CHAPTER IV—THE SOUL’S RIVAL
As soon as Gabrielle Everard had paddled across the lagoon and passed from Hillary’s enraptured sight she pulled her little craft up on the sandy beach, hid it amongst the tall rushes and started off home. She stood for a moment hidden beneath the mangoes till three jabbering, hurrying native chiefs had passed by.
As she watched them recede from sight down into the gloom of the sylvan glades, she gave a sigh. “I hate to see those big tatooed chiefs; it’s through them that I feel so wild at times, I’m sure. I simply curse that ancestor of mine who married a dark woman. Why, I’d sooner die than marry a dark man!” Then she added: “Pooh! Why should I worry? I’m white enough, since I feel such a dislike for them—but, still, I do like dancing and singing at times, I admit.”
Then she thought of the young apprentice; his bronzed, frank face and earnest eyes rose before her memory. “He does look handsome; those odd-coloured eyes of his do fascinate me; but it’s a pity he’s not a passionate kind, who would make love like those handsome chiefs do when they sing to their brides on the pae paes and tambu stages. But there, they’re wild and can’t control their passions as we do!” she added. She looked down into the lagoon at her image and blushed deeply at her own thoughts. “I’m getting quite a pretty girl—almost a beautiful woman,” was her next reflection, as she noticed her large shadowy eyes and her full throat in the still water.
“Hallo, Ramai!” she exclaimed, as a graceful native girl suddenly stepped out of the bamboo thickets, stared with large dark eyes at her, then made as if to pass on. “Don’t go, Ramai,” said Gabrielle. The girl stared sphinx-like for a second, then moved on. “I go, Madesi, to pray, tabaran! Must go or die!” answered the strange maid as she turned round, then pointed her dark finger in the direction of the god-house that was situated somewhere in the taboo mountains.
“Your old god-houses! Do you really believe in them?” said Gabrielle, looking earnestly into the strange maid’s serious eyes. For a moment Ramai stared, put her brown knee forward, made a magic pass with her hands above her head, and said: “The gods have spoken more than once to Ramai when the stars did shine in the lagoons and the caves by Temeroesi, and told the future. And am I not sacred in the eyes of the gods? For I am head singer at the tambu festivals, so are my love affairs good, and chiefs have died for that look from my eyes that would tell all that a woman may say.”
“If I danced on the pae paes would I be loved too?” said Gabrielle almost eagerly.
“Pale-faced Marama, you no dance; the gods like not your kind!” Ramai answered almost scornfully. Then she glided away into the shadows on the other side of the track and disappeared.
Gabrielle burst into a merry peal of laughter. Once more she looked at her image in the lagoon and began to chant and sway and clap her hands rhythmically, just as she had seen the natives do. The deep boom of the bronze pigeon recalled her to herself as she stood throwing her shapely limbs softly to and fro. The songs of the birds seemed to remind her that she was no longer a child, and that such antics were a bit out of place now that she wore long dresses. She stopped dead, and put her hands into the folds of her hair that had fallen in a glinting mass to her shoulders as she shuffled her sandalled feet in the long jungle grass.
“I’m really getting awful,” was her next reflection. The sun was lying broad on the western sea-line; it looked like an enormous, dissipated, blood-splashed face that would hurry to hide itself below the rim of the ocean, away from the violent wooing of the hot, impassioned, tropic day.
Gabrielle stared across the seas from the hill-top and half fancied that that great hot face grinned from ear to ear over all it had seen. A peculiar feeling of fright seized her heart. In a moment she had turned and hurried away. She felt quite relieved as she sighted her father’s bungalow beneath the shade of the bread-fruits. “It’s late. Won’t Dad swear! I don’t care; men must swear, I suppose,” she muttered as she plucked up courage and entered the small door of the solitary homestead.
The shadows of evening had fallen; the last cockatoo had chimed its discordant vesper from the banyans near by. The room was nearly dark as she opened the door; only a faint stream of light crept through the wide-open casement that was thickly covered with twining tropic vine and sickly yellowish blossoms. To her astonishment, she was received by her father with a broad smile of welcome. “Come in, deary, don’t stand there! What yer frightened of—you beauty?” said old Everard, as his lean, clean-shaven face looked up at the girl in a warning way and he placed a forcible accent on the last two words.
