was not far wrong. Anyway,
he did not express his private opinion, for he looked up at Gabrielle
and said: "Good Lord, what an awful being. Glad to see the back of him!"
It may have been that the late stranger's presence had turned Hillary's
thoughts to his sailor life, for that massive being positively smelt of
the high seas, of tornadoes and sea-board life on buffeting voyages to
distant lands. Looking up at Gabrielle, he suddenly said: "I'm going
aboard the schooner that is due to leave for Apia next week. I'm on the
look-out for a berth. I suppose I sha'n't see you any more if I get a
job?"
Everard's daughter gazed at the apprentice for a moment as though she
did not quite know her own mind concerning his query. Then she sighed
and said: "Must you go away to sea again?"
Hillary looked steadily into the girl's face. He could not express his
thoughts, tell her that he would wish to stay with her always. What
would she do were he to spring towards her, clutch her tenderly, fold
her in his arms, rain impassioned kisses on her lips, look into her eyes
and behave in general like an escaped lunatic? She might think he was
mad!--race from him, screaming with fright, seeking her father's
assistance, or even hasten for the native police. Such were the thoughts
that flashed through Hillary's mind. And so, although he longed to do
all these things, he only stood half-ashamed over the passionate
thoughts that flamed in his brain as he gazed into the half-laughing
eyes of the girl.
They sat and talked of many things. Hillary forgot the outside world. He
half fancied he had been sitting there for thousands of years with that
strange girl by his side. He spoke to her of scenes that were remote
from Bougainville: of England, of London and the wide bridges over the
Thames, and of the deep, dark waters that bore the tall ships away from
the white Channel cliffs, taking wanderers to other lands. And as the
girl listened she saw old London as some city of enchantment and
romance, where cold-eyed men and women tramped down labyrinthine streets
by dark walls. In her imagination she even fancied she heard the mighty
clock chime the hour over that far-off city of wonder and romance.
"Fancy! And you've lived there! Actually seen the great palaces, the
spires and towers that I've read of and dreamed about!" said Gabrielle.
Then she added: "And you've seen the queen and the beautiful
princesses?"
"Yes, Gabrielle, I have."
Then she said artlessly: "Weren't they sorry when you left England for
the Solomon Isles?"
For a moment Hillary was grimly silent, then he said: "Well, they were,
rather!"
Gabrielle's innocence and his own mendacity had broken the spell that
home-sickness and distance had cast over him, the spell that had enabled
him to picture to Gabrielle's mind the atmosphere of old London in such
true perspective. Indeed, as he talked, Bougainville, with all its
novelty and heathenish atmosphere, became some dull, drab reality and
London a great modern Babylon of his own hungry-souled century. His
voice as well as Gabrielle's became hushed. He was so carried away by
his own vivid imagination that he fancied he _had_ dwelt in some ancient
city of smoky romance, and had seen a Semiramis on her throne, and
Pharaoh-like peoples of a past age. It was only the eerie beauty of
Gabrielle's eyes that awakened him to the reality that blurs man's
inward vision. The girl had handed him a small flower which she had
taken from her hair.
"Could anything be more innocent and beautiful," he thought as he placed
that first symbol of the girl's awakening affection for him in the
buttonhole of his brass-bound jacket.
Night had fallen over the island. "I must go," said Gabrielle. "It's
terribly late."
"So it is!" Hillary moaned regretfully. Gabrielle hastily jumped into
her canoe, fear in her heart over the coming wrath of her father.
Hillary had intended to place his arms about her and embrace her before
she went, but his chance had gone!
As he stood beneath the tamuni-trees and watched, she looked more like
an elf-girl than ever, as her canoe shot out into the shadows of the
moon-lit lagoon and was paddled swiftly away.