had been ruled for him with red ink. But to-night, lost in thoughts
of he knew not what, he strayed from his direction and found himself
approaching a little grove of coco-palms. They grew prettily
together, laced with creepers and thickened with an undergrowth of
ferns; there was something about the innocence of their arrangement
which reminded him of an English copse, and the resemblance was
increased by a little path that turned and twisted its way in among
them. But in an English copse even the slenderest path is wide enough
for two lovers to walk it with their arms about each other, while
this path was so narrow that it was clearly the path of one who
visited the thicket alone.
A parrot flew off from a bough above his head, uttering a loud cry.
Mr. Fortune roused himself from his dream. He was not in an English
copse, looking for bluebells and being careful not to tread on a
nightingale’s nest, he was in a grove of coco-palms on the island of
Fanua, an island in the midst of the Pacific ocean like an island
in a story book. And he was looking for--? He was not looking for
anything; for in all his time at Fanua though he admired the flowers
he had rarely picked any. It did not occur to him to do so. One picks
only the flowers that one learned to pick as a child--cowslips and
primroses and cuckoo-pint, and pale starwort that grows in the dusty
summer hedge and fades before one can carry it home.
Lueli was always picking flowers. Perhaps he came here for them,
perhaps he had been along this path but an hour ago? At any rate some
flower gatherer had; for lying at his feet Mr. Fortune observed a
dark-coloured blossom like a stain. He stooped and picked it up. Yes,
it was freshly gathered, it had not begun to wither yet, but it was
moist with dew and felt cold and forsaken.
Presently Mr. Fortune came on a trail of lilac-flowered creeper
caught up on a fern. He disentangled this and carried it along with
him.
“Extravagant creature!” he said; for now he felt sure that he was on
Lueli’s track. “I could make myself a bouquet out of what he spills
and scatters.”
He still followed the path, wondering what next he would pick up. A
little further on he perceived a whole garland lying on a patch of
greensward. He was in the heart of the little wood and here the path
seemed to end.
“I declare that he’s still child enough to be playing at houses. And
this is the young man I’ve been trying to find a wife for!”
It looked exactly as though Lueli had been playing at house. The
ferns and bushes were hung with trailing sprays of blossom which
looped them into a pretence of being walls, and in the midst beside
the garland was a platter arranged with fruits and leaves.
“What a child!” exclaimed the priest. “Yet after all it may not be
Lueli. Why should I be so sure that this is his fancy-work?”
In an instant he was to be made quite sure. Something slim and dusky
and motionless was reared up behind the platter of fruit. He looked
closer. It was dreadfully familiar. He snatched it up and stared
close into its face, a face he had seen before. And trampling on the
garland he stood glaring at Lueli’s idol, which looked back at him
with flowers behind its ears.
It was quite obvious, quite certain. There was no chance of being
mistaken, no hope of doubt. For all these years Lueli had been
playing a double game, betraying him, feigning to be a Christian, and
in secret, in the reality of secretness, worshipping an idol.
“It’s my fault,” said the priest, speaking aloud because of his
desperate loneliness. “Not his at all, nor yours either,” and he gave
the idol a sort of compassionate shake.
“I have deluded myself wilfully, I have built my house on the
sand....”
“I have forgotten the fear of God,” he went on. “All this time I have
gone on pretending that religion is a pleasant, is a gentle thing, a
game for good children.”
“But it is an agony!” he suddenly shouted out.
There was no echo. The sultry twilight was closing in on him like a
dark fleece. He could scarcely see the idol now, but in his mind’s
eye he could see it, a face coldly and politely attentive, and the
narrow polished shoulders over which a doll’s necklace slipped and
sidled as it shook with his trembling hands.
“It is torments, wounds, mutilation, and death. It is exile and
weariness. It is strife--an endless strife--it is bewilderment and
fear and trembling. It is despair.”
Turning abruptly he left the thicket by the path which had led him
in, and stumbling in the dark and feeling his body heavy and cold in
the hot night he made his way to the hut.
It was all dark; but that was no reason why Lueli should not be
within, for he had been so often warned to handle the lamp carefully
that he was a coward about it and never touched it if he could avoid
doing so.
Mr. Fortune threw down the idol and lit the lamp from his tinder-box.
Then he looked round. Lueli was curled up on his mat. He had been
asleep and now he opened his eyes and looked drowsily at his friend.
