Part 9

“Then I came out to Taku, and I met Lulukuila. She was beautiful beyond anything I had ever dreamed. She made other women look clumsy beside her. She stayed overnight at my uncle’s, and next day an escort came from the old chief, her father—six savages in pandanus kilts and necklaces. Those creatures came to take the very flower of womanhood back to uncivilized surroundings. I can’t tell you how horrible it seemed to me. And so I married her.”

Cartwright jumped up, and began walking up and down. After a while he switched off on another tack.

“Her voice was as perfect as her face,” he said, “and her sense of pitch was absolute. Those first days we used to go out to the point where the pavilion stands, and sit looking out over the reefs, and I thought I’d found happiness at last. I liked to hear her answer a certain note that the sea sounds in the reefs yonder when the tide is right. She would take up the note an octave higher, and it was thrilling, the perfection of her pitch. I sent home for the piano, imagining that it would be a bond between us. I thought I’d teach her the songs Charlotte and I used to sing together.

“But she hated the piano,” Cartwright brought out in a muffled voice. “I suppose I was rather a fool over it at first. I was so hungry for familiar music. Lulukuila couldn’t bear the music I’d grown up with. It brought out alien traits in her, gusts of passion, fits of moodiness. Octaves, those she’d listen to. Once when I filled in an octave she jumped up and caught my hands. I remember yet how she looked.

“‘You are drawn by the many voices,’ she said. ‘There should, be only one for you.’

“She went off to the pavilion then, and when I went to find her she was singing, following that sound the surf made on the reefs. The perfection of her pitch made me shiver. I began to hate it then. I saw that Lulukuila was going to destroy my pleasure in the music I had loved. She was robbing me—”

I don’t believe Cartwright was talking to any one in particular by this time. His voice dropped, and I missed a lot till I heard him mention his cousin. He stopped then, and looked at me for the first time.

“My uncle threw me over when I married Lulukuila,” he said, “but when my cousin Charlotte came out from England she made her father come over with her. She brought Davidson too—good sort, Davidson.

“I must have been homesick, for the sight of them seemed to wake me from a nightmare. I remember we were very jolly at dinner. Afterward Charlotte and I sang. I was thinking how good it was to hear the music of home again, when I caught sight of Lulukuila’s face in a shaft of light that reached out to where the rest were sitting. Her face was white, and her teeth were biting her lip.

“Charlotte stopped playing just then, and asked me why I had broken into the octave. The chord, she said, was so much prettier. I couldn’t tell her that it was Lulukuila’s interval haunting me. I hadn’t even known I was singing an octave,” Cartwright added with a sudden laugh. Then he went on.

“We didn’t sing any more, but went out to join the others. Lulukuila wasn’t there. I was just asking Davidson where she had gone, when I heard a splash down by the lagoon. All in a flash I remembered how her face had looked in the lamplight, and I started off down the path. . . . I got there too late.”

After a while he began muttering in a disconnected sort of way. “She had her way. I’ve never touched the piano since. Surely I have the right now, though, now Charlotte’s coming back—a little happiness.”

“That’s the thing to think of now, sir,” I says, wondering if I should call his man or leave him to talk himself out. “You weren’t to blame for what happened. Think of your cousin now.”

“My cousin, yes,” Cartwright murmured. He pulled himself up with a sharp breath.

“I’m afraid I’ve been talking an uncommon lot,” he said in his ordinary tone. “It’s late. You must be wanting to turn in.”

We commented on the sultriness of the night as we parted. The stars were hidden in a sort of murk, and the air had grown so still that the beetles bumping against the banana leaves overhead startled one like the crack of artillery.

Inside I found Simmons, Cartwright’s servant, tapping the barometer.

“It’s fallen uncommonly fast,” Simmons said to me. “Just as it did before the hurricane five years ago.

“The hurricane!” I said. “Did it do much damage?”

“Not to speak of,” Simmons said. “Some of the native huts were swept away when the water backed up into the lagoon, but the people had time to get up here. There’s no saying what might have happened if the water had come up two feet higher.”

