Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 7

Gabrielle was staring into his eyes as though she were asleep and yet had her eyes open. Her face was pallid; she had released her hand from his; she was still singing the song she had begun when her expression changed before the apprentice's astonished eyes.

"G.o.d! what is that weird, beautiful melody that you are singing, Gabrielle?" said he, as he came under the influence of her voice. All the European music that he knew was as nothing compared to the painful soul of melody that lingered in the strain that the girl extemporised.

As she still sang and swayed by him in the shadows he swiftly opened his violin-case, but very softly, as though he feared to frighten the song away from her lips. He drew the bow gently, caressingly, _con tenerezza_, across the responsive strings and played.

[Transcriber's Note: Lyrics]

Mis Ta-lo-fa, the chiefs are sleep-ing, The seas in moon-light sing, My eyes are dream-ing, the winds art creep-ing, Dead shad-ows round me spring.

Winds sigh-ing by me, my Ma-la-bar maid, Un-der the co-co palms.

Here thro' the night on my breast in the ... Etc.

A. S.-M.

It was very late when Hillary walked back with Gabrielle to see her home. Even the shouts from the festivals of the heathen villages had subsided, only coming to their ears in dismal wails and tom-tom beatings. Gabrielle felt no fear of the dark forest as they hurried along the silver track with the big-trunked trees clearly outlined in the brilliant moonlight.

"You mustn't get nervous and allow your brain to have such curious fancies, Gabrielle," said the young apprentice as the girl clung tightly to his arm at the dodgings of their own monstrous silhouettes.

At length they arrived outside old Everard's bungalow. All was quiet.

"Good-night, Gabrielle," said Hillary, as he leaned forward, half inclined to say: "Dearest, may I kiss you?" During the last two hours, however, he had been too much worried about something that he knew not of to have made such headway in his advances. Notwithstanding his wish, he only took her hand and gazed into her eyes, and made her promise to keep the next appointment without fail. And she promised. Then he said: "Don't look so scared, he's asleep. Surely you're not afraid of your father like this?" Then he added: "I'll wait outside here and have a snooze beneath the palms till I think that you are fast asleep!"

Gabrielle didn't laugh at such a suggestion, as she might have done two nights before! Indeed, she pressed his hand in almost hysterical thankfulness. Hillary wondered why she should be so frightened, why she should look so delighted after looking so scared. "G.o.d in heaven! the girl's madly in love with me!" was the delighted thought that flashed through his brain.

Gabrielle crept indoors. She heard her father's snoring as she softly opened her bedroom door and entered the room. She went straight to the small cas.e.m.e.nt that opened on the feathery palms and distant moon-lit seas. She pushed aside the big hibiscus blossoms and peered down. Her heart fluttered with some half-fierce delight as she saw that form reclining beneath the palms: it was the penniless, stranded sea apprentice watching outside his South Sea princess's castle.

With some great light warming her heart Gabrielle crept into bed and fell fast asleep, and so another night pa.s.sed. It was only in the morning that old Everard said: "Where the 'ell were yer last night? I wish ter blazes ye'd come back before it's dark. I'm d.a.m.ned if there wasn't a shadder a-knocking about 'ere last night!"

"No, Dad!" said Gabrielle.

"Yus!" said the old man with terrible vehemence. Then he added: "That old barman up at Parsons's is a blamed liar; he swore that the last case I bought was the best Jamaica rum. And yer don't see shadders after drinking ther best Jamaica, that yer don't!"

The old ex-sailor rambled on as he beat a violent tattoo on the floor of the bungalow with his wooden leg.

As for Hillary, he didn't get home till sunrise, so he slept till near midday.

"Papalagi! Maser Hill-e-ary!" roared Madame Tamboo, his landlady, as she banged his bedroom door with a ponderous bamboo stick.

"All ri'!" answered the sleepy young apprentice. Then he jumped up. He was out and about in two ticks, for he had slept "all-standing."

He couldn't keep calm that day. Mango Pango the maid-of-all-work, opened her bright eyes with delight as he paid her pretty compliments over her beauty. "Ah, what nice papalagi!" she said, as she looked sideways in the German mirror at her image. True enough, she had fine eyes and features that were quite different from those of the full-blooded Solomon natives. Like most Polynesian girls, she was extremely romantic and imaginative. She lifted her eyes towards the roof in childish ecstasy when Hillary laughingly admired her yellow stockings and told her that she reminded him of Cleopatra.

"Who Cleopatra?" Mango Pango said. Then Hillary told her a lot about the doings of Antony, who loved Cleopatra.

"She and nicer Antony still liver in Peratania England?"

"No, they're both dead," said Hillary mournfully.

"Oh dear! poor tings!" said Mango Pango sympathetically. Then she looked into the apprentice's eyes and said coquettishly: "Was Cleopatra a bery beautifuls woman, Mounsieur?"

"Most beautiful woman in the whole world, just like you," said Hillary.