“Who’s here that he should be so affable?” thought Gabrielle.
Turning round, she was startled to see a tall figure standing by the window. In a moment she hurried to the mantel piece and, striking a match, lit the small oil lamp, scolding her father all the time for his discourtesy in allowing a stranger to stand in the darkness. As she turned and gazed at the visitor she almost gave a cry, so impressed was she by the appearance of the man before her. It was the handsome Rajah Koo Macka, the half-caste Malayo-Papuan missionary. He was attired in semi-European clothes, but with this difference—round his waist was twined a large red sash and on his head the tribal insignia of the Malay Archipelago Rajahship, which consisted of coils of richly coloured material swathed round and round to resemble a turban. He looked like a handsome Corsair who had suddenly stepped out of an Eastern seraglio. For a moment the girl stared in astonishment; the Rajah corresponded with her conception of what the grand old heroes of romance were like.
The Rajah took in the whole situation and the impression he had made at this first glance at the father and daughter. He swelled his chest and assumed his most majestic attitude, and then behaved as though he knew he had befriended the girl by being at her homestead at that opportune moment.
“My darter!” said old Everard, inclining his lean face and introducing the girl with a grin.
“Your daughter!” gasped the Rajah as he stared with all the boldness and brazen admiration that Hillary’s eyes had lacked into Gabrielle’s face. He was taking no risks, had no idealistic views about innocence and beauty to thwart his heart’s desires—in a sense he had already captured her!
Gabrielle, recovering from that thrilling glance, blushed deeply. She stared at the dark moustache; it was waxed, and curled artistically at the tips. “What eyes!—luminous, warm-looking, alive with romantic dreams!” she thought.
The Rajah looked again at the girl. That second swift glance made her heart tremble with fright, but somehow she liked to see a man stare so.
“My darter ’andsome girl,” gurgled old Everard, stumping his wooden leg twenty times in swift succession, as Gabrielle brought out the rum bottle. The business confab that had been going on between Everard and his guest ceased abruptly. The old ex-sailor took the Rajah’s proffered cigar, stuck it in his mouth and gripped the ex-missionary’s hand, with secret delight bubbling in his heart. That grip said to Everard: “Everard, old pal, I never knew you had such a bonny daughter. Never mind the business I came here about, I’ll supply you with cash for rum!” The old sailor rubbed his hands. He knew that the man before him was wealthy, owned a schooner, and was boss of two plantations in Honolulu, where he had first met him. He put forth his horny fist and gave the Rajah the first familiar nudge of equality.
Everard was altogether worldly, but utterly unworldly in the great human sense of that phrase. He lacked the swift instincts that should have made him discern the truth and see how the wind might blow. His drunken eyes could not read the deeper meaning in the Rajah’s eyes as that worthy glanced at his daughter. He could see nothing of the passion and lust that is so often in the hearts of the men of mixed blood in the dark races.
Even Gabrielle’s half-fledged instincts of womanhood made her realise that the man before her did not exactly represent her preconceived ideas of what the old heroes of romance would look like could they stand before her in the flesh; the look in the Rajah’s eyes as he gazed on her was rather too obvious.
That night as the three of them sat at the table and Everard roared with laughter over Rajah Macka’s jokes, and giggled in delight at discovering that the Papuan potentate was such a fine fellow after all, Gabrielle’s heart fluttered like a caught bird. Rajah Koo Macka had leaned across the table once and stared into her eyes in such a way that even old Everard had ceased his narrative concerning his own astuteness and, like the idiot he was, stared at the Rajah, the rum goblet still between his lips and the table. But the Rajah, noticing that swift look in the old ex-sailor’s face, immediately recovered his mental equilibrium, and with astute cunning swiftly turned to his host and said: “I really couldn’t help staring so. Why, bless me, Everard, this Miss Gabrielle is the dead spit of the Madonna, the glorious painting that adorned the sacred walls of my missionary home when I studied Christianity’s holy precepts.”
“Damn it! Is she?” wailed old Everard, as the artful heathen gent shaded his eyes archwise with one dusky hand and, staring unabashed with a long, reflective glance at Gabrielle, murmured in holiest tones: “Virginity! Virginity! O blessed word!”
