Her own room opened directly on the veranda. She paused only long enough to s.n.a.t.c.h up a shawl, as she pa.s.sed through to the far side of the house. Here she could be safe from hostile ears where the mountain torrent ran thundering; safe from prying eyes in the velvet shadows of the pa.s.sion-vine.
She parted the leaves and harkened. A soft, thin trilling came up to her from the edge of the guava jungle in the ravine, a mere silver thread of melody against the stream"s broad clamor. And then as she leaned farther out, so that her face showed for a moment like a pale blossom in the trellis, Motauri came. He came drifting through the moonlight with a wreath of green about his head, a flower chain over his broad, bare shoulders, clad only in a kilted white _pareu_--the very spirit of youth and strength and joyous, untrammeled freedom, stepped down from the days when Faunus himself walked abroad.
"Hokoolele!" he called gently, and smiled up toward her, the most splendid figure of a man her eyes had ever beheld. "Star" was his name for her, though indeed she was a very wan and shrinking one, and so to lend her courage he sang the crooning native love-song that runs somewhat like this:
_"Bosom, here is love for you, O bosom, cool as night!
How you refresh me as with dew, Your coolness gives delight!
"Rain is cold upon the hill And water in the pool; But, oh, my heart is yearning still For you, O bosom cool!"_
"There is a night thistle blooming up the ravine," he said, "that looks just like the candle-tree you lighted in the church last month. Do you remember, Hokoolele? When I peeped through the window and you were afraid the folk would see me? Ho-ho! Afraid the "_Klistian_" folk would see their bad brother outside? But this is much prettier.... Come and see if you can light the thistle."
She kept close to the shadow.
"Are you going to be afraid again?" he asked. "There is no one on the whole mountain to-night. They are all down by the chapel staring at the new lamps and parading themselves along the path. Two great big fireflies by the path! You should see how they shine through the trees."...
He seated himself on the veranda steps and laughed up over the shoulder at her--laughter like a boy"s or like a pagan G.o.d"s.
It was that had tinged and made so live and subtle the fascination he exercised upon her; his unspoiled innocence, his utter, wild simplicity that struck back to the ultimate sources. She could never have felt so toward any of the mission converts, with their woolen shirts and their shoes of ceremony, their hymns and glib, half-comprehended texts; with the fumbling thumb-marks of civilization on their souls. Motauri had never submitted to the first term of the formula. Motauri followed the old first cult of sea and sun, of whispering tree and budding flower. He was the man from the beginning of things, from before Eden; and she who carried in her starved heart the hunger of the first woman--she loved him.
She sank to her knees on the veranda edge above him there and leaned forward with clasped hands to see the soft glow in his deep-lashed eyes, the glint of his even teeth; to catch the sweet breath of jasmine that always clung about him.
"Motauri--" she said, in the liquid tongue that was as easy to her as her own, "I am afraid. Oh, I am--I am afraid!"
"What should you fear? I have promised nothing shall hurt you. The jungle is my friend."
"It is not that. I fear my father, Motauri--and--and that man--Gregson."
She could see his smile fade in the moonlight. "The trader?" he said.
"Very many fear him. But he is only a cheat and an oppressor of poor people with things to sell and to buy. What has the trader to do with you?"
"He knows--I am sure he knows about us," she breathed. "He knows. Even now he may be watching--!"
Hurriedly she told him of the day"s strange development, of her father"s sudden friendship with the powerful white man and Gregson"s crafty, malicious hints.
"I do not know what he means to do, but for you and for me this is the end, Motauri," she said, wistfully. "I dare not see you any more--I would not dare. It is not permitted, and I am frightened to think what might happen to you. You must go away quickly." Her timid fingers rested on his close, wavy locks, all crisped and scented with the juice of the wild orange. "It is finished, Motauri," she sighed. "This is the end."
But Motauri"s mouth had set, his boyish brows had coiled and firmed, and his glance was bright. He drew closer to her with a lithe movement.
"This is the end?" he echoed. "Then I know how. White star of the night--listen to me now, for I have seen how it must end. Yes--I have known this would come....
"Here in Wailoa you behold me one apart, because I do not seek to do as the white men, or kneel in their temple, or make empty outcry to their G.o.ds. Here is not my rightful home. But around the coast two hours"
journey, is the little bay of Huapu where dwell some of my people who have never given up their own customs, and there I am truly a high chief, for my fathers used to rule over all the bays. Sweet are the young cocoanuts of Huapu, and the mangoes and the wild plantains of the hillside--sweet and mellow. There in the woods the moss grows deep and soft for a couch, and for shelter are the broad leaves--for hearth the great prostrate tree trunk that holds fire always in its heart. Like mine--white star--like mine!
