And then Raluve came in
“And then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms.”
If her chaperones were flighty, Raluve showed by contrast a deportment austerely correct. She wasby nature and training an aristocrat—well versed in the traditions of her race, which included the belief in a natural gulf fixed between her own and the lower orders, and a vast contempt for the vulgarity of gush. She had been educated on a mission station, where she learned to take an intelligent interest in something beyond getting up linen, and the latest scandal. Now reserve, intelligence, and the manners of a lady are so rare a combination in a native, that the callow Vere began to fill up the blanks in her character in his own way, and to miss the lessons on the days she failed to come, more than he cared to confess to himself. Not many men can use the eyes God gave them without enlarging or belittling, unless they have the loan of others’ eyes to correct their vision by. Some do indeed succeed in viewing life through the wrong end of the telescope, and in enjoying it hugely; but the majority unscrew the lens and gaze on a new world—rocky mountains made of dust-specks, trodden by ants as elephants. Vere, the solitary, was beginning to idealise the natives, and it is all up with the man who does that, since, for some occult reason, it is in the feminine side of the race that the finer qualitiesare discovered. He was startled to find out for himself that this brown-skinned girl thought and spoke much in the same way as did girls with white skins, with the only difference that she was more natural andnaïve. He found himself confiding his worries past and present to her, and asking her advice. He liked her ready sympathy, and her healthy good sense, and her sense of humour amused him; and when, after three weeks of almost daily companionship, he heard it hinted that she would soon leave the island, he knew that she had become a companion whom he would miss very much indeed.
During these three weeks Nambuto, after the manner of his kind, had been eating up the land, and he was in no hurry to go away. But a time comes when the slaughter of pigs and fowls has an end, and at the village meeting themata-ni-vanua, whose duty it was to apportion each man’s contribution to the daily feast, pointed out that that time had arrived. Besides a couple of elderly sows, on whom their hopes of a future herd were centred, nothing remained to kill. An intimation must be conveyed to their haughty guest. Now it is a fine thing to be a chief in these happy isles. Rank andriches in civilised communities entail responsibilities. We are even told on high authority that the rich are as unlikely to enjoy happiness in this life, as they are certain to lose it in the next, which, to say the least of it, would be rather hard upon the well-to-do if they had not the remedy in their own hands. But a chief in these islands enjoys not only his own wealth, but his subjects’ besides, and has neither responsibility nor that product of civilisation called a conscience to trouble him. He does not sleep less soundly for fear the crushed worm may turn. The crushing was done too effectually for that some generations ago.
Nambuto wore his new responsibilities lightly. They seemed to consist chiefly in consuming the food brought to him by his uncomplaining and despised hosts, who, if they ever came as visitors to his island, would be kept from starvation by his vassals. But comfortable though he was, his visit had to be curtailed owing to the natural difficulty in reanimating pigs and fowls that have been cooked and eaten. The morning’s presentation of food had been meagre, and the excuse that the land was in famine was conveyed to Nambuto’s household. There was no helpfor it. The great canoe was unburied from the pile of leaves that had sheltered it from the burning sun, and hauled down to the water’s edge; the great mat sail was spread upon the sand, while deft fingers replaced the broken threads with new sinnet; and the word went forth that she would put to sea when next the wind was fair.
Raluve came earlier than usual that morning, and, to Vere’s surprise, alone. She walked straight up to the chair where he was sitting, and said, “I have come to take leave.”
“Why, where are you going to?” he asked.
“To our land. And I must take leave quickly, lest they be angry with me for coming.”
She spoke hurriedly—almost roughly—and held out her hand with averted face. Vere sprang to his feet, and slammed the door of his hut.
“You can’t go like this, Raluve, until I know all about it. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“It is Nambuto’s decision. I have only just been told. But the canoe is all prepared, and they will sail to-day, for the wind is fair.”
Vere felt bitterly disappointed. He had almost forgotten that her mind, like the colour of her skin, mustbe different from his. He had taken her seriously, and made a chum of her, and here she was going back to her own people without a word of regret. He now remembered how one-sided their intimacy had been. She had listened patiently to all his confidences, but had told him nothing about herself in return. Well, it had been a pleasant dream, and of course it was common-sense that the awakening must come. What could he, an educated Englishman, have to do with her, the future wife of a savage? This was not even to be his adopted country. Of course he must say good-bye to her, and let his dream fade into the squalid reality of his life. But he felt angry with himself and her.
“Why should they be angry with you?” he asked indifferently, as he put out his hand.
