On returning home, they passed close to their own village which seemed unusually noisy.
Half-way across the Settlement John came to meet them in charge of Naomi, the shining light among Jellybrand's converts. John was armed to the teeth, a shaped coco-nut husk upon his head and a wooden spear in his hands.
"Mother," he called out, on sighting them, "there was a deaded man took out of one kennel, only they have tooken him away to Heaven now and everybody are very angry about it."
"You appear to have been seeing life during our absence, John," said Cyprian, as Ferlie questioned Naomi.
"One man make himself dead," that lady explained pleasantly. "'Nother village angry with his family."
The Settlement, when they reached it, appeared also, to be on the defensive. Little Jellybrand, bustling about with a shot-gun, which Cyprian instinctively recognized as a more dangerous weapon to its owner than to anything he aimed it at, explained that James Snook had, indeed, hanged himself from one of the stilts of his hut, having had trouble of some sort with his family while not in particularly good health. One of his sons had, lately, caught an evil spirit and launched it triumphantly on the deep in a small model canoe. The canoe landed its invisible occupant near the hut of an enemy's village and, hence, these furious preparations to meet a revengeful raid.
Three members of the Mission village's aristocracy, Scarecrow, Kingfisher and Captain Johnson, one of whom wore a bowler hat, green with age, and another, a child's tam-o'-shanter, legacies both of passing traders, had painted their faces scarlet and prepared quarter-staves dipped in pig's blood. Helmets of coco-nut husk were being rapidly distributed.
"W-we have these troubles periodically, w-would you believe it?" said Jellybrand. "There is no cause for alarm, but one has to show that the Mission is quite able to defend itself, should the raiders come on here. I am shutting up all my children in the Mission School and shall patrol outside it to-night w-with a loaded weapon."
He waved his gun valiantly at Cyprian and then let it off accidentally within a yard of Friend-of-England, who despite his elephantiasis, leapt lightly into the air.
"That ought to teach them to keep away from a loaded gun," the Defender of the Young remarked placidly, having ascertained that no one had received a pellet in the back.
"Young Brown has been detailed off to parade your house to-night, Mr. Sterne, and he will rouse you if your assistance is required."
Young Brown, a veteran of sixty, roused nothing but Cyprian's bitter enmity by the tumult of his snoring outside the bathroom door.
Luckily, the quarrel petered out in the village, where there was enough noise to attract every ghost in the cemetery, and as one party was getting the worst of a species of warfare worthy of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the women interfered and separated the combatants with dahs. Whereupon, all broken fingers were displayed and bandaged, and the enemy remained on to feast with the raided party, returning peacefully homewards after a couple of days.
"Mr. Toms," the Government agent of doubtful nationality, made a note in his diary that, "James Snook, elder and landowner of Car Nicobar, committed suicide by hanging himself, owing to domestic troubles with his children, whom his ghost will, no doubt, exceedingly trouble."
* * * * * *
A few days later, the padre fell upon Ferlie and the children when they were sunning themselves in a sand-pit, clad in sea-weed, bathing costumes and shells. He, literally, fell upon them sliding down the soft slope and subsiding gracefully into Ferlie's lap, hitting Cyprian en route, a swinging blow with the cord of what the latter called the "wedding garment." He asked them if they would care to drive with him into the interior to view a moonlight festival that night. He made the suggestion rather wistfully as though aware that these twain needed no outside excitement to keep them interested in one another.
Ferlie, her conscience pricking, tendered him radiant thanks. After his departure Cyprian demurred.
"It's a track through the jungle where a Red Indian would knock his shins every five minutes, and if the blighter intends driving us out behind Slippery Sam at night, I prophesy that you will spend the small hours of the morning sitting in a cactus hedge and consigning him elsewhere."
Slippery Sam, a one-eyed horse, by whose exertions the padre proudly made his rounds, was nearly as great a danger to the community as his shot-gun.
Jellybrand had bought him, cheap, of a trader because his one eye, making him nervous, he was a consistent kicker.
However, though there happened to be a brilliant moon which silvered the palms and blackened their shadows to thick treacley pools, Slippery Sam, with Ferlie behind the driver and Cyprian perched on the back seat of the rocking tonga, appeared that evening to be in spiritual rather than spirited mood.
"He's really a very nice horse," Jellybrand's mild accents assured them, "and w-would you believe it?—he loves ripe coco-nuts."
"I saw you picking yours to-day, Padre," said Ferlie. "What do you expect to make off your plantation?"
He sighed. "It's only an experiment of mine. I am so anxious to have a chancel lamp. One that burns perpetually, you know. My Party is coming on so at Home. All the Anglo-Catholic churches have them, I am told. It is so unfortunate that I can only afford a night-light in a glass. I have pasted red paper over the glass, as you have probably noticed. It isn't altogether impressive as a substitute, but it pleases the children."
"Of whom you are the most childish," thought Cyprian; but aloud he said, "do you seriously think that, if your Mission left the natives in peace for one year, there would be a Christian left in the islands at the end of that time?"
"The Lord is mindful of His own," returned Jellybrand reproachfully. "One puts one's trust in the rising generation. But the motherswillhide the children at census times, lest the Government spirit them away to school!"
"Wise women!" muttered Cyprian; but the speaker, unhearing, went on:
"I have had twelve babies born this year and baptized them all. Twelve among the Converted! It is God's will to provide the children."
"You can call it that if you like," Cyprian admitted. And Ferlie, uncertain that he was going to behave well throughout the drive, plunged into a dissertation on sweet potatoes.
Another mile and a half and the road became exciting enough for private prayer. All at once, a darksome pit yawning at the feet of Slippery Sam, he freed himself of his master's mild restraint by a coolly-timed kick at a vital piece of harness where he had been led by knowledge of Nicobarese psychology to expect the feeble co-operation of a bit of frayed string with his leather shackles, and proceeded to crop by the wayside.
"I am afraid we will have to get out," regretted the padre's dulcet tones.
From a hedge that was, luckily, not cactus, Ferlie succumbed to the retort courteous.
"I am out," she said.
No word came from Cyprian, and she was just wondering whether one of them ought not to be lowered, like Sinbad, into the pit in search of his mangled bones, when an angry pattering announced his arrival from the dark behind them.
"Why, where did we shed you?" in amazement.
"Half a mile back," he stormed. "I howled like a maniac, but you were engrossed in invoking your patron saint, and the padre, Slippery Sam."
They continued their way on foot down paths wherein they feared much evil, between patches of moonlight, bursting brightly enough through the interlacing branches to have enabled them to read a letter.
Weird sounds guided them to a ring of scantily-clad revellers round a bonfire and a young lady, attired in rings of silver wire which crawled up her legs and arms, impeding free movement.
