Part 6

It seemed a small matter to Vere whether Nambuto came back or not. He could not realise that this girl by his side, who thought and spoke so rationally, was still one of her own people, bound to fear what they feared, and to respect the customs that had become stronger than law to them. That she, an affianced chief woman, should prefer a white man to a man of her own race, was as great a social crime as it would be were a countrywoman of ours to tolerate an Indian rajah.

Meanwhile the party had landed from the canoe, and the voices on the beach were silent. Raluve thought she had heard her name called in the direction of Vere’s house; but they waited until the cocks had crowed in the village, and a few sleepy birds had begun twittering in the trees on the island. It was the safest hour for their return: the natives, roused in the night, would sleep late that morning. Still Raluve feared to take a direct course to the shore, and, calling to Vere to follow her, waded through the shallow water and struck out, steering a diagonal course towards the shore opposite Vere’s house. The water was brilliantly phosphorescent, and her body seemed to be clothed in polished silver as she swam. Every stroke of her arms and feet scattered a shower of diamonds that flashed a moment and vanished in the black water; and from before her hundreds of fish, taking her for an enemy, shot away, leaving a dull train of fire behind them like shooting-stars in a dark sky. It was a long swim, for it was high tide; but as they waded ashore, tired and out of breath, the beach seemed deserted. There was only the dark shelter of the trees to be gained, and they were safe. They stopped a moment on the sand to put on the clothes they had tied round their heads, and then hurried up towards the trees. But before they reached them there was a shout from the bush just in front of them, answered by two voices further off in different directions.

“They have seen us,” said Raluve, hurriedly. “Run away, Kalokalo. I will wait for them here.”

But Vere had no idea of running away, and stood his ground by her side. There was the sound of a man crashing through the bushes, and a native ran into the open and stood before them. It was Nambuto.

There was silence for some moments. Raluve stood facing him with heaving breast, while Vere clenched his fists, and drew nearer to her. The chief broke the silence with the most insulting word in his language. Vere did not understand the word, but the man’s tone and Raluve’s passionate indignation were enough for him.

“You scoundrel!” he cried in English from between his set teeth; “how dare you speak to her like that?”

Nambuto, expecting a blow, put up both hands to defend his face, and Vere, mistaking the gesture in the dim light, thought he was about to strike him. In a moment Nambuto was reeling backwards, stunned with a heavy blow between the eyes, and as he fell he shouted a few words at the top of his voice.

“Run, Raluve, and hide yourself,” cried Vere.

“Come with me,” she answered; “he has called his men, and they will kill you.”

She tried to drag him into the trees, for they could hear voices and the crashing of the undergrowth, as Nambuto’s men ran in the direction of their chief’s voice.

“Run and hide yourself,” cried Vere again, excitedly pushing her into the shadow of the trees. He had just time to reach the trunk of a great _dilo_-tree, and put his back against it, when five men ran out on to the beach where Nambuto sat rubbing his eyes as if stupefied.

“Seize the white man!--he has struck me,” he cried.

They came upon Vere cautiously, for he was a formidable object for unarmed natives to tackle. “Quick, a stick,” cried one, and ran to pick up a rough worm-eaten piece of drift-wood. He dodged the first blow and knocked down one of them, who tried to run in under his guard, but the second blow struck his shoulder, and he fell. Before he could rise they were upon him, trampling and stamping the breath out of his body. But help was near. Raluve had run to the nearest house, and it was that of Vere’s landlord and particular friend. But she outstripped him, and was among Vere’s assailants, raging like a tigress, long before he came up. It is no easy matter to quiet savages when their blood is once up; but her prestige among them was still great, and one after another they slunk off before her indignant flow of invective. She was almost terrible in her anger, as a woman can only be when she is defending some one she loves.

I once saw a woman, meek, cowed, and dispirited with the years of slavery called marriage among these people, divorced from her husband, who beat her. She did not seem to have a soul above her yam-patch, nor could she be stirred to a show of interest by the announcement of her freedom. Her child, an ill-favoured brat, eruptive with sores, sat by her side, and when she heard that it was to be taken from her, even that woman became terrible in her indignation.

Raluve’s anger all changed to the most perfect tenderness as she helped her companion to lift Vere, all bruised and stunned, and carry him to his own house. Once there she would not leave him, but sat fanning him far into the day, without thinking of hunger or thirst, until a friendly storekeeper, who had heard of the disturbance, came to see him. No bones were broken. There were some bad bruises, and an unsightly black eye. But as any movement gave him intense pain, he wisely lay still, and slept away the greater part of the day, while Raluve sat fanning him. Late in the afternoon a burly form filled the doorway. Mr Commissioner Austin was, sorely against his will, come to do his duty. He began by suggesting that Raluve should withdraw, but she would not go farther than the end of the house. Was Vere much hurt? No. Well, he was glad to hear it. He was awfully sorry about the whole business. These wretched connections always ended alike, because they brought Europeans down to the level of natives. But it would be a lesson to Vere, who would take what he had to say in good part. But Vere did not take it in good part at all, and told him so. He had some news, however. The vessel in which Vere was to leave for headquarters was to sail in a day or two, and Nambuto had been ordered to go before the end of the week.