Gabrielle certainly did look beautiful: the dying flowers in her bronze-golden hair and her negligé attire (a much-renovated, washed-out blue robe and scarlet sash) added to the mystery of that sordid bungalow, as the dim candles and oil lamp burnt humbly before the unfathomable eyes of sapphire-blue. The deep golden gleam in their pupils seemed to expand as the night grew old. What a night of magic it was for her! The strange man from the seas thrilled her.
The old bungalow, lit up by two tallow candles and one oil lamp, the smell of rum, all vanished, and the dilapidated furniture and walls shone with a beautiful light, a light that came from that romantic presence! By an inscrutable paradox Macka was abnormally sensual and selfish, and yet truly religious! He spoke in low, sombre tones about Christ, of innocence, of the hopes of the living and of men when they are dead. Old Everard looked almost sane as he leaned his Dantesque face across the table and murmured “Amen.” And as the girl listened the Rajah loomed before her imagination as some glorious representative of the chivalric ages who had stolen into their bungalow out of the hush of the great starry night. The very walls of the room faded away as she watched his eyes flash. It was the sudden tiny pinch on her leg as he stooped to pick up his fallen cigar that she couldn’t quite place. It most certainly had no Biblical import in the books she had read. But still, “Why worry?” she thought, as she once more came under the spell of that look. And still old Everard looked round with insane eyes and thanked God for a Rajah’s friendship; and still Gabrielle struggled against the fascination of that man of mystery. Though nature has fixed indisputable danger signals in the eyes of voluptuaries, liars, rogues and old roués so that they give themselves away in a thousand acts, women’s blind eyes will not see!
All the old idolatry, the belief in his heathen gods, returned to Rajah Koo Macka that night. His mind was fired with superstition, much as Gabrielle’s was by romance, as he stared upon her. Had not the gods of his boyhood far away in New Guinea spoken of such a one with midnight-blue eyes and the hue of the stars in her hair? And was she not before him drinking to his eyes as she held the goblet at his wish? Had not their lips met in secret before the white man’s blinded eyes?
He even made a further advance in that predestined courtship, as planned by the gods, when he left the bungalow that night. In a way that is the special gift of voluptuaries, he managed to squeeze by her in the doorway, passing his arm about her with heathen artistry till she felt a strange thrill. Old Everard also received monstrous pressures of friendship as he put forth his hand and opened his insane-looking mouth at being so flattered. Then the old ex-sailor fell down in the doorway, dead drunk.
As soon as the Rajah got outside the bungalow he stood under the palms and looked back at that little homestead, a terrible fire gleaming in his eyes. The old superstition, deep in his heart’s blood, asserted itself with that full strength that is always triumphant when invested with the power of two creeds. “She’s mine!” he muttered in the old Malayan language. He looked like an agent of the devil as he waved his arms and made magical passes. Then he gave a low whistle. Two stalwart Kanakas, with mop-heads and glassy eyes like dead fish, stepped out of the shadows and saluted the Rajah. “Talofa Alii, Sah!” said one, as he softly swung his strangling rope to and fro and muttered, “Oner, twoer, threer, fourer,” at the same time ticking off each number with his dusky finger. They were kidnappers, members of his crew. In a moment they were all hurrying down towards the shore. As they stood by the coral reefs, the waves singing up to their feet, the Rajah rubbed his hands with delight, for there were five dark girls lying prone, half strangled, in his waiting boat.
They had just been caught while swimming in the enchanted lagoons at Felisi, where native maidens, at the tribal witchman’s bidding, went in the dead of night to wash their bodies in the charm-waters that made girls so beautiful. Even as the Rajah and his kidnappers stood on the shore they heard the sound of a sharp, terrified scream come faintly on the hot winds across the hills. They knew that another victim had been caught in the thug-nets. It was easy enough too; for it was a happy hunting ground for the “recruiters” down Felisi beach way. In the dead of night native girls often ran along the soft, moon-lit sands like coveys of dishevelled mermaids, placing sea-shells to their ears that they might hear the songs of dead sailors and the far-off voices of their unborn children humming and moaning in the great spirit-land that is under the sea.