"Once I would not have ventured, Hokoolele. Once I looked at you from afar, dreaming only of you as one who had dropped from the sky--so different from my kind. But you are my life and the light of my life, and I have touched you and found you real--strange and beautiful, but real--
_"Bosom, here is love for you, O bosom, cool as night!"_
He caught her hands in both of his.
"Come with me now, for always. I will take you away to the groves of Huapu. There we will laugh and dance and sing all the day through, and I will bring you water in a fern-leaf and weave you flower chains and climb to pluck you the rarest fruits, and build a nest to keep you safe.
There you shall never be sad any more, or wearied, or lonely--or afraid.
Because I will be with you always, always--Hokoolele! Come with me to-night!"...
Then the maiden soul of Miss Matilda was torn like a slender, upright palm in the tropic hurricane, for a lover"s arm was about her waist and a lover"s importunate breath against her cheek, and these things were happening to her for the first time in her life.
"No--no, Motauri!" She struggled inexpertly, fluttering at his touch, bathed in one swift flush. "My father--!" she gasped.
"What does it matter? Your father shall marry us any way he pleases--afterward. But we will live in Huapu forever!"
And with a sudden dizzied weakening she saw that this was true and that she had treasured the knowledge for this very moment. Her father would marry them. He would marry them as he married Jeremiah"s Loo and the sh.e.l.l-buyer--"and only too thankful." Curious that the conventional fact should have pleaded with the night"s spiced fragrance, with the bland weight of the island zephyr on her eyelids, with the vibrant contact of young flesh and the answering madness in her veins. Curious, too, that her dread and loathing of the man Gregson should have urged her the same way. But so they did, reason fusing with desire like spray with wind, and all conspiring to loose her from the firm hold of habit and training.
"We can go now--this minute," Motauri was whispering. "There are boats to be had below on the beach. We can reach Huapu before morning. None shall see us go."
"You forget the path--the people--" She could hardly frame the words with her lips.
"And Gregson"s lights on the chapel--!"
But Motauri laughed low for love and pride.
"I do not use a path. Am I a village-dweller to need steps to my feet?
The mountain is path enough for me. That way!... Straight down to the sh.o.r.e."
"By the ravine?" she cried stricken. "Impossible! It has never been done. No one can climb down there. It is death!"
"It is life!" With the word he swept her up like a wisp of a thing in his strong arms. "And also I am not "no one," but your captor, Hokoolele. I have caught my star from the sky. See--thus is it done!"...
Such was the elopement of Miss Matilda, when she left her father"s house and her father"s faith in very much the same manner as her remote maternal ancestor went about the same sort of affair somewhere back in the Stone Age. And in truth Miss Matilda was living the Stone Age for the half hour it took Motauri to get them both down the untracked mountain side. How they managed she never afterward knew. Not that she slept, or fainted, or indulged in any twentieth century tantrum. But it was all too tense to hold.
Of that descent she retained chiefly a memory of the stream and its voices, now low and urgent, now babbling and chuckling in her ear. At times they groped through its luminous mists, again waded from stone to stone in the current or lowered themselves by its brink among the tangled roots. It hurried them, hid them, showed them the way, set the high pulse for their hearts and the pace for their purpose like an exultant accomplice. Nor did Miss Matilda shrink from its ardor.
Once embarked, she had no further fear. Unguessed forces awoke in her.
With the hands that had never handled anything rougher than crewelwork she chose her grip along the tough ladder of looped lianas. As confidently as a creature of the wild she sprang across a gulf, or threw herself to the cliff, or slipped to the man"s waiting clasp on the next lower ledge. Ma.s.sed shadows, shifting patches of moonlight, the glimpsed abyss and silvered sea far down--these held no terrors. Sharp danger and quick recovery, sliding moss and rasping rock, the clutch of thorn and creeper--all the rude intricacies of wet earth and teeming jungle seemed things accepted and accessory. She was tinglingly alive, gloriously alert. This was her wonderful night, the great adventure that somehow fulfilled a profound expectancy of her being.
Only at the chute she could not hope to aid. Motauri meant to find a certain slanted fault beyond the last break that offered like a shelf.
If they could reach that, they might clamber under the very spout of the hissing outfall, drenched but comparatively safe, for the rest was no more than a scrubby staircase that bore away leftward to the gentler slopes of the valley and the beach below. He told her his plan, then swung her up again and took the whole task to himself, easing inch by inch down the narrow channel. The water boiled and raved about his knees; she could see the streak of its solid flood ahead, where it straightened for a last rush, where the least misstep must dash them down the glistening runaway into s.p.a.ce.
But she would not look ahead. She looked at the dim, adorable face so near her own, at the carven lip, the quivering, arched nostril, the fine, proud carriage and dauntless glance of her G.o.dling. The flash of their eyes met sidelong. With a deep-drawn sigh of content she surrendered herself to him, drew her arms about his neck until she was pillowed on his smooth shoulder....
"Strange there should be no boats at this end," said Motauri.