The Chief of the family, who introduced himself as "Captain Tin Belly," told them that the girl wasmafaior bewitched, and there to be fêted. She had been very ill and was inspired by convalescence to prophesy on the heels of an extraordinary dream.
Thus, also, were witch-doctors licensed, but if the aspirant to that honour was, later, doomed a failure he was again relegated to private life.
Mr. Toms, who had arrived at the festivities, proved a useful interpreter.
"This lady was cured by English prescription," he told Ferlie. "That which you doubtless use, when Eno's Salts are added to water with some turpentine and powdered camphor. They gave twice a day for belly-ache."
Wild chanting heralded another procession from a neighbouring village, the members of which beat a pig-skin drum and bore aloft the corpse of a sacrificial pig, while indignant squealing from the rear betrayed the whereabouts of more pigs, bound for burnt offering.
The great dance of the evening was executed to hand-clapping, accompanied by a low monotone introducing here and there odd English phrases, culled from the Converted, in compliment to the foreigners present.
"Where-is-my-hat-safe-in-the-arms-of-Jesus-give- him-more-pig-God-save-the-King," one man sang piously in passing Ferlie.
"Is Delilah thehors d'œuvreor only the dessert?" asked Cyprian, watching the hoisting of the Amazon in silver armour to an honourable situation beside the dead pig.
Mr. Toms announced that she would now heal people by her touch and the art of shampooing.
"Plenty little cannibalism in the islands," he reassured them cheerfully. "When discovered in the past, on Camorta Island, for secret rites, it very punishable. The Nicobarese a simple people and a musical."
"One had guessed as much," said Cyprian, putting his hands to his ears as the chorus grew deafening.
Captain Tin Belly presented them each with a plaited palm-leaf box from a shrine bristling with votive bananas. The boxes were not the same size and the discovery seemed to worry him; he measured them several times in the faint expectation that one would grow in the process.
On the way home, with Slippery Sam consistently practising the double-shuffle, Ferlie asked: "Padre, do you never grow tired of smiling at them and appreciating their customs, and settling their infantile disputes? Don't you often give up hope?"
His pathetic pink-rimmed brown eyes were glorious with vision as he answered: "I never grow tired of praying for them; and then one hopes again."
As Cyprian said afterwards to Ferlie, "One can hypnotise oneself into any state of semi-imbecility through prayer."
He remained restlessly convinced that whether or no the islands were going to bring him any closer to Ferlie's visions they were not going to bring him any closer to her God.
Nor to the God of the Reverend Gabriel Jellybrand.
* * * * * *
An incident which occurred during the following week seemed to confirm that impression.
Ferlie never forgot that evening; the last which spelt peace for them for many a long day.
The children had built a camp-fire on the edge of the jungle; not for warmth, but because it was a good way to dry the wet things of juvenile adventurers who had been assisting at fish-spearing or canoe-racing throughout the day.
Mr. Toms and Friend-of-England would often join them in the murmuring twilight and the elder folk drew near also, when he and the old Nicobarese spun little stories and island legends for John's benefit.
The favourite, related again on this particular occasion, was the story of Shoan and the Mermaid.
It had, originally, been invented by the traveller, De Roepstoff, who knew that the cachelot lived in Nicobarese waters and that, according to the natives, the mermaid is the whale's daughter. De Roepstoff, re-visiting the islands years later, had the tale re-told him as one of their own.
Mr. Toms related it now in English, periodically assisted by Friend-of-England in Nicobarese.
"Come all Nicobarese and foreigners, old and young, men and women, boys and girls, youths and maidens, and listen to a story.
"There was formerly a man by the name of Arang, whose wife had borne (him) three sons and three daughters. He made himself a nice house and possessed much property. One day he went out on the sea with his eldest son, called Shoan, and wanted to fish with hook and line.
"Strong wind got up and heavy sea sprung up. Then it happened that one of the outriggers of the canoe broke and both sank into the sea.
"Arang was drowned, but the boy crawled up on the back of the canoe and cried: "'What shall I do? My father is dead; what am I to do?'
"Whish! It is the whale arriving.
"'Why are you crying, child?'
"'Oh, my father is dead; I cannot survive; how shall I get home? (lit.: 'there is no road.') What am I to do? My father is dead.'
"'Sit down on my back. I know the road,' said the whale.
"'Oh no, I will not,' said the boy. 'I am afraid. I do not know the road as my father is dead.'
"But after a while Shoan did sit on the back of the whale.
"Whish! Off they went, quickly, swiftly! The whale is the chief of the sea. At sight all got afraid of him.
"The flying fish flew in all directions; the turtle dived down suddenly; the shark sank down (below) his fin; the sea-snake dug himself into the sand; the ilu danced along the sea; the dugong hugged her young one; the dolphins fled, for they were afraid of the whale.
"Thus (sped) the two. By and by, they arrived at the country of the whale. It was a big domed house. The walls were of red coral, the steps were made of tridachua.
"In the house they saw the daughter of the whale, whose name was Giri.
"'Do you like this boy?' said the whale.
"'All right, let him stay,' said Giri.
"'Do you like to stay, Shoan?'
"'I am willing to stay here.'
"Then Shoan became the servant of Giri.
"Giri's face was like that of a woman; below she was shaped like a fish-tail; her breast was the colour of mother-o'-pearl; her back was like gold; her eyes were like stars; her hair like seaweed.
"She said to Shoan, 'What work do you do?'
"'I collect coco-nuts in the jungle.'
"'Never mind, we have no coco-nuts, but what other work can you do?"
"'I can make boats.'
"'We do not want boats, (but) what other work do you know?'
"'I know how to spear fish.'
"'Don't! You must not do it, (for) we love the fish. My father is a chief among the fish. Never mind; comb my hair.'
"Shoan remained. He combed her hair. They (used) to joke together, and they married.
"Said Shoan: 'How is it, wife, that you do not possess a looking-glass, although your face is so nice?'
"'I want a looking-glass; look out for one.'
"'In my parents' house in the village there is one looking-glass (but) I do not know the road.'
"'Never mind! I know the road; sit on my back and I will bring you near the land. I cannot walk in your country but do (I pray you) return quickly.'
"Then Shoan returned to the village. He came to (lit.: "saw") his father's house.
"'Who is there?' said his mother.
"'It is I, Shoan.'
"'No (you are not). Shoan died with his father on the sea.'
"'Look at my face. I am Shoan, your son.'
"He came up into the house. When they heard (about it) all the people (of the village) came. They asked many questions and Shoan answered. He told the story about the whale, and the story of his marriage with Giri. The people laughed and said he was telling lies. Shoan got so angry. He ran away with the looking-glass. The people went after him and speared him, and thus killed Shoan.
