“god has sent you to the right place here,” said father studby, solemnly, to the lay brother. “life in lauli’i flows in the same channel, day by day, year by year, so that we wonder to grow old and are surprised to see our changing faces in the glass. when we think, it is of the goodness of god; when we fear, it is for the sick or for the machinations of the evil one. our little bay is a monastery, remote from all the passions and fevers of mankind; and the people we live among are pleasant children, naïve, gay, and pious.”
“you must not consider me a sick man,” said brother michael, with his dark smile. “i am worn out with teaching, and the hot bustle of nukualofa. the doctor said i needed rest, that i needed peace and fresh air, and the bishop has sent me here to get them.”
“in nukualofa,” said the old priest, who entertained a partisan’s contempt for the neighbouring island, “in nukualofa they do not know the meaning of those words. they exist in a frenzy of excitement, amid the intrigues of three conflicting nationalities; one’s ear is dinned with rumours; and one wearies with the very names of consuls and captains. one cannot take a walk without beholding a fresh proclamation on a cocoanut-tree, or turn round without offending[238] some preposterous regulation. the natives wear trousers and drink whisky; they model themselves on the dissolute whites set over them, and degenerate as rapidly as their masters.”
“i never could see what people found to like in the natives,” said the lay brother. “i dare say they are good enough in their way, and fill a necessary place in the world, but to me they are greasy and offensive.”
“ah, but you have never seen the true samoan,” exclaimed the priest. “here it is so different from nukualofa. here our people are better born; here they are self-respecting, honest, and kind; here you will see at once an astonishing contrast to those you have left.”
once launched on his favourite topic, the superiority of lauli’i to all the villages of the group, the old missionary knew not when to stop, and his interminable tongue ran on in an unceasing harangue. the new-comer listened with a sort of detachment, as he might have done to some strange parrot screaming in a zoo, assenting by perfunctory nods to that long tale of samoan virtue, religion, and generosity. his black eyes ranged about the room and through the open window at its back, where, within a distance of a dozen yards, a little church half barred the vista of peaks and forest. still talking, father studby led him away to see it, this scene of his professional life which had been raised, stone upon stone, by his own assiduous hands. the lay brother was shown the altar, with its artless decoration of tissue-paper flowers; the pulpit inlaid with pearl-shell; the sacramental vessels in[239] their wrappings of tapa-cloth. the father seated himself at a crazy harmonium, which was planted on the sandy floor like some derelict cast up by the sea, and ran his fingers over the yellow keys. he played, after a manner, with considerable skill and vivacity, his preference being for the sentimental ballads of his youth, and the dance-music which had then been in fashion. it was strange to hear these old waltzes, so long dead and forgotten, coming to life again in that darkened chapel and from the hands of such a player. the lay brother leaned against an open window, from which there was a wonderful view of wooded mountains half screened in mist, and sighed moodily as he gazed about him. under the spell of those swaying measures, his heart returned to the australian plains where he had been born, and he felt himself, indeed, an exile.
on leaving the church, the father took him on a little tour of the garden: showed him the cemented oven where the bread was baked, the roofed-in spring, the hives, the cow, the imported cock, everything, in fact, down to the grindstone and the rusty scythe.
michael followed as in duty bound; asked the proper questions; showed everywhere a becoming interest; endured it all with propriety. he asked his host many questions, some of them the inspiration of mere politeness, such as the best food for chickens, and the precautions to be taken in handling bees; others, in which he seemed more genuinely concerned, as to the nature of the inland country and its resources. he was surprised to hear that the island[240] had only once been crossed by whites; he was impatient of the priest’s statement that it did not greatly matter, as the natives suffered in social consideration by living too far from the sea, and were, besides, better off for the fish it afforded and the easy means of communication.
“there are other things in samoa besides samoans,” exclaimed brother michael, with a disdain that he could but ill conceal. “here is an island scarcely forty miles wide, which apparently has only once been crossed in the memory of living man. why, the thing stirs the imagination; it makes the blood tingle in one’s veins; it makes one speculate on a thousand possibilities. in those secluded depths there may be the ruins of ancient cities; mouldering tombs covered with hieroglyphs; perhaps even another race still surviving in those inner valleys! there may be whole forests of sandalwood, beds of fine coal, deposits of rich ores. who knows, but there may be gold!”
father studby crossed himself.
“god forbid,” he said.
“you must remember,” he went on, “that every village has some knowledge of the land behind it, and if you could combine what they know you would find that the interior is not such a mystery as you imagine; though, of course, there may be tracts which have never yet been penetrated by a white man. at one time and another i have been many miles inland of lauli’i, but i never got so far but what every gully had a name, every acre an owner. why our people should[241] dispute among themselves for such blocks of worthless forest and rock is a thing beyond my comprehension; but as a matter of fact they do attach an inordinate value to them, and it would astound you to find how exactly the boundaries are remembered.”
“you interest me immensely,” said the lay brother. “i see that you can tell me everything i want to know, and i congratulate myself again that my lucky star has brought me to your door. in nukualofa they could not answer half my questions.”
“in nukualofa,” said father studby, bitterly, “they know nothing,—less than nothing,—for they mislead you and tell you lies. the natives there, besides, are of a low stock, interbred with out-islanders and without an ancestry among them. you will look in vain for such a man as our maunga, who goes back seventeen generations to the legendary fasito’o, or a family such as the sā; satupaialā;, who have what you might almost call a special language of their own. they die, they spit, they moor a boat, they steal breadfruit, they commit adultery, all in different words from those commonly employed. it has been my pleasure, you might almost call it my folly, to absorb myself in such studies. i am afraid you will find me nothing more than an old kanaka pundit, with my cracked head full of legends and ancient songs.”
the priest saw very little of his guest, who followed the doctor’s prescription of fresh air with a literalness that made him almost a stranger in the house. every morning, after participating in the service in the little church, brother michael would take his gun[242] and disappear for the day, returning at sundown with what pigeons he had shot, and an appetite that played havoc with his host’s frugal housekeeping. he would eat a pound of meat at a sitting, make way with an entire loaf of bread, and thought nothing of helping himself four times to marmalade, in spite of the father’s disapproving looks, and the calculated contrast of his bare plate. in the light of that frightful inroad on his provisions, father studby’s good opinion of the stranger began to change into a sentiment approaching aversion, and it seemed to him an added injury that the young man would no longer eat his own pigeons, insisting, with gross self-indulgence, on an unending succession of chicken, ham, and costly preserves. he said that taro gave him heartburn, evoked the physician’s ban on all native food, and demanded, on the same shadowy authority, a daily ration of brandy from the father’s slender stock. it was hard on the old missionary, who was abstemious to a degree and seldom allowed himself the comfort of a dram, to pour his liquor down that insatiable throat, and be condemned to hold the bottle, while the other smacked his lips like a beach-comber in a bar, in no wise ashamed to drink alone. the bottle, too, until it was placed under lock and key, showed a tendency to decline unduly, and even biscuit and sardines were not exempt from a similar and no less exasperating shrinkage. and then, in his religious exercises the lay brother betrayed a disheartening coldness, and what spiritual fire had ever been in him seemed smothered over[243] with torpor and indifference. his vocation meant no more to him than a means to live. he yawned at mass, nodded intermittently through the priest’s interminable sermons, and when it was proposed that he should take temporary charge of the school he did not hesitate for a moment to refuse.
