The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories

by W. C. Scully

They talked of the scenes of their childhood in far-off Java,—of how the children used to go forth in troops in the early morning from the “kampong,” the village built of bamboo, to gather into baskets the “melatti” flowers that had fallen during the night from the trees, until the ground was covered as with a white carpet; of how they would weave the blossoms into garlands and long festoons, wherewith all, even the criminal going to suffer on the gallows, would be decked. From thus talking over scenes which they both knew and loved, they attained to a strange intuitive understanding of each other. Aiäla had been her father’s favourite child, and he, without teaching her his own tongue, had developed her mind to a degree almost unknown among women of her mother’s race. Her finely-moulded head contained a strange farrago of fantastic and poetical notions, and for one so illiterate she had a wonderful gift of language. Her memory was very retentive, especially for poetry and passages from the Koran, which she would repeat with a remarkable faculty of original expression, while her sensitive face reflected the spirit of the words.

Brand, however, did not even remotely suspect what was the true state of the case,—that the girl loved him with the full strength of her passionate nature. The man who had appeared twice in her life, each time in a great crisis, had stamped himself indelibly on the untouched wax of her heart, and she felt, without even defining the feeling to herself, that her love and her life had become one and the same. From the day when he lifted her from the cab in his arms she had tenderly cherished the memory of the strong, tall, blue-eyed stranger who had rescued her from a terrible death, and who looked like a god among the uncouth, patois-jabbering crowd, from the like of which her only acquaintance was drawn. Moreover, was he not of the race of the dead father whom she had loved so well? And when he rushed into her presence, a hunted fugitive, had she not—after the first shock of surprise was over—been filled with exalted joy at the thought that this man of men was hers to save or to slay with a word? And whilst he cowered until dawn behind the curtain within a yard of where she lay, outwardly composed, but inwardly seething as though with the thunder and the tumult of the sea pent within her breast, throughout the long night made splendid by starry, sleepless dreams, had her very soul not melted in the ardent crucible of her burning hopes and re-formed in the mould of the man whose personality was a revelation to her, far nobler than her highest ideal?

Aiäla had hitherto been loverless; now passion awoke in her torrid, Eastern nature like a summer tempest on an Indian Sea, and its waves’ resistless strength undermined what had hitherto been the impregnable rock of Brand’s insensibility. All the untaught wiles which are as instinctive to the natural woman in her youth as is preening its feathers to a bird in the spring-time, were lavished on him, and long before he even suspected it, Aiäla had filled his heart as completely as he filled hers.

She bade him farewell in the dusk, promising to return as soon as ever she could manage again to escape. When the weary, leaden-footed hours dragged past and yet she did not come, Brand was in despair. He thought something had happened to prevent her coming at all that night, and the agony of longing which he underwent taught him unmistakably that the love he had dreamt of, but never before experienced, had at length made its home in his heart.

A sound in the room below threw him into an ecstasy of expectation, and just afterwards the trap-door was lifted with the usual creaking sound which he had come to regard as sweeter than the sweetest music. It was absolutely dark; the moon had not yet arisen, and the wind-driven rain hissed against the streaming window-panes.

Brand came forward to the corner where the trap-door was, and his outstretched hands came in contact with Aiäla, who was shivering, apparently with cold, beneath a heavy, wet cloak. She slid from his attempted embrace with a low breath of laughter, and when he followed her she again eluded him. This, acting on his over-wrought mind and his inexperience, vexed him sorely, and he sat down on the chair in silence and weary perplexity.

After a few moments she startled him by striking a match and lighting a small lamp, which she then placed on the bracket. Brand then noticed that she had hung dark cloths across the windows.

He stood up and looked at her in wonderment. A thick, dark cloak covered her from head to foot and, being drawn in around her throat with a string, formed a hood which quite hid her face. When she lifted the lighted lamp to the bracket he saw with a thrill that her arms were bare from firm, round wrist to shapely shoulder. Then she slowly turned towards him and gazed fixedly into his eyes from the darkness of her hood. Lifting her hands slowly to her throat she untied the string, and then made a sudden, backward movement with her head. The cloak slid down behind her to the floor.

She was clad after the fashion of her native land in a “kabaai,” or robe of delicate, fawn-coloured silk, and a “sarong” or skirt of the same material, cerise-coloured. Her thick, glossy, black hair hung loosely over her shoulders; her throat, arms, and ankles were bare, and her feet were covered by delicate sandals of crimson silk. In her hair and around her bosom were garlanded white blossoms of a kind that Brand was unacquainted with, strung together after the manner of the “melatti” flowers, and emitting a very sweet and pungent scent.

They stood, hardly a pace apart, and gazed at each other, the girl with parted lips and heaving breast, and Brand awed to a statue before her beauty and the spell of her eyes. Then she said in a steady voice: