Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 10

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 pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and remembered Rajah Macka's visit. "Rajah Koo Macka!" he shouted.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n 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? d.a.m.n! 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 G.o.d-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.

"Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I'm ill, so ill!"

Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and sober. He'd never hurried so much in his life as he put the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful delight, stumped towards the front door.

Someone had knocked.

So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed from the room.

"She's come back, me dear gal, come to 'er old pa!"

He opened the door and stared at the form in the gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down-fell in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn't Gabrielle who stood there-it was Hillary.

Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the unromantic words: "G.o.d, what luck! He's drunk!"

The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and picked up the old ex-sailor.

Hillary's whole soul was bursting to know why Gabrielle hadn't kept the appointment by the lagoon. He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where he had waited all night.

He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle's father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken man. He'd never been in that parlour before. He looked round. Where was she?

"Gabrielle, your poor father's taken ill-it's Hillary who calls!" And then he stood holding the old man up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her father's blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune moment.

Hillary had come straight to Everard's bungalow determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright and get one glimpse of the girl's face and some kind of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in. He called again: "Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don't you come?" But the expected rustle of her dress, the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination antic.i.p.ated, was only mocked by the echo of his own voice.

He sat the old man in the big arm-chair. Everard opened his eyes and stared like an imbecile at the youth.

"Where's my Gabby? Who the 'ell are you?" moaned the ex-sailor.

"I'm Hillary, Gabrielle's friend. I'm teaching her to play the violin; it will be a great help to her. She can make money by teaching, and be able to help you too," blurted forth the apprentice in that inspiration that comes to lovers who have rehea.r.s.ed a thousand excuses for suddenly appearing before a prospective father-in-law.

Old Everard was too far gone with rum and grief to be interested in the commercial side of a prospective son-in-law.

"You're 'Illary! Violin! Play musick! You b-- villainous scoundrel! What have you done with 'er?" yelled the old man, as he struggled to his feet, a terribly vicious look in his eyes.

"Done with who? Where's Gabrielle?" Hillary shouted out in a voice that somehow managed to tell the old man that the youth before him thought that he _too_ had a right to know where Gabrielle was.

In a moment the ex-sailor's mad pa.s.sion subsided. He leaned forward and stared into Hillary's eyes and saw the despair, the appeal, the light of sincerity and truth, everything that he had not seen in Koo Macka's eyes. In a moment the old man relented.

"Ain't yer seen 'er, kid? She's gone! Bolted with Macka, the Rajah! Find 'er, boy, find 'er for me. You can 'ave her, she's my Gabby!" wailed the despairing father.

Hillary's heart nearly stopped beating. He couldn't sum up courage enough to ask the old man to explain what he meant. He dreaded to hear something, he knew not what. Then the old man continued:

"G.o.d forgive me for thinking ill of you. _He_ sent you 'ere ter-night to comfort 'er ole father."

Hillary still held the man's hand, to give _himself_ courage as well as to comfort the old man.

"'Ave a drop er rum, boy?" said the old man. Hillary did not hesitate.

He held the tumblerful of liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot.

Everard clutched the youth's trembling hand and almost shed tears as the rum loosened the apprentice's lips and he told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter. Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards him.

After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling into Hillary's ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone else, two hundred pounds if they could trace Gabrielle's whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted father's hand and said: "I don't want money; I only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back to you, and take her away from that man." The apprentice couldn't persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man's face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.

At that moment he did not want Gabrielle's father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men; the first to run away to sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world, to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself sleeping out in a strange land-in a dust-bin with the lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle's manner on the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope rea.s.serted itself.

Hillary took the old ex-sailor's hand and promised to stop the night with him. "Don't let us waste the time, it will be dark soon," said the apprentice. After a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He knew that she had strange notions, and had many girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits that he even whistled as he went off down the track. He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra, where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It was near to sunset when he at length pa.s.sed through the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the native villages from the south-east sh.o.r.e. As he entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls greeted him with their friendly salutations and the usual cries for _tam-bak_ (tobacco).

The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the small huts and palavanas as he strode across the _rara_ (cleared s.p.a.ce). The s.h.a.ggy-headed native women clapped their hands as he pa.s.sed. Some of the elder tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay pipes and stared stolidly upon him.

Just by the village patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild encores in a strange barbarian tongue.

Even Hillary smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery and gaudy silks for copra and sh.e.l.ls.

Arriving before the Chief Ingrova's palatial palavana, Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint of the girl's whereabouts. But seeing that the chief was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn't seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father's wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once. His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance by one sh.e.l.l or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that the mythological G.o.ds and legendary personages who were the great apostles of his creed were more to him in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday church-goers who wors.h.i.+p at its altars.

Hillary listened silently to the chief's moralising and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle's absence from home and felt a.s.sured that the chief knew nothing about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually friendly to the white men.

The apprentice gave the chief a plug of s.h.i.+p's tobacco, then implored him to kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her father's home. He could not bring himself to believe that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck only an hour before. "A girl so innocent that I wouldn't utter a coa.r.s.e word in her presence-she-go off with an abomination like that-a dark man-impossible!" had been his final summing up, and then in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat sky-high.

Hillary's face was flushed with the thoughts that surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing at Ingrova, said: "Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I'll give you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes, see?" The apprentice knew that he was offering the chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.

In a moment Ingrova's ears were alert; his deep-set eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore allegiance to Hillary's cause. "I find girler if she bouter 'ere!" said he, bringing his war-club down with a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they stood there in the silence of the forest.

"What's that?" The apprentice could hear approaching footsteps.

He rubbed his eyes. What on earth had happened to Ingrova? There he stood, stiff and erect, his arms crooked; he had suddenly undergone a wonderful transformation-looked like some gnarled old tree trunk that had been carved so as to resemble a man. For only the eyes blinked. At the sound of approaching footsteps he had swiftly succ.u.mbed to the old primitive instincts, and become, as it were, a part of the silent tropical forest.

Looking swiftly round, Hillary observed a dusky, wrinkled face and bright eyes peeping cautiously through the tall, thick ferns that grew around the spot where they stood. Ingrova's form immediately relaxed; it was no enemy who sought to club him; it was only the friendly face of old Oom Pa. It was very evident that Oom Pa had heard the speech of the Englishman, and knowing that the white missionaries disapproved of very many of the things his priesthood called on him to do in the performance of heathen rites, he had approached warily. Seeing that only one white papalagi was there, Oom Pa stepped forth from the thickets and forced his finest deceitful smile to his thin lips.

"Nice day," quoth Hillary.

"Verra nicer, papalagi," muttered the heathen ecclesiastic, after looking up at Ingrova, who winked and raised his tattooed brows to rea.s.sure the suspicious priest. Oom Pa prostrated himself in his most gracious manner before Hillary. In a moment he had risen to his feet, and standing with head inclined he listened to Ingrova, who had begun to tell him the cause of the white man's visit.

"Oo woomba!" said the priest, rubbing his chin reflectively, then said: "Nicer white girl's goner? She who gotter eyes like sky when stars walker 'bout, and gotter hair liker sunset on rivers?"

"That's her!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hillary dramatically. His heart thumped with hope. Oom Pa's manner made him think that Gabrielle was somewhere close behind him, hiding in the palms. The old priest winked and put on a wise look. Then he looked up and, shaking his head all the while that he spoke, he told Hillary that he had not the slightest idea as to the girl's whereabouts.

"I not know where girl is, but I knower you mean white girl who comes and jumper on _pae pae_ and dance at festival, one, two nights. But she did fly away like beautiful _tabarab_ (spirit) in forest."