Gabrielle of the Lagoon. W. H. Myddleton

beards, and put on their best behaviour as he stood there and spoke as becomes a Rajah and late missionary who has “saved” thousands of souls; for he studied the philosophy of the Psalms so that they might fit in with his views. And it might be mentioned at once that he did not allow idealistic views to disturb the nice equilibrium of his earthly requirements. When he was excited his speech lapsed into the native pidgin-English. But he spoke perfectly as he addressed Hillary, saying: “You play exceedingly well, young man, and your rendering of Spohr’s concerto strikes me as superb. For perfect intonation and verve your performance outrivals the rendering by Monsieur De T——, whom I heard play it at the Tivoli, Honolulu.” So spake the civilised heathen.

      “ ’Ark at ’im! an ole kanaka missionary!” whispered Bunky Lory, the ordinary seaman.

      “ ’Andsome cove with his whiskers on,” said another, a Cockney.

      There is no doubt that Rajah Koo Macka was a handsome type of man so far as the world’s idea of what’s handsome goes. He wore a fine moustache curled artistically at the ends; had fine teeth, ivory-white; and full, sensual, curved lips that were not a libel on his character. But his greatest asset was his magnetic, telescope-like eyes that could sight a sinfully inclined girl or woman miles off! Indeed he was a splendid example of a christianised heathen doing his best to be religious notwithstanding his inherently antagonistic principles. He had plenty of cash; he owned two or three schooners, and received a Government bounty for hunting down the white miscreants, those skippers who indulged in all the horrors of the black-birding slave traffic. He wore three medals on his ample breast, and besides the aforementioned bounty received a pension from some missionary society in London which had heard of his self-sacrifice whilst converting his heathen brothers from cannibalistic orgy and lust. And more, it was discovered, after many days, that he was a good and dutiful son to his old father Bapa, who still dwelt in the Rajah’s native village in far-away Tumba-Tumba, on the wild, God-forsaken coast of New Guinea. Such is a rough summary of the Rajah Koo Macka, whose ways were mysterious, more so than the wily Chinee! And though dead men may turn in their graves over the doings of men on earth, the apprentice only pulled the end of his virgin moustache, no prophetic breath of all that was destined to happen disturbing his equanimity.

      CHAPTER II—THE CALL OF THE BLOOD

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      The day after the young apprentice had played his violin to the shellbacks and listened to the Papuan Rajah’s eulogies over his playing, old Everard was sitting in his bungalow swearing like the much-maligned trooper. He was holding out his gouty foot whilst his daughter poured cool water upon it.

      “What the devil are yer doing!” he yelled, as the girl, who had done exactly as she had been told to do, stood half-paralysed with fear over her parent’s outburst. Then the ex-sailor picked the ointment pot up and rubbed the swollen foot himself. As Gabrielle looked on and mentally thanked her Maker that her father had only one foot, he finished up by grabbing a chair and pitching it across the room, careless as to what it might hit. A fierce look came into the girl’s eyes, her face was hotly flushed. For a moment the old man opened his mouth in surprise, really thinking she meant to hurl the chair back at him. She looked for a moment like a beautiful young savage. Then she turned and rushed from the bungalow.

      “Come back, you blasted little heathen!” roared old Everard as he stood up on his wooden leg; then he gave a fearful howl as his gouty foot gave him another twinge. His face was purple with passion. “I’ll break her b—— neck when she comes back, I will. She’s like her mother, that’s what she is.”

