By Reef and Palm Part 16

Presently he rose, talking to himself as is the wont of those who have lived long apart from all white a.s.sociations, and sauntered up and down the shady path at the side of his dwelling, thinking of Doris, and if he would ever see her again. Then he entered the house.

Seated on the matted floor with her face turned from him was a young native girl--Luita, his wife. She was making a hat from the bleached strands of the panda.n.u.s leaf, and as she worked she sang softly to herself in the semi-Tahitian tongue of her people.

Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on a rough mat-covered couch, turned towards her, and watched the slender, supple fingers--covered, in Polynesian fas.h.i.+on, with heavy gold rings--as they deftly drew out the snow-white strands of the panda.n.u.s. The long, glossy, black waves of hair that fell over her bare back and bosom like a mantle of night hid her face from his view, and the man let his glance rest in contented admiration upon the graceful curves of the youthful figure; then he sighed softly, and again his eyes turned to the wide, sailless expanse of the Pacific, that lay s.h.i.+mmering and sparkling before him under a cloudless sky of blue, and he thought again of Doris.

Steadily the little hands worked in and out among the snowy strands, and now and then, as she came to the TARI, or refrain, of the old Paumotuan love-song, her soft liquid tones would blend with the quavering treble of children that played outside.

"Terunavahori, teeth of pearl, Knit the sandals for Talaloo's feet, Sandals of AFA thick and strong, Bind them well with thy long black hair."

Suddenly the song ceased, and with a quick movement of her shoulders she threw back the cloud of hair that fell around her arms and bosom, looked up at Brantley and laughed, and, striking the mat on which she sat with her open palm, said--

"HAERE MAI, PARANILI."

He rose from the couch and stooped beside her, with his hands resting on his knees, and bending his brow in mock criticism, regarded her handiwork intently.

Springing to her feet, hat in hand, and placing her two hands on his now erect shoulders, she looked into his face--darker far than her own--and said with a smile--

"Behold, Paranili, thy PULOU is finished, save for a band of black PU'AVA which thou shalt give me from the store."

"Mine?" said Brantley, in pretended ignorance. "Why labour so for me?

Are there not hats in plenty on Vahitahi?"

"True, O thankless one! but the women of the village say that thou lookest upon me as a fool because I can neither make mats nor do many other things such as becometh a wife. And for this did Merani, my cousin, teach me how to make a wide hat of FALA to s.h.i.+eld thy face from the sun when thou art out upon the pearling grounds. AI-E-EH! my husband, but thy face and neck and hands are as dark as those of the people of Makatea--they who are for ever in their canoes.... See, Paranili, bend thy head. AI-E-EH! thou art a tall man, my husband," and she trilled a happy, rippling laugh as she placed the hat on his head.

He placed one hand around the pliant waist and under the mantle of hair, and drew her towards him, and then, moved by a sudden emotion, kissed her soft, red lips.

"Luita," he asked, "would it hurt thee if I were to go away?"

The girl drew away from him, and, for the first time in two years Brantley saw an angry flush tinge her cheek a dusky red.

"Ah!"--the contemptuous ring in her voice made the man's eyes drop--"thou art like all White Men--was there ever one who was faithful? What other woman is it that thou desirest? Is it Nia of Ahunui--she who, when thy boat lay anch.o.r.ed in the lagoon, swam off at night and asked thee for thy love--the shameless Nia?"

The angry light in the black eyes shone fiercely, and the dull red on her cheeks had changed to the livid paleness of pa.s.sion.

Brantley, holding the rim of the hat over his mouth, laughed secretly, pleased at her first outburst of jealousy. Then his natural manliness a.s.serted itself.

"Come here," he said.

Somewhat sullenly the girl obeyed and edged up beside him with face bent down. He put his hand upon hers, and for a few seconds looked at the delicate tracery of tattooing that, on the back, ran in thin blue lines from the finger tips to the wrists.

"What a d----d pity!" he muttered to himself; "this infernal tattooing would give the poor devil away anywhere in civilization. Her skin is not as dark as that pretty creole I was so sweet on in Galveston ten years ago ... Well, she's good enough for a broken man like me--but I can't take her away--that's certain."

A heavy tear splashed on his hand, and then he pulled her to him, almost savagely.

"See, Luita. I did but ask to try thee. Have no fear. Thy land is mine for ever."

