By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

A young woman obviously just passing out of girlhood. Her abundant hair was beautifully golden, throwing back in daring brilliance the bright light of the morning sun. It was not dressed after the manner of the savage Polynesian, but was neatly plaited in thick braids which were twisted around her head like an aureate crown. He was near enough for the details, and he observed that her eyes were as blue as the tropic sea, and filled with light. Her slender figure, practically entirely revealed, for she wore nothing but a wide spreading petticoat of pandanus leaves which came just short of her knees, was the very perfection of native grace and beauty, albeit a trifle immature and, as yet, somewhat undeveloped. There flashed into his mind a remembrance of a day at the museum of the Capitol in Rome, and his first sight of the marble girl, which has a high place there and which is supposed to represent the very perfection of girlhood budding into womanhood. No marble had the rich softness of texture underneath firmness and strength that the skin of this wonderful girl-woman exhibited. Even the tropic sun had only slightly mellowed the clear translucence of her complexion. A great scarlet flower was placed behind her ear in her golden hair. Otherwise, she was absolutely unadorned. She was entirely unconscious of her inadequate attire, and he was unconscious of it, too. As an ancient nymph of Greece of old, she fitted into the soft beauty of the landscape so perfectly that in his eyes, as in her own, she lacked nothing. No apparel could have made more obvious the sweetness, the innocence, the youthful charm of this graceful, enchanting figure. That is what he saw on the heaven-kissing hill on that island.

In her turn, she saw a man who was dark where she was fair, whose thin and haggard face was covered with a short growth of new and thick beard and mustache which, nevertheless, did not hide its fineness; whose sodden, torn, blue denim clothing could not disguise the strong, vigorous lines of his well-knit figure; one who was whiter where his complexion showed, and taller and stronger than any man she had ever looked upon; whose clothes were as unfamiliar to her as her lack was unfamiliar to him; who stood erect, perhaps a head taller than she, and she was counted as a tall woman on that island, and stared at her with great interest and delight. She noticed that he carried a singular looking staff, the bright brass top of which shone in the light. He was like nothing she had ever seen. He had no advantage of her in that, except in so far as that charming girl of the Capitol was concerned. Obviously she found him distinctly pleasing.

Controlling his nerves as best he could, he stepped toward this radiant wood nymph, amicably extending his hands. Then he brought his palm up to his mouth, intending thus to convey to her that he was hungry. In return, she broke the silence by addressing him. There was something extraordinarily familiar in the language she used. He had been enough in the South Seas to have picked up a smattering of dialect, enough to pass; but her speech, while it was suggestive, was, nevertheless, unlike any native tongue he had ever heard before. He could not account for its familiarity, though he could not understand it. He only shook his head, put his hand to his mouth again, and moved his jaws. Obviously, she understood this simple sign language, for she at once nodded to him as she walked toward him.

She stretched out her hand to him, as she drew near, in a gesture that was somehow singularly European, and when his greater palm met her own daintier hand, to his great astonishment she shook it vigorously in a way totally different from that of any Polynesian of whom he had ever heard. Indeed, although the Polynesians are among the handsomest and best proportioned people on earth, there was nothing whatever that suggested a denizen of the South Sea about the girl, except her costume, or lack of it.

She said something more to him that sounded as familiar as her first address, but which was as puzzling and unintelligible as her other speech. Then she withdrew her hand, turned, and walked across the grass toward the clump of trees. She beckoned him to follow. Walk, of course, is the word that must be used to describe her progress; that monosyllable in this instance covers a multitude of graceful movements. To his fancy she seemed to dance across the sward; to float across it; her small, white feet skimming the grass; her slender, exquisitely proportioned limbs flashing in the very poetry of free and unhampered motion. He found her back view equally beautiful in its symmetry and slender grace as the face-to-face impression.

Forgetful of his needs for the moment in his surprise and pleasure, in the sheer joy of contemplating a thing so beautiful--a purely esthetic pleasure, without thought of anything but the sweet innocence and purity of the girl, which made it impossible to entertain any profaning thoughts, at least for a clean, decent, young man like Beekman--he followed her gladly. Behind the clump of palm trees ran a path through thick growths of tropic fern and cane and blooming leafage. She turned into it, and he had some difficulty in keeping up with her rapid progress. She looked back from time to time to see that he was following, but otherwise pursued her way without stopping.

After a walk of perhaps a mile, which led through groves of palm or thickets of undergrowth, or across opens in which he noticed plants under cultivation that had a singularly familiar look, although he could not stop to examine them in that rapid progress, they reached the settlement which he had observed when he came out of the cleft where the brook pierced the wall. Their approach had been marked for some time, and the whole population apparently had assembled to welcome them.

There were perhaps forty souls gathered under the palm trees in front of the curious houses. As near as he could estimate, one-third of them were men, mainly old; one-third of them were women, the most of them past their youth; and the rest were small, quiet, anæmic looking children. The women were clad like his guide. The men wore breech clouts or loin cloths. They ranged in color from a whiteness that nearly but not quite matched that of the girl to the rich, golden brown of the Polynesian. Most of them were distinctly undersized, not to say stunted. Old men and women predominated. The children were weak looking, decadent. There was a listlessness about them; a languor greater than that ordinarily to be found in the tropics. Even to his first superficial investigation they presented the appearance of a degenerate race of people that was dying out. There was no look of vigor even about the young, but in nearly every face a physical and a mental indifference. Surely here was an arrival to have raised the wildest excitement in normal people, but these islanders were almost passive in their scrutiny, albeit they were deeply interested.

Two figures detached themselves from the group as they approached, and stood forth prominently. The first was a man of great age, venerable, white bearded, white haired, hoary, wrinkled, bent with many years and the infirmities consequent thereon. He walked with difficulty, leaning upon a staff. His fellow was the tallest and most vigorous of the rest of the men. He appeared to be the most intelligent of them all. This is not saying that his intelligence would have been marked to a European, or that his vigor would have been noticed elsewhere in the world, but in that assemblage there was enough difference between him and the rest to awaken instant attention. The others were quite hopeless. The old man would have aroused interest and curiosity anywhere. The young man would have passed in a crowd of Europeans without notice one way or the other.

As they approached, Beekman's glance went from the girl who led him to the young man. The two, he observed, looked at each other with a certain familiarity which bespoke some sort of relationship. They exchanged eloquent glances. He noted that the young man was as much ahead of the rest of the islanders as he was below the girl. The old man who had stepped to the front and stood leaning upon a twisted sort of staff was the first to speak.