of course, a word to nukualofa would have speedily rid father studby of his guest; he had only to write, to expostulate, and the thing was done. more than once, under the influence of some particular indignation, he had set himself to the task. but he had never got beyond the first few lines before his natural generosity reasserted itself. who was he, that he should make himself the young man’s judge; that he should help, perhaps, to mar prospects none too bright, and throw the last stone at one already tottering to his fall? besides, were the grounds of his objection as sincere as he imagined? was he not meanly condemning the lay brother for his appetite, for the hole that he was making in that dwindling larder, rather than for his lack of religious conviction which at times seemed so shocking? after all, was it not natural for a young man to eat well, to help himself unchecked to marmalade, to devour expensive tinned meats like a wolf? it was the result of those immense walks, ordered by the doctor, to which michael so assiduously applied himself. was there not something even admirable in so strict an obedience to hygiene, especially in one constitutionally slothful and self-indulgent?
one afternoon michael returned from his walk in a state of high excitement. his black eyes were burning,[244] and for once, contrary to his usual habit, he was extraordinarily noisy and talkative. he kept breaking out into wild laughter, even when not a word was said, and seemed to possess, buried somewhere within him, the secret of an unextinguishable entertainment. instead of dozing after supper in his chair, he grew, if anything, wider awake than ever, and his hilarity continued with a kind of violence. father studby was carried off his feet by that wave of gaiety; he felt the contagion of that singular fever which had so transformed his companion; he, too, laughed at nothing, and found himself talking with an animation that he could not remember to have displayed for years. but with it all he had an unaccountable sense of suspicion, of being on his guard against something, he knew not what, of some pitfall yawning for his unwary feet. he felt that he was watched; that those strange, mocking eyes of his companion were mutely tempting him to evil; at times he almost wondered whether the dark lay brother were not the devil himself.
the young man’s talk was rambling and inconsequent, a mere rattle of autobiography, punctuated with laughter. he had much to say of his college days; his penury; his struggles; his shabby makeshifts; the pranks he and his companions had played on the professors. he roared as he recalled them, and hammered the table with his fist. he spoke of his mother and her hard life; the ne’er-do-well father; the brother that drank; the sister with the hip disease. and from that again to the price of native land, the[245] way to secure good titles, the need, as he had been told, to buy the same property from a dozen conflicting owners. then he broke out about the power of money, the unlimited power of money, the lawlessness of money in unprincipled hands; the way it could buy everything the world had to offer, social position, beautiful women, the entrée to great houses. with money, what could a man ask for in vain! in this world, he meant, of course—in this world. in the next, thank god, it would be different; the rich would pay through the nose then for their pleasures. but some of them perhaps would not repent it; the most would be as bad again, if only the chance were offered; the dogs would return to their vomit.
father studby listened to these confidences with amazement; they depressed and angered him unspeakably; they seemed to disclose in his companion a cynicism and a moral deficiency that he had not previously suspected. he felt, too, as he had never felt before, the full horror of that brutal civilisation, so merciless, so inexorable, its obliterating march whitened with the bones of thousands; everything with its price, even to the honour of shrinking women and the corpses of the dead. if you had no money the wheels rolled over you; if you had no money you sank and died. there was no one to help, no one to pity; all were scrambling horribly to save themselves on the shoulders of those below. what a contrast to the calm of that samoan life, primitive, kindly, and religious, in which accursed money was unknown! he was led to declaim hotly on the high breeding and chivalry[246] of these misjudged people, and protested that they had more to teach than to learn. where, he demanded of the lay brother, could one find such hearts as these? where such brave men and compassionate women? where else a land with neither rich nor poor? here, if one starved, all starved; here, if need be, the last banana was divided into a hundred pieces; here they would all take shame if a single child went hungry.
the old priest went on and on with his tale of samoan virtue, of samoan superiority. god had never made such a people; there was in them the seed that would regenerate the world. there was nothing in which they did not excel. he carried his reluctant hearer into the mazes of native poetry; he repeated hundreds of lines in his resounding voice, blowing out clouds of tobacco smoke between each stanza. where, he asked, were the whites who could match such things as these; who could bring the tears to your eyes or convulse you with laughter at will? he would repeat that last verse, if his companion did not mind; it described how to, wandering on the sea-shore at dawn, met tingalau returning from his fishing, and led on to twenty stanzas more of what to said to tingalau, and tingalau to to!
michael lay back in his chair, scarce heeding the soft gibberish that to him meant nothing. he was living in a tumult of his own thoughts—thoughts in which kanaka poetry had no part, though the priest himself was sometimes present, but whether as a friend or foe he could not yet determine; and while he wondered and conjectured the old man himself[247] seemed to disappear in his own smoke, until nothing remained of him but a faint, passionate buzzing, like that of a bumblebee in a field.
the next day michael was up and gone before daybreak, and the little service in the church proceeded for once without him. the father was vexed at such remissness, and tolled the bell with pious indignation. was the young man no better than a heathen, thus to scamp god’s morning hour—to attend so grossly to the fleshly needs and let the soul go wanting? depend upon it, he had not left without something to stay his stomach, though god’s claim on him might wait. the priest turned a cold face to his guest when the latter returned at dusk with the invariable pigeons in his hand. but michael was too tired to notice these altered looks, nor did he seem concerned when at last his delinquency was pointed out to him in no uncertain words. his church, he answered, with mocking defiance, his church was in the woods, at the foot of a towering banyan, or in some dim recess beside a stream; he knelt when the impulse came to him, like some primitive monk wandering with god in the wilds. the priest received this explanation with a dubious silence; he was not at all satisfied with its truth, and yet scarcely knew what to reply, feeling himself helpless and outwitted. he was almost glad that the pigeons, still lying on the floor, gave him an obvious excuse to leave the room.
“the chief has done well to-day,” he said to ngalo, his servant.
the boy laughed.
[248]“excellency,” he said, “the helper does not shoot these pigeons. he buys them for sixpences from our people.”
“impossible!” cried the old man. “thou talkest like a delirious person.”
“excellency,” said the boy, “saving thy presence, the helper lies. behold in this pigeon the truth of what i say. does the chief use gravel in his gun, like a samoan, to whom there is no lead?”
“perhaps he does,” said the priest. “such a thing had not occurred to me.”
“perhaps he does not,” exclaimed ngalo, meaningly. “on tuesday he bought eight birds of my mother’s brother’s son; one was scented and had to be thrown away.”
“ngalo,” cried the priest, with a sudden change of tone, “is there a woman in this hidden business? is there gossip in the village?”
ngalo shook his head.
“he is blameless of such an evil,” he said. “but the village talks continually, and the people ask, ‘what does the helper in the bush?’”
father studby breathed a great sigh of relief.
