helped her companion to lift Vere, all bruised and stunned, and carry
him to his own house. Once there she would not leave him, but sat
fanning him far into the day, without thinking of hunger or thirst,
until a friendly storekeeper, who had heard of the disturbance, came
to see him. No bones were broken. There were some bad bruises, and an
unsightly black eye. But as any movement gave him intense pain, he
wisely lay still, and slept away the greater part of the day, while
Raluve sat fanning him. Late in the afternoon a burly form filled the
doorway. Mr Commissioner Austin was, sorely against his will, come
to do his duty. He began by suggesting that Raluve should withdraw,
but she would not go farther than the end of the house. Was Vere much
hurt? No. Well, he was glad to hear it. He was awfully sorry about the
whole business. These wretched connections always ended alike, because
they brought Europeans down to the level of natives. But it would be
a lesson to Vere, who would take what he had to say in good part. But
Vere did not take it in good part at all, and told him so. He had some
news, however. The vessel in which Vere was to leave for headquarters
was to sail in a day or two, and Nambuto had been ordered to go before
the end of the week.
Left to himself, Vere had ample time to consider his position. This
girl loved him,--there was no doubt in his mind about that. What did
he feel for her in return--gratitude, the vanity kindled by unsought
love, or something stronger than either? And if he could drop back into
the life she lived, the life man was intended to live, free from all
the vulgar struggle and squalor of civilisation, in some island to the
eastward, far from his own kind, where the smell of the reef and the
warm wind would possess his senses, he would surely ask for nothing
more. But there was a reverse to the picture. If it were to mean the
life that some white men, who had abjured civilisation, lived, despised
alike by their fellows and the people they consorted with, he could
see nothing but misery before them both. He tried to remember a single
case where the marriage of a white man to a native woman had turned
out happily. There was Bonson, an educated man like himself. One could
read the man’s history in his face. All self-respect was crushed out of
him now, but how he must have suffered for his mistake when it was too
late! No; a curse seemed to follow the union of opposite races: they
must put this folly out of their hearts, and each follow the destiny to
which they were born. But as he turned to speak to Raluve he met her
eyes fixed upon his face. She had crept up to his bed as he lay with
his face to the wall.
“What is in your mind, Kalokalo, my star? I cannot bear your face to be
hidden from me, for then evil thoughts enter your mind, and your face
is changed towards me. Are you in pain?” she asked, laying her hand
gently on his forehead.
“Raluve,” he said, taking her hand, “I was wondering how I shall fare
without you.”
“But you are not going to leave me?” she said, catching her breath. “If
you go, I must go with you to take care of you.”
“We do not plan our lives,” he answered; “it is ordered that I go from
here in three days.”
Her hand dropped from his, and she sat quite still. He could hear her
breathing, but cowardice kept him from looking at her. The light waned
and the house became dark, but still she made no sign. At last he could
bear the silence no longer.
“Speak, Raluve,” he said; “is it not better for us both that I should
go?”
“For you it is better,” she answered in a low voice, “and therefore it
must be. But for me the darkness has fallen, and is eating me up.”
What could he say more? The pain had to be borne, and he would only
make it worse by speaking. Then as he made no reply, she got up and
left the house without another word.
Vere’s bruises did not trouble him long. In two days he was busied
about his packing, and on the morning the steamer was expected he was
ready for the voyage. He had not seen Raluve since he had told her
of his determination, and he had felt his courage too weak to risk
another interview like the last. But he could not leave her without
saying good-bye, and he had just made up his mind to find her when she
herself came in. She had brought a beautiful mat as a parting gift.
Disregarding all native ceremonial, she laid it down at his feet,
saying, “This is to be your sleeping-mat, and it will be my shadow
with you, so that you may not forget me.” When he had thanked her, she
put out her hand abruptly, saying, “You are going: let us take leave of
one another here.”
Vere had only to take the hand and let her go, but he had pictured to
himself quite another sort of leave-taking, and his vanity was wounded.
“Are we to part as if we were at enmity, Raluve? Every one shakes
hands, therefore we must kiss each other: besides, I want to know what
you will do when I am gone.”
