“How can we manage all these things you’ve mentioned?” said Gabrielle softly, as she glanced earnestly at the young apprentice.
It was not Hillary’s imagination, it was all true enough; Gabrielle wanted to go at once—no delay!
Hillary knew nothing, guessed nothing of the cause of the girl’s desire for hasty flight. He only saw that the light in here eyes was as sincere as death.
“The Solomon Isles! And now an elopement with a haunted, beautiful white girl,” was his mental ejaculation.
If he had had the slightest hint of the real reason of Gabrielle’s hurry, would he have hesitated? No! He would have flown with her that very night and never let her go back to the homestead behind the beach at Felisi. Neither the wreck, the stars nor the whisper of the beating seas hinted the truth to him. He looked shoreward across the straits. The night was so clear that he fancied he could see the smoke rising from the crater of Bangana, fifty miles away.
“Gabrielle, will you meet me by the lagoon again to-morrow night? We will then arrange everything, and you can tell me if you will come.” Then he added: “I can manage everything splendidly.” He spoke enthusiastically and with assurance, as though he had had a large and successful experience of this kind of thing. Then he continued: “We can fly away to Honolulu, or anywhere you like from this cursed place—even to England.”
Gabrielle was so affected and dazed by the apprentice’s enthusiasm that she could only stare in the dusk at his flushed face and brightening eyes as he continued with his emotional tirade: “You don’t know what I’ll be to you, how I’ll love you, dear. I’ll write songs and music and dedicate all to you! I’ll write poems——” Then he paused and exclaimed: “Gabrielle, I’m a poet—you don’t know what I am! You don’t know what I’m capable of achieving in this world if I had someone like you to encourage me.”
Even Gabrielle forgot her vanity and felt some sad sense of shame over her own unworthiness, as he swore that the veriest vagabonds of the streets would aspire to fame if they had someone to inspire them beyond their unambitious selves. Hillary poured forth a flood of impassioned words; his eyes shone in his earnestness, and his lips trembled. Then he suddenly realised that his overwhelming flood of words might appear foolish to the girl. He stopped short. He watched her half in fright, wondering what impression he had made upon her.
Gabrielle replied by falling into his arms. She could not help feeling something of his almighty boyish sincerity. There in the friendly shadows she told Hillary that he had beautiful eyes. She laid her head on his lap so that he could gaze down into her eyes as their lips met over and over again. How it thrilled him when she said: “Hillary, my Hillary!” And while the torn rigging wailed and the deep waters boomed and resolved into gentle monotones against the derelict’s wooden side she sat by him and sang. A silver sea-bird swooped over the deck and, sighting them there, gave a startled cry as it sped away.
“Gabrielle,” he whispered, as he thought of all that he had rehearsed in his mind and of how little he had accomplished now that the girl was quite alone with him on that wreck. Then he softly pulled down the delicate blue neck-fringe of her blouse and exposed the whiteness of her warm throat. And Gabrielle, with an artless vanity that inspired his waning courage, gently let her head fall back so that he might touch, just once, the soft whiteness of her throat with his lips.