“Because my people are like beasts,” she answered indignantly, “and there have been many words about us, and Nambuto is angry, and has spoken evil to me. Look! I will hide nothing from you.” And then she told him her whole story, lapsing into her own dialect in her excitement, so that he could not follow her: how she had been betrothed to Nambuto against her will; how Vere was the only friend she had ever had, for themen of her nation knew not what friendship with a woman could be; how she would now have to go with them, and be insulted by them all, with none to protect her, or be her friend.
“Isa,” she cried, “you are a white man, and know everything, and I am a black woman and ignorant: tell me of some medicine, that I may drink and die! I cannot bear my life.”
Then all Vere’s better qualities rose to drag him down. All the chivalry in him was stirred. He was not going to see this girl bullied, and on his account. Whatever the consequences might be, he must protect her. A worse man would have wisely reflected that native customs are best left alone, and that, after all, the prospect painted by Raluve was not so very terrible—for a native woman. But prudence does not wed with youth, and to Vere, who had already begun to lose the sense of proportion, her fate seemed horrible. The average man needs one month in the great world for every five in the islands to correct his perspective, and to realise the utter insignificance of himself and his surroundings, otherwise he will infallibly come to believe that it matters whether or not the coral foundations of the islands crumble away, and the wholecolony, executive machinery and all, go to the bottom of the Pacific in the next hurricane.
Vere’s fluency astonished himself. He found the words without looking for them. The figure at his feet on the mats was so limp and helpless, so hard to reassure by comforting words, that he threw aside all caution in his promises. So they sat on till the pattern of the sunlight through the reed walls crept across the floor-mats, and began to climb the opposite wall, dyeing Raluve’s bowed head with red gold streaks. Suddenly they heard a woman’s voice in the road calling her name, and in another moment one of her women looked in at the door breathless, saying, “I am dead of looking for you. The chief sent me. We sail to-morrow, and it is his word that you come at once.”
Raluve looked at Vere appealingly. “There will be much anger shown to me,” she said; “how shall it be? Am I to go?”
We never know the turning-points in our lives at the time; and so Vere, following that which supplies healthy-minded men with a substitute for a conscience, his own inclination—said, “Do not go. If they are angry come to me.”
When she had gone and the light had faded, hebegan to feel very uncomfortable. He had encouraged her in resisting her own people, and he was, after all, quite powerless to prevent them from ill-treating her. Ugly stories crossed his mind of the doings of the old heathen days, of the outrage and torture inflicted even on women when they resisted the chiefs. Perhaps even at that very moment the storm was breaking on her. The suspense was becoming unbearable when he heard a smothered cough at the door. In the dim light a woman pushed a crumpled note into his hand and vanished into the darkness. It was Raluve’s first letter to him. The writing was in pencil, childish but clear, for Raluve had been taught by the missionary’s wife.
“I am most pitiable,” she wrote. “Nambuto has spoken evil of me before our people and the people of this place, and I am despised. But this is nothing, for they sail to-morrow. Only I fear lest they do something to me by force, and I go to hide in the forest. I will come back when they return. And another thing, Nambuto spoke evil of you also. I send my love to you.—R.”
The canoe was afloat
“The canoe was afloat, and laden with such of the low-borns’ household gods as their aristocratic visitors thought worth taking away.”
Next morning there was a hue and cry. The canoe was afloat, and laden with such of the low-borns’household gods as their aristocratic visitors thought worth taking away. The mat-sail was bent, and ready to be hoisted, but Raluve was nowhere to be found. The palm-groves around the village resounded with her name, and four of the crew of the canoe even went so far as to stand shouting her name in front of Vere’s house. This was hard to bear. Then one of them struck up in a sing-song tone an extempore verse, which the rest received with a burst of coarse laughter. This too was very hard to bear. Then another cried, “Lady Raluve, are there not white men in our own land?” And this being too hard to be borne, the wit saw the flash of white clothes, and found himself dazed upon his back in the grass, with the sensation of having had his face crushed in, while his three companions were in full flight up the read. And Vere returned to his hut relieved in feelings, but with a curious sense of having been degraded to a lower rank of humanity where he stood upon the same level with half-naked savages who wrangle and fight over their women. Two hours later, his fat good-natured landlord, passing his door, volunteered the information that the canoe had sailed. Being a wise man, he said nothing about the missinggirl, the great topic of village scandal, and thereby earned Vere’s confidence.