“he walks about,” he explained, “this way and that, according to the command of the wise doctor in nukualofa. the peace refreshes him and makes him well. i, too, in my youth, used to wander in the mountains and find consolation.”
ngalo’s face showed that he had more to tell.
“the helper does strange things,” he said. “he goes along, even as you say, through the village and[249] the outlying plantations like an uncaring child, with no purpose in what it does. but when he reaches a certain ifi-tree on the land we call lefoa, behold, all is changed. he stops, he looks about, he listens assiduously like a warrior on the outpost. then he puts his gun in a hidden place, and with it his shot-bottle and his powder-bottle; then he girds up his dress to the knee, and runs into the bush with the swiftness of a dog. when he returns, late in the afternoon, it is with the same quickness until the tree is reached. there he takes breath, composes himself, and with slow steps returns seaward buying what pigeons he can on the road.”
“well, and what else, mr. make-the-news?” demanded the father, as ngalo hesitated.
“there are those in the village who know nothing,” he went on, “mere worthless heathen of no family, without consideration or land of their own, living meanly like slaves on the bounty of others, who say strenuously, with the persistency of barking dogs, that the helper is under the spell of saumaiafe!”
the priest stamped his foot with anger. was that superstition never to die? saumaiafe, the fabled witch, who, in the guise of a beautiful woman, lured men to ruin in the bush! saumaiafe, that intolerable myth with which he had been combating for more than eighteen years! saumaiafe!
“thou art a fool!” he cried. “you are all fools. sometimes i feel as though i had spent my life in vain. i, too, was a fool to ever think you teachable.”
“your excellency is right,” said ngalo. “it is an[250] unendurable village altogether, and ignorant beyond anything before conceived. indeed, so weak are men’s hearts in this matter of saumaiafe and the helper that none now go into the bush, even those who are distressed for bamboo, or for red clay with which to beautify their hair.”
the priest turned away without a word. he was almost inclined to laugh as he went back to the other room, and to tell the lay brother the commotion his actions had excited. but the sight of michael’s face somehow daunted him; those suspicious, bloodshot eyes suggested dangers that he was at a loss to name. he remembered the hiding of the gun; the strange deceit about the pigeons; he seemed to see the young man kilting up his cassock and plunging furtively into the dark forest. what did it all mean? he asked himself again and again. mercy of god, what did it mean?
that night he slept but little. he tossed on his hot bed, and whether he lay on this side or on that, the same question dinned in his ears without cessation. he was tortured by thoughts of hidden wickedness in the bush; mysteries of evil in rocky defiles, in caves beside great waterfalls. he rose and went out into the starlight, reproaching himself for his foolishness; and even as he did so, brother michael’s even breathing thrilled on his ears like a vindication. when all was said, what was it that he feared for the young man? what could an old priest fear but the one thing—a woman? and what woman, he asked himself, however dissolute or abandoned, would venture alone into those haunted woods? he could[251] trust superstition to keep the wickedest from such a course. had he indeed become such an old kanaka, that even he, father studby, was to credit the existence of the witch, roving in her naked beauty, a peril to white lay brothers? perish the thought, so degrading and childish! assuredly it was not saumaiafe he had to fear.
he got to bed again, and waited with open eyes for the approach of day. as the cocks began to crow, he heard, with a sudden sinking of the heart, the sound of the lay brother stirring in the next room; heard him dress and go stealthily out, shaking the verandah under his heavy tread.
mercy of god, what did it all mean?
morning after morning he asked himself the same question, as the mysterious routine continued with unabated regularity; and the thought of it haunted him persistently throughout the day as he tried to fix his mind on other things. evening after evening he saw the young man return with his tired face, the pigeons so ambiguously obtained, the gun that had never been fired. they would eat their silent meal together, and then michael would doze in his chair till bedtime. on sunday, the only day he remained at home, the lay brother resigned himself to the unavoidable services of religion, going with the father to mass, and assisting, by his presence at least, the cause to which they had both pledged their lives. the few hours of his leisure were spent at a little lock-fast desk; and the nature of this correspondence became the second mystery of his singular and baffling life. once, looking[252] up from his half-written page, he asked the priest how many feet went to a mile. on another occasion he inquired as to the soundings of the bay, and the most likely point for a steamship pier. steamship piers, and feet in miles! miles of what? whose steamships, and what was there to bring them? mercy of god, what did it all mean?
in the beginning, when father studby had first begun to suspect he knew not what, to worry, to ask himself importunate questions, a way had occurred to him—a way not altogether honourable nor dignified—which could not fail to lead to some elucidation of the mystery. he had put it behind him with decision, as unworthy of himself and his reputation. what! act the spy and follow the young man? see with his own eyes, from the vantage of some thick fern or bush, the nature of that strange tryst? no; let him keep his honour, even if curiosity went unsatisfied—even if that same curiosity were not wholly bad, but inspired by a genuine regard for the young brother’s welfare, for which, as the elder of the two, he was in some degree responsible. it was only right to hold out your hand to a sinking man. but could the lay brother be called a sinking man? ah, if one could be sure of that, how much might be pardoned!
one morning father studby could bear it no longer. as the boards creaked in the next room, he, too, rose and dressed himself, trembling as he did so with a sense of guilt. when the front door at length closed on the lay brother, and his quick step was heard on the path outside, father studby found himself on[253] the verandah, looking after him in the dawn. he would have followed; he even took a few steps down the hill. but the folly of such a course was at once apparent. to act the detective, one must one’s self remain undiscovered. yet how could he hope to elude observation and keep on brother michael’s heels all through the open village and the wide malae? it was manifestly impossible. in the forest it might be different; yes, in the forest, crouching in the thick undergrowth, it would not be so hard to track a man down.
the next night, which happened to be one of a moon almost full, the father lay down ready dressed for a new adventure. a little after one o’clock, he rose, crossed himself, and cautiously quitted the house, making his way through the sleeping village to the path across the swamp. this he followed, slipping on the sodden tree-trunks that served as bridges, until he attained the farther region of cocoanut, banana, and breadfruit plantations. these were in a choking tangle of weeds and lianas; trees thirty feet in height bent under their weight of parasites; others, still higher, were altogether overwhelmed and lost to view in a wall of green; and in the forks of the giant breadfruits orchids were sprouting like the scabs of some foul disease. keeping with difficulty on the half-obliterated track, the priest toiled slowly and painfully through this belt of so-called cultivation, from which, indeed, the village drew no considerable portion of its sustenance, until at last he reached the welcome shelter of the forest. in contrast to the zone through which he had just emerged, opened by man to the[254] furious energy of the sun, the forest floor itself, densely shaded from this fecundating fire, was comparatively open and easy to penetrate. it was dark, of course, dark as the inside of a well; and the father stopped and lighted the lantern he carried in his hand. he peered about him, blinded by the glare, and uncertain for the first time as to his road. yes, he had not been misguided; he could trust the instinct of eighteen years to steer him through these labyrinths. here, indeed, was the ifi-tree of which ngalo had told him, with its low, spreading foliage that had so often concealed michael’s gun. at the thought of the lay brother his heart began to beat, and he crossed himself repeatedly.
he paced off seven, eight, nine, ten yards from the trunk of the ifi; and his feet at that distance carried him into a thicket of fern and wild bananas. he blew out the lantern, and settled himself in the damp ambush so providentially at hand, drawing the big leaves over his head until he could no longer see the stars. from two o’clock—for such he judged the hour when he first took up his station in the ferns—from two o’clock till five he remained huddled in his green lair, praying at intervals, and counting the interminable minutes to dawn. with the first peep of day his impatience turned no less swiftly into dread. what had tempted him to such madness, such dishonour? what if he should be discovered in this shameful nest, and incontinently revealed to the jeers and laughter of the man he thought to track down? what if the lay brother, turning a little aside, should stumble[255] over his cramped and aching body? explain? how could he explain? mercy of god, what a position for an old religious! he underwent spasms of panic; he was of two minds whether or not to rise and run. but the sound of a footstep, of a man’s hoarse breathing, of rustling branches and snapping twigs, suddenly brought the heart to his mouth. the wild animal in him was instantly on the defensive, and he flattened himself to the ground.
he lay like a log, not moving so much as an eyelash. he heard the ring of metal as michael apparently fumbled with his gun in the lower branches of the ifi-tree. the shot-flask fell with a crash, and the brother swore—yes, said “damn” audibly, and picked it up. then there was a silence; an eternity of suspense; then a faint crackling as of parting boughs. the father peeped out, and saw a black figure disappearing inland; an unmistakable black figure, bent and furtive, speeding mysteriously through the gloom. he was up and following in a second, half doubled together, like the man he pursued, eager as a bloodhound with his nose to the spoor. the way, with few intermissions, ran steadily uphill, up and up, faster and faster, until one’s side seemed to crack and one’s heart to burst. up and up, with a swing to the right to avoid the splashing waterfalls of the vaita’i; through groves of moso’oi that stifled the air with sweetness; under towering maalava-trees that seemed to pierce the very sky.
would he never stop?
but the lay brother, without once turning, without[256] once stopping either to rest or to look back, plunged forward with the certainty of a man who knew his way blindfold. they were, now, pursued and pursuer, on the high ridge between two river valleys; on the one hand was the vailoloa, a tributary of the vaita’i, on the other the roaring fuasou, both racing tumultuously to the sea. the father wondered how michael meant to extricate himself from such a cul-de-sac, unless (and the thought dashed his hopes to the ground) he intended to assail the cloudy slopes of mount loamu itself and make a circuit of a dozen miles.
but his question no sooner suggested itself than it was answered. of a sudden the brother stopped on the edge of the fuasou ravine, dropped one leg over, then the other, and began to disappear hand over hand by means of a hidden ladder. the priest stood where he was, transfixed with astonishment. to hurry now seemed unwise. if he had come to ladders he was not improbably near the goal itself. patience! a breath or two, a moment to cast one’s self full length on the ground and wipe the acrid sweat from one’s eyes, and then, having given the lay brother a minute’s start, to descend the precipice in his wake.
father studby approached the brink and looked over. below him, dropping, perhaps, sixteen feet, was a roughly made ladder of bamboo which rested at the bottom on a rocky buttress of the cliff. on the edge of that, again, with its splintered ends appearing through the trampled undergrowth, was a continuing[257] ladder, the second of a series that dropped, one after another, into the deep defile. with guarded steps, and after a prolonged deliberation, the priest let himself slowly down ladder number one; down number two; down number three, which ran so long and straight on the open face of the rock that he faltered, turned dizzy, and had to close his eyes to recover himself; down number four; down number five, at the base of which there descended a zigzag path to the river. following this unhesitatingly, with the noise of rushing water in his ears, he emerged at last on a basaltic shelf not six feet above the bed of the fuasou. from this coign of vantage he gazed about in vain for any sight of michael, until, on creeping to the very edge of the rock, he ventured to look below. there, immediately beneath him, so close, indeed, that he might have touched him with his hand, was the lay brother himself, busy shovelling a bucket full of sand.
“mercy of god!” exclaimed the priest below his breath; and even as he did so, by that singular telepathy which so often confounds us, michael lifted his head and looked his pursuer squarely in the face. for an appreciable instant the pair challenged each other’s eyes in silence; the lay brother’s were kindling and fierce, the priest’s all abashed, like those of a girl.
“come down here,” said michael, peremptorily. “i have something to tell you.”
the priest obeyed, with the mien of a man descending to his execution.
“you old interloper,” cried michael, with a mirthless laugh. “so you are here at last, are you? i[258] have seen it working in your silly old head for weeks. i never looked up but i thought to see your bloody boots!”
this unexpected address only served to add to the old man’s confusion. he looked about him helplessly. such unrestrained language seemed to call for a sharp rebuke. he was shocked and frightened; as much so as a woman insulted on the street; and yet the consciousness of his own position—that of the detected spy—froze the words of correction on his lips.
“of course, you want to know what i have been doing here,” continued michael, in his mocking tone. “if you’ll look into that cradle you will see quick enough. why, man alive, don’t you know what it is?”
amazed and ashamed, father studby touched the dirty sediment with his finger.
“that’s gold!” cried the lay brother.
the priest hastily withdrew his hand and stared at his companion in consternation.
gold!
the priest’s head went round; his heart thumped in his breast, with that word everything was forgotten—his shame, his anger, his humiliation.
“oh, michael!” he broke out incoherently. “oh, michael!”
“i am taking out about twenty ounces a day,” said the lay brother. “some days i have touched forty.”
“mercy of god!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “mercy of god, show me how you do it!”
michael had another cradle ready to hand. it was the first he had made he said, and nothing like so good[259] as the other; but it would do for a day or two until they made a new one—yes, it would do, though a lot of the finer stuff was lost. you did it this way—so—just rocking it like a baby’s cradle; the squares of blanket screened the gold, and you washed them out afterwards in a pan. a place? oh, anywhere along the stream. it was all rotten with gold.
the priest hurried off, and was soon shaking frantically a hundred yards below. he had not been gone an hour when he came hurrying back to where his companion was still at work.
“look at that!” he cried, holding out a trembling hand. “oh, michael, what is it worth?”
“three or four pounds, perhaps,” said the lay brother, indulgently.
“mercy of god!” cried the priest, and he was off again at a run.
a little later he came back again. they were watched, he said; he was certain they were watched. he could hardly speak for agitation. he had heard noises behind him, again, and again, like the laughter of girls in the bush.
but michael only derided his fears. the bush was a creepy place, he said, when you were all alone in it. he had felt the same way himself when he first came, and was eternally peeping over his shoulder and stopping his work to listen. one got used to it after a while; he supposed it must be some kind of a bird.
all day long they worked together in the stream, stopping only at noon for a bite of bread and a pipe. so engrossing was the occupation that one seemed[260] never to grow tired; the glittering reward was always a fresh incentive to try one’s luck again. five pounds, four pounds, six pounds, three pounds! one lost all count, and the level of the tobacco-tin in which the golden sand was poured rose and rose in half-inch tides. father studby was almost angry when his companion declared it was time to go. he was hurt at such a suggestion; he was disappointed; he almost cried. michael showed him his watch. mercy of god, it was past five o’clock! then he remembered, for the first time, his neglected duties: the morning service, the school, the woman who lay dying in nofo’s house; the hundred calls, great and small, that kept his day so busy. he wondered at his own unconcern, at his own apathy and selfishness. he felt that his contrition lacked the proper sting; he asked himself whether, indeed, he cared. he was dizzy with the thought of gold, of cradles and rich pockets, of those bright specks that still stuck to his hands. he followed his companion in a sort of dream, silent and triumphant, trying to fasten on himself a remorse that would not come.
