The heap was a small one. But Rachel was glad to see that it included her violin-case.
She knew that her stay was like to be a long one. They had been looking for islands out of the way of ships; and she knew that it might even be some years before another sail appeared on that stainless horizon. The thieves would disappear, and they were not likely to talk. Her own movements had been so erratic that she doubted whether her friends could trace her. But she took it all very pluckily; so that the round-eyed Amaru and Tinovao were unable to guess the full meaning of her plight. They came to the conclusion, and Rachel thought it best to encourage them in it, that she was voluntarily planning to live amongst them for a little while, and that the yacht would of course return for her. They had heard of white people doing these strange things, and they were delighted at the prospect.
In a very short time, they had lodged Rachel in a hut of palm leaves, with all the fruits of the island at her door. They carried up the small heap of her possessions, and she gave them each a little mirror from her dressing bag, which lifted them into the seventh heaven. Thenceforward, they were her devoted slaves. Rachel discovered, moreover, while they were turning over her possessions and examining her clothes, that her ignorance of their language was but a slight barrier to understanding. They communicated, it seemed, by a kind of wireless telegraphy, through that universal atmosphere of their sex. They helped her to do her hair; and, as it fell over her shoulders, they held it up to one another, admiring its weight and beauty. When it was dark, there came a sound of singing from the beach; and they crowned her with fresh frangipanni blossoms, and led her out like a bride, to hear the songs of the islanders.
It was a night of music. In the moonlight, on the moon-white sands, a few of the younger islanders, garlanded like the sunburnt lovers of Theocritus, danced from time to time; but, for the most part, they were in a restful mood, attuned to the calm breathing of the sea. Their plaintive songs and choruses rose and fell as quietly as the night-wind among the palms; and Rachel thought she had never heard or seen anything more exquisite. The beauty of the night was deepened a thousand-fold by her new loneliness. The music plucked at her heart-strings. Beautiful shapes passed her, that made her think of Keats:
"Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain."
She murmured the lines to herself; and while her lips yet moved, a young islander stood before her who might have posed as the model for Endymion. He was hardly darker than herself, and, to her surprise, he spoke to her in quaint broken English.
"Make us the music of your own country," was what she understood him to say, and Tinovao confirmed it by darting off to the hut and returning with the violin. Rachel took it, and without any conscious choice of a melody, began to play and sing the air which had been pulsing just below the level of her consciousness ever since she had left England:
"Like dew on the gowan lying is the fa' of her fairy feet,
And like winds in simmer sighing, her voice is low and sweet,
Her voice is low and sweet, and she's a' the world to me,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I'd lay me doon and dee."
The islanders listened, as if spellbound; but she could not tell whether the music went home to any of them, except the boy who lay at her feet with his eyes fixed on her face. When the last notes died away, the crowd broke into applause, with cries of "Malo! Malo!" But the boy lay still, looking at her, as a dog looks at his mistress. Then the moonlight glistened in his eyes, and she thought that she saw tears. She bent forward a little to make sure. He rose with a smile, and lifted her hand to his face, so that she might feel that his eyes were wet.
"Tears," he said, "and I only listen. But you—you make the music, and no tears are in your eyes." He looked into her face.