It was no good; the man was relentless. He still moaned his beautiful words, whispering warm Malayan phrases into her ear. She did not understand his native tongue, but her instincts heard. The hour was late.
Gabrielle half heard the rustling of swift-moving feet outside the bungalow. A thick mist seemed to lie over the furniture. She felt that something had crept into the room, something terrible and not to be denied. A swarthy expression passed over her face as she leaned forward and listened, for once more she could hear the tribal drums beating somewhere across the centuries. It did not horrify her as before. Macka was there and his eyes had an all-powerful look: why be frightened in his masterful presence? But still she tried to struggle to her feet and rush out of the parlour door. For a moment she forgot and fancied she was standing on the derelict out in the straits. “Hillary! Hillary!” she wailed, as she thought of the stranded apprentice and fancied she still looked into his eyes. Slowly the fumes did their work, fumes of opium and the drink slipped into her tea. She still heard the Papuan’s voice; it was not a voice near her, it was a call coming across distant spaces. And still she struggled, as she called out the long-forgotten name of the missionary, one who had taught her in the mission-room from her earliest childhood. But no answer came, only the snores of her drunken father and the sounds of tribal drums a hundred years away. Then the lights burned low. Even the Rajah was overcome with heathenish emotion as she stood by the window and, lifting her face, looked out on the stars and in a strange way scraped her pale hands up and down the glass, as though she would tear aside the veil that divided her from freedom and the outer world.
And Hillary, who waited by the lagoon, walked up and down, up and down, full of hope, full of faith. And he was still walking silently on the silvery sands by the tossing seas, like a pale figure of romance, as dawn crept over the mountains and the stars went home. And still Gabrielle did not come.
CHAPTER VIII—HEATHEN LAND
In the morning old Everard awoke with a swollen head.
“Gabby! Gabrielle!” He shouted. Then, wondering why on earth the girl did not reply, he struggled to his feet, opened the door and went up the three steps that led into her bedroom. Her bed was neatly made—it had not been slept in. He was so puzzled about it all that he looked out of the small open window to see if she’d fallen out—notwithstanding that the window was six feet from the ground. Then he passed his hand across his brow and remembered Rajah Macka’s visit. “Rajah Koo Macka!” he shouted.
“God damn it! I don’t remember ’im going,” he mumbled, as he stumped his wooden leg about the room till the bungalow shook, and began whimpering like a fretful child, nearly falling down with sudden dizziness. Recovering himself, he got into a frightful rage and began to roar mighty oaths. “Gabby! Gabby! I’ll a-murder you! Where are you? Damn! My eyes! Ter ’ell with Macka! Ter ’ell with everything! Where are you?” Then he swung his wooden leg round, poked it right through the velvet-lined screen that Gabrielle had so neatly lined, and gave a terrible oath.
Then he cooled down. The reaction had begun to set in. His brain began to reason over it all. He rushed outside, stumped about and stumped back again. “Where is she? What’s it all mean? She’s not the kind of girl to go off by night with Macka,” were his reflections. All day long he called and called. Then he left the bungalow and roamed away to the native villages in search of her. He kicked up an awful commotion. The natives for miles thought a new kind of spirit with a wooden leg had escaped from shadow-land, for as they peeped from their hut doors they saw old Everard frantically waving his arms, shouting vehemently, swearing and calling out: “Gabby! Gabby!” He arrived back at his bungalow at dusk. “Gab!” he shouted. But she was still missing. The old ex-sailor realised all that Gabrielle had been to him in his desolate life.
He wept. He got terribly drunk and kept calling out: “Gabrielle! My Gab! Come back to your old father!” Then he mumbled in a self-soothing way: “She ain’t really gone. Macka’s so relygious. ’E wouldn’t take ’er from me. No! P’r’aps she’s gone to the b—— German’s wife at K——, or the mission-room at Tomba-kao.” Once more he got up and began to stump about. He seemed to go mad. He rushed again and again into the girl’s bedroom, caught his peg-leg in the fibre mats and fell down. “It’s ’er gown, ’er pretty gown,” he wailed. The tears rolled down his cheeks. He actually put his lips to the girl’s washed-out, torn garment and kissed it. Poor old man! He had never really found his true self. All the chances and virtues that might have been his had been shattered by gross surroundings.
After a while he cooled down again. “Who’d ’ave thought it! Who’d ’ave thought it!” he wailed. He returned to his parlour. The room looked dark and comfortless. A terrible suspicion was haunting his mind. But it was too late. His faith in Macka’s supreme holiness had begun to slacken slightly. Old remembrances and God-given instincts that had been his in the long-ago, pre-rum days came back to him. But he sought the weak man’s support, and poured fiery liquid between his trembling lips.