“i’ll never forget the first time i got into that valley,” said michael, on the long road home. “it was the hardest job of my life to follow up that river. i climbed into places that would have scared a sea-faring man; and i was no sooner up one than i would have to risk my life shinning up another, hanging on to lianas and kicking for my life. tired? why, i would regularly lie down and gasp—when there was anything big enough to lie on; and the noise of those[261] falls, those that i was on top of, and those that were still to come—my word! it made me sick to hear them. and when i at last got into the place, and sat down by a big pool, and saw the black sand with the shrimps wriggling in it, i simply said to myself, as quiet as that: ‘here’s gold.’”
when they reached home michael called loudly for brandy. the priest himself was glad of a little after that day of days; placer-mining was a new experience, even to that veteran of labour, and he felt extraordinarily stiff and tired. he remembered with contrition how often in the past he had grudged his companion the stimulant, and he now blushed for those trivial economies with a hot sense of impatience. could he not take out in a day what they represented in a twelvemonth? with a new-found sense of freedom, he helped himself again to the bottle, and, for once in his frugal life, did not measure the allowance with his thumb. then michael, with an elaborate pantomime of secrecy, beckoned him into the other room, and, after shutting and bolting the door, threw open the top of his trunk. beneath the rumpled heap of clothes there were a dozen tin cans of all shapes, some with their own original covers, others capped with packing-paper like pots of jam. the lay brother opened them one by one, lovingly, exultingly, his face shining with satisfaction. each was filled to the brim with coarse gold-dust; each weighed down the hand like an ingot.
“take one, father,” said michael. “it is a little enough return for all your kindness.”
[262]the priest trembled and drew back.
“no, no!” he cried.
“as you like,” said michael, with a tone of affected indifference. “you will be doing as well yourself in a few days.”
“god help me!” exclaimed the priest, and buried his face in his hands.
the lay brother looked down at him strangely and said nothing. he knew something of the hidden conflict at that moment raging in the old man’s breast, and he had too much at stake himself to venture an incautious word. everything depended now upon the priest, for good or evil; it lay with him to keep the secret inviolate, or to spread it to all the world; to accept the partnership thus tacitly offered, and allow them both to reap a colossal harvest; or, standing coldly on the letter of his vows, to open the door to a rush of thousands. the brother held his breath and waited for that supreme decision on which so much depended; he was afraid to speak, afraid even to move, as he looked down at his companion in a fever of suspense. the intolerable silence weighed upon him like a nightmare. he felt that it was the enemy of all his hopes; that every minute of it increased the hazard of his fortunes; that he was being tried, that he was being condemned.
“father,” he broke out, “your name need not appear in this; you need do nothing but hold your tongue; you can be my partner without a soul to know it. as god sees me, i will divide with you to the last penny.”
[263]the old man lifted his head.
“i don’t know what to do,” he said.
“it’s just this,” said michael, regaining a little confidence. “if you spread the news broadcast—and the merest whisper will do that—you will get nothing at all and i will get no more than a beggarly claim. keep it to ourselves and we shall share tens of thousands of pounds.”
“i am a marist priest,” said father studby. “i am a missionary. i am an old man nearing the end of my days. my vows prevent me from withholding any property from my order. i should be acting dishonourably in entering into such an enterprise. i have no right to gain money for myself.”
“who is asking you to keep it for yourself?” demanded michael. “what prevents you giving your order every ounce that falls to your share? do you really think monseigneur would find fault if you brought him a check for a hundred thousand pounds? and i don’t even ask you to keep silence for ever. in six months, or a year, or whatever it is,—when the proper time comes,—you can make a clean breast of it. of course, if you choose the other thing, your order will get nothing, and somehow i don’t think they will be as pleased as you seem to think. why, man, think what the money would do for the cathedral! they could build the new mission-house to-morrow. and remember for one moment what you could do here!”
“no,” said the father, “you have put the matter in a new light. i should fail in my duty if i let this[264] money go from us. they would be right to reproach me if i let the chance slip. i fear i was thinking more of myself than of them.”
after supper they drew out their chairs on the moonlit verandah, and sat for a while in silence. the priest was conscious, amid the uneasy preoccupation that settled on him like a cloud, that in some manner their relative positions had changed. the masterful young man, by reason of his great discovery, on the strength, perhaps, of his more vigorous and determined will, seemed now to arrogate to himself the right to lead. it appeared natural to father studby to acquiesce in this; to subordinate himself to his companion and wait timidly for him first to speak; even to feel a kind of gratitude for the partnership that caused him such qualms. self-effacing and humble, it came easy to him to sink to a second place and accept unquestioningly the orders of a superior. besides, what did he know of gold?
“the first thing we must consider,” began michael, “the first, because it is the most important, is the land. it must all be ours, from the sea to the mountain-tops, from one end of the bay to the other. in a small way i have been already moving in the matter. i have taken options from maunga, leapai, and george tuimaleali’ifano, the three principal chiefs here, for what seems to cover more than the area of the group. i paid them out of hand about twenty dollars each; but the options, to make them good, will call for twenty-eight thousand dollars in chile money. oh, it’s all perfectly right and legal,” he broke out, forestalling[265] an objection he saw on his companion’s lips. “i had the forms drawn up in nukualofa by a lawyer; it cost me three pounds to do it. the only point is how much of the land really belongs to these chiefs, for there are bound to be half a hundred other claimants whose consent will be needed to make the title good; and it will be your part to ferret them out. what you must bear in mind most is that we must nail every inch of the beach. there will be a city here in a month after the news is out; in a year there will be tramways, and newspapers, and brick banks and churches, and wharves with ships discharging. don’t you see, we must have our fist in all that; we must have the lion’s share; every pound the others bring must pay us toll.”
“the others!” cried the priest. “mercy of god, let us keep the thing to ourselves!”