Now it is not to be supposed that Raluve could escape from annoyance with the departure of her people. These happy isles are no more free from the love of scandal than is civilised Europe. A people endowed with the love of social converse, and without any legitimate object for discussion, naturally falls back upon the topics most dear to the frequenters of small European watering-places. Such a prize as the reputation of a chief woman, hitherto unsmutched, to tear to pieces, would not glut the carrion-crows of this small district for many weeks. And with the knowledge that Raluve had earned her chief’s displeasure, all respect for her rank vanished; for they shared with a certain class of society journal the gloating triumph that only rank and character tottering from its pedestal can properly awaken. So when Raluve quietly returned to the village to take up her abode with the chief’s wife, she found that it would need all her strength to live the scandal down. Deeply wounded as she was to find that by her own act she had earned the scorn of a people she had been trained to despise, her courage soon returned to her, and she gave backscorn for scorn. But she lived on with her one friend, the village chief’s wife, a woman of her own island and her own clan; and as the days passed, and the scandal became stale, she began to take her proper place among them.
Vere was not allowed to escape scathless. The village scandal had of course leaked out among the few Europeans of the place, and as they were precluded from comparing notes with one another, not being on speaking terms for the most part, each one supplied the details according to the richness of his individual fancy. The principal storekeeper’s wife told her daughter that he was an unprincipled young man; and the damsel, having heard all the details from her nativeconfidante, who did the family washing, examined Vere as he passed with redoubled interest. The missionary bowed coldly, and his wife cut him dead. But, worst of all, Commissioner Austin felt it his duty to have his say in a stammering speech, which began, “I don’t pretend to be a particularly moral man myself, but——” and got no further, because Vere, who knew very well what was coming, was short in the temper, and replied with heat, “Mr Austin, I am averymoral man, and I always mind my own business,” which, asa rejoinder, was coarse and unwarrantable, and offended his well-meaning chief past redemption. He felt very sore and angry with the world that chose to regard what he felt to be the fruit of his nobler self as a mere boyish escapade, and he hardened his heart into a defiant resolve to keep his promise to Raluve, and let the world say what it pleased. Probably if the world had left them alone, or if either of them had been a coward, Vere would not have become—well, what he now is.
The next six weeks taught Vere some new things. He learned, for instance, that a brown-skinned girl has much the same kind of heart inside her as her white sisters; that, when in love, she will say and do all that has been said or done by a highly civilised woman, save only that she is more simple, and less tamed by conventionality; that love counts no cost, and asks only to be free from artificial restraint, and utterly careless of the future. His life for the past six weeks had been like some perfect dream that fears no awakening. Memories of home, the throb of the great world, the ambitions of his boyhood, touched him like the murmur in the ears of one who, standing in some silent wood, seems to hear the roar of the city he hasjust left. How often in a lifetime can any of us pause and say, “This is perfect; I ask for nothing more”? We can no doubt remember many perfect moments in our lives, because we have forgotten the little vexations,—that we had the toothache, and our account was overdrawn; for it is the petty worries and the cares of civilised life that prevent our happy moments from being quite perfect. Thetempo felicewas never quite so happy as we think, nor themiseriaquite so wretched. But Vere’s life was happy enough to be worth paying for. He had met Raluve every day, and had come to look on life as quite impossible without her. Sometimes they had met at a trysting-place of Raluve’s choosing in the forest, where a greattavola-tree barred the entrance into a narrow gorge in the hills. Sometimes they had wandered on moonlight nights along the sandy beach; and once Raluve had plunged, laughing, into the warm sea, daring him to follow her, and had swam to the little islet that lay a few hundred yards from the shore. But once, as they sat talking beneath thetavola-tree, Raluve had clutched his arm, listening to some distant sound, and a few moments later a man had crashed through the underwood and stopped a few yards from the tree, hidden from them by the greattrunk. Then Vere prepared himself for battle, but the intruder crashed off again in another direction. Thereafter Raluve declared their trysting-tree unsafe, and the island became their regular place of meeting. There had once been a house on the point, but nothing was left to mark the spot but a number of oleander-trees, and a patch of couch-grass which the sheep had trimmed down. Here at least they were safe from intrusion, for they could see any boat upon the starlit strait that divided them from the shore long before it could land. And to make their safety surer, they swam off independently after night had fallen. Vere told the girl the story of Hero and Leander, and she thereafter would laughingly wave a smouldering branch among the oleanders as a signal to Vere to bind his clothes on his head and swim across to her.