So would they talk together; and the pretty native girl would laugh and smirk with the apprentice and wonder if she was as beautiful as he said she was, and if he really meant it when he told her that he longed to elope with her so that they could live on a desert isle together.

Hillary little dreamed how one day he and that little native girl _would_ travel across the seas together-in a stranger fas.h.i.+on than he jokingly antic.i.p.ated.

After the noon sun had dropped and the fire-flies had begun to dance in the mangroves the apprentice put his cap on and strolled out on to the slopes to kill time. And pretty Mango Pango peeled potatoes, sang a melancholy Samoan song, dreamed of the handsome white papalagis and nearly wept to think she was so brown.

CHAPTER VI-THE DERELICT

Hillary was impatient during the interminable hours that pa.s.sed ere he saw Gabrielle again. "Don't worry me, Mango," he said, as the pretty native girl stood on the verandah and blew kisses from her coral-red lips.

"He go mad soon; man who no get drunk am no gooder at all!" murmured Mango Pango as she ran off to obey the orders of her mistress.

It was the next night when Hillary was to reach the zenith of his dreams and happiness. Gabrielle had promised to meet him at sunset and go off in a canoe for a paddle round the coral reefs off Felisi beach. He was on fire with the idea. He could not sleep. His brain teemed with the thoughts of all he would say to Gabrielle when he declared his love. He determined to act his part well and be a worthy lover. She should not be disappointed in him. "I'll paddle her out to that derelict three-masted s.h.i.+p; that old wreck's the very place. I'll take her on board so that we shall be quite alone."

He thought of the light in Gabrielle's eyes. "Fancy me being the lucky one to receive her kisses! Wonderful! I know men get exaggerated ideas about the _one_ woman who appeals to them-but Gabrielle!-it's excusable in me." So Hillary reflected as he heard the ocean surfs beating against the barrier reefs. It pleased him to hear the winds sighing mournfully through the tracts of coco-palms beyond his bedroom window. His brain became confused as he thought of the ecstasy of holding her in his arms.

He sat down by the bamboo table and wrote off a poem. He was so much in love that even the poem was good. He proudly read the verses over and over again, till they seemed more wonderful than anything he had read in the works of the great poets. "I'm a poet," said he. Then he stared in the mirror at his haggard face, just to see what the world's greatest lyric poet looked like. Placing his scribbled lyric amongst his valued property in his sea-chest, he once more continued to think over all that he would do when the sublime moment arrived. He thought of how he would hold Gabrielle in his arms. He would be no ordinary lover. He would rain impa.s.sioned kisses on her sweet mouth as he held her in his strong embrace. She should not escape him: the very fright that might leap into her eyes through his impa.s.sioned vehemence would only serve to feed the fires of all that he felt for her. He looked in the corner on his violin-his old love. How insignificant it seemed when compared to his new love. Yet he felt a slight pang of remorse as he realised how its strings had always responded to his moods. Would Gabrielle's heart-strings respond as readily? Are the heart-strings of women as perfectly in tune with a lover's ideals as violins are to the touch of the _maestro_? He heard the faint booming of the far-off seas sounding through his reflections as they stole across the quiet night. Then he opened his sea-chest and took out Balzac's _Wild a.s.s's Skin_. He gazed on the faded flower that had lain in the pages. Though it was limp and withered, it was glorified because Gabrielle had worn it in her hair.

After that he fell asleep.

Next day the young apprentice became terribly impatient as the hours slowly pa.s.sed. He was to meet Gabrielle at sunset by the old lagoon. It wanted half-an-hour before the sun fell behind the peaks of Yuraka when he eventually started off. Mango Pango wondered why he was so full of song, so carefully dressed. He chucked her under the chin, even praised her eyes, as he said, "Good-bye, O beauteous golden-skinned Mango Pango," then hurried out under the palms.

"He fool; he go meet dark-skinned, frizzly Papuan girl, I know! O foolish mans!" murmured pretty Mango as she readjusted the hibiscus blossoms in her bunched tresses and looked quite spiteful.

As the young apprentice hurried on, his Byronic neckerchief fluttering from his throat like a flag, his eyes twinkled with delight. The glamour Gabrielle had created in his head threw a poetic gleam over the rugged island landscape and on the brooding wealth of nature around him. The blue lagoons, nestled by the lines of ivory-nut palms, looked like petrified patches of fallen tropic sky that had been mysteriously frozen into bright mirrors. Then they seemed to break up into musical ripples of laughter, for a covey of bronze-hued, pretty native girls had modestly dived down into their blue depths as he suddenly emerged into the open. He distinctly saw the bubbles where they had disappeared, and he knew that they were all standing on the sandy bottom of the lagoon hastily slipping on their loin-cloths before they boldly reappeared on the surface.