Mr. Fortune said nothing. He stood in the centre of the hut under the
hanging lamp and waited for Lueli to notice the idol.
Lueli parted his lips. He was just about to speak when he saw what
lay on the ground. He raised his eyes to Mr. Fortune’s countenance,
for a moment he put on a confused smile, then with an ill-feigned
yawn he turned over and pretended to have fallen asleep again.
“Deceit,” said Mr. Fortune, as though he were reading from a
note-book.
A faint grunt answered him.
“Lueli, my poor Lueli, this is useless. You can’t get out of it like
this. Get up and tell me what it is that I have found.”
Lueli sat up. The pupils of his eyes were still distended by sleep
and this gave him a frightened look; but his demeanour was perfectly
calm.
“That?”
He shook his head as if to say that he really couldn’t tell what it
was.
“Look again.”
Mr. Fortune spoke curtly, but it was from pure sorrow.
“It is an idol.”
“Yes, and it is your idol.”
Lueli gave a sigh of distress. Mr. Fortune knew exactly how much that
was worth. Lueli hated any unpleasantness.
“You don’t ask me how I came by it. I found it in a thicket near the
beach, the lonely one. And there were flowers round it, and offerings
of fruit, and look, there are flowers stuck behind its ears.”
“So there are.”
“Is this your doing? Why do I ask you, for I know it is. Lueli, you
mustn’t lie to me. I implore you not to lie. Is this your doing,
have you been worshipping this object?”
“I picked the flowers.”
Mr. Fortune groaned. Then he sat down like one who foresees a long
and weariful business before him. Lueli edged himself a little
nearer. He had rumpled up his brow into a grimace of condolence, he
looked like a beautiful and sympathetic marmoset.
He said in a voice at once tender and sly:
“But why are you unhappy? I have done nothing, it is only my idol,
and I just happened to pick it a few flowers. That is all.”
“Listen. I will tell you why I am unhappy. When I came to Fanua I
came to teach you not to worship idols but to worship God. I came
to teach you all, but the others would have none of me. You were my
only convert, you received my teaching, I thought you loved it, and
I trusted you. Now I have found out my mistake. If you worship your
idol still I am to blame. It is my fault. If I had done my duty by
you you would have known better. But I have not shown you the true
God, so you have kept to the old one, the false one, a wooden thing,
a worship so false that you can treat him like a toy. As I came back
to-night I was tempted with the thought that perhaps after all your
fault was only childishness. And for a moment (to spare myself and
you) I had half a mind to pretend to God that your idol was only a
doll. But we will have none of that.”
Now he spoke sternly, and at the last words he beat one fist against
the other. Lueli started.
“I blame myself, I say, not you. I should have been on my guard. When
I saw that thing four years ago I should have acted then. But I shut
my eyes (I am most horribly to blame) and now, see what has come of
it. You are in fault too, for you have been deceiving me. But I know
you are rather cowardly and very affectionate; your deceitfulness
after all is not so surprising.”
He could have gone on talking like this for some time and finding it
soothing, but he knew by experience that Lueli would find it soothing
too. He raised his eyes from his heavily folded hands and looked at
the boy. Sure enough, there was the familiar expression, the lulled
face of one who listens to a powerful spell.
He stopped short, nerved himself to deliver the blow and said in a
slow dull voice:
“You must destroy your idol. You had better burn it.”
With a vehement gesture of refusal Lueli sprang to his feet.
“Burn it,” repeated the priest.
Such a wild and affronted antagonism defied him from the tautened
brown body and the unswerving, unbeholding gaze that for a moment the
priest was appalled. But his looks gave back defiance for defiance.
They bore the other’s down, and averting his eyes Lueli gave a sudden
shrug and made as though to walk out of the hut.
Mr. Fortune was between him and the door. He jumped up and barred the
line of retreat. Lueli wavered. Then he went back to his corner and
sat down without a word. Mr. Fortune half expected him to weep, but
he did nothing so obliging.
For a good hour Mr. Fortune talked on, commanding, reasoning,
expostulating, explaining, persuading, threatening. Lueli never
answered him, never even looked at him. He sat with downcast eyes in
utter stubbornness and immobility.