Gabrielle’s heart thumped like a drum as she softly closed the door of the bungalow. She thought she must have dreamed it all. A handsome, god-like Rajah had gazed upon her as though she were a goddess—impossible! So thought the girl as she stumbled over a sordid reality—her father’s recumbent form on the bungalow door-mat. He still lay where he had fallen. He was a big man, and so it was with much difficulty that she at length managed to pick him up and lay him down on the old settee. Then she sat down in the big arm-chair. She heard her father gurgling out some old-time sea-chantey, so faint that it sounded a long way off. The two tallow candles were burning low in their coco-nut-shell candlesticks. But still she sat there. The idea of going to bed seemed ridiculous after the wonderful thing that had happened. She was still trembling to her very soul over the Rajah’s flatteries.
She thought of that secret pressure, the hot kiss, the deep meaning look in the flashing eyes. “He even spoke of God. Men seem to think more of God than women,” she muttered absently. “I’m dark, a heathen at heart; I’d like to marry a handsome, dark man like that,” she continued, as she began to beat her hands to and fro. Suddenly she felt a pang at her heart, for she had begun quite unconsciously to hum a melody that she had heard the young apprentice play to her on his violin. Her limbs started to tremble; the old look came back to her eyes; the swarthy, half-fierce look had vanished. She tried to change her thoughts by humming on in that weird way. “I’m heathenish, I’m sure I am,” she almost sobbed. Then a fierce feeling took possession of her as she realised her own unstable thoughts over the two men she had just met. For a moment she sat perfectly still, thinking—then she burst into tears.
Everard still snored on. Gabrielle ceased her tears, clapped her hands and laughed softly to herself. She had drunk a little rum and stuff that she knew not the name of that night. How could she help doing so. Had not the Rajah placed his lips at the goblet’s edge and looked sideways in deep meaning at her as he drank a toast to her father? But it wasn’t the rum that filled the bungalow parlour with mystery and changed the universe for her. She forgot the armchair in which she sat: it seemed that she sat on a lonely shore by night and stared at a blood-red sun that peered at her over the ocean horizon. Perhaps the Rajah had done this mysterious thing to her through his tender pressure. He knew! He knew! But still, he had no hint in his mind of the witchery of that girl’s soul.
She rose from the arm-chair, her shadow dodged about the walls of the bungalow, then she peeped through the open casement. Night lay with its tropical mystery drenched with stars as she stared upward and then again across that silent land. She withdrew her head and placed a pillow under her sleeping father’s head, then crept from the room, passing up the three steps that separated her from her own chamber. Her room was faintly lit up by the tint of moonrise on the distant mountains. “How silly of me to feel frightened like this,” she murmured, as she swiftly lit the oil lamp. Her limbs still trembled. A feeling of intense sorrow had come over her. The apprentice’s eyes rose before her memory again; she thought of the tryst by the lagoon, and it all seemed like some memory of a romantic opera she had seen and heard long years ago. Then she gave a startled cry: a shadow had run across the room. “How foolish of me to be frightened of my own shadow!” she said almost loudly to herself, as though she would seek courage by hearing her own voice. “I’ve heard that mother had nights of madness, when she thought a dark woman, blind, deaf and dumb, crouched under her bed and begged forgiveness for something she’d done.” So she thought as she rushed to the window to get away from her thought.
But Gabrielle could not escape from that presence. She looked out on the wide landscape of feathery palms and pyramid-shaped hills to the south-east in a strange fear. Then she stared seaward in the direction of the dark-armed promontory, where she knew the native girls stood on their great god-nights, coiled their tresses up and dived into the moon-lit seas, so that they might swim and beat their hands at the cavern doors where Quat and his vassal-gods moaned.
“I’m going mad too,” she murmured, as she pulled her head in through the open window and began to undress. One by one she pulled off her sandals and ribbons. Then she heard a queer kind of sawing noise. “What’s that?” she wondered. But it was only the regular intervals between Everard’s snores in the silent parlour below. “It’s Dad!” she murmured; and the sound of that deep bass snore soothed her soul as though it were the music of the singing spheres. She took off her blouse, undid the lace corsage, loosened the sash swathing till her semi-oriental attire fell rustling to her knees. “Am I so beautiful?” she murmured, as she looked half in fright and guilt at herself in the oval bamboo mirror. Her eyes sparkled like stars in the gloom as she peeped through her bronze-gold tresses. And still she swerved and swayed, so that the cataract of golden hair fell to her throat and again below the sun-tanned flush of her bosom. She thought of the Rajah, the warm look of his dark eyes. A strange thrill went through her. As though a dark figure ran across the moon-lit space just outside her window once again, a shadow whipped across the room. She hastily wrapped a robe about her, rushed across the room and stared through the vine-clad bamboo casement. The sight of the masts in the bay and the dim light of the far-off grog shanty by Felisi, where she knew sunburnt men from the seas spent the nights in wild carousal, dispelled her fears. She looked round her; then in some unaccountable fascination she stared in the mirror again. “I’m growing into a woman, getting quite beautiful!”