      The ex-sailor’s wild sayings meant nothing. He had been genuinely fond of his wife. Like most men who have choleric tempers, his hot words had no relation to his true feelings. Gabrielle’s mother had been dead for many years. Although she had dark blood in her veins, she had been a very beautiful woman. Indeed an eerie kind of beauty seems to be the natural heritage of women who are remotely descended from a mixture of the dark and white races. And this striking beauty is most noticeable in those half-castes who are descended from the Malayan types, a superstitious people, of wild, poetic, passionate temperament. There was some mystery concerning Gabrielle’s mother: she had flown from Haiti to Honolulu in some great fear. Everard had met her because it was on his ship that she had stowed away; but she had never divulged the cause of her flight from the land where she had been born. All that Gabrielle knew was that her mother’s photograph hung on her bedroom wall, a sad, beautiful face that gave no hint of her dark ancestry. Gabrielle had been the tiny guest who had unconsciously caused her natural host to depart from this life—for her mother had died during confinement. Gabrielle Everard felt that loss as she walked beneath the palms; but, still, she felt glad that her father’s violence had inspired her with sufficient courage to beat a hasty retreat, careless of the parental wrath when she at length returned home again. “Perhaps he’ll be so full of rum when I get back that he’ll have forgotten,” was her sanguine reflection. Then she pulled her pretty, washed-out blue robe tight with the sash, and murmured: “The old devil! Good job if he pegged out!”

      As the girl’s temper subsided the savage look on her face faded away. Like a gleam of sunrise across the lagoons at dawn, the laughing expression of her blue eyes slowly returned. The firm resolve of the lips also disappeared. Her mouth was again a rosebud of the warm, impassioned South, a mouth that easily claimed twinship with the beauty of the luring eyes, which looked warm with desire as the lips themselves. She wore her loose blouse very low at the neck, so low that the sun had delicately touched the curve of her breast. But she was only an undeveloped woman as yet. Her ideas of the great world were vague and shadowy. She knew little of what lay beyond her own surroundings, of men’s ways, the terror of cities, human frailty, and the force and passion of human tragedies. All the ribaldry, the hints thrust upon her by the rough sailors since she had entered her teens, had been quite lost on her undeveloped mind. Her whole idea of life and its mysteries had come to her out of a few old books. They were books that had been left at her father’s homestead by a ship’s captain when Gabrielle was a child. This captain’s ship had gone ashore in a typhoon off Bougainville, and its wreck could still be seen lying on the barrier reefs about a mile from the shore.

      Who could foresee the wondrous potentialities that lay within the pages of those books which the old skipper had carelessly thrown aside?—what dreams they would some day awaken in a girl’s heart, giving her strength to combat the desires that came with volcanic-like force on the threshold of womanhood? For, true enough, the heroes and heroines of those old books mysteriously leapt from the thumb-torn, yellow pages and seemed to struggle in their effort to help her regain her better self.

      One book was Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; another, Christina Rossetti’s poems; The Arabian Nights and Hans Andersen’s fairy tales. That old captain (he must have been old by the dates in the books) had brought many valuable cargoes across the world, but he dreamed not that his most wonderful cargo was the magic in the books that he was destined one day to leave behind him in the Solomon Isles!

      To a great extent old Everard’s daughter was the embodiment of the principles and idealisms that were in those faded volumes: in her imagination Bunyan stood there beneath the palms, seeing God in those tropic skies; Hans Andersen drank in the mystery of sunset on the mountains, and Christina Rossetti laid a visionary hand on the tiny, shaggy heads of the native children who had rushed from the forest’s depths and had started gambolling at Gabrielle’s feet. She hastened on. “Awaie!” she cried to the dusky little creatures, who looked up at her in a bewildered way, as though they had seen a ghost. “Ma Soo!” they wailed, as they sped away, frightened, into the shadows of the forest. A wild desire entered Gabrielle’s heart; she half bounded forward, as though to rush after those tiny forest ragamuffins. She felt like casting aside her civilised attire, so that she too might race off, untrammelled, into those happy leafy glooms. The cry of the yellow-crested cockatoo, the deep moaning of the bronze pigeons and iris doves in the bread-fruits seemed to feed her soul with unfathomable music. As she passed by a lagoon she saw her reflection in the still depths. The dark-toning water made her appear almost swarthy; her bronze-gold hair