Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

But Gabrielle could not escape from that presence. She looked out on the wide landscape of feathery palms and pyramid-shaped hills to the south-east in a strange fear. Then she stared seaward in the direction of the dark-armed promontory, where she knew the native girls stood on their great god-nights, coiled their tresses up and dived into the moon-lit seas, so that they might swim and beat their hands at the cavern doors where Quat and his vassal-gods moaned.

“I’m going mad too,” she murmured, as she pulled her head in through the open window and began to undress. One by one she pulled off her sandals and ribbons. Then she heard a queer kind of sawing noise. “What’s that?” she wondered. But it was only the regular intervals between Everard’s snores in the silent parlour below. “It’s Dad!” she murmured; and the sound of that deep bass snore soothed her soul as though it were the music of the singing spheres. She took off her blouse, undid the lace corsage, loosened the sash swathing till her semi-oriental attire fell rustling to her knees. “Am I so beautiful?” she murmured, as she looked half in fright and guilt at herself in the oval bamboo mirror. Her eyes sparkled like stars in the gloom as she peeped through her bronze-gold tresses. And still she swerved and swayed, so that the cataract of golden hair fell to her throat and again below the sun-tanned flush of her bosom. She thought of the Rajah, the warm look of his dark eyes. A strange thrill went through her. As though a dark figure ran across the moon-lit space just outside her window once again, a shadow whipped across the room. She hastily wrapped a robe about her, rushed across the room and stared through the vine-clad bamboo casement. The sight of the masts in the bay and the dim light of the far-off grog shanty by Felisi, where she knew sunburnt men from the seas spent the nights in wild carousal, dispelled her fears. She looked round her; then in some unaccountable fascination she stared in the mirror again. “I’m growing into a woman, getting quite beautiful!”

“I’m growing into a woman, getting quite beautiful!” came some exact echo of her words. She was startled; she swiftly glanced round the room; she could almost swear that she was not alone.

“What’s that?” she muttered, as she heard the muffled sounds of beaten drums, so faint that it seemed that the barbarian rumbling came across the centuries.

“What’s that!” re-echoed her own query. The echoes startled her more than the reality would have done. Thoughts of Ra-mai, the tambu dancer, of her gods and the terrors of the phantoms that haunted those whom the tabaran high priests had tabooed flashed through her brain. Her bedroom was faintly lit up by the light of the oil lamp that fell over the dilapidated furniture and on to her old settee bed. A swarm of fire-flies whirled and sparkled beneath the palms outside and then were blown through the open casement, right into the room! She swiftly placed her hands over her eyes, as one might at the sight of vivid lightning—a ghostly flash leapt across the room and seared her very soul! The hot night winds swept through the palms outside; she heard them moan as something leapt out of the night and clutched her heart with its shadowy fingers! In her terror she swiftly looked up at her mother’s photograph, as though she would rush to the dead for companionship. No help there. The faded eyes of that sad face only stared in immutable silence down from the frame on the wall, as though in some twinship of misery. Gabrielle dared not turn her head. She knew that something stood there watching her. Another gust of wind seemed to come from the stars and burst the half-closed casement open.

“Dad!” she cried in her terror, as she felt a hot breath against her face.

“Dad!” echoed the walls of her room in mockery.

“Who are you?” she managed to wail out.

“Who are you?” came the relentless echo.

She had just caught sight of her face in the mirror. Even the fear of that presence in the room was somewhat subdued, so unbounded was her astonishment at seeing the reflection that stared back at her from the bright glass—it was not her own face that she saw, but the face of a wildly beautiful, dark-blooded woman!