“we couldn’t, if we would,” cried the lay brother. “you might as well try and hide the island as to keep them out. when i was a boy i was in the kattabelong gold rush with my father, and i know what i am talking about. they rose up like waves in the sea—waves and waves of men, bursting in with yells like an invading army. why, it won’t be any time before we are holding our valley with a line of rifles; you will see all hell loose and a thousand devils landing at a time; you will see the horizon black with steamer smoke, bringing in thousands more; you will see men killed and their bodies rotting in the sun. that’s the first stage of a gold rush—the pioneer stage, the stage of murder and crime, of might for[266] right. that will be the time for us to live through as best we can. bit by bit there comes a subsidence into a kind of order. there is a rally of the better sort; the inevitable leader rises to the top. you walk out one morning, and you run across billy this, the terror of the camp, swaying peacefully at the end of a rope. at another turn it is tommy that, with his toes turned up and a ticket on his breast. the third period is the arrival of an official with a tin office and blank forms. who owns the land here? why, we do. who claims that? why, we claim it. who owns the beach from a point beginning at such and such a place, to a point marked b on the new official map? we again! who owns the mountain lakes they talk already of tapping for the water-supply? we do. who owns everything in sight? the same old firm, if you please, sir. but i am not saying we can hold the fort single-handed. god never made the two men that could. but this is what we do. we grant titles, concessions, half and quarter interests to men of the right stamp, and make them our partners against the mob. we take the money they bring, and reserve a substantial profit in their future undertakings. as i said before, we must have our fist in every pocket.”
michael paused and slowly filled a second pipe. the father remained silent, his head resting on his trembling hand. he was staring into vacancy, seeing through his half-shut eyes a myriad of changing pictures.
“michael,” he said, “have you ever thought how it will be with our people?”
[267]“oh, the kanakas!” said the lay brother.
“yes, the samoans,” said father studby. “what is to become of them, michael?”
“they will go,” said the young man, coolly, “where the inferior race always goes in a gold rush. they will go to the devil.”
“oh, michael,” exclaimed the priest, “i cannot bear to think of them!”
“i am sure i am sorry, too,” said the lay brother. “but there is no use blinking our eyes to facts, or feeling miserable about what can’t be helped. the men must learn to work like other people, and i look to you, with your influence here, to line them up on the right side. fifty or sixty of them would be worth everything to us at the start. as for the nigger women, if they are young and pretty, i dare say a use can be found for them, too. i am sorry, but what can you do? you can’t put back the clock, old fellow.”
the priest groaned.
“i wish you had never found the gold!” he cried out passionately.
“well, it is too late now,” said michael.
the next day the old man was up at the first peep of dawn. he had not slept all night, but had lain with open eyes, in a fever of horror and remorse. he walked down to the village and along the sandy beach, and sat miserably for an hour on the bottom of an upturned canoe. one by one, he saw the beehive houses awaken; he saw the polas rise, disclosing dark interiors and smoking lamps; he heard the pāté, that[268] most primitive of human signals, rousing the sluggards to another day, its insistent tapping the prelude to the morning prayer which rose here and there as each household assembled its members. grave old chiefs appeared at the eaves, yawned, gazed at the sun, and exchanged ceremonious greetings; children trooped out sleepily to play; half-grown girls tripped away for water, or sat on logs or strips of matting, in twos and threes, staring out to sea. an imperious old chief began to blow a conch-shell bigger than his head. bu, bu, bu! it sounded, rich and mellow, with faint reëchoings on the woody hills. the young men assembled about him, laughing and shouting, and taking up the note of the conch in a lusty chorus as they called out the names of those still to come. the father remembered that they were to launch the new alia, the huge double canoe, which belonged in common to all lauli’i.
he looked about him mournfully; he felt himself a traitor through and through; he dropped his eyes as every one saluted him and the little children ran up to kiss his hands. he was about to sweep this all away, this life of simplicity, peace, and beauty; he was going to enslave these stalwart men; he was going to give these women to degradation. under the scorching breath of what was called civilisation they would wither and die. god help them! on the ground where those houses now stood there would rise the brick banks and churches of which michael had spoken; offices, stock exchanges, theatres, and roaring bars; dance-halls full of shameless women, and dens where[269] men would be drugged and robbed. and what was he to gain for it all? what was the price for so much sin and misery? wealth for his order! the biggest account in that brick bank, blocks of bonds and shares, sheafs of mortgages! good god, how had he dared set his hand to such an infamy! and if, by way of penance, he were to build a church, the great church of which he had dreamed, with lofty windows of stained glass, and an organ that would shake the very ground, and bells tempered with hundredweights of silver, who, indeed, would there be left to worship in it? what had gold-seekers to do with christ, with god, with the blessed virgin? there might appear, perhaps, a few brown faces, changed and heartbroken, a few shrinking figures in the rags of the disinherited, who would appeal to him for comfort in their extremity. ah, how could he look at them, these that he had wronged?
mercy of god, let the accursed gold lie undug!
in an agony of self-denunciation, he walked hither and thither, without looking, without caring where he went, treading the phantom streets of that city of his dreams. he talked aloud and gesticulated to himself; he knelt at the foot of a palm and prayed; he was overwhelmed by his own powerlessness in the face of that impending calamity. he could see no help, he could find no solace. and yet, all the while he felt, with an intense conviction that belied the supplicating words on his lips, that it lay with him, and him alone, to save his people. thus writhing in the coil of his perplexities, despairing and half mad at the unavertible[270] ruin he knew no way to avoid, he suddenly found himself at his own door, confronting the man who had brought them all to such a pass.
“my word, father!” cried michael, “you don’t look fit for another day up there. why, if you could see your face in the glass it would give you the shakes; you ought to be in bed.”
he would have passed on, but the priest caught him by the arm.
“michael,” he broke out, “michael, stop and listen to me. i have something important to tell you—something that must be said, however little you may like to hear it. i—i find i cannot permit this to go any further.”
the lay brother stopped short.
“you cannot permit what?” he demanded.
“this digging of gold,” cried the priest; “this crime we have in mind against these people, this crime against ourselves. do you count our vows for nothing, our holy vocation, the fact that god has set us apart to guard the flocks he has confided to us? fall on your knees, miserable boy, and beg his pardon for your impiety—here, even as i have done; down, down with you!” the old priest’s voice rose to a scream; he wound his skinny arms round his companion, and calling on the saints for help, tried to force him to the earth.
the lay brother grew suddenly pale, and, with a violent movement, shook himself free.
“you old fool!” he exclaimed. “keep your dirty hands off me, i tell you. leave me alone.”
[271]“i forbid you to take another step,” cried the priest. “in the name of god i forbid you.”
“see here,” said michael, somewhat recovering himself, “i don’t want to quarrel with you. i would rather cut off my right hand than quarrel with you. i need you; and if you only had the sense to see it, you would know that you need me. it would be a rotten business if we ruined each other.”
“why can’t you take the gold you have, and go?” exclaimed the father. “leave the island and content yourself that you have got a competence. it is more already than you could have gained by a lifetime of honest work.”