“I’m growing into a woman, getting quite beautiful!” came some exact echo of her words. She was startled; she swiftly glanced round the room; she could almost swear that she was not alone.
“What’s that?” she muttered, as she heard the muffled sounds of beaten drums, so faint that it seemed that the barbarian rumbling came across the centuries.
“What’s that!” re-echoed her own query. The echoes startled her more than the reality would have done. Thoughts of Ra-mai, the tambu dancer, of her gods and the terrors of the phantoms that haunted those whom the tabaran high priests had tabooed flashed through her brain. Her bedroom was faintly lit up by the light of the oil lamp that fell over the dilapidated furniture and on to her old settee bed. A swarm of fire-flies whirled and sparkled beneath the palms outside and then were blown through the open casement, right into the room! She swiftly placed her hands over her eyes, as one might at the sight of vivid lightning—a ghostly flash leapt across the room and seared her very soul! The hot night winds swept through the palms outside; she heard them moan as something leapt out of the night and clutched her heart with its shadowy fingers! In her terror she swiftly looked up at her mother’s photograph, as though she would rush to the dead for companionship. No help there. The faded eyes of that sad face only stared in immutable silence down from the frame on the wall, as though in some twinship of misery. Gabrielle dared not turn her head. She knew that something stood there watching her. Another gust of wind seemed to come from the stars and burst the half-closed casement open.
“Dad!” she cried in her terror, as she felt a hot breath against her face.
“Dad!” echoed the walls of her room in mockery.
“Who are you?” she managed to wail out.
“Who are you?” came the relentless echo.
She had just caught sight of her face in the mirror. Even the fear of that presence in the room was somewhat subdued, so unbounded was her astonishment at seeing the reflection that stared back at her from the bright glass—it was not her own face that she saw, but the face of a wildly beautiful, dark-blooded woman!
She stared again, paralysed with horror. The fiery eyes mocked her fright and astonishment. Then the expression changed: the face seemed to appeal and smile half sadly at the girl.
It was not a monstrous Nothing that gazed upon her. She turned to flee from the terrible presence. But in a second it had leapt out of the mirror—had sprung at her! So it seemed to the terrified girl; but the figure was standing behind her, staring into the mirror over her shoulders like some relentless, cruel Nemesis from her helpless past, a hideous thing that had searched for centuries—and found her at last!
Old Everard slept on. He heard nothing of the terrible conflict in the room three steps up, where his daughter struggled in the awful grip of that temptress who had found her—a woman from some long-forgotten forest grave in the Malay Archipelago.
It was not madness; nor did the struggle exist only in her imagination. The sheets were torn, the counterpane rent in twain, as that merciless phantom tried to overpower the girl.
Only those who have been true worshippers in the great Papuan tambu temples who have seen and heard the magic of the heritage rites, can guess what really happened in the girl’s room. Only those who have experienced a like experience secretly know how she felt as she attempted to overthrow that deadly visitant. For a few seconds their two figures swayed in the dark. The oil lamp had been knocked over! Then the small door of the bungalow suddenly opened: Gabrielle had escaped. She ran out into the moon-lit night! Just for a second she stood under the windless palms, staring first one way and then another, as though she longed to leap over her own shoulders—escape from herself. Up the slopes she ran, and down into the distant hollows by Fallamboco. She passed the derelict hut where the high priest dreamed before he died and was buried just in front of his front door. The broken, crumbling wooden idol still stood on his grave, its bulged glass eyes staring in immutable insolence as Gabrielle rushed by. She stopped by the lagoons at Felisi, where the huddled waters lay, the sacred waters that washed the beautiful bodies of the dead brides ere they were buried safe in the highest mahogany-tree of Bougainville.