The girl looked at him angrily. “It is nothing to you where I go when
you are gone. You are a white man, and I am a black woman. I amused
you, my chief, while you were here, and you will find another to amuse
you in the place to which you go.”
“Raluve, are you angry with me?”
“No. You are a white man, and white men always treat my people so.”
“But think----”
“Give me no more reasons. It is enough that I myself would not make you
despised of your own people. It is best that you should go.”
“But what will you do?”
“I also will go away. The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe
shall bear me farther still,” and she laughed a hard little laugh. Then
she got up to go, and Vere dared not detain her. She did not respond
to his parting kiss, but left the house with averted face. What could
she have meant by her last words? He remembered with sickening dread
that he had heard of natives killing themselves for the most trivial
reasons. Men and women had climbed cocoa-nut-trees and flung themselves
down because their townsfolk ridiculed them, and Raluve, refined as
she was, had a native’s feelings underneath the surface. If she meant
this, the rest of his life would not be pleasant to him. And as he sat
pondering a sound caught his ear, and he ran to the door. There sat
Raluve trying in vain to stifle her passionate sobs. He tried to raise
her, and draw her back into the house, but she resisted, crying, “O
Kalokalo, I cannot leave you in anger, therefore kiss me, and let me
go; my love for you is hurting me.”
She returned his kiss this time, and in a moment she had passed behind
the palm-stems.
Two hours later Vere was shaking hands with his native friends on the
beach, hardly daring to look along the line of faces for fear that
Raluve might be among them. But she was not. He strained his eyes
from the steamer as she moved slowly out to distinguish the tall lithe
figure he knew so well. On the hill above the village was a great
boulder of black limestone, hurled from the topmost pinnacle of the
island in some old earthquake. As they steamed away he saw a movement
on the top of the rock. With his glasses he made out the figure of a
woman dressed in white, as Raluve had been that morning. She took off
her upper garment, waved it once above her head, and then flung it far
out towards the steamer. The wind caught and bore it sideways, but
before it had fluttered down among the tops of the palms the figure was
gone. It was Raluve’s farewell.
Vere had plenty of leisure during the two days’ voyage to think
over the past. Till now he had been buoyed up by the sense of doing
that which was difficult and disagreeable, and therefore probably
right,--for his early training had imbued him with the idea that the
pleasant ways of life lead into the “broad road”; but now he began
to feel unaccountably ashamed of himself. If he had been to blame
for accepting the girl’s love, still, he thought complacently, the
wrench had been as great for him as for her. But argue as he would,
he felt that he was running away from a situation he did not dare to
face,--that he was betraying and deserting a woman. What was it that
she had said? “The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall
bear me farther still.” Why, if she had that sort of temptation in
her present state of nervous excitement, she would yield, of course.
What might she not be doing at this very moment while the engines
trampled on and put mile after mile between them? And he might save
her if he were there. Pulses began to beat in his brain, and he got up
and raced along the empty deck. Only a blue wavy line on the eastern
horizon remained of the island. As he looked at it, trying to picture
the village that lay beneath it, the memories of the last three weeks
rushed over him, with Raluve as the centre of each picture,--her
tenderness, her soft words, even the proud little pose of the head that
he had so often teased her about. It was a very perfect life while it
lasted. Then he began to remember words that he had said but forgotten
till now,--words that she must have taken as promises. Nay, but they
were promises, and he, an English gentleman, bound by promises, was
coolly breaking them. With every throb of the propeller this feeling
became stronger, until he had persuaded himself that he was already
bound by the past, and was no longer master of his own actions. There
was a feeling of rest in having come to a determination, and his mind
recoiled from the idea of again reviewing the arguments that had led to
it step by step.
The first action on landing was to write the best and most foolish
letter he had ever written, resigning his appointment, without offering
any explanation. Then he made terms with the skipper of a cutter that
sailed the same afternoon to carry him back. He went on board at once,
not daring to meet any one he knew lest awkward questions might be
asked.
