Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 3

"You're a clever girl. Not many girls can quote the poets and rattle off verses as you can. I suppose your father's an educated kind of man and has a good library?" he added after a pause.

Gabrielle's hearty peal of laughter at the idea of her father possessing a library made the frightened parrots flutter in a wheel-like procession over the belt of sh.o.r.eward mangroves. Then she said: "Well, my father has got a lot of books, but they really belonged to a ship's captain-a nice old man who lived with us years ago, when I was a child." Then she added: "His ship was blown ash.o.r.e here in a typhoon and when he went away he left all his books behind him in Dad's bungalow. I've learned almost all I know from those books." Saying this, she pointed with her finger towards the sh.o.r.e, and said: "From the top of that hill you can see the old captain's ship to-day: it's a big wreck with three masts.

Father told me that the old captain often got sentimental and went up on the hills to stare through a telescope at his old ship lying on the reefs."

"How romantic! So I've to thank the old captain that you can quote the works of the poets to me," said Hillary. Then he added: "But still, you're a clever girl, there's no doubt about it."

"I'm secretly wicked, down in the very depths of me."

"No! Surely not!" gasped the apprentice as he stared at the girl.

Then he smiled and said quickly: "What you've just said is proof enough that you're not wicked. You're imaginative, and so you imagine that you have limitations that no one else has. If anyone's wicked it's me, I know," he added, laughing quietly.

"I've got the limitations right enough, that's why I feel so strange and miserable at times."

"Don't feel miserable, please don't," said Hillary softly as he blessed the silence of the primitive spot and the opportunity that had arisen for his direct sympathy.

"You must remember that we all have our besetting sins, and that the majority of us think our besetting sin is our prime virtue," he said.

"I've been all over the world but never met a girl like you before," he added in a sentimental way.

"I can take that as the reverse of a compliment," said Gabrielle, laughing musically.

"Believe me, Gabrielle, I would not say things to you that I might say in a bantering way to other girls I've met. I dreamed of you when I was a child, so to speak. It seems strange that I should at last have met you out here in the Solomon Isles, that we should be sitting here by a blue lagoon in which our shadows seem to swim together."

"Look into those dark waters," he added after a pause.

Gabrielle looked, and as she looked Hillary became bold and placed his hand softly on her shoulder, amongst her golden tresses that tumbled about her neck. And Gabrielle, who could see every act as she stared on their images in the water, smiled.

"It's a pity you're so wicked," said Hillary jokingly. Then he added suddenly: "Ah! I could fall madly in love with a girl, like you if only I thought I were worthy of you.-What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing," said Gabrielle. Hillary noticed that she had become pale and trembling.

"Why, you've caught a chill!" he said in monstrous concern, though it was 100 in the shade and the heat-blisters were ripe to burst on his neck.

"Dad thinks everything that he does is quite perfect," Gabrielle said, just to change the conversation, for the look she saw in the young apprentice's eyes strangely smote her heart.

"Of course he does," said Hillary absently.

The girl, looking eagerly into his face, said: "You know quite well that you play your violin beautifully, I suppose?"

"I'm the rottenest player in the world."

The girl at this gave a merry ripple of laughter and said: "Now I _do_ believe in your theory, for I've heard you play beautifully in the grog bar by Rokeville. You played this"-here she closed her lips and hummed a melody from _Il Trovatore_.

"Good gracious! you don't mean to tell me that you hover about the Rokeville grog shanty after dark?" exclaimed Hillary.

Gabrielle seemed surprised at his serious look, then she burst into another silvery peal of laughter that echoed to the mountains.

Hillary looked into her eyes, and seeing that eerie light of witchery which so fascinated him, felt that he had met his fate.

"If I can't get her to love me I'm as good as dead," was his mental comment. Even the music of her laughter thrilled him. Then she rose from the ferns, and sitting on the banyan bough again started to swing to and fro, singing some weird strain that she had evidently learnt from the tambu dancers in the tribal villages.

"It seems like some wonderful dream, she a beautiful girl with flowers in her hair, sitting there singing to me," thought the apprentice.