The night was sultry and absolutely still. Mr. Fortune dripped with
sweat, he felt as though he were heaving enormous boulders into a
bottomless pit. He continued to heave his words into silence, a
silence only broken by the hissing of the lamp, or the creak of his
chair as he changed from one uneasy position to another, but the
pauses grew longer between each sentence. He was weary, and at his
wit’s end. But he could see nothing for it but to go on talking. And
now he became so oppressed by the silence into which he spoke that he
could foresee a moment when he would have to go on talking because he
would be afraid to hold his tongue.
A frightful imagination took possession of him: that Lueli was become
like his idol, a handsome impassive thing of brown wood, that had
ears and heard not, that had no life in its heart. Would nothing move
him? He would have been thankful for a look of hate, for a curse
or an insult. But with the same show of inanimate obstinacy Lueli
continued to bend his look upon the ground, a figure too austere to
be sullen, too much withdrawn into itself to be defiant.
Mr. Fortune heard himself say at the top of his voice: “Lueli! Don’t
you hear me?”
It seemed that his outcry had broken the spell. Lueli suddenly looked
up and began to listen, to listen with such strained, absorbed,
animal attention that Mr. Fortune found himself listening too. There
was a sound: a sound like a violent gust of wind strangely sweeping
through the motionless night. It came rapidly, it came near, brushing
its way through the tree-tops. Like an actual angry presence the
wind came vehemently into the hut and as though an invisible hand
had touched it Mr. Fortune saw the hanging lamp begin to sway. It
swayed faster and faster, widening its sweep at every oscillation;
and while he stared at it in a stupor of amazement he felt the earth
give a violent twitch under his feet as though it were hitting up at
him and he was thrown to the ground. There was a noise of rending
and bellowing, the lamp gave a last frantic leap, again he felt the
ground buffet him like the horns of a bull and then with a crash and
a spurt of fire the roof of the hut caved in.
At the same moment he felt something large and heavy topple across
his body.
He could not move and he could not think. He saw flames rising up
around him and heard the crackle of the dried thatch. Again the
ground began to quiver and writhe beneath him, and suddenly he knew
what was happening--an earthquake!
The bulk that lay on top of him was the harmonium. He was pinned
beneath it--presently the flames would reach him and he would be
burnt to death.
He felt no kind of fear or emotion, only a calm certainty as to
what was happening, and with it a curious detached satisfaction at
being able to understand it all so well. The flames would enclose
him and he would be burnt to death, unless the ground opened first
and swallowed him up. Then he remembered Lueli. What of him? He
struggled again, but he could not get out from under the harmonium.
The struggle reminded him that he was a human being, not only an
intelligence but a creature defencelessly sentient that must perish
by fire. Fear came on him, and self-pity, and with it a sort of
pique; for he said to himself: “I know now he never cared for me. He
has made off and left me to burn, just what I should expect.” And at
the same moment he heard himself cry out: “Save yourself, Lueli! Be
quick, child! Never mind me, I am all right.” And then, seeing Lueli
bending over him, he said in a voice of command: “Lueli, I tell you
to save yourself. Get out of this while there’s time.”
He saw Lueli in the light of the flames, he saw him put his shoulder
against the harmonium and begin to heave it up; he saw the muscles
leap out along the thrusting body--all with a sort of anger and
impatience because his friend would not attend to what he was saying.
Even when it was jolted backward and he was freed he lay where he had
fallen, half-stunned, with no definite thought except to compel Lueli
to obey him and get away before the next tremor sent the whole hut
crashing down on them.
He felt Lueli put his arms round his shoulders, shaking him and
hauling him on to his feet, and he noticed with surprise how stern
the boy looked, not frightened, but extraordinarily stern, like a
stranger, like an angel. The earth began to quake again, another
sheaf of thatch slid from the roof and the flames leaped up to seize
upon it. Mr. Fortune suddenly came out of his stupor. Stumbling and
losing his footing on the wavering floor he caught hold of Lueli’s
arm and together they ran out of the hut.
Three times in crossing the dell they were thrown to the earth. There
was something horribly comic in this inability to stand upright. It
was as though they were being tossed in a blanket. They did not speak
to each other; all thought of speech was forbidden by the appalling
novelty of the uproar that was going on, rumblings and bellowings
underground, trees beating against each other or crashing to the
ground, the cries of terror-struck creatures. Lueli dragged him on,
hastening toward the mountain. There was a little path that led up by
the ravine, difficult to mount at any time and more difficult still
in an earthquake.