But the awakening came at last. One morning a cutter anchored bringing the mails from headquarters. Besides his usual home letters, there was an oblong official envelope addressed to him. The letter was short. Somebody had the honour to request that he would report himself at headquarters at his earliest convenience, with the view of taking up an appointment as magistrate of another district. So here washis promotion before he expected it. Three months ago it would have delighted him, now it seemed the worst misfortune that could befall him. To leave this place meant giving up Raluve, for it was out of the question that she could go with him, unless he caused a scandal that would cost him his appointment. And yet what prevented him from shaping his life as he chose? He had only desired promotion to shorten the time of his exile, and life with Raluve was no longer like exile, for he had eaten of the lotus, and the smell of the reef had entered into his soul.
Never did the sea seem so cold, nor the island so distant, as on that night. A light rain was falling, and the smell of the oleander-flowers was carried to Vere by the light wind as he swam; and while he waded ashore shivering, Raluve came out from the shadows to meet him.
“E Kalokalo, I am dead with waiting. I waved my brand, but you did not see it, and now it has gone out. And I began to fear, thinking of the woman you told me of, who saw her lover’s dead body washed up at her feet.”
“Am I late? I was reading letters that the cutter brought—letters frompapalangi.”
“From your own people? E Kalokalo, you have never told me of them. Some day they will make you throw me aside, and you will take amaramaof your own land to wife.”
“What is this foolishness, Raluve? Who has put foolish words into your mouth?”
“I thought they were foolish words, but now I know they are true. Alika——”
“Alika is a foolish old woman. What did she tell you?”
“She said, ‘Raluve, this white man loves you. You are fortunate, for the white men love better than our men; but for all that he will leave you, and return to his own people, taking one of them in marriage.’ And when I grew angry she said, ‘Did Kaiatia keep Lui, the German, though she bore him two children? And why does Alisi go about Lakeba like a hen with half her feathers plucked out?’ Then I knew that her words were true; for Lui has a white woman for wife now, and Alisi was beaten by her people because of Tomu, the trader, and he left her, saying he would return, and did not. And one day you will leaveme, Kalokalo.”
Vere said nothing, feeling her eyes upon him in the dim light.
“But I will know whether it shall be so,” she went on. “Sit down: no, not there on the grass, but on the sand. Now see,” she said, taking up an empty cocoa-nut shell, “when I spin this cup it shall fall toward one of us. If it falls toward you, then you will leave me, and marry one of your people; and if it fall toward me—— See, it spins.Mana dina!Ah, faithless one, it topples like Kata, the kava-drinker!”
The shell reeled, lurched, and fell toward the girl, rolling away on its side from between them. Raluve’s hands fell to her side.
“Nay; but the shell spoke the truth,” said Vere, laughing.
But the girl had become serious.
“It is a heathen game, and we ought not to have done it, therefore it lied. And if you doubt that it lied, I will take a Bible to-morrow, and swear that I will never leave you. Then if I swear falsely, I shall die as Ana did, when she swore she did not burn down Finau’s house. But you will leave me, and it is right; for you are my chief, and I am a black woman, and I could not bear that you should be despised by your people because of me. What is she like, Kalokalo?”
“Who?”
“The woman you will marry. She must be a great lady like the Governor’s wife, not like themaramasof Levuka, who are angry, and have harsh voices. I hate them: but you would never take one of them?”
“And what would you do if I married, Raluve?”
“I would be your wife’s servant if she would let me; but if you left me for one of my own people——” She caught her breath, and half-started up. He thought she was excited by her own speech, but her face was set, and her body tense. She was listening. “Somebody is coming,” she whispered. Vere strained his ears, but could hear nothing but the faint hiss of the sand as the tiny waves sucked it back.
“I hear nothing,” he said.
She put her hand on his mouth, and rose upon her knees, looking seawards. After some seconds she stooped.
“There are no other double canoes but Nambuto’s. I can hear thesua, four of them, therefore it is a double canoe. They are sculling against the wind, and may land here. Come, let us swim across.”
But while Vere still hesitated, scarcely believing her, the quiet air was pierced by the deep note of a conch-shell from the sea.
“It is Nambuto,” she said, excitedly. “Vonu?No, they do not blow like that forvonu” (turtle).