“i mean to stay just where i am,” returned the lay brother, “regardless of whether you like it or don’t like it; i mean to stand by all my rights, with you if i can, without you if i must. you can do me lots of harm, and skim no end of cream off my milk; though i don’t think you have much to gain by doing it, or that the niggers you are so fond of will be greatly benefited. you have every reason to stand in with me, both for your sake and theirs; and if the money cuts no figure with you, you can surely see the sense of having some say in the subsequent developments. that’s all i have time for now, though if you are more in your right mind by evening i won’t mind talking it over with you again.”
with that last word michael passed on, with an air of assurance implying that all would come right. the old priest remained standing in the path, sullenly looking after him; and he remained long in that[272] attitude, even after the brother’s black figure had dwindled and disappeared into the distance. he felt utterly baffled, utterly conquered; he wondered whether he had any more resistance in him; he asked himself if god had forsaken him.
what was there now left for him to do, helpless and despairing as he was, but to wait with what patience he might for the concluding tragedy? after all, his own soul was clean; except for the one day, when, in the exultation of the discovery, in the madness that had temporarily possessed him, he had soiled his hands with the accursed thing. he remembered, with self-disdain, how he had accepted the partnership held out to him; how he had been dazzled, cajoled, swept altogether off his feet by the importunity of the devil. but that was all done with now. he would have none of the blood-money; if the knell had sounded for his people, he at least would not profit by their ruin, he at least would not transmute their agony into gold. the others could do that; michael and his white savages; the hosts that were to come. had the young man no conscience, no compassion? was he simply a wall of selfishness, against which one might beat in vain? oh, the hypocrite, the months he had lived a lie! oh, the remorseless devil and his gold! how could god endure such things? a man like that ought to be struck down by thunderbolts; people ought to kill him like a mad dog.
the thought made him tremble. if michael were dead, who would ever know about the gold? had it not lain there all these years, latently evil in the earth,[273] no one dreaming of its existence? why should it not continue to lie for ever, powerless for all mischief, or until such a time, perhaps, when men would no longer count it a thing of price; when it would be relegated to museums for the curious to stare at, side by side with the wampum of indians, cowry-shells, and the white beards that pass for money in the marquesas. ah, were it not for michael!
his hands shook and he began to pant for breath. were it not better that one should suffer than the many? one rather than a thousand? one rather than a whole race, with countless generations yet unborn? he looked down on the roofs of the village, a sight endeared to him by the recollections of so many years; he saw, in the brilliant sunshine, amid the houses that had sheltered them in life, the mossy tombs he knew so well. there, under the shadow, lay soalu, his first friend; there, the black-browed puluaoao, the heathen, the libertine, who had first thwarted and then had loved him; there, the earth that covered lala’ai, in whose bright eyes he had looked once and never dared to look again, whose memory was still as sweet to him as on the day she died; there lay to, the silver-tongued; silei, the poet; lapongi, the muaau, with a dozen bullets through his headless corpse; faamuina, tupua, sisimaile—how many there were! he had loved those honest hearts now mouldering in the grave; to some he had given messages to carry beyond the unknown river to those dark comrades who had already gone. he loved their children, now men and women, who had been held out to him[274] by dying arms, and whom he had led crying from the house of bereavement to comfort as best he could. for nigh twenty years he had been the ruler and lawgiver of the bay, the trusted adviser of great chiefs, the faithful priest, the ever-welcome friend. should he desert his people now?
he went into the cook-house, where ngalo was sitting on the steps playing hymns on his mouth-organ.
“ngalo,” he said, “i want your rifle and some cartridges.”
the boy looked up at his master’s face with astonishment,—the ways of whites were past all understanding,—and it was not until he was asked a second time that he rose and sought his gun.
the priest tried to say something by way of explanation, but the words would not come. he could do nothing but take the gun in silence, and charge the magazine with an unsteady hand, while the boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“doubtless your excellency has seen a wild cow in the bush?” ngalo at length inquired.
the father nodded and turned to go.
“blessed be the hunting!” cried the boy after him from the door, before resuming the strains of “there’s a land that is fairer than day.”
“blessed be the home-stayers,” returned the priest, with conventional politeness.
at last he was at the place—at the foot of the second ladder, on the narrow ledge that overlooked the[275] third. he scarcely knew why he had been led to choose this spot, for the top would surely have done as well. but the ladder there was shorter, and a desperate man might let himself drop below, or rush up like lightning before one could pull a second trigger. the third ladder was immensely long; michael himself had once said that it was sixty feet or more; in the middle of it a man was helpless. if he fell it would be to smash to pieces on the rocks beneath; if he elected to climb, it would be in the face of a dozen bullets.
he threw himself on the ground, and sat cross-legged, with the rifle resting in his lap. he was haunted by a dread that the lay brother might still outwit him; that he might burst on him from behind with a mocking laugh; or dart up unexpectedly from the very edge of the cliff. he wondered how michael would look with a bullet through his face. he remembered such a wound in the talavao war, when he had helped to bury the killed; and the thought of it made him shudder. he tried to pray, but the words froze on his lips. what had a murderer to do with prayer? but he was not yet a murderer—not yet. there was still time to draw back; there was still time to save his soul from everlasting hell. how dared he hesitate when all eternity was at stake? he was shocked at himself, at his own resolution, at his own courage and steadfastness. he meant to kill the lay brother, even if the skies were to fall. he was there to make a sublime sacrifice for the sake of those he loved. let hell do its worst. he would say between the torments: “i[276] saved them! i saved them!” his only dread was that his hand might tremble on the trigger; that at the supreme moment he might flinch and fail; that he might throw his weapon from him in uncontrollable horror.
hark! what was that? mercy of god, what was that?
he peeped stealthily over the edge.
michael was standing at the foot of the ladder.
the priest felt a sudden sinking in the region of the stomach. something seemed to say to him: “but that’s flesh and blood; that’s a man!” he would have given worlds to have dispossessed himself of the rifle; lies and explanations crowded to his lips; his teeth chattered in his head. then, as he cowered impotently to the ground, the ladder shook with the weight of michael’s feet on the lowest rung.
he tried to pull himself together; but under the stress of that overwhelming agitation the mechanical part of him seemed to stop. he had to tell himself to breathe; his heart suffocated within his breast. he gasped like a drowning man, drawing in the air with great, tremulous sighs as his choking throat relaxed. suddenly he ceased altogether to be himself; he became a phantom in a dream; a twitching, crazy creature whom he saw through a sort of mist, dizzily centred in a whirl of forest and sky.
he looked over and saw that michael was more than half-way up. the lay brother’s whole body spoke of dejection and fatigue, of a long day’s work not yet ended, and it was evident that the heavy[277] can slung from his neck was for once more of a burden than a satisfaction. he raised his weary eyes, and with a kind of a shock encountered those of father studby peering down at him from above. he cried out inarticulately, and began to redouble his exertions, smiling and panting as he did so.
still as in a dream, the priest leaned boldly over the precipice, and dropped the point of his rifle until its farther sight was dancing across the lay brother’s face, which, in swift gradations, underwent the whole gamut of dismay, astonishment, and utter stupefaction. for an instant michael faltered and hung back; he even slunk down a step, speechless and as white as death. then, of a sudden, he broke out into shrill peals of laughter, followed by a torrent of gabble, brisk, friendly, and tremblingly insincere, such as one might address to a madman from whom it is dangerous to run. he had struck a new place, he cried. my word! there was no end to it—pockets upon pockets only waiting to be washed out. it was at the fifth waterfall, not far from the dam by the banyan-tree, and he had worked there all day with extraordinary success. the other place was good enough, to be sure, with its average of three pounds and more, but this at the fifth waterfall was the real mckay. the father must positively come down and see it at once; positively you could see the nuggets shining in every spadeful; no matter if it were late, the father must come. he had better leave his gun on the top, for who was there to touch it?