Then she looked down at him, gave a mischievous peal of laughter, and said: "Oh, I say, you are a flatterer! I almost forgot who I really was while you were saying those poetic things about me!"

"Don't laugh at me, I'm serious enough," Hillary responded, as he looked earnestly at the swaying figure. Heaven knows how far Hillary might have progressed in his love affair had not the usual noisy interruption occurred at the usual crucial moment. Just as he felt the true hero of a South Sea romance-sitting there in a perfect picture of ferns and forest flowers, sunset fading on a sea horizon, dark-fingered palms bending tenderly over his beloved by a lagoon-with a rude rush out of the forest it came! It was not a ferocious boar, or revengeful elephant; it was a bulky, heavily breathing figure that seemed the embodiment of prosaic reality. It was attired in large, loose pantaloons, belted at the waist, a vand.y.k.e beard and mighty, viking-like moustachios drooping down to the Herculean shoulder curves.

"What the blazes!" gasped Hillary, as he looked over his shoulder and saw that ma.s.sive personality step out from underneath the forest palms.

The strange being wore an antediluvian topee and an extraordinary, old-fashioned, long-tailed coat. The atmosphere of another age hung about him. A colt revolver stuck in his leather belt seemed to have some strong link of kinship with the grim determination of its owner's mouth.

"What-o, chum! How's the gal?" Saying this, the new-comer put forth his huge, th.o.r.n.y palm and emphasised his monstrous presence by bringing it down smash!-nearly fracturing Hillary's spine.

"What-o, friend from the great unknown!" came like an obsequious echo from the young apprentice's lips as, recovering his breath, he saw the humour of the situation. Hillary well knew that it was wise to return such Solomon Island civility as affably as possible. At that first onslaught Gabrielle had jumped behind Hillary's back when he had sprung to his feet. No one knows how long that new-comer had stood hidden behind the palm stems before he came forth. Anyhow, he rubbed his big hands together in a mighty good temper, chuckling to himself to think his presence should be so little desired. He bowed to the girl with ma.s.sive, Homeric gallantry. Then, as they both stared with open-mouthed wonder, he put his hand up and, twisting his enormous moustache-end on the starboard side, courteously inquired the route for the equivalent of the South Sea halls of Olympus. It was then, and with the most consummate impertinence imaginable, that he gave them both the full view of his Herculean back and put forth his mighty feet to go once more on his way, bound for the wooden halls of Bacchus-the nearest grog shanty.

Such a being as that intruder on Gabrielle's and Hillary's privacy might well seem to exist in the imagination only, but he was real enough. That remarkable individual was only one of many of his kind who, having left their ship on some drunken spree, roamed the islands, seeking the nearest grog shanty, after some drunken carousal in the inland tribal villages.

As that ma.s.sive figure pa.s.sed away he left his breath, so to speak, behind him. It seemed to pervade all things, sending a pungent flavour of adventure over forest, hill and lagoon. Indeed, the faery-like creation into which Hillary's imagination had so beautifully trans.m.u.ted Gabrielle-vanished. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he muttered. As for Gabrielle, she looked as though she was half sorry to see that handsome personality go. His big, grey eyes had gazed at her with an unmistakable, yet not rude, look of admiration. Indeed, before he strode away he gazed at Hillary as though with a mighty concern, as though he would not hesitate to redress wrongs done to fair maids who had been lured into a South Sea forest by such as he.

"Do you know him?" gasped the apprentice as the man went off; but the astonished look in the girl's eyes at once convinced him that the late visitor was a stranger to Gabrielle as well as to himself. It all happened so suddenly that he wondered if he had dreamed of that remarkable presence. But the frightened c.o.c.katoos still giving their ghostly "Cah! Cah!" over the palms were real enough. And as they both listened they could still hear the fading crash of the travelling feet that accompanied some rollicking song, as the big sea-boots of that extraordinary being beat down the scrubby forest growth as they travelled due south-west.

Gabrielle little dreamed as she stood there listening how one day she would hear that intruder's big voice again, and with what welcome music it would ring in her ears.

