Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

The three of them sat down at the parlour table. For quite a long time Gabrielle sat like a sphinx, a dazed look in her eyes. The Rajah, who sat opposite her, noticed that look. But was he embarrassed? Not he! He simply rubbed his hands and gave an extra curl to his moustache. He had tackled very obstinate ladies in his time down in the native villages. And it was immensely gratifying to him to think that Everard was a kindly disposed white man and did not dine with a war-club by his side—as old chief Mackeroo did when the Rajah sought his wife for a convert. Blowing his hose in his handkerchief, he at once began business. Gabrielle quailed before his sinuous, reptilian-like glances. She was trembling, for she knew that she had met her master—and he knew that she had too. He was watching her as a cat watches a mouse. He saw her eyes roam in a furtive way to the door more than once. He knew that she was ready to spring at the first unguarded moment and fly out into the night.

Old Everard wondered why they both sat staring at each other. He suddenly burst into speech, and brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “Why the h—— don’t you speak, blind me eyes?” he roared. He was decidedly drunk. Macka lifted his eyebrows and then looked at the old sailor and began to quote applicable Scriptural texts. His voice took on quite a melancholy wail, the old ecclesiastical drawl habit, as he remonstrated with the ex-sailor for roaring in such a rough manner at so sweet a girl. Everard relented, even apologised. Macka stretched forth his hand in a grandiloquent manner and forgave! About half-an-hour later the Rajah’s hopes had returned: the girl was his!

For the stars had begun to dance before Gabrielle’s eyes. She felt that he wasn’t so wicked after all. And the reason for this sudden change in her was not far to seek. The Rajah had slipped some rum and opium into her tea, some kind of mixture that is still used prolifically by the natives who wish to dope artless girls, and sailormen too! “Tea’s the thing! Good old papalagi’s tea, wholesome drink,” he had chuckled beneath his virile moustache.

“Whisky, I say!” Everard had wailed, as he stared with bleary eyes. But the Rajah would have none of it. He dearly loved tea, nothing to beat tea, he swore. That settled it. Everard told Gabrielle to make a pot of tea at once. But Gabrielle still sat at the table and wouldn’t move, so Everard got up and made the tea himself and thought of how he would get his own back on his daughter when the Rajah had gone. Let it, however, be said that old Everard would never have made that pot of tea had he had the slightest hint of the consequences. But he was a fool. The ex-sailor was not so much to blame: civilisation has shrivelled up the white man’s God-given weapons of instinct, and so he stands to-day a slave to dull reason, and is positively nowhere when a native’s cunning is concerned. It was only natural, therefore, that sinful old Everard should fall into every trap that the wily Malayan-Papuan, made for his daughter’s destruction. As the hours passed things began to look brighter to Gabrielle. She forgot the night and all that she had intended to do. As for Everard, he got quite boisterous when she laughed, at last, at one of his antiquated jokes. And then, as the old man listened to the Rajah’s mellifluous voice, he became so emotional that he forgot and wiped his nose on the edge of the best green tablecloth. “Dad!” whispered Gabrielle, in an awestruck voice over her parent’s preposterous act in front of the twelve-dollar suit of clothes and jewellery from the Honolulu slop-shop.

The ex-sailor lifted his grizzled face and, staring with his bleary blue eyes, gave his daughter a half-apologetic look. Gabrielle reddened to the ears at the thought of her sudden good fortune. It seemed that the impossible was occurring. A Rajah of holiest soul looked fondly upon her and her late swearing old father sat there gazing into her face apologetically! It was more wonderful than any fairy tale or any novel she had read. She could have risen from her chair and sung; could even have snapped her fingers with derision at the phantom-woman who she half fancied was lurking outside the bungalow.

Gabrielle hardly spoke as the Papuan Rajah waved his hand and glorified himself in the eyes of his host and his daughter, expatiating on the virtues of Christianity and his own true belief. Old Everard said “Amen,” opened his mouth in surprise and hung his head for shame as Macka chided him over his habitual drunkenness. The Rajah pointed his dark finger at the daughter, and said: “See yon sacred maid. White is she as the spotless snow on the mountains of Kaue. Art not ashamed, O white man, to set so bad example?” Saying this, the Rajah opened his prettily bound pocket Bible and in sombre tones read Scriptural passages till the old ex-sailor’s heart quaked in fear of God’s wrath and his own remorse over his treatment of his daughter. And still the dark missionary proceeded with his exhortations. “Art not ashamed, O man Everard?” “Yus, I ham,” almost wailed the derelict representative of the great white races, as Macka continued his Scriptural denunciations in a sombre voice. Thus did Macka the half-caste missionary further his desires. But why record all that really happened that night? It is sufficient to say that Everard’s eyes brightened as Macka’s heart softened, until the brown man quite forgave the white man for his sins. Indeed that dim-lit parlour became a kind of confessional-box, whilst Everard fell on his knees and Gabrielle trembled in mighty trouble at her former wicked thoughts over so noble, so holy a missionary.

Then the Rajah bode Everard rise, and said: “O white Everard, think no more of thy sorrows and thy sins; frailty is the great inheritance, it is the dark shadow that maketh the light to shine and so doth beautify human existence.” Then Everard took another swill at the whisky bottle and most foolishly mixed his drinks. And still the heathen man meandered on, and murmured into the ex-sailor’s ears: “O heed not the great pearl scheme that I wished you to venture upon; for I say unto these that I’ve other business on hand. And more, for the sake of thy friendship and contrite heart, and thy hallowed daughter” (he pointed with outstretched finger at Gabrielle), “I’ll give thee double the sum that any pearl scheme may have brought thee.”

So spoke Macka as he dropped into the Kanaka’s usual Biblical style, since it was from the Bible that most of them derived their first lessons in our tongue. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the heathen was considerably overcome by his own self-glorification. As for the white man, he said holy things, wailed out that he believed in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints and the sacramental drink of the best rum! Then the aged drunken idiot swallowed another tumblerful of whisky and fell forward on his knees.

Gabrielle began to think that she must be dreaming it all: that scene as she sat in the wicker chair watching. Then the noble Rajah sang weird songs. His voice was mellow and pathetically sweet, nicely tinged with tragedian-like sadness that lingered in Gabrielle’s ears. It was all strangely blasphemous. Old Everard simply fell forward on the floor, holding the rum bottle tightly in his hand. Gabrielle and Macka laid him down comfortably on his settee. There he lay, his head forward, mouth dribbling, one arm dangling to the floor, so drunk was he.

Gabrielle cried softly to herself as she placed his head in a more comfortable position and bunched the pillow up. Then she turned aside in a terrible despair and gazed in mute appeal into those masterful eyes. “Let me escape,” her lips mumbled, and her voice sounded far off.