CHAPTER VIII

LOVE STEPS IN

Two birds were sitting in the branches of the artu tree: Koko had taken

a mate. They had built a nest out of fibres pulled from the wrappings

of the cocoa-nut fronds, bits of stick and wire grass—anything, in

fact; even fibres from the palmetto thatch of the house below. The

pilferings of birds, the building of nests, what charming incidents

they are in the great episode of spring!

The hawthorn tree never bloomed here, the climate was that of eternal

summer, yet the spirit of May came just as she comes to the English

countryside or the German forest. The doings in the artu branches

greatly interested Emmeline.

The love-making and the nest-building were conducted quite in the usual

manner, according to rules laid down by Nature and carried out by men

and birds. All sorts of quaint sounds came filtering down through the

leaves from the branch where the sapphire-coloured lovers sat side by

side, or the fork where the nest was beginning to form: croonings and

cluckings, sounds like the flirting of a fan, the sounds of a squabble,

followed by the sounds that told of the squabble made up. Sometimes

after one of these squabbles a pale blue downy feather or two would

come floating earthwards, touch the palmetto leaves of the house-roof

and cling there, or be blown on to the grass.

It was some days after the appearance of the schooner, and Dick was

making ready to go into the woods and pick guavas. He had all the

morning been engaged in making a basket to carry them in. In

civilisation he would, judging from his mechanical talent, perhaps have

been an engineer, building bridges and ships, instead of palmetto-leaf

baskets and cane houses—who knows if he would have been happier?

The heat of midday had passed, when, with the basket hanging over his

shoulder on a piece of cane, he started for the woods, Emmeline

following. The place they were going to always filled her with a vague

dread; not for a great deal would she have gone there alone. Dick had

discovered it in one of his rambles.

They entered the wood and passed a little well, a well without apparent

source or outlet and a bottom of fine white sand. How the sand had

formed there, it would be impossible to say; but there it was, and

around the margin grew ferns redoubling themselves on the surface of

the crystal-clear water. They left this to the right and struck into

the heart of the wood. The heat of midday still lurked here; the way

was clear, for there was a sort of path between the trees, as if, in

very ancient days, there had been a road.

Right across this path, half lost in shadow, half sunlit, the lianas

hung their ropes. The hotoo tree, with its powdering of delicate

blossoms, here stood, showing its lost loveliness to the sun; in the

shade the scarlet hibiscus burned like a flame. Artu and breadfruit

trees and cocoa-nut bordered the way.

As they proceeded the trees grew denser and the path more obscure. All

at once, rounding a sharp turn, the path ended in a valley carpeted

with fern. This was the place that always filled Emmeline with an

undefined dread. One side of it was all built up in terraces with huge

blocks of stone. Blocks of stone so enormous, that the wonder was how

the ancient builders had put them in their places.

Trees grew along the terraces, thrusting their roots between the

interstices of the blocks. At their base, slightly tilted forward as if

with the sinkage of years, stood a great stone figure roughly carved,

thirty feet high at least—mysterious-looking, the very spirit of the

place. This figure and the terraces, the valley itself, and the very

trees that grew there, inspired Emmeline with deep curiosity and vague

fear.

People had been here once; sometimes she could fancy she saw dark

shadows moving amidst the trees, and the whisper of the foliage seemed

to her to hide voices at times, even as its shadow concealed forms. It

was indeed an uncanny place to be alone in even under the broad light

of day. All across the Pacific for thousands of miles you find relics

of the past, like these scattered through the islands.

These temple places are nearly all the same: great terraces of stone,

massive idols, desolation overgrown with foliage. They hint at one

religion, and a time when the sea space of the Pacific was a continent,

which, sinking slowly through the ages, has left only its higher lands

and hill-tops visible in the form of islands. Round these places the

woods are thicker than elsewhere, hinting at the presence there, once,

of sacred groves. The idols are immense, their faces are vague; the

storms and the suns and the rains of the ages have cast over them a

veil. The sphinx is understandable and a toy compared to these things,

some of which have a stature of fifty feet, whose creation is veiled in

absolute mystery—the gods of a people for ever and for ever lost.

The “stone man” was the name Emmeline had given the idol of the valley;

and sometimes at nights, when her thoughts would stray that way, she

would picture him standing all alone in the moonlight or starlight

staring straight before him.

He seemed for ever listening; unconsciously one fell to listening too,

and then the valley seemed steeped in a supernatural silence. He was

not good to be alone with.

Emmeline sat down amidst the fears just at his base. When one was close

up to him he lost the suggestion of life, and was simply a great stone

which cast a shadow in the sun.

Dick threw himself down also to rest. Then he rose up and went off

amidst the guava bushes, plucking the fruit and filling his basket.

Since he had seen the schooner, the white men on her decks, her great

masts and sails, and general appearance of freedom and speed and

unknown adventure, he had been more than ordinarily glum and restless.

Perhaps he connected her in his mind with the far-away vision of the

_Northumberland_, and the idea of other places and lands, and the

yearning for change the idea of them inspired.

He came back with his basket full of the ripe fruit, gave some to the

girl and sat down beside her. When she had finished eating them she

took the cane that he used for carrying the basket and held it in her

hands. She was bending it in the form of a bow when it slipped, flew

out and struck her companion a sharp blow on the side of his face.

Almost on the instant he turned and slapped her on the shoulder. She

stared at him for a moment in troubled amazement, a sob came in her

throat. Then some veil seemed lifted, some wizard’s wand stretched out,

some mysterious vial broken. As she looked at him like that, he

suddenly and fiercely clasped her in his arms. He held her like this

for a moment, dazed, stupefied, not knowing what to do with her. Then

her lips told him, for they met his in an endless kiss.