They had a head-wind all the way back, and Vere became ill with anxiety
and excitement during the four days’ voyage. At last the palm-groves
he had left a week ago were in sight, and he was straining his eyes in
trying to recognise Raluve’s figure among the crowd on the beach. She
was not there. He landed with a sense of sickening fear. Two or three
natives shook hands with him, but he dared not ask them the question he
longed to have answered. A couple of storekeepers’ assistants were the
only white men on the beach. They stared at him in open astonishment,
and then explained his return in their own way with many grins and
nudges of the elbow. He hurried to his landlord’s house, knowing that
he would tell him the unvarnished truth without gloating over the
scandal. The daughter of the house was alone in the house mending a
net. Without waiting to account for his sudden appearance, he said,
“Where is Raluve?” The girl knew the story, and hesitated. “Tell me,”
he cried, angrily, “Am I a sick man that you fear to say the truth?
Where is she?”
“She has gone,” answered the girl.
“Gone whither?”
“With Nambuto,” she said, falteringly.
“Say on.”
The story was short. On the day he had left there had been a great
meeting, and Raluve had been admonished before all the chiefs. Nambuto
had spoken kindly to her, and day after day they had waited till she
should make up her mind. Then gradually the old feeling of her race
must have gained upon her, and the memory of the dream that had passed
waxed fainter. Her people would take her back, and her lover had
deserted her, and as for death by her own hand--it was most terrible.
“But why do you say she has gone with Nambuto?” asked Vere, fiercely.
“They are not married? Speak plainly all that you know.”
“They are not yet married, but this I know, that they sailed in
Nambuto’s canoe this morning, and before they sailed Raluve’s
_tombe_[2] was cut off.”
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The _tombe_ is a long lock of hair worn by Fijian girls until they
marry, as a sign of maidenhood, the rest of the hair being short.
THE RAIN-MAKERS.
In Ambrym there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom among the
hills. For two whole months there had been peace: the clubs lay idle
in the eaves; the digging-stick replaced the spear; bold warriors
ingloriously tilled the soil; and yet there was scarcity. Peace, and
yet famine! December had come, but the yam-vines, already twining on
the sticks, had sickened and withered; the taro swamp was hard and
fissured, like old Turo’s face, and a stalk or two, blackened as by
fire, was all that was left of the taro; the plantain-leaves were
yellow and wrinkled; and still the earth was as iron and the heaven was
as brass. Not even Turo remembered such a season.
It was useless to wait longer for rain: a few weeks longer and there
would be no one left to wait. Something must be done, and done at once.
But what? The ancient arts were forgotten. What is the use of being
able to creep unheard upon an unsuspecting foe, if one has forgotten
how to control the unseen powers? What profits it that one can strike
one’s foe with the club, if one no longer knows how to slay him with
magic leaves as the hillmen do? For there is foolishness upon the
coast, and wisdom dwells only among the hills.
But to go to the hills for wisdom can only be resorted to under the
direst necessity. It is true that brains have often been brought from
the hills, but that was in a material form, for purposes of decoration,
as the grinning row of skulls under the eaves, that form Turo’s patent
of nobility, bear witness; and as the end one, added only eight weeks
ago, has not yet been paid for in the usual way, there is a natural
delicacy in applying for the loan of the wisdom seated in the crania of
the survivors. If only the hillmen’s heads, when sundered from their
wretched carcases, were not useless for purposes of consultation, the
difficulty would be solved.
But any death is better than starvation. An ambassador must be sent. If
he does not come back, he will be no worse off than if he starved at
home, save that his body will play an important _rôle_ at a mountain
feast, and his head will grin derisively at the mountain children
playing before the chief’s house. But even so the hillmen will be one
head to the bad, and what is the use of a big score if there be no one
left to glory in it? In a week the warriors will be so famine-weakened
that the hillmen could hold them by the hair while the boys beat them
to death, as Turo used to do when he was younger. Yes, some one must
go, and who better than Erirala the orator?
The matter is put before Erirala at the evening conclave. Erirala
approves of the principle, but thinks that Malata would make a better
envoy, seeing that his brother married a hillman’s third cousin. Malata
is diffident about his powers of persuasion, and the point is submitted
to old Turo as he squats in his doorway, still trying with palsied
hands to carve the club he began two years ago.
“Let Erirala go,” he pipes, and there is nothing more to be said.