father studby never turned from his position, nor[278] made the least pretence of answering the breathless patter with which the brother tried to shield himself. like a rock he waited, while the miserable man below him, sweating with fear, moved slowly into point-blank range. talk as he might, with a volubility that grew increasingly anxious and incoherent, michael realised at last that his time had come. he stopped; he raised his hand convulsively; he cried out in a broken voice: “oh, for god’s sake, don’t kill me!”
even as he did so, the father pulled the trigger.
then he turned, reclimbed the ladders, and went home.
that night the priest went outside the reef in his canoe, and emptied michael’s store of gold-dust into the sea, scattering it like seed on the ocean floor at a point where the tide ran swiftest. on his return, with a cunning that seemed to him the inspiration of the devil, he got out the lay brother’s spare hat and some of the clothes that were in his chest, and left them, to tell their own tale, on the sandy beach. at dawn he made his way back to the valley, still sustained, in spite of all his fatigue, by a consuming fire of activity. he felt that the sands of his own life were running out; that at any moment he might be struck down himself by an unseen hand; that those strange, benumbing premonitions in his brain bade him imperiously to close the chapter of his crime. the horror of dying with his purpose unfulfilled spurred him on to desperate exertions. he stumbled again and again on the path; he had recurring fits of giddiness, when[279] the sun seemed darkened to his eyes, when for a space he half forgot his dreadful errand, and wondered to find himself in the bush. he expected, when he reached the brink of the cliff and began to descend the long, shaky ladders, to feel some recrudescence of the emotions of the day before. but, to his own surprise, he discovered in himself a callousness that set all such qualms at defiance; he had exhausted, in the course of those last forty hours, all his capacity for such paralysing susceptibilities; like some soldier after the battle, he was sated with the horrors through which he had passed, and had become altogether deadened to those about him. even when he stood on the very place from which michael had made his last appeal, and, looking in the air above, more than half expected to see the protruding muzzle of another rifle, he felt, indeed, no answering thrill or perturbation. the burden of his own fatigue seemed of greater moment than this reliving of a tragedy; and the thought of how much there was for him still to do moved him infinitely more.
at the foot of the ladder, shrunken and disordered, the corpse of the dead brother lay tumbled in the grass like a sack. with his face upturned to the sky, his sightless eyes, filming with corruption, his tangled hair in a slime of blood and dirt, he opposed a ghastly barrier to the old priest’s further progress; and seemed, even in death itself, to continue to resist and defy him. but the father had passed the stage when such a sight could turn him back, though he faltered for a moment in the throes of an unconquerable disgust[280] before daring at last to set his foot across the body. even when he did so, driving off the swarming flies with both his hands, it was with an agony of precaution against the least contact with that dead flesh.
descending into the valley, he drew together all the tell-tale evidences of their work below, the cradles, picks, and shovels, the tins and boxes and ends of boards and scantlings, which had been carried, at one time and another, into that secluded place, and buried them in one of the deepest holes along the stream. he broke down the dams that michael had spent days in building, the stones that had been piled aside to uncover the ground of some new pocket, the rough shelters he had raised here and there against the sun; he obliterated with his knife the marks that had been blazed upon the trees, and searched everywhere, with a feverish pertinacity that took him again and again over the same ground, for the least detail that he might have overlooked.
then, in a drip of sweat, and exhausted to such a pitch that he wondered whether he should ever leave the valley alive, he took the spade he had kept by him to the last, and mounted the bottom ladder. as he went he cut away the lashings that bound it to the rock, and from the top sent it headlong behind him. in the same manner, resting painfully at each stopping-place, he detached the second ladder and the third, arriving once more at the wide shelf where he had meant to dig the grave. but his little strength suddenly forsook him; he was overcome by a deadly nausea; he could hardly stand, much less dig. he[281] cast the spade into a thicket, and with unflinching resolution detached the can of gold-dust from the dead man’s neck. that, at least, should not remain to tell its tale, and he let the stuff dribble through his fingers over the cliff.
to do more was impossible. his only thought now was to escape; to climb up into the fresher air above; to save himself while there was yet time. that unmoving, silent thing in the grass, obscurely dissolving into decay, must perforce be left as it was, to bear its horrible witness against him. the declining margin of his strength filled him with a frenzy of fear that if he waited overlong he might wait for ever. between the two risks, the one of a possible detection, the other of a doom unspeakable, he did not venture to pause. he felt, indeed, an extraordinary sense of relief as he began, rung by rung, to rise above the narrow ledge; and with relief a strange fatalism, in which it seemed to him that everything had been predestined from the beginning of the world. as he clung to the ladder, overcome at times by spells of faintness which he knew might bring him to the point of letting go his hold, he was always sustained by the thought that the issue lay with destiny. he would live, or he would fall, as it had been written.
in this singular humour, in which all human responsibility for good or evil seemed to count for nothing, the priest continued to mount the steep face of the cliff. he rested at every second step; he struggled against the recurring fits of giddiness that threatened to dash him from his perch; he fought his way up[282] inch by inch, wondering all the time with a grim composure whether or not he was ever destined to reach the top. when at last he drew himself into a coign of safety and sent the great ladder crashing in his wake, when at last he put his foot on the final goal and lay down beneath the trees, then it was that he began to realise the perils to which he had so nearly succumbed, and to quake with a thousand belated apprehensions.
for an hour he remained huddled in the grass, starting at every sound, and altogether daunted by the thought of returning to the village. how would he dare encounter those familiar faces, take up the threads of the old familiar life, endure those awful days to come when the mystery of michael’s disappearance would be in every mouth? could he trust himself to simulate the concern he was bound to show, the surprise, the alarm, the increasing astonishment and horror as the days passed and there would be still no news of the missing man? ah, could he trust himself? had he in him the power to live such a lie, to go as usual about his duties, to hear the confessions of others when his own tortured heart was so dark with guilt?
when, with faltering steps, he at length reached the village, it was to find the whole place in a tumult. every canoe was afloat; a couple of whale-boats were scouring the outer bay; and the malae, usually so deserted on a hot afternoon, was overrun by an excited throng. had he not, then, heard the news?[283] it was thought that the helper had been drowned that morning, and the boats were now searching for his body! behold, here were the unfortunate’s clothes, found even as they were, and by order of the chief left untouched for the priest himself to see; here, too, was old lefao, the shrill mother of pa’a, who had seen the young man go in to his death, and had heard his sinking cry. “lefao, make for his excellency a repetition of that mournful sound, and show how he cast up his arms as thou watchedst him from the beach.” the old impostor was enjoying all the importance of having such a tale to tell, and the father winced under a pang of shame as he listened to this unexpected confederate.
it was afterwards thought that the sad affair must have unhinged father studby’s mind, for he subsequently began to show symptoms of serious mental disturbance, which culminated a few months later in his tragic suicide. a marble pillar, the outcome of a public subscription in sydney, was raised to the memory of these two martyrs of the cross. in faded letters, beneath their crumbling names, one can still spell out the lies:
in life they were together;
in death they were not divided.
