“That will do for to-day, Sestra. I am tired and will go and bathe in the lagoon and so refresh my body,” said Hawahee as he dropped his tools.
“So am I, Hawahee,” murmured Sestrina.
In a few moments they had both passed up the beach and had retired to their separate huts. They had already had their supper, for Hawahee was in a hurry to get the raft finished, and so had made up his mind to work till sunset each night.
Directly Sestrina had passed out of sight, Hawahee went down to the lagoon to bathe. In a few moments he stood in the cool water. His heart was full of happiness in the thought that a chance of a new life did lie before him and Sestrina. Then he stood gazing towards the aftermath of the dead day as though he had suddenly died, and in some inexplicable way still stood rigid, upright, with the water to his waist, staring at the sky! What had done this, brought this awful change to Hawahee’s face and eyes? It was nothing more than a stinging feeling in his back where the salt water was smarting. He gave a gasp and partially recovered. Then he placed his tappa-robe on, pulling it over his shoulders in a mechanical way as though he was moving in a dream.
Walking along the sand bank of the lagoon, he pulled the robe down and stared again on his imaged shoulder. It was true enough, no mistake!—a great leper patch had broken out! In his grief he ran up the shore, and, throwing himself on the ground, beat his hands and forehead on the stones till they were stained with blood. For several minutes the nobility of his character faded away and left him a frenzied, savage fanatic.
“Wahine! Sestra! come to me! I am clean! I am clean!” he wailed as he realised what the discovery meant to him, and to the woman he really loved—unless be deceived her, told her nothing about his dreadful discovery. In a few moments the natural bravery and nobleness of his soul came to his assistance. He rose to his feet, and lifting his poor hands to the sky, called in terrible fervour and anguish to the old gods of his boyhood. He trembled as he stood there, staring first out to sea and then in the direction of Sestrina’s homestead. But all was silent, Sestrina had heard nothing. The next moment he had rushed down the slope; he was on his way to the heiau (temple). It was a terribly sad sight as he stood in the gloom of that big pagan aisle and with lifted, bloodstained hands, appealed to the goddess Pelé, Atua and Kauhilo. But their immutable sightless eyes and hollow ears brought no comfort to the stricken man’s soul as the wide, reddish shell-mouths moaned while the wind swept down the valley. Only the goddess Pelé seemed to gaze from her sombre immobility in sorrow upon the miserable man as he stood there with lifted hands and grief-distended eyes. In the flood of bitterness that came to him, he ran from the presence of those heathen deities and knelt under the palms just outside the temple. “O White God of Langi, Maker of the seas, the stars, the birds and all the wonders and beauty of the universe, and the wondrous clays which I have moulded into the great gods of shadowland, be merciful unto me, a poor heathen untutored savage of the wilds.” And as he moaned on in this wise the night winds caught the words and swept them away! Again he rose to his feet, and, running a few steps, sought the spot where the stone image that resembled Sestrina stood. He wrung his hands in despair as he bowed his head before the moulded grace of the perfect, veined limbs. Then he turned his head and hid his face in his hands. A great fear had swept into his soul; he felt that he might be unable to control his passions, so great was the beauty of the figure before him. “Sestra, I am like to betray thee! I, Hawahee the leper, might make thee unclean. I, who love thy shape, might cast the reality of your loveliness as a loathsome object into the grave by the side of Rohana, Steno and the rest.” In the terror of his thoughts and the possibility that he had lost Sestrina for ever, he leaned forward to embrace the passionless grace of that symbolical form which his imagination had incarnated, endowed with his soul’s ideas. In the agony of his unsatisfied imagination, he embraced the air. The winds wafted the rich odours of the breadfruits to his nostrils. Again he leaned forward and gazed through the dusk with burning eyes at that beautiful figure which he had fashioned with the warm fingers of a wondrous creative impulse, till he had actually robed the stone form with the glamour of a beauty almost divine. He forgot his gods. Only the shape appealed to his staring eyes, the divinity, the spiritual light of his soul strangely seemed to fade. What had happened? Had he drunk too deeply of the pagan’s starry heavens, of the foaming sunsets and Sestrina’s eyes? Was it only sorrow, that almighty alchemist who transmutes mortal dross into purest gold, that had saved Hawahee and Sestrina from falling into the lap of atheistical luxury and warm-scented dreams?
“Sestra, O love of mine! Wahine, thou whom I have fashioned from the moaning ocean’s coral stone, teach me to be brave, I am a leper, unclean! unclean!” he wailed.
The sight of the form’s graceful beauty, the parted lips, the sensuous curves of the shape, the symmetrical loveliness of the outstretched arm and the hand still holding the faded flower, overwhelmed his senses. He sprang towards the silent shape—. His material self seemed to swoon into the grace of soulless stone! He gave a startled cry! Lo, the figure’s outstretched arm had softly closed, held Hawahee in the grip of a passionate clasp! His impassioned lips met the lips of the shape—they were warm; the bosom heaved! The lips spoke: “Hawahee, thou shalt worship me. I, at least, care not for leprosy, or for—”
“Sestra! your arms—your arms are warm! The eyes I made have light as beautiful as the stars in them. O Pelé, what hast thou done?—forgive! forgive!”
“Hawahee! save me, the light fades—I fall!” wailed the trembling statue.