Left to himself, Vere had ample time to consider his position. This girl loved him,--there was no doubt in his mind about that. What did he feel for her in return--gratitude, the vanity kindled by unsought love, or something stronger than either? And if he could drop back into the life she lived, the life man was intended to live, free from all the vulgar struggle and squalor of civilisation, in some island to the eastward, far from his own kind, where the smell of the reef and the warm wind would possess his senses, he would surely ask for nothing more. But there was a reverse to the picture. If it were to mean the life that some white men, who had abjured civilisation, lived, despised alike by their fellows and the people they consorted with, he could see nothing but misery before them both. He tried to remember a single case where the marriage of a white man to a native woman had turned out happily. There was Bonson, an educated man like himself. One could read the man’s history in his face. All self-respect was crushed out of him now, but how he must have suffered for his mistake when it was too late! No; a curse seemed to follow the union of opposite races: they must put this folly out of their hearts, and each follow the destiny to which they were born. But as he turned to speak to Raluve he met her eyes fixed upon his face. She had crept up to his bed as he lay with his face to the wall.

“What is in your mind, Kalokalo, my star? I cannot bear your face to be hidden from me, for then evil thoughts enter your mind, and your face is changed towards me. Are you in pain?” she asked, laying her hand gently on his forehead.

“Raluve,” he said, taking her hand, “I was wondering how I shall fare without you.”

“But you are not going to leave me?” she said, catching her breath. “If you go, I must go with you to take care of you.”

“We do not plan our lives,” he answered; “it is ordered that I go from here in three days.”

Her hand dropped from his, and she sat quite still. He could hear her breathing, but cowardice kept him from looking at her. The light waned and the house became dark, but still she made no sign. At last he could bear the silence no longer.

“Speak, Raluve,” he said; “is it not better for us both that I should go?”

“For you it is better,” she answered in a low voice, “and therefore it must be. But for me the darkness has fallen, and is eating me up.”

What could he say more? The pain had to be borne, and he would only make it worse by speaking. Then as he made no reply, she got up and left the house without another word.

Vere’s bruises did not trouble him long. In two days he was busied about his packing, and on the morning the steamer was expected he was ready for the voyage. He had not seen Raluve since he had told her of his determination, and he had felt his courage too weak to risk another interview like the last. But he could not leave her without saying good-bye, and he had just made up his mind to find her when she herself came in. She had brought a beautiful mat as a parting gift. Disregarding all native ceremonial, she laid it down at his feet, saying, “This is to be your sleeping-mat, and it will be my shadow with you, so that you may not forget me.” When he had thanked her, she put out her hand abruptly, saying, “You are going: let us take leave of one another here.”

Vere had only to take the hand and let her go, but he had pictured to himself quite another sort of leave-taking, and his vanity was wounded.

“Are we to part as if we were at enmity, Raluve? Every one shakes hands, therefore we must kiss each other: besides, I want to know what you will do when I am gone.”

The girl looked at him angrily. “It is nothing to you where I go when you are gone. You are a white man, and I am a black woman. I amused you, my chief, while you were here, and you will find another to amuse you in the place to which you go.”

“Raluve, are you angry with me?”

“No. You are a white man, and white men always treat my people so.”

“But think----”

“Give me no more reasons. It is enough that I myself would not make you despised of your own people. It is best that you should go.”

“But what will you do?”

“I also will go away. The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall bear me farther still,” and she laughed a hard little laugh. Then she got up to go, and Vere dared not detain her. She did not respond to his parting kiss, but left the house with averted face. What could she have meant by her last words? He remembered with sickening dread that he had heard of natives killing themselves for the most trivial reasons. Men and women had climbed cocoa-nut-trees and flung themselves down because their townsfolk ridiculed them, and Raluve, refined as she was, had a native’s feelings underneath the surface. If she meant this, the rest of his life would not be pleasant to him. And as he sat pondering a sound caught his ear, and he ran to the door. There sat Raluve trying in vain to stifle her passionate sobs. He tried to raise her, and draw her back into the house, but she resisted, crying, “O Kalokalo, I cannot leave you in anger, therefore kiss me, and let me go; my love for you is hurting me.”

She returned his kiss this time, and in a moment she had passed behind the palm-stems.