"Giri stops in the sea near the coral banks, and she sings and calls. In the night, when the moon is high, fishermen hear a sound like singing and crying of a woman. They ask other people (about it) and wonder, for they do not know (about) Giri. Giri will not return alone (that is why) she sings and calls out, 'Come (back), Shoan! Come back, Shoan....'"
Ferlie used to love to think she could hear the voice of Giri, crying loudest when the nights were happiest, since the Grey Lady of Sorrow loves best to walk in quiet places which have once known laughter and love.
She and Cyprian lingered after the tale was finished and the children in bed, dreamily feeding the red heap of dying logs with grass and leaves and rousing little spurts of angry blue flame.
To them came Jellybrand to crouch, rather exhaustedly Ferlie thought, in the violet shadow; his chin thrust forward; his thin shoulders hunched.
"It is difficult," he said presently, "to know quite how to act when immorality creeps unexpectedly into my small garden."
Cyprian glanced up at him sharply, but his ferrety eyes were fanatically searching the embers for an answer to the question troubling him.
"The Nicobarese are really a moral people. The w-women have equal rights w-with the men; in fact, being so necessary for the continuance of the race, they are really considered more valuable than the men. And, though among the Unconverted, a divorce can easily be arranged by the co-respondent's paying the injured husband a fine of pigs, one seldom hears of such a disastrous necessity."
There was a pause, during which Ferlie cleared her throat nervously.
Then Cyprian sat upright. "And by this you are leading up to tell us, Padre...?"
"That there is a couple of professing Christians, living in sin in the midst of the Mission," said Jellybrand dejectedly.
It was out, and Ferlie sighed a little tired sigh. So, even here, they were to meet with criticism. She was past interesting herself as to how he had guessed. She hoped Cyprian would be patient with him. But Cyprian, blinking rapidly in a manner that foreboded battle answered: "I should have thought that what you may call 'living in sin' was nobody's business but their own."
Little Jellybrand looked his amazement at this unsympathetic attitude, from one to the other.
"How can it not be my business?" he asked in a hurt voice. "I am here to see that they set a good example to one another. And these were two of my own children. I baptized them with my own hands."
This naïve admission drew a choking laugh from Ferlie. As the padre turned his astonished face towards her Cyprian exclaimed impatiently:
"Good Lord, man! Are you referring to two of the natives?"
"Who else could I be referring to?"
Ferlie, with a final gulp of relief, rushed to the rescue. "It's all right, Padre. We were stupid. Please tell us more."
Encouraged again, he confessed that he was having great trouble with two actual communicants in the Mission—Naomi and Kingfisher.
Naomi was, virtually, the wife of Young Brown. She had played her star part in the most complete Wedding Mass, decked out in the scarlet robes of the Mission calico, two years ago, amid the general rejoicings of a family much enriched by Young Brown's substantial dowry of pigs and pandanas. The pair had no children, and, a twelve-month later, Kingfisher, who had been showing marked interest in the Bible Class regularly attended by the young wife, was brought forward by her for enrolment in the True Fold.
The toiling priest had thanked Heaven before the paper swathed night-light for this unexpected windfall in addition to the slow fruits of his labours.
Some months after the baptism Naomi produced a son whom Young Brown's common-sense did not permit him to regard as an answer to prayer, and, on his refusal to lay claim to the child, Naomi and Kingfisher had boldly taken unto themselves a hut on the outskirts of the Settlement, whence neither consistent appeals to their better nature nor the threat of excommunication could dislodge them.
"This is my man," was all Naomi had to say about it. And confronted with the Woman's Credo her Father-in-God found himself helpless.
"The villagers consider that I ought to be able to put a curse on them," he complained worriedly. "The Mission is losing prestige by my very patience and I fear a great deal of harm may be done to the Cause. I am wondering whether I should appeal to the Chief Commissioner at Port Blair, since the Nicobars, being under his jurisdiction as well as the Andamans, he would be able to have the couple tried and sentenced for bigamy."
Cyprian took his head in his hands.
"Oh, my hat!" he groaned. "If I were the Chief Commissioner, Padre, I would have you locked up for a dangerous lunatic. Living in sin! Had they ever heard the word before you taught it them? By what authority do you keep a healthy young female animal tied, for sentimental reasons of your own introduction here, to a man who is incapable of giving her a child? Anyone sane would tell you that the Law was made for man and not man for the Law. Let the poor unfortunates alone, for God's sake."
Painfully, Jellybrand replied to him.
"There was a Man whom many accounted insane, but Him only do I serve and from Him do I take my authority. And He said: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'."
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Cyprian threw a stone shatteringly into the fire. It lay there unaffected by the ruin of hot ashes.
"These people are not Jews any more than we are. Why should any of us follow the letter of the Jewish Law?"
"Hear how He amplified it to the multitude upon the mountain who were not Jews," said the Padre, and a hectic spot burnt on each cheek-bone as he recited: "'Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you that whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.... But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, committeth adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.'"
Cyprian rose disturbingly, trampling the smouldering branches under his feet and kicking the stone back into the cool dewy forest.
"I am going to bed," he said. "I prefer logic to theology. And my logical conclusion is that anyone who applies the word 'sin' to these folks would be quite prepared to try a tiger before twelve good men and true, and hang him, for devouring a human intruder in his jungle."
They heard his footsteps mounting the wooden stairs of the bungalow blurred black against a starry horizon. From the distance stole the sound of breakers on the coral reefs; the children's hammocks were just visible under an ingenious canopy of mosquito-netting.
"And will you also go away?"
The question was asked more to himself than to Ferlie, but she replied to it gently; she, who hated hypocrisy from the depths of a soul which felt plunged into it.
"No, Padre. I understand what you feel. I belong to a Church much criticized for its adamant attitude towards such logic as is Cyprian's."
"You cannot think," he told her in a broken voice, "w-what it has meant to me to have you two here. Merely to w-watch you both makes me less lonely. It used to be my dream, before I vowed myself to celibacy, that one day a w-woman might stand to me, even me, in the same relationship that you stand to him. I could be tempted to pray for it, even now."
She shivered slightly.
"And God would reply that you know not what you ask," she said, so low that he did not catch the words, and went on speaking: "But sometimes I have thought that, in spite of the perfect unity between you, w-which turns this self-chosen isolation into an Utopia of contentment, there is yet something troubling you; something deep and painful. Forgive me if I am mistaken. Living apart, as I do—I have deliberately chosen Mission work, you know, though Colonel Maddock offered to help me to a Living—one's instincts become sharpened, like a dog's when someone it knows is in trouble."