“I hope there isn’t going to be a hurricane this time,” I said, thinking of Molly.

“I hope so, I’m sure,” says Simmons, in an undertaker’s voice.

It took more than a falling barometer to put me off sleep those days, and I was off sounder than usual that night. I waked at last in a bedlam of sound, wailing of wind, cracking of branches, and the thunder of surf from the barrier reef.

“It’s the hurricane that owl Simmons was wishing on us,” I thought. I struck a match to find my clothes, but a gust of wind puffed it out. I was just trying for the third time, when Simmons came in, carrying one of the two ship’s lanterns Cartwright kept by the outer door.

“Do you know where Mr. Cartwright is?” Simmons says.

“I? No. Isn’t he in bed?”

Simmons shook his head. “I’m afraid he’s gone down to the pavilion. He began to worry about the piano. I see the other lantern’s gone. I must go after him.”

“I’ll come with you, then,” I said. “Just hold the light while I find my clothes.”

Ordinarily that Yorkshire face of Simmons had no more expression than a granite slab, but he looked human enough now. If he cared for any earthly creature it was Cartwright. I’d not been in the house three days without finding that out.

I had a start as we passed through the big room, for the floor was covered with figures stretched out like corpses on the mats. “From the huts on the beach,” Simmons explained. “That’s what makes me think it’s going to be a bad storm.”

He braced himself to hold the door open for me, and added in a sudden shout as the roar of the storm came about us: “A little harder than last time, and the pavilion would go.”

The path to the pavilion ran just above the coral shingle along the foot of the ridge. Ordinarily it was ten feet above high tide, but as we struggled on, hugging the bank to keep from being blown flat by the wind, I could catch a glimpse of creaming, sullen-looking water not two yards away. Slipping up quietly it was, and the soundlessness of its rising was more uncanny than all the bustle and roar on the reefs outside.

We had a struggle to get on, and Simmons hung on to me to keep me from being blown into the lagoon. I began to wish I hadn’t come, and I thought of the peaceful mission house in Taku and of Molly.

“Mr. Cartwright’s there,” Simmons says suddenly in my ear. “I see his light. Hang tight. The wind’s worse out here.”

And it was. An awful clap came, driving us to our knees. I saw a huge bulk crash down between us and the pavilion. The light disappeared.

“The breadfruit tree,” said Simmons, in a hoarse voice. He clawed his way over the fallen branches and I managed to follow, shivering to think of what a misstep would do for me. At last we made out Cartwright struggling in the wreckage brought down by the fallen tree.

“You, Simmons?” he cried. “Quick! Give a hand with this piano. We must get it to higher ground.”

His voice sounded sane enough, but it was the speech of a crazy man. The only path up the ridge was a mere goat trail, fully exposed to the wind. And Cartwright was suggesting our carrying the piano up that! Simmons jerked his lantern up to Cartwright’s face. There was wildness with a vengeance. But my word! How beautiful he looked with his fair, tossed hair, and his eyes purple black with excitement.

“It’s you we’ve come for, sir,” Simmons says to him. “The water’s backing up fast. There’s no time to lose.”

“We must save the piano first,” Cartwright says insistently. A lull had fallen, and his voice sounded very clear. Simmons made a desperate gesture.

“It’s gathering for worse,” he muttered. I took a hand.

“If that wind comes up again we’ll have to scramble to save our skins,” I shouted. “It isn’t humanly possible for us to move the piano. Come, sir, while there’s time!”

“And desert it again?” he asks with a strange little smile. “You’re asking too much of me, old chap. What about Charlotte?”

“She won’t care a hang about the piano!” I could have stamped my foot at him. “It’s you she’ll be worrying about. Don’t be an ass.” That shows how beyond myself I was, that I could speak to him that way. A long, ominous roll shook the silence.

“It’s the surf coming over the reefs,” Simmons says in a hushed voice.

“By Jove, you’re right!” Cartwright exclaims, throwing back his head. His voice was boyish and energetic. “Come on, we must make a dash for it.” And jerking up the lantern he fairly herded us through the tangle to the cliff.