Two hours later Vere was shaking hands with his native friends on the beach, hardly daring to look along the line of faces for fear that Raluve might be among them. But she was not. He strained his eyes from the steamer as she moved slowly out to distinguish the tall lithe figure he knew so well. On the hill above the village was a great boulder of black limestone, hurled from the topmost pinnacle of the island in some old earthquake. As they steamed away he saw a movement on the top of the rock. With his glasses he made out the figure of a woman dressed in white, as Raluve had been that morning. She took off her upper garment, waved it once above her head, and then flung it far out towards the steamer. The wind caught and bore it sideways, but before it had fluttered down among the tops of the palms the figure was gone. It was Raluve’s farewell.

Vere had plenty of leisure during the two days’ voyage to think over the past. Till now he had been buoyed up by the sense of doing that which was difficult and disagreeable, and therefore probably right,--for his early training had imbued him with the idea that the pleasant ways of life lead into the “broad road”; but now he began to feel unaccountably ashamed of himself. If he had been to blame for accepting the girl’s love, still, he thought complacently, the wrench had been as great for him as for her. But argue as he would, he felt that he was running away from a situation he did not dare to face,--that he was betraying and deserting a woman. What was it that she had said? “The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall bear me farther still.” Why, if she had that sort of temptation in her present state of nervous excitement, she would yield, of course. What might she not be doing at this very moment while the engines trampled on and put mile after mile between them? And he might save her if he were there. Pulses began to beat in his brain, and he got up and raced along the empty deck. Only a blue wavy line on the eastern horizon remained of the island. As he looked at it, trying to picture the village that lay beneath it, the memories of the last three weeks rushed over him, with Raluve as the centre of each picture,--her tenderness, her soft words, even the proud little pose of the head that he had so often teased her about. It was a very perfect life while it lasted. Then he began to remember words that he had said but forgotten till now,--words that she must have taken as promises. Nay, but they were promises, and he, an English gentleman, bound by promises, was coolly breaking them. With every throb of the propeller this feeling became stronger, until he had persuaded himself that he was already bound by the past, and was no longer master of his own actions. There was a feeling of rest in having come to a determination, and his mind recoiled from the idea of again reviewing the arguments that had led to it step by step.

The first action on landing was to write the best and most foolish letter he had ever written, resigning his appointment, without offering any explanation. Then he made terms with the skipper of a cutter that sailed the same afternoon to carry him back. He went on board at once, not daring to meet any one he knew lest awkward questions might be asked.

They had a head-wind all the way back, and Vere became ill with anxiety and excitement during the four days’ voyage. At last the palm-groves he had left a week ago were in sight, and he was straining his eyes in trying to recognise Raluve’s figure among the crowd on the beach. She was not there. He landed with a sense of sickening fear. Two or three natives shook hands with him, but he dared not ask them the question he longed to have answered. A couple of storekeepers’ assistants were the only white men on the beach. They stared at him in open astonishment, and then explained his return in their own way with many grins and nudges of the elbow. He hurried to his landlord’s house, knowing that he would tell him the unvarnished truth without gloating over the scandal. The daughter of the house was alone in the house mending a net. Without waiting to account for his sudden appearance, he said, “Where is Raluve?” The girl knew the story, and hesitated. “Tell me,” he cried, angrily, “Am I a sick man that you fear to say the truth? Where is she?”

“She has gone,” answered the girl.

“Gone whither?”

“With Nambuto,” she said, falteringly.

“Say on.”

The story was short. On the day he had left there had been a great meeting, and Raluve had been admonished before all the chiefs. Nambuto had spoken kindly to her, and day after day they had waited till she should make up her mind. Then gradually the old feeling of her race must have gained upon her, and the memory of the dream that had passed waxed fainter. Her people would take her back, and her lover had deserted her, and as for death by her own hand--it was most terrible.

“But why do you say she has gone with Nambuto?” asked Vere, fiercely. “They are not married? Speak plainly all that you know.”

“They are not yet married, but this I know, that they sailed in Nambuto’s canoe this morning, and before they sailed Raluve’s _tombe_[2] was cut off.”

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The _tombe_ is a long lock of hair worn by Fijian girls until they marry, as a sign of maidenhood, the rest of the hair being short.

THE RAIN-MAKERS.

In Ambrym there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom among the hills. For two whole months there had been peace: the clubs lay idle in the eaves; the digging-stick replaced the spear; bold warriors ingloriously tilled the soil; and yet there was scarcity. Peace, and yet famine! December had come, but the yam-vines, already twining on the sticks, had sickened and withered; the taro swamp was hard and fissured, like old Turo’s face, and a stalk or two, blackened as by fire, was all that was left of the taro; the plantain-leaves were yellow and wrinkled; and still the earth was as iron and the heaven was as brass. Not even Turo remembered such a season.