Then Ferlie made a resolve she would have found impossible to justify but, in after-life, found it impossible to regret. Peter had always condemned her as doctrinally unsound, and wondered that the Church could not see it.
Perhaps the Church did see it but was wiser than Peter in its utterly trained patience.
Poor Cyprian, who, in these lost islands, could not escape the pursuit of the Men in Black.
* * * * * *
Every Saturday evening the communicants of the toy church arrived in a complacent body, turn-about to kneel under the struggling night-light and receive mild directions from their harassed shepherd, balanced on the harmonium stool behind a yard of green baize, as to the speedy restoration of unlawfully-acquired coco-nuts and pigs illicitly retained in huts to which they did not belong. Most defrauded neighbours could be certain of recovering the fowl that was lost, before the metal bell was jerked by Young Brown for Sunday Mass.
That Ferlie should contemplate lending herself to such a farce acted as the final blister on Cyprian's already irritated spirit. Having divulged her intention, he let fall a few dangerous remarks; quite clever remarks most of them. She only turned on him the straight grey look he was learning to accept as impervious to outside influence.
"I understand that you were going to preserve an open mind on all these subjects with a view to embracing my ideas?"
"How does this affect your ideas, Cyprian?"
"I fail to see what support you can expect from that religious maniac in our affairs."
"I am not requiring either his support or his advice overouraffairs."
"In the name of Heaven what are you requiring from him?"
"If you did not require it yourself—in the name of Heaven—you would know."
"Ferlie, will you promise to resist the temptation to confide in him, just because he wears a last century's fashion in angelic uniform?"
His tone roused her to real anger.
"There are things which you are not at liberty to say to me. Every human soul knows of shadowed places within its circle which even the angels dare not enter."
He got up, took some native fishing-tackle off the window-sill and made for the door.
"I won't intrude again. If you'll not be needing the boat to-day for the children, I suppose you can have no objection if I take Kingfisher, my fellow-sinner, and go fishing."
She saw the pair of them from her window, plunging into the jungle, while she was washing Thu Daw.
The little chap was beginning to say whole sentences in English, though he seldom honoured anybody but John with his conversation.
Drearily, Ferlie blamed herself for the reticence which had prevented her from attempting to make clear her reasons for admitting territory from which all but Divine Love must be locked out. She was steadied by that conviction. And Cyprian would come back. She must try and satisfy him before seeking satisfaction anywhere herself.
Cyprian took the motor-boat to a further point than he had originally intended choosing.
Kingfisher, who had fastened his canoe behind it, with forethought concerning creeks which did his intelligence justice, found his companion, even for a foreigner, exceedingly stupid over the fishing. Cyprian, on the other hand, was regretting proper tackle, and finding Kingfisher's methods irritatingly childish.
Everybody in the islands was childish. Jellybrand with his weak chin and his goggles, and his ridiculous tuft of hair sticking out at the back, and his lisping faith; the natives with their infantile intellects, not half a degree removed from John's, and now Ferlie with her clouded illogical trust in the differing satellites of a long-dead Teacher, who, to Cyprian's mind, had shown less courage in deciding the doubtful question of the Life-to-Come than had the Buddha. Cyprian recalled the words of one modern writer, "Buddhism is the religion of men; not of children." Assuredly, had the Christ only professed to preach the religion of children. Well, Ferlie was a child. She would outgrow it, and he, in the light of his extra experience, must be patient.
It never occurred to him that there might be something childish in his angry flight from the thing that had annoyed him. He decided to give her time to get this uncomfortable mood over before he went back and, consequently, steered the boat towards a likely-looking creek biting into what was known as the mainland.
To his astonishment he was checked by Kingfisher, who, for some time past, had been shading his eyes and muttering at the reflection of trees in water so clear that it was difficult not to believe that there was no material substance to the drowned world it mirrored.
He now clutched Cyprian's arm, indicating that they must not land. The latter was in no temper to be thwarted.
"Is it ghosts or devils which will prevent you, Kingfisher? Or is the ground tabu on account of a birth or a death?"
The man could not explain himself any more clearly than to insist that it would be unsafe to land.
His fear was very genuine and when he had gauged Cyprian's obstinacy he climbed resignedly into his canoe, from the motor-boat, and cut it adrift.
"All right!" Cyprian agreed cheerfully, "If you fish long enough you may catch a whale. I am going to explore."
He beached the motor-boat, and the jungle swallowed him up.
Then Kingfisher did a very sensible thing: he seized his paddles and made for home.
* * * * * *
Ferlie was going down the forest road to the shore to meet the fishermen. Long before he saw her Kingfisher heard her singing to herself and thought, for a little while, that it was Giri.
"Oh, ye'll tak the high road and I'll tak the low road,"
... and ever the last two lines filled the green gloom with haunting sorrow....
"But me and my true love will never meet againOn the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond."
But there was no sorrow in Ferlie's face just then.
It was the little padre who wiped the joy out of it after he had seen Kingfisher.
* * * * * *
In a few moments everybody in the Settlement had collected round the two of them while the sun reached out long scarlet-sleeved arms through the plain glass window of the church and took St. Paul in a ruddy embrace.
The agent's face was grotesquely serious, thought Ferlie. No one could make her understand why for quite a long time.
It sounded so incredible—the thing they were telling her. A patch of colour from a boy's adventure book. That there existed a tribe of savages, within reach of a comparatively civilized Mission Settlement, whose hand was against every human being and against whom every man's hand was raised in enmity; that Kingfisher's trained sight had noticed signs of them along the shore in a vicinity to which they seldom came, and that Cyprian, ignoring Kingfisher's warning, had landed on that particular stretch of beach—this was the gist of it all.
"But what will they do to Cyprian?" asked Ferlie, desperately incredulous. "He is unarmed and, they can see, unaggressive; if they are not cannibals why should they want to interfere with him?"
"They shoot at sight," explained Jellybrand slowly. "They do not wait to find out if harm is intended. They strike first, even at the neighbouring tribes, w-which go in terror of them. They are called the Shorn Pen."
She turned on him in cold fury.
"And you never warned us!"
"They live so far afield; right out in Great Nicobar. How w-was one to dream——? The Andamanese have a similar tribe to cope w-with, the Jarawas. But they, like the Shorn Pen, are so seldom seen that one forgets. For centuries the Shorn Pen have managed to isolate themselves from the remaining islanders, and they are now practically a different people. Markedly Malayan. Intermarriage and contact with foreigners has altered the ordinary Nicobarese and civilized him."
She became, of a sudden, stoically calm.
"What are we going to do about it first?"