There the gale broke loose on us again. We lay flat on our faces, clinging for dear life to the stems of the stout little pandanus palms. It was like a beast, that wind. It sucked the breath from our mouths, it pounded us and shrieked at us and mocked us till we were half dead from the sheer, cruel force of it. We could scarcely think. Once I had a vision of those huddled figures on the mats, and wondered if the house was still standing, and once I thought of Molly, and hoped she was saying a prayer for me. Then all thought was wiped out as, with a shaking of the very cliff, the surf came racing into the lagoon, sending the spray up fifty feet, and drenching us where we lay.

“The piano!” Cartwright shouted, struggling to get up. Simmons hauled him down, crying to him that it was no use to think of the piano. Cartwright staved quiet a moment till another of those uncanny silences fell.

“Now we can go down,” Cartwright said pleadingly. “I can’t lose my chance of happiness again. The piano—”

The words died on his lips. Through the thunder of the surf came a single long-drawn note, clear and unearthly sweet.

“B flat,” I said, scarcely knowing that I spoke. Cartwright gave a wild laugh.

“You hear it? The voice from the reefs. Why doesn’t Lulukuila answer?”

Well, I can only tell you what happened next, and you may believe it or not. From below us there came another note, making a perfect octave. Never before or since have I heard anything so exquisite or so horrible. Then there was a hideous discord—and silence.

“Lulukuila!” Cartwright cried. “She is taking it from me—my only chance of happiness—”

And before we could stop him he was gone.

We tried to follow him, but the wind caught us again at the edge of the ridge. I’d have been over and lost if it hadn’t been for Simmons. I think I must have fainted from the shock of it. There’s a blank about there, though the rest of the night seemed centuries long.

The wind stopped at sunrise, and we made our way home along the ridge, looking down on a beach swept clean of every human mark, pavilion, grove, native huts and all. The house was still standing, but in a wreck of fallen branches and torn lianas. Scared servants and ashen-faced women and children came out to meet us, and began asking for their master. Simmons, granite faced as ever, did not answer them, but pushed on down to the beach.

Cartwright had come home ahead of us. He was lying on the shore, unscarred except for a faint streak of blue across one temple. He looked beautiful as some sleeping creature of the sea. The wreck of the piano was just above him. Simmons’ composure gave way when he saw that.

“You’ve broken the thing he loved, and you’ve killed him, too. I hope you’re satisfied at last!” he snarled, shaking his fist at the lagoon. I wondered if he was talking to Lulukuila. It was a terrifying outburst—from a man like Simmons.

Next morning they came over from Taku to look for us. The sea was smiling as ever, and the little launch came dancing over the rose and amethyst water as if there never had been a storm to ruffle it. I caught sight of Molly first, then I noticed another woman, sitting between her and Davidson. As she leaned forward to search the shore I was startled with the likeness of her face to Cartwright’s. Yet there was a difference. Her beauty was gracious and human, and—well, comfortable is the only word I can think of for it.

As they came near the beach she saw just Simmons and me and the staring natives. She cried out sharply and swayed a little. I saw Davidson put his arm out as if he would shield her from a blow. Faithful fellow, Davidson, and he got his reward at last.

It was Cartwright’s Charlotte, and Cartwright was not there to meet her. Lulukuila had seen to that.

_Margaret Adelaide Wilson_.

THE ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS

It was the Feast of the Assumption, and the archbishop, as he left his palace and stepped into the summer sunlight, breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for the brilliance that glowed about him. For, during the mass which was about to be celebrated in the great cathedral, the passion of his life, one of the most impressive moments occurred when the sun shot its rays with pure and dazzling radiance for the first time into the middle of the apse. With exact calculation the architect had arranged that this took place on the fête day of St. Remi, the patron saint of Rheims, and when the day was overcast or rain obscured the sun it seemed to the archbishop that the Almighty was expressing His displeasure of some negligence or wrongful act on the part of the guardian of this, to him, most precious and wonderful trust in the world.