It was useless to wait longer for rain: a few weeks longer and there would be no one left to wait. Something must be done, and done at once. But what? The ancient arts were forgotten. What is the use of being able to creep unheard upon an unsuspecting foe, if one has forgotten how to control the unseen powers? What profits it that one can strike one’s foe with the club, if one no longer knows how to slay him with magic leaves as the hillmen do? For there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom dwells only among the hills.

But to go to the hills for wisdom can only be resorted to under the direst necessity. It is true that brains have often been brought from the hills, but that was in a material form, for purposes of decoration, as the grinning row of skulls under the eaves, that form Turo’s patent of nobility, bear witness; and as the end one, added only eight weeks ago, has not yet been paid for in the usual way, there is a natural delicacy in applying for the loan of the wisdom seated in the crania of the survivors. If only the hillmen’s heads, when sundered from their wretched carcases, were not useless for purposes of consultation, the difficulty would be solved.

But any death is better than starvation. An ambassador must be sent. If he does not come back, he will be no worse off than if he starved at home, save that his body will play an important _rôle_ at a mountain feast, and his head will grin derisively at the mountain children playing before the chief’s house. But even so the hillmen will be one head to the bad, and what is the use of a big score if there be no one left to glory in it? In a week the warriors will be so famine-weakened that the hillmen could hold them by the hair while the boys beat them to death, as Turo used to do when he was younger. Yes, some one must go, and who better than Erirala the orator?

The matter is put before Erirala at the evening conclave. Erirala approves of the principle, but thinks that Malata would make a better envoy, seeing that his brother married a hillman’s third cousin. Malata is diffident about his powers of persuasion, and the point is submitted to old Turo as he squats in his doorway, still trying with palsied hands to carve the club he began two years ago.

“Let Erirala go,” he pipes, and there is nothing more to be said.

That night the limestone ring, the handiwork of the gods, is unburied from its hiding-place. It is beyond all price but that of rain. Ten barbed spears--not the shin-bone ones, because to present _them_ to the relations of the shin-bones would be indelicate, but good spears, inlaid with mother-of-pearl--and eight strings of shell money, are the price with which the precious rain is to be bought. Erirala leaves at daybreak, after being wept over by his three wives and the sister-in-law who digs his plantation. There is nothing to do but to wait till he either comes back or--till bad news comes. The pitiless sun rides through the burning sky, and sinks at last behind the western hills, leaving the air hazy and tremulous. The tide goes out, and the mud hardens and cracks behind it as it goes. The very crickets are silent--dead, probably, of thirst--and the people still sit, spear in hand, beneath the palm-trees waiting. It grows dark, and still he fails to come. Surely the worst has happened.

A cry at last from the forest. A hundred voices answer, a hundred wasted bodies spring up to welcome Erirala returned from the dead. The silent village has found its voice at last, and every inhabitant, down to the dingo dogs, has something to say, and says it at the top of his voice. Brands are snatched from the fire, and then Erirala is seen standing on the bush-path imploring silence in dumb show. At last he gets it, and tells his news. The wise have taken pity and come to the foolish; but unless the foolish keep silence, the wise will be frightened and take to their heels, if they have not already done so. The wise know that better men than they have been enticed by fair words and gifts, and fallen into an ambush from which not even their gods could save them, and never came back to tell their friends how it happened.

There is silence, and Erirala retires into the bush and calls. No answer. He shouts again with long-drawn mountain vowels. From far up the hillside comes a faint answer. The wise have run fast and far, and must be reassured, and Erirala bawls comforting words into the darkness. In twenty minutes the two wary old birds emerge into the village square, and stand blinking in the circle of flickering light cast by the fire. The children crowd wonderingly round them, and their elders scan them from the dense shadow of the huts. Will the wise stay the night? No; the wise have a particular engagement at home before morning. Won’t they at least wait till a meal can be cooked? No; the wise have come on business, and that done, they must needs return. Well, then, since they won’t, let Erirala go with them to fetch rain.

The chief magician leads the way to the river, now nearly dry. He is elderly and wizened, with no clothes but a shell and a stick thrust through the cartilage of his nose. His familiar is a trifle younger, attired in the same cool garb, but dignified with an ear-lobe pierced and distended enough to carry an empty _caviare_ tin whole. The left lobe, following a natural law, had broken under the strain, and after dangling for months on the shoulder, has lately been excoriated and tastefully spliced with grass bandages. The familiar carries a roll of bark-cloth under his arm. Equipped with this only and wisdom, the magicians would force the heavens to give rain. How wonderful is human intellect, and how high above the beasts is man!