It was too late to think of swimming ashore. In another moment the beach would be alive with men. Raluve drew Vere back into the shadow of the oleanders, and made him lie down lest his white face should be seen. He could see her crouching at the edge of the sand. Gradually he began to distinguish a dull rhythmical beat, and the girl drew back into the shadow. The sound grew louder, and then he saw a dark mass emerging from the night, which took the shape of a great canoe, creeping inshore against the light land-breeze which had just sprung up. It glided on noiselessly, save for the rhythmical blow of thesuaas they rocked from side to side in the sockets, while the figures of the four scullers stood out in sharpsilhouetteagainst the sky-line. It passed so close to the point of the island that Vere could have thrown a biscuit on to the deck, and could hear every word spoken by those on board. When it had passed on to the beach, Vere realised how great had been the strain to Raluve.
“Nambuto is there; I heard his voice. What shall I do?”
It seemed a small matter to Vere whether Nambuto came back or not. He could not realise that this girl by his side, who thought and spoke so rationally, was still one of her own people, bound to fear what they feared, and to respect the customs that had become stronger than law to them. That she, an affianced chief woman, should prefer a white man to a man of her own race, was as great a social crime as it would be were a countrywoman of ours to tolerate an Indian rajah.
Meanwhile the party had landed from the canoe, and the voices on the beach were silent. Raluve thought she had heard her name called in the direction of Vere’s house; but they waited until the cocks had crowed in the village, and a few sleepy birds had begun twittering in the trees on the island. It was the safest hour for their return: the natives, roused in the night, would sleep late that morning. Still Raluve feared to take a direct course to the shore, and, calling to Vere to follow her, waded through the shallow water and struck out, steering a diagonal course towards the shore opposite Vere’s house. The water was brilliantly phosphorescent, and her body seemed to be clothed in polished silver as she swam.Every stroke of her arms and feet scattered a shower of diamonds that flashed a moment and vanished in the black water; and from before her hundreds of fish, taking her for an enemy, shot away, leaving a dull train of fire behind them like shooting-stars in a dark sky. It was a long swim, for it was high tide; but as they waded ashore, tired and out of breath, the beach seemed deserted. There was only the dark shelter of the trees to be gained, and they were safe. They stopped a moment on the sand to put on the clothes they had tied round their heads, and then hurried up towards the trees. But before they reached them there was a shout from the bush just in front of them, answered by two voices further off in different directions.
“They have seen us,” said Raluve, hurriedly. “Run away, Kalokalo. I will wait for them here.”
But Vere had no idea of running away, and stood his ground by her side. There was the sound of a man crashing through the bushes, and a native ran into the open and stood before them. It was Nambuto.
There was silence for some moments. Raluve stood facing him with heaving breast, while Vere clenched his fists, and drew nearer to her. The chief broke thesilence with the most insulting word in his language. Vere did not understand the word, but the man’s tone and Raluve’s passionate indignation were enough for him.
“You scoundrel!” he cried in English from between his set teeth; “how dare you speak to her like that?”
Nambuto, expecting a blow, put up both hands to defend his face, and Vere, mistaking the gesture in the dim light, thought he was about to strike him. In a moment Nambuto was reeling backwards, stunned with a heavy blow between the eyes, and as he fell he shouted a few words at the top of his voice.
“Run, Raluve, and hide yourself,” cried Vere.
“Come with me,” she answered; “he has called his men, and they will kill you.”
She tried to drag him into the trees, for they could hear voices and the crashing of the undergrowth, as Nambuto’s men ran in the direction of their chief’s voice.
“Run and hide yourself,” cried Vere again, excitedly pushing her into the shadow of the trees. He had just time to reach the trunk of a greatdilo-tree, and put his back against it, when five men ran out on to the beach where Nambuto sat rubbing his eyes as if stupefied.
“Seize the white man!—he has struck me,” he cried.
They came upon Vere cautiously, for he was a formidable object for unarmed natives to tackle. “Quick, a stick,” cried one, and ran to pick up a rough worm-eaten piece of drift-wood. He dodged the first blow and knocked down one of them, who tried to run in under his guard, but the second blow struck his shoulder, and he fell. Before he could rise they were upon him, trampling and stamping the breath out of his body. But help was near. Raluve had run to the nearest house, and it was that of Vere’s landlord and particular friend. But she outstripped him, and was among Vere’s assailants, raging like a tigress, long before he came up. It is no easy matter to quiet savages when their blood is once up; but her prestige among them was still great, and one after another they slunk off before her indignant flow of invective. She was almost terrible in her anger, as a woman can only be when she is defending some one she loves.