Jellybrand and Mr. Toms, having decided on a search-party, had a little difficulty in organizing their men, and, since this too was necessary, in arming them.
The people, by nature, were no heroes, and it took more than the sight of the foreign lady's stricken insensibility to induce them to collect canoes at this late hour, when the labours of the day should be over.
The padre's influence did more than Mr. Toms' promises of reward, but little Jelly, having finally shouldered his shot-gun, was surprised to find Ferlie prepared to accompany them armed with a small despatch case and Cyprian's revolver.
"The children, Mrs. Sterne," he stammered. "Surely you w-will remain w-with them."
"There will be Naomi and Young Brown," said Ferlie coolly. "And I want to explain that, should anything happen to us, those converts who take care of the boys till my brother and Colonel Maddock return will be very substantially rewarded for their trouble. I have left a note with Naomi."
The hardness of her voice frightened him.
"Nothing should happen," he said haltingly. "Really——"
She was not listening.
"John," she called, "Come here."
He came, dragging his imitation spear, and she knelt down putting her arms about him.
"I have got to go away for a little while, John. If I do not get back very soon, wait for Uncle Peter and look after Thu Daw. And when Uncle Peter comes, tell him that Mother went away to follow Cyprian wherever he had gone. Can you repeat it after me? Say, 'Whereverhe had gone.'"
He spoke the words wonderingly, straining back, boylike, from the close pressure of her arms.
He was always proud to be entrusted with a commission and the charge of Thu Daw. Only when she had hurried a little way down the road, walking between the padre and Mr. Toms, some intuition made him drop his weapon and run after her, crying, "Mother! Mother!"
She whirled back to meet him and lift him against her heart.
"You are a man," she told him. "And one day you will stay by your woman, please God, as I am going to choose to stay by my man to-night and through Eternity."
Jellybrand surveyed the little scene, his face troubled, but he did not again try to prevent her from joining them.
In the canoe he leaned forward and touched her cold hand.
"The smallest boy," he said softly. "Did you adopt him?"
"No. He is Cyprian's. His mother is dead."
He was puzzled, but not inquisitive. Ferlie added dully, "That was before we found one another."
"I see." said her companion compassionately. And did not.
It took a long time in the canoes, under Kingfisher's guidance, to arrive at the spot where, eventually, they caught sight of the dim outlines of the motor-boat.
There was no sign of any living thing on the shimmering starlit shore. The canoes crept closer and closer, under the shadow of the bank, cutting the water noiselessly as otters. The foremost one, containing Kingfisher, had only just been beached when he took a sudden flying leap into the creek. They heard him scruffling with someone on the far side of the motor-boat.
The two struggled out into the open; two naked forms grappling in the stream where the water was just shallow enough to allow a precarious footing.
"Keep quiet!" commanded the padre in Nicobarese, whispering, as another of their party splashed to the leader's relief.
"There! They've got him.... Yes. It is one of the Shorn Pen!"
The man was dragged towards the bank and a dozen willing hands stretched out to draw him up. Scarecrow, who, generally, showed more initiative than his fellows, stepped forward to act as spokesman. Fingers were firmly pressed against the prisoner's mouth, lest his alarmed shout should attract his friends.
"Tell him," said Jellybrand, "that if he gives us the information we require, no harm shall come to him; but that on his making the least sound it w-will be the w-worse for him. Our revenge w-will be horrible," he informed the man himself with the utmost placidity.
The latter had, evidently, made up his mind not to risk shouting. Or, maybe, he was only a stray member of the tribe, lured back to the motor-boat out of curiosity.
To get him to speak, however, was another matter. His dialect, also, differed from that of his interlocutors.
"He must speak," said Ferlie. "He shall speak. He will speak under torture."
"Mrs. Sterne!"
She wheeled round upon the padre as he advanced hastily to her side, pushing him back into the arms of his huddling flock.
"Let me be!" cocking the revolver. "Stand aside, any one of you who does not want to be shot. But if I shoot this wild beast to bits, inch by inch, I will know where Cyprian is to-night."
This, Ferlie, the long-suffering and so-compassionate of all human pain. There may have been an hour, far back in some forgotten life, when she stood, herself a half-savage incarnation of Womanhood, surrounded by her slaves, directing the slow doing-to-death of a feudal enemy who had deprived her of mate or son.
Whether or no, the present captive, who had obviously never set eyes until that moment on a white woman, was startled by the impression that she was an avenging devil, it was certain he considered her supernatural.
He broke shuddering from his gaolers to prostrate himself at her feet in crawling supplication.
In due time they extracted from him a promise to lead them to "the place where they had put the white man."
Yes, the white man had come there in the boat. Yes, he had walked in the jungle. Yes, he had been captured. The rest was not clear.
Jellybrand saw that, although they might be moving directly into a trap, there was nothing for it but to go on. Everybody understood that there would probably be a scrap. They must rely upon the terrorizing effect of their fire-arms. He stopped to make the sign of the cross.
Ferlie noticed that unsympathetically. She felt insanely cruel, and he avoided those wild eyes.
It was not long before they arrived at a fired clearing, the centre of which showed the remains of an earth-oven. A low bamboo platform, beyond, supported a primitive hammock of plaited grass, hung round with queer indistinguishable objects.
The whole thing suggested a funeral pyre; not an unlikely idea, since the padre knew that the Jarawas in the Andamans burnt the bodies of their dead.
Ferlie was the first to push aside the grass and leaves completely screening the still form on that rude dais.
And then the birds of the forest rose in fluttering distress, disturbed by the exceeding bitter cry of a soul in torment.
Cyprian lay there with an arrow, dimly discernible, pinning his coat to the dark stain which had spread over his breast. They held the dancing torches high, and poured brandy between his lips, but he did not appear to swallow; they splashed his face with water from a flask and listened desperately for the beating of his heart. His hands were clammy cold.
The arrow had pierced clean through his coat to the other side of the shoulder; after cutting off the barbed head they were able to remove the shaft. And Ferlie, having done all she could with no result, flung herself moaning like a wounded thing upon the charred ground.
All at once she raised her tortured face to the priest's and out of the extremity of her suffering challenged him.
"You talk of faith! Use yours. You talk of prayer. Pray! You believe there is Someone to pray to: speak to Him, then, but do not come near me nor try to take this revolver from me, until I see whether the God you uphold as faithful answers faithful prayer."
It was fruitless to attempt comfort; utterly hopeless to argue. He knew that her face would remain imprinted on his memory to his dying day, wearing just such a look as must have shadowed the faces of those sorrowing women who stood beneath the Cross of the Beloved.
