“Well, and what else, Mr. Make-the-News?” demanded the father, as Ngalo hesitated.
“There are those in the village who know nothing,” he went on, “mere worthless heathen of no family, without consideration or land of their own, living meanly like slaves on the bounty of others, who say strenuously, with the persistency of barking dogs, that the Helper is under the spell of Saumaiafe!”
The priest stamped his foot with anger. Was that superstition never to die? Saumaiafe, the fabled witch, who, in the guise of a beautiful woman, lured men to ruin in the bush! Saumaiafe, that intolerable myth with which he had been combating for more than eighteen years! Saumaiafe!
“Thou art a fool!” he cried. “You are all fools. Sometimes I feel as though I had spent my life in vain. I, too, was a fool to ever think you teachable.”
“Your Excellency is right,” said Ngalo. “It is an unendurable village altogether, and ignorant beyond anything before conceived. Indeed, so weak are men’s hearts in this matter of Saumaiafe and the Helper that none now go into the bush, even those who are distressed for bamboo, or for red clay with which to beautify their hair.”
The priest turned away without a word. He was almost inclined to laugh as he went back to the other room, and to tell the lay brother the commotion his actions had excited. But the sight of Michael’s face somehow daunted him; those suspicious, bloodshot eyes suggested dangers that he was at a loss to name. He remembered the hiding of the gun; the strange deceit about the pigeons; he seemed to see the young man kilting up his cassock and plunging furtively into the dark forest. What did it all mean? he asked himself again and again. Mercy of God, what did it mean?
That night he slept but little. He tossed on his hot bed, and whether he lay on this side or on that, the same question dinned in his ears without cessation. He was tortured by thoughts of hidden wickedness in the bush; mysteries of evil in rocky defiles, in caves beside great waterfalls. He rose and went out into the starlight, reproaching himself for his foolishness; and even as he did so, Brother Michael’s even breathing thrilled on his ears like a vindication. When all was said, what was it that he feared for the young man? What could an old priest fear but the one thing—a woman? And what woman, he asked himself, however dissolute or abandoned, would venture alone into those haunted woods? He could trust superstition to keep the wickedest from such a course. Had he indeed become such an old Kanaka, that even he, Father Studby, was to credit the existence of the witch, roving in her naked beauty, a peril to white lay brothers? Perish the thought, so degrading and childish! Assuredly it was not Saumaiafe he had to fear.
He got to bed again, and waited with open eyes for the approach of day. As the cocks began to crow, he heard, with a sudden sinking of the heart, the sound of the lay brother stirring in the next room; heard him dress and go stealthily out, shaking the verandah under his heavy tread.
Mercy of God, what did it all mean?
Morning after morning he asked himself the same question, as the mysterious routine continued with unabated regularity; and the thought of it haunted him persistently throughout the day as he tried to fix his mind on other things. Evening after evening he saw the young man return with his tired face, the pigeons so ambiguously obtained, the gun that had never been fired. They would eat their silent meal together, and then Michael would doze in his chair till bedtime. On Sunday, the only day he remained at home, the lay brother resigned himself to the unavoidable services of religion, going with the father to mass, and assisting, by his presence at least, the cause to which they had both pledged their lives. The few hours of his leisure were spent at a little lock-fast desk; and the nature of this correspondence became the second mystery of his singular and baffling life. Once, looking up from his half-written page, he asked the priest how many feet went to a mile. On another occasion he inquired as to the soundings of the bay, and the most likely point for a steamship pier. Steamship piers, and feet in miles! Miles of what? Whose steamships, and what was there to bring them? Mercy of God, what did it all mean?