I once saw a woman, meek, cowed, and dispirited with the years of slavery called marriage among these people, divorced from her husband, who beat her. She did not seem to have a soul above her yam-patch, norcould she be stirred to a show of interest by the announcement of her freedom. Her child, an ill-favoured brat, eruptive with sores, sat by her side, and when she heard that it was to be taken from her, even that woman became terrible in her indignation.
Raluve’s anger all changed to the most perfect tenderness as she 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 broughtEuropeans 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 hadturned 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 himfrom 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 shadowwith 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 amongthem. 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 asfor 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 bypromises, 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. Acouple 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 hadpassed 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’stombe[2]was cut off.”
[2]Thetombeis a long lock of hair worn by Fijian girls until they marry, as a sign of maidenhood, the rest of the hair being short.
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 thathis body will play an importantrôleat 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 presentthemto therelations 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 emptycaviaretin 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 iswashed 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 seennothing 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 greatgrey 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.
Hour after hour passes, and it is near nightfall when they hear his cry from the forest above them on the hillside. The men seize their weapons, and spring forward to meet him. “I told them that there would be evil unless the rain stopped to-night,” he answers; “and they said, ‘Draw out the cloth from under the stone and the rain will cease: it is a flat-topped stone.’”
What stone? Why, the river-bed, of course. Not a man is left to guard the women and children, for the whole of the warriors follow Erirala towards the river-bank. The roar gets louder as they rush on. It is the river—a broad foaming cataract by this time. What hope of finding the stone in such a hell of waters as this? But Erirala knows the place. A party is told off to cut stout vines from the forest, and in ten minutes a rope, to which a ship might swing, is made and fastened to a tree in the bend of the river, round which the flood-water swirls and eddies. Clinging to the other end, Erirala and the boy Narau are paid out into the stream, and as the current strikes their bodies they are whirled from side to side like a pendulum girt with a belt of foam, and followed by a foamy wake, like the track of a fast steamer. Near the middle ofthe stream there is a deep eddy. As Erirala reaches this he stretches up his arm, and perhaps shouts, though no sound is heard by those on shore. Both he and his companion disappear for a moment, come up for breath, dive again, and then emerge, waving their arms. The people on shore strain at the vine-rope. It does not yield an inch. Now, all together—pull! The rope stretches, yields an inch, another, and suddenly gives some six feet with a jerk. Narau disappears for a moment, and is then seen whirling downstream on the swift current, waving a dripping, sodden, greyish-looking rag. Poor Erirala is forgotten as the whole party rush for the point for which Narau is swimming. A dozen hands are stretched out to pull him ashore. Erirala, leaving the rope tied to the flat-topped stone, strikes out, and in a moment lands at the same place. Yes. Narau has the cloth, sodden though it be to a pulp of bark-fibre, scarce adhering together.
Surely already the rain is abating! Yes; there is no doubt of it! Why, there to the north-west, it is lighter! There is a break in the clouds. One can almost see where the sun is setting. It is little more than a drizzle now—not even that, for we are under thedripping trees. Two hours later one can see the stars, and the clouds are sweeping away in heavy masses to the southward.
But just think what would have happened if Erirala had not found the cloth under the flat-topped stone!
Makereta was not beautiful. Her mouth was wide, even for a Fijian girl; and although she was on the shady side of nineteen, she had not yet adopted the staid demeanour suited to her decaying youth. She was a born coquette, and being quick-witted, and with a character hitherto irreproachable, she had captivated the hearts of all the middle-aged widowers in her neighbourhood. Why, had it not even been reported that she had refused the honourable offer of Jenkins, the white trader, and sent away the haughty Buli Yasawa, broken in heart and purse, after gracefully accepting from him five pounds’ worth of printed calico and cheap scent! Yes; Makereta had a certain charm about her quite apart from her skill in ironing and the use of the sewing-machine, or her being the niece of Roko Tui Ba. She wasamusing to chaff; her repartees were witty, if not refined; and she had an inexhaustible fund of gossip about all the ladies of her acquaintance. But what a voice she had! Its gentlest tones struck the drum of the ear like a tap with the teeth of a saw; and when she laughed, which was generally after some remark of her own, the old women in the next village would grumble to each other about “that woman’s” deficiency in chief-like behaviour. It was Makereta’s laugh that brought her into trouble.
Her sister had been for some years married to a steady old native preacher, who was chaplain to the small native force stationed in the mountains. This good lady was the very antipodes of the dusky Makereta. She had never been known to flirt, but then that may have been due to other causes than disposition, and she led her good-natured husband a life of it by making him ferret out real or fancied scandals, very much against his will.