But today the sun’s effulgence surpassed in warmth and splendor that of any August fifteenth in the archbishop’s memory, and brought into his heart an intense calm and peace which even the knowledge that German guns were despoiling Belgium, not many leagues away, could not entirely dispel. Nevertheless, the remembrance cast a shadow over the spirituality of his broad brow, and his lips moved in silent supplication for the suffering inhabitants, and that the onward march of the invaders would be stayed before their presence desecrated the sacred soil of France.

In rapt contemplation he stood, kindliness and benevolence radiating from his mild face, crowned with its silver halo of hair. His large, gentle eyes wandered over the massive pile raising its lofty steeples in eloquent testimony to the omnipotence of God; its slender spires, pointed portals, and lancet windows indicating the heights to which the thoughts and lives of men must reach before perfection can be attained.

When the archbishop emerged from the sacristy at the end of the long procession of choir, acolytes and coped priests, and entered the cathedral, the voice of the mighty organ was rolling through the edifice in rushing waves of melody, which ebbed and flowed in and out among the great columns in a wealth of harmonics, whose exquisite beauty, as they broke around him, caused a band to tighten about the old man’s throat.

The crossing was filled with a throng of devout worshippers whose faces wore a look of expectancy, for France, la belle France, was threatened by a danger greater than even the oldest among them could recall. War had always been a horror, but today it transcended, in the vague reports that reached them from stricken Belgium, the worst the most imaginative of them could conceive, and the thought haunted them, in spite of their faith that the Blessed Virgin would not permit such a calamity to befall France, that notwithstanding their entreaties, the hand of the Hun might descend on her as it had on her equally innocent and unprovoking neighbor.

The procession wound slowly to its place in the choir, and the organ broke into the great, swelling chords of Gounod’s mass, Mors et Vita. The music, inspired by the sublime grandeur of the sanctuary where it had partly been composed, proclaimed an unshakable faith in the majesty and power of the Almighty, whose protecting arm stands between His children and harm. Gradually the tense look of alarm on the faces of the congregation changed to the serenity of souls in the presence of God.

The organ’s voice subsided to a breath, wafted in and out among the incense-filled recesses of the cathedral like the rustling of angels’ wings, and the deep-toned peal of the great cathedral bell rang through the tense stillness. All at once a shaft of pure radiance shot into the center of the apse from the Angel’s Spire. Straight as a dart it descended until it found the jeweled arms of the cross. Here it rested, throwing out myriad rays of effulgence, as if through them the Spirit of the Founder of their faith was renewing His promises of salvation to His flock.

A breathless hush rested on the congregation until, in an ecstasy of triumph, the organ burst once more into a pæan of praise. The procession receded into the remote spaces of the cathedral, and the worshippers passed out into the sunlit square. As they walked by the statue of Joan of Arc, who sits on her charger before the cathedral, many paused and spoke in low, reverent tones of the sacrifice she had made for France, and wondered if the same spirit of loyalty would spring into life if the land of their adoration stood in need of defense.

Through the great western rose window of the cathedral the sun was casting quivering masses of rubies, topazes, emeralds, sapphires and amethysts to the floor below, where they lay in gorgeous profusion, melting one into the other in extravagant richness of beauty.

An old man stood in contemplation of the splendor of that mighty work of the ages which for a century and a half had been the especial care of his forefathers, and to which end, with reverent preparation, each succeeding generation of his family had been trained. To the old _vitrier_ the windows in the sacred structure were not only a holy trust, but a prized heritage, each separate particle to be watched and studied, as a mother guards its offspring from possible injury, and passed on to posterity in as perfect a condition as it was received.

So deep was his absorption in the magnificence of the spectacle before him that he did not notice the approaching step of the archbishop. The ecclesiastic laid his hand on Monneuze’s shoulder.

“Exquisite, is it not, _mon vieux_?” he asked in his resonant voice. “I have never seen the colors more superb than they are this afternoon.”

The old glass-maker started, and turned toward him. The expression of ecstatic wonder still lingered on his lined face, from which, behind his heavy glasses, peered eyes round and childlike in their unquestioning trust.

