“Man proposes and God disposes.” I say this because the very thing that happened at this period was, as far as I can see, the worst thing that could have happened. It’s like this: I had been aboard a schooner, and finding that she was bound for Hivaoa, I had decided to wait about till the captain returned. He was ashore for a while. Full of hope that my scheme would work well, and that I would get Waylao a passage home, I hurried down the gangway, slipped, sprained my ankle. Providence also arranged that my head should come such a crack on the iron stanchion as I fell that I remained unconscious for five days. I say five days, but it was two weeks or more ere I could think coherently.
I was taken in by a medical man who lived four miles out of Suva. I will not go into detail about my illness, all that I suffered when at length I recovered my senses; how I tried to remember if Waylao was a dream or someone I had met in the flesh. As the days wore on, Mrs Pink’s whiskered face loomed in front of my dreams. “It’s real enough,” thought I; “no diseased imagination could fashion a face like that.” Then Old Man Pink took a settled shape. I heard him wailing about the goodness of things, and men ’elping the ’elpless.
When at length I realised the truth of everything, I was in a fearful state of mind. What would Waylao think of my sudden absence? Would she think that I had given her the slip—left her to her fate after all my tender expressions, all that I said beneath those coco-palms on Suva Parade?
CHAPTER XX
The Pinks in their True Colours—A Charitable Community—Waylao thrown out—I return Too Late—Punishment for the Pinks
I WILL do my best to record all that happened to Waylao after I was stricken down.
It appeared that she waited and waited my return in absolute faith that it was no fault of mine that I had not turned up. I cannot describe her feelings as the days went by and I did not put in an appearance. But I can easily imagine a good deal from all I heard, not only from the people that resided in and around Pink’s establishment, but from Waylao’s lips. It was a long time, though, ere we met once more, ere she came like a stricken wraith out of the night to Father O’Leary and I, before she again went away into the darkness.
Mrs Pink was devoutly religious and a typical chapel-goer. She had even got old Pink to pay for a special pew in the wooden chapel at H——. So it is not surprising that when the next week’s rent was due she became extremely suspicious and fearfully pious.
Each morning she would put her head through Waylao’s doorway and, glaring fiercely with one eye, say: “Hi say, miss, ’e ain’t returned yet, ’as ’e?”