“Why do you go this way?” Mr. Fortune asked, when the tremor had
subsided enough for him to be able to remember how to speak. Lueli
turned on him a face of terror.
“The sea,” he said. “The sea.”
Mr. Fortune had forgotten the sea. Now he remembered what he had read
in books of adventure as a boy: how after an earthquake comes a tidal
wave, a wall of water frantically hurling itself upon the land. And
not daring to look behind him he followed Lueli up the steep path as
though the sea were at his heels.
At last they came out upon a little grassy platform, overlooking
the ravine. They were only just in time, for the earthquake began
again. They sat side by side, holding on to one another. Mr. Fortune
discovered that it was a brilliant and impassive moonlight night. He
looked toward the ocean. It seemed strangely calm, incredibly vast,
more solid than the tormented earth. A glittering path of silver
across it reflected the moon.
They were close to the cataract. To-night, instead of the usual
steady roar of falling water, the noise was coming in curious gouts
of sound, now loud, now almost nothing. He turned his eyes and saw
the slender column of falling water all distorted, and flapping
like a piece of muslin in a draught. For some reason this sight was
overwhelmingly piteous and a sort of throe hollowed him as if he were
going to cry.
At every shock thousands of birds flew up from the tossing tree-tops.
In wild excitement they circled overhead, flying in droves, sweeping
past with a whirr of innumerable wings, soaring higher and higher,
then suddenly diving aslant, shot from the wake of their own vortex.
Their continual angry clamour, passionate and derisive, swayed above
the uproar of trampling earth and clashing forest. One bird came
volleying so close to Mr. Fortune that he saw its beak flash in the
moonlight and put up his hand to shield his face. As it passed it
screamed in his ear like a railway whistle. He thought: “I should
like to scream like that.”
Although he and Lueli sat holding on to each other, Mr. Fortune had
no sense of companionship. In this appalling hour there did not seem
to be anyone alive save himself. He was the Last Man, alone in a
universe which had betrayed him, abandoned on the face of an earth
which had failed under his feet. He was isolated even from himself.
There was no Mr. Fortune now, a missionary who had been a bank-clerk,
an Englishman and a member of the Church of England. Such a one would
have been behaving quite differently. At the best he might have been
behaving much better, he might have been in the village, keeping
troth with his fellow-men; at the least he would have been trembling
for his own skin and calling on God. But this man sat on the reeling
mountain-side with but one sensation: a cold-hearted excitement, a
ruthless attentive craving that at the height of horror would welcome
another turn of the screw, another jab of the spur, another record
broken.
The shocks were now coming so continuously that it was scarcely
possible to say when one followed another; but he went on keeping
count and comparing them, and if they seemed to be slackening off he
was disappointed. He sat with his eyes shut, for so he could both
feel and hear more unmitigatedly. At intervals he looked out seaward
for the coming of the tidal wave. But the sea was always calm, as
coldly calm as himself and a great deal more solid. “Yet it must
come,” he told himself. “It is certain to come.” And after a terrific
shock, accompanied by sounds of rending and shattering as though the
whole island were splitting asunder, he thought with certainty: “It
will come now,” and opened his eyes once more.
Something had happened. There was a difference in the air, in
the colour of the night. Had dawn come already? His faculties
were so cramped with attention that he could scarcely receive a
new sensation, still less analyse it. Yet he felt that there was
something he must account for, some discrepancy between this light
and the light of dawn. The sun rose--yes, the sun rose in the east,
over the sea: but this light seemed to come from behind him. He
turned and saw the sky lit up with the light of fire.
“The mountain is on fire!” he cried out. And at the sound of his own
words he suddenly understood what had happened. The mountain was on
fire. Its ancient fires had come back to it, Fanua was once more an
active volcano.
Below the bed of the cold and heavy sea, below the foundations of the
great deep, into an unimaginable hell of energy and black burning
those fires had withdrawn. They had rejoined the imprisoned original
frenzy that lies in the heart of the earth, working and wallowing in
unknown tides, and once more the fiery spring had mounted, revolting
against the encompassing pressure, fumbling in darkness, melting its
way, flooding along its former channels until now it flared on the
crest of the island, brightening and brightening upon the sky, a glow
of such intense and vivid rose-colour that by contrast the moonlight
turned to an icily-piercing blue. Cloud upon cloud of smoke rolled
upwards and at every fresh surge of fire the vault of heaven appeared
to grow more vast and haughty, and the stars seemed recoiling into
space. The mountain shouted and bellowed as though it were triumphing
because its fires had come back to it.