She was not surprised when she stooped and gazed on her reflection in the waters and saw a second image beside her own in those silent depths. Standing there in her hastily donned night attire, her hair outblown, her chemise torn to rags at one shoulder, her blue robe clinging to her delicate figure, she looked around in despair. Only the mountains looked on silently as their giant stone heads seemed to stare like Fate across the desolate landscape and out to the moon-lit seas. She looked at the sky and groped in some blindness, lifting her hands in mute appeal. Some past heathen life possessed her. A crawling, half-human-shaped cloud blurred the moon’s face, failing suddenly, like a dark hand. It was not a cloud to Gabrielle’s changed eyes as the shadow fell over the weird landscape; it was a big thumb busily tattooing the sky, as one by one the dim constellations rebrightened on their darkened background.
She stood alert and peered over her shoulder, her face and eyes bright with startled delight—she heard the tribal drums beating.
Those sounds were real enough. Even the young apprentice in his room over the hills jumped as he heard the booming, then put his head out of his window and bobbed it back, startled like a frightened child.
Gabrielle recognised those sounds. The long, low-drawn chant was familiar to her ears. Softly they came, weird undertones drifting across the silence. Like a monstrous rat that had wings, something whirred across the sky and gave a wretched groan as it swept out of sight.
“Ta Savoo! Ta Savoo!” (“Come on! Come on!”) said a voice beside her. A shadowy hand was laid upon her shoulder. The horror of that presence had already vanished. She startled the hills by bursting into a silvery peal of laughter; then away she ran, on, on, into the depths of the forest.
On the brightest tropic night the forest depths were dark with lurking mystery; the multitudinous twistings of the giant trees and their gnarled limbs, all thickly lichened with serpent-like vines, made a wonderful depth of brooding silence and unfathomable light, and in the moonlight looked like some mighty forest of twisted coral miles down under the sea.
White men would sooner walk miles than pass through those depths by night. “No, thank ye! No tabooed b—— heathen forest for me!” they said, as they gave a knowing glance. And none could persuade them. Old Sour Von Craut simply shrugged his shoulders, spread out his fat hands and intimated by raised eyebrows that it was the most natural thing on earth to have found the dead beachcomber, with ears and eyes missing, in the forests behind Felisi beach.
Even Gabrielle stopped running, gave a startled moan and looked up in the dim light. Something screamed and gave a mocking laugh; it was a red-striped vulture. The girl saw the whitened bones of its eyrie as it stood up and flapped its wings. For it had made its nest amongst a dead man’s bones, a grave up there in the palms of the tabooed forest. Just for a moment she crouched in fear, but not because of that sight over her head. An aged dark man with a large nose was passing along, not ten yards off, chanting to himself. It was Oom Pa, hurrying back from the festival outside Parsons’s grog shanty. He had a bamboo rod across his shoulders, Chinese fashion, wherefrom his calabashes swung as he disappeared in the depth beyond. In a few seconds Gabrielle was off again. She had been that way before, so knew the near cuts to the villages and tambu temples. As she ran out of the bamboo thickets she caught a first glimpse of the hanging lamps. A breath of wind had swept through the forest, blowing the thick, dark leaves aside that made the natural taboo curtain to the festival spot. She saw the whirling figures of the tambu maiden dancers. She heard the weird music of the flutes and twanging stringed gourds. The chants only increased the wild feeling of savagery that was delighting her soul. She did not hesitate, but deliberately pushed aside the bamboo stems and stood in the presence of that secret midnight throng of sacred worshippers and the great tambu priests. For a moment the dark heathen men and affrighted women stared from their squatting mats in astonishment, the expression on their faces strangely resembling the carved surprise of the big wooden, one-toothed idol that stood six feet high, staring with glass eyes from behind the taboo stage. Even the dancing tambu maidens swerved slightly in their sacred movements, their steps put out of gear as Gabrielle, with hands uplifted, and eyes staring strangely, appeared before that pae pae.
The head priest coughed in astonishment; then he rose and wailed out: “Taboo! She is white, and such are tabooed by the gods!”