But he also considered the danger of resorting to such prayer before the marvelling undeveloped intellects of the adult children round him, so hardly-won to Christ. Their faith was ever-ready to rise or fall to the success or failure of a sign. How could he thus tempt the Lord his God?
His hesitation scorched her to scorn.
"You are afraid!" she said. "And there is not even God left."
"Hush!" he pleaded. "Hush, child. W-wait and I w-will pray ... that His w-will be done."
It was a strange scene: the girl writhing in her mental agony at the foot of the savage bier; the frail diminutive figure of the little shepherd, in his unsuitable draggled white robe, who had proved himself, whatever his weakness, no hireling to his Master's flock; the scared human animal, naked as his Creator made him, starting from the grasp of the hybrid agent clad in khaki shorts and bowler hat; and, behind, the straight smooth-skinned forms of the Nicobarese, leaning on spear and long bow, awaiting the miracle their Christian witch-doctor must, surely, perform upon the white woman's man, who lay so still in the dead light of torch and mocking star.
Jellybrand knelt forlornly on the earth. It has been shown that St. Francis—the "little sheep of Christ"—was small and starved of appearance with no physical beauty but his transfiguring trust....
"Our Father——" And that was all.
For coincidence or miracle, at the same moment the man on the rickety erection twitched one hand faintly and opened glazed eyes.
"For God's sake get the arrow out!" he muttered, and once more relapsed into unconsciousness.
* * * * * *
Ferlie never remembered how they got him home.
From the fact that those present ever after respected her as a superwoman, she supposed she must have taken over charge again of the reins she had relinquished, for the time being, to the padre and his God.
In her dreams she would often hear the padre's voice saying,
"Let him bleed; it is best."
She had necessary things with her in the despatch-case. It was really blood-poisoning they had to fear, for the actual hurt proved not serious.
They had reason to be glad of the glassy night-harbour and the smooth stealing of their canoe.
Their prisoner they took with them, it being the padre's inspiration to load him with gifts and send him back to his tribe with a wholesome narrative of good returned for evil.
He obviously expected protracted death, but Ferlie was now indifferent to his fate, where she sat silent in the bows, holding Cyprian's head on her knees.
Mr. Toms clung to a theory that the Shorn Pen, amazed at the appearance of their quarry, had left him for dead at a popular festival ground, in charge of the prisoner, wishing to display him to the rest of their tribe before burning him with due ceremony. Probably, not more than three or four were responsible for the actual outrage....
Several delirious nights dragged between drawn-out days of tireless nursing before Cyprian opened comprehending eyes upon the world.
Before that hour came Gabriel Jellybrand had learnt more than he had ever sought to know of his new friends. He took his turn at watching beside the fever-stricken bed and was able to spare Ferlie a considerable amount of the sick raving that wrung her heart.
Sometimes, Cyprian, who so seldom needed to emphasize his speech with oaths, would break out into frantic blasphemies entirely alien to his mentality.
"It is nothing." And the padre would describe other sick-beds at which he had officiated. "He is not worse. It is as if he were speaking in a foreign language, absorbed at some time or other by his sub-conscious mind."
But always the sick man returned to the same poignant theme; that Ferlie was his and the barrier between them a figment of her imagination.
"Do not distress yourself over that delusion either," Jellybrand implored her.
"No," said Ferlie at last, shocked by revelations of the restraint it had been Cyprian's part to endure. "That is not delusion. That is Truth.... And now you know...."
"My poor child," he answered, "I ought to have understood.... I am not very clever, you see. I only w-went to a cheap school. My mother w-was a w-widow and did mending for Colonel Maddock at one time, in order to give me my chance. He w-was very good to us. But I only got through my exams by much prayer.... My mother prayed too, and that helped. I w-was able to visit her as an ordained priest before she died.... I, wh-wo w-was so stupid and—and not very strong. W-we both felt that God had w-worked a miracle."
She saw that he was shying away from her admission, eager to show that he claimed no right to pry into more than she willed to confide in him.
It was inevitable then that she should make known to him the circumstances which had driven them to seek temporary refuge at some spot where they would not be hampered by the living lie represented in their lives side by side.
"And even here," she finished pathetically, "there was you to deceive."
He thought it all out for some while before his slow wits responded gropingly.
"You see, though God understands, His 'little ones' can't. And it is forbidden to cause them to stumble.... And so again... There were only three magi w-who came across the thirsty desert in their w-wisdom to the Cradle. But many shepherds clustered about it, simple and adoring, w-who imagined the star to have been lit in the Heavens that very night by some supernatural hand. The w-wise men did not seek to convince them, by astronomical data, that it had probably existed before the w-world began. They merely followed them and adored."
"But they did not accept the shepherds' view," objected Ferlie. "They reserved their own. What matter, if it was the same star and led them to the same Cradle?"
"I know—I know. But, by action, they accepted the belief of the simple folk. They conformed, outwardly, for the sake of those 'little ones'..."
He passed his hand over the back of his head, accentuating the tuft of hair, like a drake's tail.
"I am so sorry for the W-wise; they have such heavy responsibilities."
The day came, at last, when she was able to approach the subject with Cyprian, lying in a hammock beside her under the trees.
He had, up to now, avoided all reference to his unsatisfactory departure, armed with fishing tackle, into hostile territory.
As she sat making tea, late in the whispering afternoon, preparatory to hailing the padre from his drudging attempts in the Mission school to explain the evil of coveting your neighbour's pig, likewise his pandanus grove and his coco-nuts and anything that is his, including his wife, she looked up to catch Cyprian's whimsical expression.
"Which of us apologizes this time, Ferlie? Me?"
"I'll let you off," she replied shakily, "If you'll make adequate restitution by getting well."
"I am well."
She took his cup of tea to him and placed it within reach of the uninjured arm. His stiffened shoulder still prevented free use of the other.
"The monsoon will be breaking soon," dreamily twisting a floating curl round his finger as she stooped, "Shall we remain on here and beset the even tenor of Jelly's existence with a similar problem to his bigmatical ones?"
"Cyprian. Heisa little saint!"
"I know it. You are both saints, and I eye the haloes with envy, but not much hope. I want you, as well as your halo."
"Take!" said Ferlie. But she went back to her chair and sat looking at John chasing Thu Daw across the clearing.
He followed their flight and then said, "We can't stay. 'Unto each his mother beach, bloom and bird and land.'"
"That's true," agreed Ferlie, and rolled Thu Daw's ball back to him from under her chair.
"What will we do about it, Cyprian?"
"What indeed? John's future is clear. Winchester, I suppose, and Oxford, and so to Black Towers, finally. You are right to remind me where the greater responsibility lies. At an English school, would he find himself out of it? Would they take him?"