Mr. Fortune leapt to his feet. He waved his arms, he stood on tip-toe
in order to see better. Though the next moment might engulf him he
was going to make the most of this. But there was no need to be
so provident, so economical. This bonfire had been preparing for
decades, it would not burn out in a minute or two. Realizing this
he sat down again and relinquished himself to an entire and passive
contemplation, almost lulled by the inexhaustible procession of
fire and smoke, warming his mind at the lonely terrific beauty of a
mountain burning by night amid an ocean.
Clouds began to gather at daybreak. Only a pallor showed where the
sun groped upwards among them, and the sea which but a few hours ago
had looked so lustrous, and solid like a floor of onyx, was now pale
and weltering.
The earthquake seemed to be over; sometimes the ground gave a sort of
a twitch and a tremble like an animal that dreams a bad dream; but
this happened at longer and longer intervals and each disturbance was
fainter than the last. Except for the plume of foul smoke that issued
from the crater and sagged over the mountain-side as it was checked
by the morning airs there was nothing to distinguish this daybreak
from any other, unless, thought Mr. Fortune, that it was a peculiarly
dreary one.
He was chilled with watching, and oppressed with the indigestion
common to those who have sat up all night. He was also bruised
with so much falling about, and his ribs ached from being crushed
under the harmonium. But his excitement which in spite of all the
adventures of the last twelve hours was still a deferred excitement,
unsatisfied and defrauded of its prey, wouldn’t let him settle down
into a reasonable fatigue, but still kept his muscles strung up and
his vision strained.
It seemed an age since he had last thought of Lueli. He looked at him
now as though from a long way off and rather crossly and it seemed as
though his vague irritation were in a way to be justified, for Lueli
lay as though asleep.
That Lueli should sleep while he waked was enough. It showed that
he was inconsiderate, incapable of true sympathy, an inferior being
who hadn’t got indigestion. Mr. Fortune heaved a loud short sigh.
Lueli didn’t stir. No doubt of it. He was asleep. He lay so that Mr.
Fortune could only see the curve of his cheek and half his mouth,
which bore the sad resigned expression of those who slumber. But
bending a little over him to make sure, Mr. Fortune discovered that
the boy’s eyes were open and fixed mournfully upon the empty and
tormented sea. There was something so devastated about that blank and
unmoving gaze that the priest was awed. Why did Lueli look so old, so
set and austere? The face so well known seemed that of a stranger:
and suddenly he recalled Lueli bending over him in the burning hut
as he lay helpless under the harmonium, and remembered that then his
face had worn the same look, grave and stern.
Lueli had saved his life at the risk of his own, he had shown that
greatest love which makes a man ready to lay down his life for his
friend. And now the rescued one sat coldly beside the rescuer eyeing
his unknown sorrow, and but a moment ago seeking some pretext for
scorning and disliking him.
“What a hateful creature I am,” thought Mr. Fortune, “and how this
earthquake has shown me up! But Lueli has behaved well throughout, he
saved my life, he kept his head, he didn’t want to cheer and behave
like a tripper when the mountain exploded.” And in his thoughts he
begged Lueli’s pardon.
Still Lueli lay beside him, staring out to sea with the same mournful
look. His silence was like a reproach to Mr. Fortune. It seemed to
say: “You have slighted me unjustly and now I must forget you.” Mr.
Fortune waited patiently, he had a confused idea that his patience
now must repair his former impatience. But at length his love could
endure no longer, and he laid his hand gently on Lueli’s arm. There
was no response. Lueli didn’t even turn his eyes.
“He is tired out,” thought the priest. “That is why he looks so
miserable.” He said aloud: “Wake up, Lueli, you will make yourself
ill if you lie there any longer so still on the cold ground. Wake up.
Rouse yourself. It is all over now.” And he gave him an encouraging
slap on the shoulder.
At last Lueli sighed and stretched himself and turned and met Mr.
Fortune’s anxious gaze.
“I think the earthquake is over,” he remarked in an everyday voice.
“Just what I said a minute ago,” thought Mr. Fortune. “But he doesn’t
know I said it. What can he have been thinking of that he didn’t hear
me?”
He still felt slightly worried about the boy.