That night the limestone ring, the handiwork of the gods, is unburied
from its hiding-place. It is beyond all price but that of rain. Ten
barbed spears--not the shin-bone ones, because to present _them_
to the relations of the shin-bones would be indelicate, but good
spears, inlaid with mother-of-pearl--and eight strings of shell money,
are the price with which the precious rain is to be bought. Erirala
leaves at daybreak, after being wept over by his three wives and the
sister-in-law who digs his plantation. There is nothing to do but to
wait till he either comes back or--till bad news comes. The pitiless
sun rides through the burning sky, and sinks at last behind the western
hills, leaving the air hazy and tremulous. The tide goes out, and the
mud hardens and cracks behind it as it goes. The very crickets are
silent--dead, probably, of thirst--and the people still sit, spear in
hand, beneath the palm-trees waiting. It grows dark, and still he fails
to come. Surely the worst has happened.
A cry at last from the forest. A hundred voices answer, a hundred
wasted bodies spring up to welcome Erirala returned from the dead.
The silent village has found its voice at last, and every inhabitant,
down to the dingo dogs, has something to say, and says it at the top
of his voice. Brands are snatched from the fire, and then Erirala is
seen standing on the bush-path imploring silence in dumb show. At
last he gets it, and tells his news. The wise have taken pity and come
to the foolish; but unless the foolish keep silence, the wise will
be frightened and take to their heels, if they have not already done
so. The wise know that better men than they have been enticed by fair
words and gifts, and fallen into an ambush from which not even their
gods could save them, and never came back to tell their friends how it
happened.
There is silence, and Erirala retires into the bush and calls. No
answer. He shouts again with long-drawn mountain vowels. From far up
the hillside comes a faint answer. The wise have run fast and far,
and must be reassured, and Erirala bawls comforting words into the
darkness. In twenty minutes the two wary old birds emerge into the
village square, and stand blinking in the circle of flickering light
cast by the fire. The children crowd wonderingly round them, and their
elders scan them from the dense shadow of the huts. Will the wise stay
the night? No; the wise have a particular engagement at home before
morning. Won’t they at least wait till a meal can be cooked? No; the
wise have come on business, and that done, they must needs return.
Well, then, since they won’t, let Erirala go with them to fetch rain.
The chief magician leads the way to the river, now nearly dry. He is
elderly and wizened, with no clothes but a shell and a stick thrust
through the cartilage of his nose. His familiar is a trifle younger,
attired in the same cool garb, but dignified with an ear-lobe pierced
and distended enough to carry an empty _caviare_ tin whole. The left
lobe, following a natural law, had broken under the strain, and after
dangling for months on the shoulder, has lately been excoriated and
tastefully spliced with grass bandages. The familiar carries a roll
of bark-cloth under his arm. Equipped with this only and wisdom, the
magicians would force the heavens to give rain. How wonderful is human
intellect, and how high above the beasts is man!
Arrived on the river-bank, Erirala is commanded to advance no farther,
for it is not permitted the common mortal to witness the mysteries of
the intercourse between the gods and their chosen ones. Together they
pick their way among the round boulders that form the dry river-bed,
till they come to the inch-deep stream that is all that is left of
the river. Together they grope to a certain boulder, with a flat top,
whose base is washed by the trickling stream. “This is the place,”
says the magician. The familiar grasps it, strains at it, and raises
one end a few inches from the water. The wise one snatches the cloth
from under the familiar’s arm and thrusts it under the stone, which
falls on it with a heavy thud. Then in the pitchy darkness, with no
sound but the faint gurgle of the shallow stream, he chants magic words
in a quavering treble--words whose meaning is hidden from degenerate
man, but which were handed down by the wise men of old, in the days
when gods came up from the sea with white faces, strange head-gear, and
turtles’ shells on their backs, and slew their forefathers, and sailed
away in a magic canoe to the heavens whence they came. Whatever the
words meant, the gods always obeyed them, provided that the right kind
of cloth had been put under the right kind of stone. Would they disobey
now?
When they came back Erirala was sitting on the bank, slapping his bare
limbs to kill the mosquitoes and keep his spirits up. “Erirala, there
will be rain,” said the sage; and without another word he plunged with
his companion into the bush, and was gone. The envoy returned to the
village. In answer to his anxious questioners, he could only say that
he had seen nothing and knew nothing, except that the rain was coming.