Gabrielle laughed quietly to herself as the intruder pa.s.sed away and seemingly left a mighty silence behind him. She had seen many men of his type in her short day, not only in Rokeville, but out on the ships that anch.o.r.ed in the harbour. She had also seen stranded sailors at Gualdacanar, at Ysabel and at Malaita, where her father had taken her on a trip a year or so before. Such men stood out of the ruck, quite distinct from the ordinary run of beachcombers, who were usually stranded scallawags, seeking out the tenderfoots who would stand them drinks in the nearest grog bar. Hillary saw that new-comer as some mighty novelty in the way of man; to the young apprentice the late intruder was something between a Ulysses and a Don Quixote. And Hillary's conception of the man's character was not far wrong. Anyway, he did not express his private opinion, for he looked up at Gabrielle and said: "Good Lord, what an awful being. Glad to see the back of him!"

It may have been that the late stranger's presence had turned Hillary's thoughts to his sailor life, for that ma.s.sive being positively smelt of the high seas, of tornadoes and sea-board life on buffeting voyages to distant lands. Looking up at Gabrielle, he suddenly said: "I'm going aboard the schooner that is due to leave for Apia next week. I'm on the look-out for a berth. I suppose I sha'n't see you any more if I get a job?"

Everard's daughter gazed at the apprentice for a moment as though she did not quite know her own mind concerning his query. Then she sighed and said: "Must you go away to sea again?"

Hillary looked steadily into the girl's face. He could not express his thoughts, tell her that he would wish to stay with her always. What would she do were he to spring towards her, clutch her tenderly, fold her in his arms, rain impa.s.sioned kisses on her lips, look into her eyes and behave in general like an escaped lunatic? She might think he was mad!-race from him, screaming with fright, seeking her father's a.s.sistance, or even hasten for the native police. Such were the thoughts that flashed through Hillary's mind. And so, although he longed to do all these things, he only stood half-ashamed over the pa.s.sionate thoughts that flamed in his brain as he gazed into the half-laughing eyes of the girl.

They sat and talked of many things. Hillary forgot the outside world. He half fancied he had been sitting there for thousands of years with that strange girl by his side. He spoke to her of scenes that were remote from Bougainville: of England, of London and the wide bridges over the Thames, and of the deep, dark waters that bore the tall ships away from the white Channel cliffs, taking wanderers to other lands. And as the girl listened she saw old London as some city of enchantment and romance, where cold-eyed men and women tramped down labyrinthine streets by dark walls. In her imagination she even fancied she heard the mighty clock chime the hour over that far-off city of wonder and romance.

"Fancy! And you've lived there! Actually seen the great palaces, the spires and towers that I've read of and dreamed about!" said Gabrielle.

Then she added: "And you've seen the queen and the beautiful princesses?"

"Yes, Gabrielle, I have."

Then she said artlessly: "Weren't they sorry when you left England for the Solomon Isles?"

For a moment Hillary was grimly silent, then he said: "Well, they were, rather!"

Gabrielle's innocence and his own mendacity had broken the spell that home-sickness and distance had cast over him, the spell that had enabled him to picture to Gabrielle's mind the atmosphere of old London in such true perspective. Indeed, as he talked, Bougainville, with all its novelty and heathenish atmosphere, became some dull, drab reality and London a great modern Babylon of his own hungry-souled century. His voice as well as Gabrielle's became hushed. He was so carried away by his own vivid imagination that he fancied he _had_ dwelt in some ancient city of smoky romance, and had seen a Semiramis on her throne, and Pharaoh-like peoples of a past age. It was only the eerie beauty of Gabrielle's eyes that awakened him to the reality that blurs man's inward vision. The girl had handed him a small flower which she had taken from her hair.

"Could anything be more innocent and beautiful," he thought as he placed that first symbol of the girl's awakening affection for him in the b.u.t.tonhole of his bra.s.s-bound jacket.

Night had fallen over the island. "I must go," said Gabrielle. "It's terribly late."

"So it is!" Hillary moaned regretfully. Gabrielle hastily jumped into her canoe, fear in her heart over the coming wrath of her father.