As he brought his club down with a crash, anger come into the dark eyes of the sacred chiefesses, who had leapt to their feet, all disturbed while they had been paying obeisance to the wooden Idol Quat (chief god of the skies). It was a specially private occasion, only the greatly trusted allowed to attend. One stalwart chief stepped forward as though he intended slaying the girl on the spot. Old Oom Pa, who had barely wiped the perspiration from his brow and flung down his calabashes of bribes, gazed with as much surprise as anyone on Gabrielle. Then, seeing that harm might come to the girl, he hastily stepped forward and said: “Hold, O chiefs; this papalagi has that in her eyes which tells she is under the influence of our gods. And, therefore, is she not one of us?” He swiftly turned and said something in the guttural language of his tribe. Whatever he said was for Gabrielle’s benefit, for it greatly calmed the fears of the huddled dark men and their women-kind. In a moment the fierce resentment towards Gabrielle changed to wild grunts of welcome. One aged priest who was grovelling on his stomach before the dwarf taboo idols that were receiving the sacred slanting moonbeams through the palms prostrated himself at Gabrielle’s feet. The white girl looked round her like one who stared in a dream, then she gave a merry peal of laughter. The handsome, tattooed braves who stood leaning on the palm stems gave a hushed cry of admiration as they saw the girl standing, bathed in moonbeams, her hair wildly dishevelled, her eyes like stars, her arms as white as coral as she made mystical movements in a dance they did not know. The old priest, who was at her feet lifted his face and chanted some prayer to her eyes.
This act of the priest made the chiefs and chiefesses think that the girl was there by special decree of their kai-kai (sacred moon gods). In a moment the whole tribe had followed the priest’s act, hod surrounded the girl and were moaning and grovelling at her feet.
“Tala Marama Taraban!” (“’Tis a spirit-girl!”) they whispered in an awestruck voice as they lifted their chins and stared at the girl’s vacant eyes. The peculiar stare of those wonderful blue eyes intensified their superstitious belief.
Two of the chiefs rose, nodded their heads, wailed, and said: “She has been here before, O brothers!”
The tambu maidens had now stopped dancing. The barbarian flutes had ceased their wailings, not a drum note disturbed the hush as the wild, swarthy men gazed on Gabrielle and the aged priest chanted into her ears.
The girl seemed to be dimly conscious of the reverent homage those wild men and women paid her as they fell on their faces before her. She looked down with a dream-like stare on their muscular brown bodies, on their richly shelled ramis, their red-feathered headgear.
“Savoo! Savoo!” (“Go on! Go on! Dance for us!”) they almost whispered, as they turned their shaggy heads and peered into the depths of the forest, half in terror and pleasurable anticipation of what the girl might do.
For a moment Gabrielle swayed, clapped her hands softly as a prelude, then chanted. Then she swiftly glided towards the tambu elevation. In a moment the tambu maidens had jumped down, soft-footed, on to the mossy floor before the sacred erection. Gabrielle had leapt on to the stage! The skulls and skeleton bones and other gruesome ritual objects that dangled on boughs just above her head swayed to the hot night breeze, all tinkling weirdly as she stood for a moment in dreamy hesitation. Then she gave a silvery peal of laughter. She had begun to move hither and thither as though in a dream, swaying to and fro with marvellous delicacy and grace. Never before had those chiefs seen so weird, so wonderful a sight or heard a voice chant their wild melodies with such strange effect. They all stared. Even the tambu maidens stood as though riveted to the forest floor in envious wonder. A drum began softly to beat out the tribal notes, “Too Woomb! Too Woomb!” in perfect tempo to the girl’s shifting faery-like footsteps. Suddenly the aged high priest, Pooma Malo, fell prostrate before his tambu idol and began to chant, so great was his fear. The whole assemblage were trembling like wind-blown shadows. They had all noticed the silent, shadowy woman who stood beside the white girl on the pae pae mimicking her every movement, as it, too, bobbed rhythmically to and fro, moving its feet noiselessly behind her across that pae pae before them all.
Two of the tambu maidens and one dusky youth jumped to their feet and bolted off into the forest in fright. The giant wooden idol just behind the shadow-figure gave a wide carven grin from ear to ear as a shaft of moonlight fell across its hideous face. A handsome, plucky young chief stepped forward. He was adorned with the insignias and decorations of the fetish rites. He leapt straight on to the pae pae. Under the influence of the white girl’s dance he too swayed his arms and chanted, as only men of his race can dance and chant.
