“Who did it? Who is it? Tell me, you wicked villains!” she shrieked.
Waylao stood silent as death, as mother and daughter faced each other. Only the old grandfather’s clock broke the silence of those dreadful minutes, ticking off, as though with sorrow, the flight of time.
“If yous don’t tells me the man, I’ll kills you!” shrieked the infuriated woman. With the pluck born of resignation, the true pluck that is found in most women when the supreme moment comes for the test, the girl stared ahead with a look of secret defiance and loyalty to her Indian cut-throat.
Like a big marionette on a stick, the dusky old woman jumped up to the low-roofed ceiling three times, then, with a howl, rushed into the next room and clutched hold of the huge family war-club hanging on the parlour wall. In her flurry she tripped over the matting and fell. Scrambling to her feet, she rushed back into the bedroom—it was empty. In that moment of her mother’s absence Waylao had fled.
The old woman gasped, then rushed out of the cottage door, spurred by mingled feelings of hatred and remorse.
“Wayee! Wayee! Wheres ares you? Come back! Come back! Tells me all,” she shouted.
The old Marquesan woman stared through the colonnades of bread-fruits, and listened. She heard nothing but the low cry of the katafa bird, bound seaward, breaking the stillness.
All that day and the next day the sad old mother searched and called in vain. She wandered like one demented to the huts of the native villages, calling aloud for Waylao, telling every greedy listener of her sorrow.
The scandal swept with magical rapidity from village to village, from shore to shore. Indeed scandal was as rampant in the South Seas as in the cities of civilisation.
The rumour spread and spread, and took on wondrous shapes and hideous detail. Some pitied the girl, and cried: “What! Waylao? Well, I never! Poor Waylao!”