"Talofa! Papalagi!" said one as her s.h.i.+ny head bobbed on the surface, her eyes sparkling as she gazed sh.o.r.eward and blew the apprentice a kiss as he was pa.s.sing out of sight. Then he arrived on the lonely sh.o.r.e tracks. The Papuan birds of paradise looked like fragments of feathered rainbows haunting old sh.o.r.es as they floated over the sea. The orange-striped c.o.c.katoos, sitting high in the tall flamboyants and tamuni-trees, seemed to shout "c.o.c.katoo-e whoo! c.o.c.k-a-too whoo! Make haste! Make haste!" as he approached. They rose in a glittering shower from their roosts, gave dismal muttering as they fluttered over his head, till, hanging their coral-red feet loosely, they resettled on the boughs of the ta.s.selled breadfruits. It was a wildly desolate spot; not a sail specked the horizon as Hillary tramped along, singing to himself.

Except for the solitary dark man who lay fast asleep in his outrigger canoe, that was becalmed a few yards beyond the coral reefs, he wandered in a world alone. Only the bright-plumaged birds populated the wooded promontories, cheeks and slopes.

As the young apprentice walked slowly along, making time, he repeatedly glanced seaward to see how low the sun was setting. Arriving opposite the alligator-shaped promontory at Nu-poa, he sighted the scattered palavanas of the small hut citadel, Ko-Koa. It was a fis.h.i.+ng village; quite a score of canoes floated hard by on the lagoons. The romping heathen kiddies waved their paddles as he pa.s.sed by. Their alert eyes seldom missed the pa.s.sing of a papalagi. From out the thatched beehive-shaped homesteads, under the mangoes and mahogany-trees, rushed several old chiefs and their women-kind, who at once began loudly to lament the dearth of tobacco and gin and loose cash.

Attractive girls offered him their fabulous wealth of sh.e.l.ls and fish in exchange for a silk handkerchief. "You got nice lady fren, papalagi?-one who 'av' gotter old pair stocking she no wanter?" said one coy maid whose soul yearned to attract some dusky Lothario's waning glances. But it was all innocent enough in a way. "Women are the same the world over, blest if they aren't!" he murmured, as he gave a bashful maid a small piece of red ribbon in exchange for her beautifully carved bone hair-comb, which she handed him with inimitable grace, for brown maids are very ambitious for the love of a white man. Some of the youths and maids were half-caste and three-quarter caste, a mixture of Polynesian and Melanesian. Armlets and leglets fas.h.i.+oned from the pretty treduca sh.e.l.ls jingled as the girls romped round the apprentice.

Those girls of mixed blood were mostly of graceful deportment, many having fine, intellectual eyes. Neither did they possess the ungainly head-mop. Indeed, standing there under the distant palms of the lower sh.o.r.e, their wavy hair tossing to the sea-winds, they made a picturesque sight. And one might easily have imagined that they were tawny mermaids who had crept up the sands so as to stand under the green-leafed palms to comb their tresses and wail luring songs. Hillary stood still for a moment and gazed on that enchanting scene of primitive life, fascinated.

Out on the edge of the promontory sat yet another covey of semi-Papuan and Polynesian maids. It was not fancy; they were really singing mysterious songs as they sought to lure the sun-varnished native fishermen who paddled or sailed their buoyant catamarans over the wine-dark waters. Hillary bolted under the palms to escape the embarra.s.sing attentions of both the cadging chiefs and those Solomon Island Nausicaas and Circes. It was not long after that he arrived by the side of the wide lagoon that Gabrielle would cross in her canoe if she kept the appointment. She would come by water, whereas he had travelled three miles, the long way round by the coast. As he stood by the lagoon it seemed to stretch before him like a beautiful mirror that reflected tall fern and palm trees. Even the bright-winged lories were distinctly visible as their shadows flitted across the sky. "Will she come? Is it all a dream?" thought he as his heart thumped heavily.

It seemed incredible to Hillary that he should really be standing there by that lagoon in the cannibalistic Solomon Isles, waiting to see a beautiful white girl paddle towards him across the blue waters. He had not waited long before round the bend of the lagoon, far off, came a ripple, quite visible on the waters; in another moment the curved, ornamental prow of a canoe appeared as the moving paddle leapt into full view. The sun was setting and the blaze shot right across the Pacific and touched the mountains to the south-east, sending transcendent hues and shadows down on to the lagoon waters and again into the forests.

Women play all sorts of tricks with credulous men and their instinctive love of beauty. True enough, Gabrielle was an artist in the delicate business of self-attire. She knew exactly where to place the blue ribbon at her throat and the crushed crimson flower in the crown of her hair so that it might appeal to the senses of a mere man. The blue and white flowers stuck in her tresses looked unreal, for her hair shone as though it had been set on fire by the hues of the sunset. Her robe might have been cut out of some burnished cloud material such as the angels wear.

"Fancy! She's come!" murmured Hillary as the prow of the canoe softly swerved broadside on to the sandy sh.o.r.e. "Come on, dearest," he said.

Gabrielle looked tired and was breathing fast through her haste in paddling across the wide lagoon. She looked very pale. "What's the matter, dear?"

"Father's drunk."

"Is he?" said Hillary, as he metaphorically brought his fist down and swept such an unromantic nuisance as a father off the face of the earth.