After that terrible discovery I returned to Waylao, hardly conscious of what I should say. For a while I managed to keep the sorrow of it from her. She saw by my manner that something terrible had occurred; indeed she half guessed the truth before I told her anything. Her grief was terrible. I did my best to console the poor girl.
“Waylao,” I said, “it is no good grieving; she has gone from all the sorrow of this world; and but for this little bit of ribbon we might well imagine that such a being never existed, never drifted out of the stars, and then, leaving these dilapidated shoes behind, escaped from the clutches of the convict officials.”
Taking her hand as tenderly as a brother might take the hand of an erring sister, I said: “Waylao, come away home to your people. I have been to Father O’Leary and he wants to see you.” Then I told her once more of her mother’s grief over her flight, of all the kind things that people had said about her—for I, too, can be a holy liar—and I took her away over the hills. She was strangely silent as she walked beside me.
“I don’t want to go back, I cannot,” she said when we were within sight of the township. I did not dream of the true state of her mind. All that she had gone through, and the sudden loss of her new-made friend in her sorrow, had evidently unhinged her mind, for I never saw any woman run like she did. We were just passing by a clump of bread-fruits that stretched into the deeper forest by Tai-o-hae when I looked up and saw her bolting.
Recovering from my astonishment, I started off in pursuit. She was light of frame and foot, and so easily outpaced me.
I was more upset at this turn of affairs than I would like to confess. When I got back to the old hulk I was sweating and exhausted through my hopeless search. I thought it best to say nothing to anyone except Father O’Leary of what had happened. To tell the truth, I began to wonder what construction might be put on my unconventional interest in Waylao’s plight. I suppose, even now, old Mother Grundy will have her private opinion, but what care I, safe out here in the solitude of Savaii Isles! I wonder what she would think of my next chance meeting with the half-caste girl. Yes, we met again some time later, and in the most miraculous way—far out at sea. But there’s a good deal to tell before I reach that episode.
CHAPTER XVII
A Pacific Storm—A Glimpse of Pauline—Waylao on the Hulk—Her Many Fathers—Grimes’s Unuttered Proposal—A Serenading Fiasco—Hermionæ
TWO days after I had lost sight of Waylao I was sitting in the shadows of the banyans near the Broom Road. Grimes was laid up in the hulk with a sprained ankle, through some wild spree in the grog shanty. I had been that day to Father O’Leary and told him my experiences. The old priest was terribly upset, but we were both hoping that Waylao might eventually turn up.