"If we could circumvent the first question he could live the other down."
"Why should he be forced to live down my—sins?"
"The alternative is Burma, and, there, you and I have much to live down, whatever course we take."
"Ferlie! For God's sake reassure me on one point."
To that stifled passion she instinctively reached out comforting hands.
"You—you are not thinking of separation?"
She said, "I hardly know. It seems to me we cannot go back now on what we have done. As we might tell Peter, 'there must be pioneers!' ... But I do think our pioneering is going to lie along a very rough road and I am afraid—for you."
The sight of Jellybrand on his way from the school checked Cyprian's reply. The padre beamed joyously as Ferlie waved him to the second straw chair.
"W-would you believe it? My choir can now sing the w-whole of 'There's a Friend for little children,' by heart. W-we are going to have it at Benediction to-night. The Bishop is not quite certain w-whether I ought to be allowed Benediction, as an extra service, but I hope to be able to persuade him to my point of view when he visits us. He's not a very Protestant Bishop, and most w-wide minded."
"Does it make any difference to Friend-of-England and Co. which you have?" asked Cyprian.
"Nothing makes any difference to them, but it makes a very great difference to me to be allowed to teach and practise w-what I believe to be necessary."
"If I were the Bishop," said Ferlie, "I shouldn't be able to help feeling that you must know best and that you mattered more than he did. He has so much to encouragehim. Does your brain never bother you into believing the work useless and the source of all your inspiration a dream?"
He crossed his knees, displaying a badly cobbled rent in the trailing uniform he loved too proudly to lay aside more often than was absolutely essential. "Even my poor intellect questions sometimes. Doubts come and go, but nothing can take away one's past spiritual experiences."
"I don't know that a single unlooked-for spiritual experience can influence a mind which leans naturally towards agnosticism," put in Cyprian suddenly. "There is a work-a-day agnosticism which satisfies most men, supported by certain ethics, coloured with what for nearly the last two thousand years has been regarded as Christianity.... It is not my fault if I have not a temperament which can rest content on Faith. I did not make my brain."
"That is just the point," said Ferlie. "You are incapable of making a single thing about yourself. But you are able, if you wish, to insist that your brain, and all the attributes of your particular temperament shall serve instead of rule you. Faith is within the reach of all who reach out towards it. The Christ, whose ethics you adopt, explained that whenever He met educated doubting men."
"But sometimes," said Jellybrand, "one fears to presume."
Ferlie saw that he was thinking of that night in the forest when she had defied him to test his own faith for her sake, and she replied,
"Perhaps that should be considered an experience especially given to me."
Unexpectedly, he chuckled.
"W-would you like to spend a happy hour now torturing our prisoner? It might entertain the invalid. I have often w-wondered w-what I should have done if he had not confessed and you had proceeded to carry out your intention of making a second St. Sebastian of him w-with revolver bullets."
"Did she intend doing that?" asked Cyprian. "Ferlie, what a joke!"
"It was no joke, I assure you," contradicted Jellybrand, "She stood there—w-would you believe it?—w-with that horrid little w-weapon pointing in all directions at once, and rank murder in her face."
Then Ferlie said a horrible thing. So horrible for her that the padre dropped his tea-cup and Cyprian raised himself upright to meet her blazing eyes.
"I'd have re-crucified Christ!" said Ferlie.
In the petrified silence which followed Cyprian extended his one arm. She went to him, startled into comprehension of her own words, and hid her face in his sleeve.
"It's all right," muffled tones assured them. "Do you suppose that, because you don't understand, all Heaven doesn't?"
Neither answered, till Cyprian said uncertainly,
"You might make me terribly conceited, Ferlie."
"Or terribly humble," she answered, still in the dark.
Jellybrand mopped up, with his handkerchief, the mess he had made, and poured himself out some more tea. His wrist was unsteady and he slopped the milk afresh over the table.
"I meant to tell you both"—they heard his words stumbling towards them through a clogging mist—"I have thought a good deal about you—and prayed. But, somehow—I suppose because I am not quite sure of my right to advise—light has not come to me yet. The solution slowly dawning may be a mirage. I must leave you to judge of that. It is not for me to follow the w-wise across the desert. My place is in the fields w-with the blind flocks. Still, since you must go back and live practical lives in a practical w-world, there is such a thing as rendering unto Cæsar. In this case—to a custom, if an unlawful custom, as many considered Cæsar's tribute. Yet, the disciples were permitted to pay that, to give their enemies no handle. You could pay it—this tribute to our so-called Civilization—by obtaining your divorce and contracting, according to the law of the land, to live together as it permits you. A marriage in a registry office counts as no marriage to a Catholic; but this you know. Your lives together after it w-would be a matter for yourselves and your own consciences, supposing you can continue to live together under the same conditions you have observed up to now. If you find you cannot, then I, honestly, see no w-way out but the one w-which seems to spell living death to both of you—separation.
"There is another consideration. The Roman Communion and its rules are outside my scope. You know best w-whether it w-will permit a w-wife separated from her husband, in such special circumstances, to remain under the innocent protection of another man, in a state fulfilling the demands of both Civil and the Ecclesiastical Law. In my own very humble opinion—and I speak after much consideration—the thing is permissible. But I live so far beyond the reach of those dogmatic burdens w-with which Man impedes his progress to bear as offerings along the steep road to God. Clever theologians w-would, doubtless, frustrate my arguments, in one sentence. I can only say that I do not think they could alter my feeling in the matter.
"The views of any Church are immaterial to one of you, who has been, hitherto, a law unto himself. They are not immaterial to me; but my heart is ready to let the situation rest between you and the Greatest of all Lovers, who sees further than His disciples in the Church."
The speaker pushed his untasted tea aside with a little clinking jerk of china, and moved swiftly away from the two under the restless palms.
In the distance they watched him climb the steps of the toy ark and, a moment later, the cracked bell clanged.
* * * * * *
Cyprian spoke first, when the cadences of the concertina would have been inciting to hilarity most listeners superior to the Nicobarese and inferior to the angels.
"Did you ever hear of Er, the son of Armenius? No. You never trod the mill of the ordinary Greek classics. Er was a brave man who was killed in battle, and the story goes that, ten days later, his body was discovered quite fresh. The twelfth day they laid him on a funeral pyre, when he wisely came to life again. He brought news that he had been permitted to see the other world and return, and described a long and complicated vision—Socrates' idea of the justice meted out to Man after death.
"While I was ill my brain was troubling itself with an account of the method by which the sky's vault was held together, in the vision, at either end, by a belt of light."
"What are 'whorls'?" Ferlie asked him suddenly.
He laughed, his fingers busy with her hair.
