I can still hear the terribly sad music of that voice, as in pathetic, broken English she almost sang her sorrow into our ears.
She told us how justice was meted out to her, how fierce, relentless men came in the disguise of outraged righteousness, seized her and shut her with her remorse in that coffin whereon no flowers are placed: nailing a young girl down with all her shattered dreams—alive, inside.
As Waylao and I listened to her story, I imagined that girl to be some terrible symbol, some sad, beautiful personification of all the castaways of the earth. The very winds seemed to shriek triumphantly, as though they still roared out the hate of pious men, and coming from the far-off cities across the seas, rushed up that shore and shook the forest trees violently with pursuing hands. I felt as though the world of reality had long since been shattered back into its hell by the final cataclysm, the crash of the spheres; that I sat there with the remnant, two beings it had failed to crush, but had left behind, gloriously beautiful with sorrow, in a new, divine form. As for me, it seemed as though I were some great mistake, some man, by a sad mischance, still left behind on earth, and I sat between them listening and hung my head for shame.
Out of another’s sorrow balm came to Waylao: she wept not for herself, but for the ragged figure, the blistered feet of the derelict beside us.
O heart of mine! Is it true that the forest trees brightened with ethereal light—that an angel stood weeping in those woods—that a stricken phantom girl seemed to step from the confessional box of that almighty cathedral of giant trees and the domed starlit night, her soul renewed with glory, her shattered dreams restored by our sympathy?
Was it a fallen angel, a phantom of the imagination, that came down to us in the forest by Tai-o-hae, sang that French hymn to beauty, and, with the stars shining in her flying mass of hair,
Danced as the winds came creeping in
And I played on the violin!
Yes, danced, as the mad shadow played and played the songs of romance and the waves beat out their warning monotones on the beach below.