“Missy Queenie break taboo,” Mali explained at once, with Polynesian frankness. “That make people angry. So him want to kill you. Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress. Korong may smile on bride—that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him.”
The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet clearly afraid to approach within arm’s-length of the strangers. Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures. “Come away,” she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more. “Oh, what are they going to do to us? Will they kill us for this? I’m so horribly afraid! Oh, why did I ever do it!”
The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break. Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky lady on her wedding morning.
The final touch was too much for poor Muriel’s overwrought nerves. She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.
Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind again as if by contagious magic. A loud shout of “She cries; the Queen of the Clouds cries!” went up from all the assembled mob to heaven. “It is a good omen,” Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look. “We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.” Almost before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her. Many of the women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second against Muriel’s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner. The happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy. “No more drought!” they cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations. “The Queen of the Clouds is good: she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!”
Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd was now nothing but affection and sympathy. Slowly they gathered in closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and pressed it sympathetically. Mali explained their meaning with ready interpretation. “No cry too much, them say,” she observed, nodding her head sagely. “Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much. Them say, kind lady, be comforted.”
There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. “They say, ‘It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,’” Toko said, with frank bluntness; “‘but not too much—for fear the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.’”
By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and, smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low voice to Felix’s Shadow. The Shadow turned most respectfully to his master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in a very doubtful voice, “She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just for to-day, to wear this ornament?”
Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to the bride with polite gallantry. “She may wear it forever, for the matter of that, if she likes,” he said, good-humoredly. “I make her a present of it.”
But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at this untoward incident. The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of the cause of the misunderstanding. “Korong must not touch or give anything to a bride,” he said, quietly; “not with his own hand. He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky. But he may hand it by his Shadow.” Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen. “These gods,” he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness, “though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful—see, they have come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari—they do not yet know the ways of our island. They have not eaten of human flesh. They do not understand Taboo. But they will soon be wiser. They mean very well, but they do not know. Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!” And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public admiration. Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other decorations.