"I can well believe that I babbled about them. Er's idea of the eight whorls, inserted in one another was founded on the Greeks' conception of astronomy. Never mind. I'll lend you the translation....
"I am only prefacing my own vision (if you can call it that when you know) with the mention of all this, to show you how my mind has been running on Plato for the sake of one passage in his Republic, portraying Earthly Love as a frantic and savage Master."
Said Ferlie, "He is a Master who can be enslaved."
"Your faith tells you so. I only saw it in my—dream. Do you know that I believe, like Er, I have been dead?"
"You were dead. Your heart had stopped beating. You must have been unconscious for a long time. And now, being you, you are wondering whether knowledge acquired during an experience in Death should be pushed aside by your well-balanced living mind. What did you see?"
"It was not exactly a seeing. It was a knowing. I was dead and I knew I was dead. But I was still alive, most terribly and poignantly. You were the Dead—on this side of the Dark, belted down, like Er's universe, from the light. But I was struggling so passionately to return and be dead with you here, rather than alive with all those other Living, that, like Er, I think I was shown the way to break through....
"One has heard of people in trances waking in the grave. Can you be sure with me, Ferlie, that this was more than a trance?"
"God knows I can!" she said earnestly.
"You need not have been afraid. I would have wrenched the way through to you if you had not come back to me. For that reason I took your revolver."
After a silence he said, "Then I see now why I was allowed to find the way. I was not worth such a sacrifice ... the sacrifice of your unfinished work here. That is quite clear."
"Ah, never! Never till that night did I know the depths of my own weakness. For the memory I must go humbly all my days. Cyprian, believe, rather, that you have been allowed the vision because only through its acceptance can you receive the strength which must make me strong."
"Well, whatever the explanation," said Cyprian, "it is only certain, as it was to another man before me, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. I see the truth of the Resurrection."
Bright with revelation was Ferlie's face.
"Dear, it is enough and more than enough. The rest follows as it is needed, making all things possible for us who can look forward into Eternity. I fear nothing, in whatever shadowy valley our steps may be turned ... now. The light will break some time when our eyes are strong to bear it. We have been united in all things save the one thing that was needful: belief in the Life Everlasting. Without that faith our love must have mastered us. And I knew it. Your Frantic Master drives as his slaves those who see no further than the end of this fragment of life. Cyprian, my lover, do you not understand how it is that I am not afraid to stay beside you now?"
Across the gilded bamboo leaves the children's voices stole to mingle incongruously with the shouts of the returning fishermen, to the drawling melody of——
"A Friend Who never changeth, Whose love will never die.Our earthly friends may fail us,And change with changing years ..."
Cyprian slipped out of the hammock and raised Ferlie to her feet.
* * * * * *
Yet, finally, the leadership, even in mystical matters, was to devolve on him.
There were only thin wooden walls to the little forest bungalow.
Ferlie and he had been sleeping indoors since his illness so that she might have all medicines and the paraphernalia for nursing within easy reach.
Therefore, it happened that in turning his head restlessly to escape an intruding beam of moonlight through the curtainless door, he roused himself with sudden completeness, straining to catch the echoes of quiet sobbing.
He only paused an instant.
Ferlie was lying face downwards: her forehead on her arms, which gleamed lily-coloured in the pure light.
He knelt beside her, attempting to raise her head.
"My dear... My dear..."
She grasped thankfully at the steadying sensitive fingers. "Help me, Cyprian! You were always, really, the stronger. Help me to conquer it.... I know you have thought that everything mattered a great deal more to you than to me. That I was satisfied with the knowledge that the end is not yet. But sometimes—at night—Heaven is very far away and earth is most powerfully real, and doubts creep over me, who have laid the great burden of this faith on you, whether I am fit to bear the burden of my own human loving. You see, Cyprian, there is one instinct given to women at Creation; the roots of which are in Creation itself.
"John is mine by duty and Thu Daw is yours by desire, but I want—and, at the moment, I'd sell my soul to eternal death to make it come true—your son in my arms ... through love...."
So came again to Cyprian the inexorable phantom of that Master of whose subjection he had been made falsely confident by the soothing sympathy of a celibate's idealism and the magic of Ferlie's trust, a few short hours back.
Though he came in the form of an angel of light; though he came in the form of a roaring lion; though now in a more mysterious guise than either, it was the same despotic power which drove and drew.
How to battle now with this image of shadowy radiance? And, after all, why? He summed up the matter afresh. If there was not truth here it was nowhere, and only in following the truth could man be set free of his ills. Thus had taught that same Nazarene, whose spoken word of two thousand years ago was causing all the trouble; since even in the sceptical circles of modern scientific research men were to be found to follow the gleam along His trail. Across which lay Ferlie exhausted; himself hesitating above her in the knowledge that she would yield, inevitably, to the guidance of his groping hands in the dark.
He had said to her, "I see the truth of the Resurrection," and she had replied that all else followed; but she had not then meant to signify the strength for this sacrifice. And he saw, blindingly, that there might be no half-measures. The ghost of an unborn child barred the way of compromise.
Shaken with pain, mental and physical, Cyprian of the once all-satisfying ethical agnosticism called with the impotent despair which is akin to anger upon that Lover who stood between them as lovers, and who was becoming in conception unwaveringly the same as the God who brooded over the disciplined Churches.
"Why should Ferlie let them torture her?" he had asked fiercely again and again of himself in the past, and now that the power lay with him to stay the hated pressure he found himself weakly refraining instead with the question, "why should I let them torture me?"
Even if separation had spelt material death for them both, Ferlie's Church would concentrate only upon the spiritual death their life together must effect.
Had not the time really come to dismiss as out-worn sentimentality this talk of a soul's death?
His own, such as it was, andifhe might barter, and gladly, for the fathomable happiness of To-day, despite that secret glimpse of wisdom imparted during his unconscious hours. But what of Ferlie's soul, such as That was, and now in his keeping—a stainless loyal Existent?
He had fought to make it see with material vision and the mastering Force had fought on his side.
Yes, she had indeed fallen, spent, in the fearful starlessness and it was his at last exultingly to lead.
Incoherent shreds of forgotten argument worried him. Magi or shepherds ... the wise with their great responsibilities....
He became contemptuously aware of the aguish shaking of his body. How did one pray? ... Howdidone pray? ... The opalescent tropical dawn found him still at her side, his hold unrelaxed of hands now at rest, the glory of her hair making a halo about the face of a very tired sleeping child.
Above the dim blue mists still shrouding the patient jungle the sun floated, a scarlet ball, heralding the resurrection of another day.
Resurrection. That whisper continued with its insistence upon horizons beyond the vision of all earthly eyes.