Next morning the brazen sun climbed into a copper sky. Not a breath
of air rippled the oily sea; even the distant reef was silent. It was
just such a morning as the rest, and the rain-god laughed at spells.
Nevertheless, the women were sent to cut firewood to store in the huts,
and to gather a store of bush-nuts against the time when the bush would
be impassable. The canoes at the river-mouth were hauled up lest the
flood should carry them away, and old Turo sat on the beach looking
eastwards, and chuckling to himself.
But at noon the day is not like other days. The cockatoos are
screaming, which they never do at noon on other days. Insect life is
awake. The whole bush is singing, and only dull-witted man awaits a
clearer sign. And now even that is given. A purple haze has gathered in
the south-west. It resolves into a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand;
there is a muttering in the heavens, the clouds rush up the sky, though
not a breath as yet cools the simmering air or stirs the palm-leaves.
The muttering grows to a murmur, the murmur to a distant roar. The air
becomes dark; the roar gathers volume. There! there! to the south a
great grey pillar rolls towards us, lashing the forest beneath it: the
air grows cold. To your huts! it is upon us! and with a savage roar the
rain-storm bursts. It does not break up into paltry drops, but gushes
down upon the thirsty earth in one broad torrent, and the parched soil
drinks it greedily, and sends up a sweet fresh smell in gratitude.
Did the windows of heaven open so wide as this when Noah launched his
clumsy craft upon the waters? Surely the ocean will overflow and engulf
Ambrym.
Rain, rain, rain! The sodden thatch has long since ceased to turn the
flood. The water beats down the tree-tops, bowing beneath its weight. A
raging torrent has been formed through the village square. The soil is
crumbling away to the house-foundations, and fast pouring out seawards.
There are six inches of water in every house. The crazy rafters of
Turo’s house have given way, and the last trophy has fallen and been
whirled out to sea, grinning at its enemies’ new misfortunes. Voices
are drowned in the never-ceasing roar of rushing water. It grows dark
and light again, and again dark, and the people, hearing, seeing, and
breathing nothing but water, cling helpless and dismayed to their
house-posts, and wish for the day. The third morning dawns, and the
men gather round the wreck of Turo’s house. Their voices are drowned
by the rain and the river, whose trickling stream has long burst its
banks and become a furious torrent. They shout to one another that the
rain must be stopped. But who can stop it but the rain-makers? Erirala
must again go to the wise with greater presents than those that brought
the rain. The treasures of the village are collected, and Erirala,
half drowned, is laden for his second embassy. Knee-deep in the swift
muddy stream that has torn its way through the village, he toils step
by step up what was once the path, and disappears. It is night when he
reaches the rocky spur on which are perched the dwellings of the wise.
He gropes his way to a hut, and shouts greetings through the blinding
rain. A voice from within replies. The leaf door slides to one side,
and a skinny arm is thrust out for the presents, yet is the envoy not
invited in. He proffers his request. The foolish have had the rain. It
was good. But there was a little too much of it. Will the wise be of a
good mind and turn it off? The wise will do their best: and with this
slender comfort Erirala is left to find his way back in the dark, half
swimming and half sliding down the slippery path.
But with the dawn the rain has not ceased--nay, it has gathered double
volume. What do these crafty hillmen mean? Will they kill us with water
since they failed with drought? Or are they too lazy to raise a finger
to save us?
Another night passes, and with the morning comes stern resolve. There
is no doubt now what are the hillmen’s motives, and if we needs must
die of water, let us at least redden it with our enemies’ blood. There
shall be one last embassy to them, and they shall understand that
the coast warriors will be trifled with no more. An ultimatum shall
be sent to these crafty foes, and the rain shall either cease or be
dyed with the blood of the rain-makers. Angry and defiant words are
spoken at the meeting on the spur overlooking the village whither the
foolish have removed from their inundated dwellings. Hungry and cold,
they cower in the driving rain, without any shelter but the dripping
trees,--men, women, and crying children huddled together, the victims
of a cruel conspiracy between the malignant spirits and their mountain
foes. Wearily Erirala leaves them, bound upon his last embassy, without
presents this time, but with a stern message instead.