“The beauty of it passes belief, Monseigneur,” he murmured fervently. “Oh, that I knew the art of reproducing those marvelous colors! It is the sorrow of my life that, try as I may, I can never duplicate the depth, the richness—” he shook his head dejectedly, and fixed his eyes once more on the flaming window.

“Ah, Jean,” answered the archbishop a little sadly. “So it is with all of us; no matter how hard we strive, we never reach the goal to which we are pressing. Our attainments are ever a disappointment to us. We can only labor on, and live in the hope that on the Last Day, when we see our endeavors through the eyes of the Blessed Redeemer, we may find that His estimate of them, graded on the knowledge of our limitations, will be higher than ours. It may be that our efforts and the sincerity of our motives will be judged instead of the results we were able to achieve. We must remember that no man can do bigger things than his capacity allows.”

The _vitrier_ did not reply. His eyes wavered from the magnificence above him to the spiritualized countenance at his side. It surprised him that the archbishop, renowned alike for his piety and good works, should speak so slightingly of his life.

The ecclesiastic had turned and was gazing at the representation of the Almighty on the great rose window of the south transept. Something of the sublimity of the conception and execution of the masterpiece was reflected on his face, over which still hovered an expression of humility. His eyes left the window and swept up the vast stretches of the cathedral, over mighty pillars, great misty aisles, glorious choir, its beauty half shrouded in the encroaching shadows, until they reached the very penetralia of the Lady Chapel.

“Ah, Jean,” he went on in a deep, vibrant voice, “great is God’s goodness that He has seen fit to confide this marvelous structure to our keeping. May we so live that, when we are called to give an accounting of our stewardship, we may hear the wondrous words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’”

The lips of the aged _vitrier_ moved in a murmured “Amen,” and they watched in silence the sun, as it threw its dying rays through the window to their feet. They fell in a great splash of red, like blood, on the pavement, and a shudder shook the archbishop’s frame. He passed his hand over his forehead, and the shadow that had clouded his face in the morning settled once more on it. Bidding the old glass-painter good night, he moved up the dusky nave.

Days and weeks slipped by, and the gray waves of the invaders rolled nearer to Rheims. Notwithstanding the heroic, almost superhuman, efforts of her sons, the vandals swept across her borders into France, ravishing, desecrating, destroying in a frenzy of frightfulness so terrible that the world, shocked beyond belief, stood aghast and incredulous at the reports that reached it.

The archbishop of Rheims, with others who believed that there was good in the worst of men, at first resolutely declined to credit the rumors that reached him. But when, at last, driven before the attacking force, the refugees, with terror-stricken faces, came breathlessly into the city, the mothers clutching their babies to their breasts, with little tots scarce able to toddle clinging to their skirts and, throwing themselves on his mercy, recounted with white lips, in a dull monotone, the horrors that had befallen them and theirs, the hopeful trust in the old priest’s face turned into a crushed look of sadness as the knowledge came home to him that his faith in man was an illusion of which, at the end of his life, he was to be bereaved.

He lent such aid as lay in his power to the stricken peasants, and when the wounded, friend and foe, were brought in and, overflowing hospital and private dwelling, still clamored for succor, he threw open the great sanctuary to the Germans with the thought that here they would at least be safe from the shells that were beginning to fall on the outlying districts of the city.

Then one night, when the foreboding chill of autumn had replaced summer’s golden warmth, the archbishop was awakened by a noise, apparently in his bedroom, which shook the house to its foundations. He rose hurriedly and, going to the window, saw that the east was ablaze with light. Although the dawn was approaching, he realized that the refulgence that flared across the horizon was man-made, for the rumble of mighty guns which, when he had retired the night before, had been louder and more resonant than before, had risen to a threatening roar that forced a sickening sense of impotence upon him.

Startled by the sudden proximity of the enemy, the archbishop dressed hurriedly and made his way to the Square, already half filled with people. An old woman approached him and, with blanched face, asked whether he thought the city would be shelled and destroyed, as were the Belgian towns. He shook his head despairingly, and his lips framed the words:

“God forbid!”