The girl looked up, and in an instant her face, wet with tears, was laid against his breast. Still caressing the dark head that lay upon his chest, Brantley stooped and whispered something. The little tattooed hand released its clasp of his arm and struck him a playful blow.

"And would that bind thee more to me, and to the ways of these our people of Vahitahi," she asked, with still buried face.

"Aye," answered the ex-captain slowly, "for I have none but thee in the world to care for."

She turned her face up. "Is there none--not even one woman in far-off Beretania, whose face comes to thee in the darkness."

Brantley shook his head sadly. Of course there was Doris, he thought, but he had never spoken of her. Sometimes when the longing to see her again would come upon him, he would have talked of her to his native wife, but he was by nature an uncommunicative man, and the thought of how Doris must feel her loneliness touched him with remorse and made him silent.

Another year pa.s.sed, and matters had gone well with Brantley. Ten months before he had dropped on one of the best patches of sh.e.l.l in the Paumotus, and to-day, as he sits writing and smoking in the big room of his house, he looks contentedly out through the open door to a little white painted schooner that lay at anchor on the calm waters of the lagoon. He had just come back from Tahiti with her, and the two thousand dollars he had paid for the vessel was an easy matter for a man who was now making a thousand dollars a month.

"What a stroke of luck!" he writes to Doris. "Had I gone back to Sydney, where would I be now?--a mate, I suppose, on some deep-sea s.h.i.+p, earning twelve or fourteen pounds a month. Another year or two like this, and I can go back a made man. Some day, my dear, I may; but I will come back here again. The ways of the people have become my ways."

He laid down his pen and came to the door, and stood thinking awhile and listening to the gentle rustle of the palms as they swayed their lofty plumes to the breezy trade wind.

"Yes," he thought, "I would like to go and see Doris, but I can't take Luita, and so it cannot be. How that girl suspects me even now. When I went to Tahiti to buy the schooner, I believe she thought she would never see me again.... What a fool I am! Doris is all right, I suppose, although it is a year since I had a letter ... and I--could any man want more. I don't believe there's a soul on the island but thinks as much of me as Luita herself does; and, by G-d! she's a pearl--even though she is only a native girl. No, I'll stay here; 'Kapeni Paranili'

will always be a big man in the Paumotus, but Fred Brantley would be n.o.body in Sydney--only a common merchant skipper who had made money in the islands.... And perhaps Doris is married."

So he thought and talked to himself, listening the while to the soft symphony of the swaying palm-tops and the subdued murmur of the surf as the rollers crashed on the distant line of reef away to leeward. Of late these fleeting visions of the outside world--that quick, busy world, whose memories, save for those of Doris, were all but dead to him--had become more frequent; but the calm, placid happiness of his existence, and that strange, fatal glamour that for ever enwraps the minds of those who wander in the islands of the sunlit sea--as the old Spanish navigators called Polynesia--had woven its spell too strongly over his nature to be broken. And now, as the murmur of women's voices caused him to turn his head to the shady end of the verandah, the dark, dreamy eyes of Luita, who with her women attendants sat there playing with her child, looked out at him from beneath their long lashes, and told him his captivity was complete.

A week afterwards the people of Vahitahi were cl.u.s.tered on the beach putting supplies of native food in the schooner's boat. That night he was to sail again for the pearling grounds at Matahiva lagoon, and would be away three months.

One by one the people bade him adieu, and then stood apart while he said farewell to Luita.

"E MAHINA TOLU [Only three months], little one," he said, "why such a gloomy face?"

The girl shook her head, and her mouth twitched. "But the MITI [dream], Paranili--the MITI of my mother. She is wise in the things that are hidden; for she is one of those who believe in the old G.o.ds of Vahitahi.... And there are many here of the new LOTU [Faith, i.e.

Christianity] who yet believe in the old G.o.ds. And, see, she has dreamed of this unknown evil to thee twice; and twice have the voices of those who are silent in the MARAE called to me in the night, and said: 'He must not go; he must not go.'"

Knowing well how the old superst.i.tious taint ran riot in the imaginative native mind, Brantley did not attempt to reason, but sought to gently disengage her hands from his arm.

She dropped on the sand at his feet and clasped his knees, and a long, wailing note of grief rang out--

"AUE! AUE! my husband! if it so be that thou dost not heed the voices that call in the night, then, out of thy love for me and our child, let me come also. Then, if evil befall thee, let us perish together."

Brantley raised his hand and pointed to the bowed and weeping figure.