Gabrielle looked up at him, a strange light in her eyes. He reminded her of the Rajah. She lifted her arms in response to the handsome young chief’s gesticulations as he careened by her in the mystical cross-passes of the ritual dance. She lifted her mouth to his. The tribal chiefs saw the strange look of the girl’s eyes and at once smothered the cry of “Awai! O lao Mia!” the old tribal exclamation that would express their innermost feelings. The elder priests stood open-mouthed, leaning against their idols in fear and trembling, as though they would ask their protection.
The impassioned warrior chief grew bolder, and held Gabrielle’s delicate figure in a swerving embrace. His dark mouth came close to her ear, murmuring words of magic that she could not understand. Even the idol seemed to stare its surprise as he lifted one white arm and touched the soft flesh with his lips. And still the tambu flute-players blew on, for they too had come under the spell of that strange sight, where the two races clung together and chanted mysteriously to each other. Then the chief untwined his swarthy arms from that embrace and, falling forward on one knee, placed his lips to her feet. He was eager to press his extraordinary advantage. To kiss a maid’s feet is the first act the happy warrior performs when a maid favours his presence on a tambu stage. But he found that her feet were covered. In a moment he had pushed her robe aside and had begun to remove one of her small, blue-bowed sandals.
Just for a moment the white girl’s face seemed to betray the light of vanity over this act of the young chief. Then he lifted her foot once again, to his lips, and immediately Gabrielle’s expression changed. She stared around her in astonishment, looked with a dream-like stare back into the eyes of the giant warrior who was caressing her and at the swarthy men and women who stood under the coco-nut-oil lamps watching in front of the pae pae stage. They knew that the cry she gave was one of terror, for Gabrielle had awakened; her soul had been asleep.
The young chief who had danced with her suddenly cowered away from her side; then he jumped in the opposite direction as she leapt from the pae pae.
“Taboo!” whispered the astonished chiefesses as the wind sighed mournfully across the forest height and flickered the bluish flames of the hanging lamps.
“She would tempt our menkind!” yelled a deep-bosomed chiefess as she leapt forward, her head-dress feathers swaying violently.
One or two of the older chiefs put forth their dusky hands as though they would clutch her in their anger. In a moment Oom Pa lifted his dark fist and bade none touch her. Placing his tawny hand on his tattooed chest, just where his sun-tanned skin encased his thumping heart, he muttered solemn-sounding undertones that told the assembled tambu watchers to leave the girl to him.
Gabrielle looked round on those fierce-eyed men and women in terror. She saw that look in the eyes of old Oom Pa which told her that he, at least, had her welfare deep in his heart. The lines of tambu maidens divided, and moved back half in fright as Gabrielle made a dash and passed by them.
“Stay, O papalagi maid,” said Oom Pa, as he too moved back into the recesses of the forest and, staying her flight, said: “O white maid, you come to tambu dance before, I knower you. I know, too, that you no belonger to our race.” Then he rubbed his wrinkled face, looked at her sternly and proceeded: “Remember that great trouble may come to one who comer to our full-moon rites unasked. Savvy?”
Gabrielle nodded. She could not speak as she stood there trembling from head to feet. Then the old priest looked quietly in her eyes and said: “Tell me, O white maid, who was she with skin dark as the night, eyes like unto stars and cloudy, flowing hair as she dance on pae pae stage with you, mimicking you like a spirit-shadow?”
“With me!” exclaimed the girl in a startled, hushed voice, as she looked round into the forest depth in a great fear.
“Wither you!” reiterated Oom Pa. Then he said: “You knower not that such a spirit-shadow dancer with you and laugher when you place your lips ’gainst those of our taboo warrior? La Umano?”
So spake old Oom Pa, as the light of the moon and superstition lit up his wrinkled face. Before he could say more Gabrielle had fled in fear from his presence.
She had no recollection of the way of her flight back to her father’s bungalow. Her feet went swiftly, like pattering rain, over the forest floor as she ran from her fear and shame. And only God knows the thoughts of her sad heart as she entered her father’s homestead in the dead of night and crept into her little civilised bed to sleep.
Was it imagination? Well, whoever you may be, go to Bougainville, look into the wonderful eyes of those half-caste women who happen to have the blood of the white, Papuan and Polynesian races mixed in their veins, fall in love with such a one, hold her in your arms by night and watch for the shadow!—listen for the rustle of the old life that revelled in the magic of the tambu and maidia temples, the altars of heathen passion and enchantment.