Rachel Hepburn believed that her first lover had been drawn to her—when she was twenty-two years old—by the way in which she played the violin. She played it remarkably well; and she was also exceedingly pretty, in a frank open-air fashion. Until she was seventeen, she had lived on the mountainous coast of Cumberland, where she rode astride, and swam half a mile every morning before breakfast. Her family nicknamed her "the Shetland Pony"; and that was her picture to the life, as she used to come in from her swim, with her face glowing and her dark eyes like mountain pools, and the thick mane of hair blowing about her broad forehead. Her sturdy build helped the picture at the time; but she had shot up in height since then, and the phrase was no longer applicable. At twenty-four, she became beautiful, and her music began to show traces of genius. Unfortunately, she had the additional attraction of ten thousand pounds a year in her own right; and, when the marriage settlement was discussed, she proposed to share the money with her three younger sisters. The young man behaved very badly. She told him—very quietly—that this was the result of her own folly; for, in her family, hitherto, marriages had always been "arranged." He replied—for he was an intellectual young man, who understood women, and read the most advanced novelists—that she was one of those who were ruining England with their feudal ideas. Then they parted, the young man cursing under his breath, and Rachel lilting the ballad to which she had hitherto attributed her good fortune. "Maxwelton's braes are bonnie, where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie gi'ed me her promise true, Gi'ed me her promise true, which ne'er forgot shall be, And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I'd lay me doon and dee." He had quoted it so often in his letters that she was justified, perhaps, in thinking that it had influenced her fate. "You know, darling, that those words were supposed to tell the love of a soldier, who died in Flanders, fighting for England, more than a hundred years ago, and when you sing them, I feel that I, too ..." So it was the obvious thing to toss at him as she went through the door, holding her head up almost as gallantly as a soldier. But he didn't seem to mind, and the parting was final. Rachel, apparently, minded very much indeed; but she kept it to herself and her violin, till on a certain day, she decided that she must escape from all her old surroundings and forget. Her guardian was the only person she consulted, and he made no criticism of her scheme of travel so far as she divulged it. She had been brought up to complete freedom, while her parents were alive, and in the six years since their death, she had proved that she was capable of taking care of herself. He was wise or unwise enough not to let her know that he understood her trouble. But he tried to express a certain sympathy in his gruff parting words, "London is a grimy cavern." "Yes, and the people are grimy, too," she replied, waving her hand to him, as she went out into the fog. She looked brighter than she had looked for months past. His last impression of her was that she looked as roses would look if they could wear furs and carry stars in their eyes. She had been studying the sailings of the ocean-steamers for some time, but it was not her intention to follow the traveled routes more than was necessary. Her brain was busy with a new music, the music of the names in a hundred tales that she had read. The Golden Gate and Rio Grande called to her like chords in a Beethoven symphony. Yokohama and Singapore stirred her like Rossini. But it was the folk-song of travel that she wanted, something wilder and sweeter even than Tahiti, some fortunate Eden island in the South Seas. Egypt and Ceylon were only incidents on her way. They only set the fever burning a little more restlessly in her veins; and her first moment of content was when the yacht of thirty tons, which she chartered in San Diego, carried her out to the long heave of the Pacific, and turned southward on the endless trail to the Happy Islands. This was a part of her scheme about which she had not consulted any one at home, or she might have received some good advice about the choice of her ship. It was a sturdy little craft, with small but excellent cabins for herself and her maid. The captain and his wife were apparently created for her special benefit, being very capable people, with the quality of effacing themselves. The crew, of half a dozen Kanakas in white shirts and red pareos, was picturesque and remote enough from all the associations of cities to satisfy her desire for isolation. The maid was the only mistake, she thought, and she did not discover this until they had been a fortnight at sea. Her own maid had fallen ill at an early stage of her travels, and had been sent home from Cairo. Rachel had engaged this new one in San Diego, chiefly because she thought it necessary to take somebody with her. When Marie Mendoza had come to do Rachel's hair at San Diego, she had a somewhat pathetic story to tell about a husband who had deserted her and forced her to work for her living. Rachel thought there might be two sides to the story when she discovered that the captain was playing the part of Samson to this Delilah. It was a vivid moonlight picture that she saw in the bows one night, when she had come up on deck unexpectedly for a breath of air. Captain Ryan was an ardent wooer, and he did not see her. Marie Mendoza looked rather like a rainbow in the arms of a black-bearded gorilla, and Rachel retired discreetly, hoping that it was merely a temporary aberration. She would have been more disturbed, probably, if she had heard a little of the conversation of this precious pair. "I tell you, it's a cinch, Mickey. I never seen pearls like 'em. They're worth fifty thousand dollars in Tiffany's, if they're worth a cent. She keeps 'em locked up in her steamer-trunk, but I seen her take 'em out several times." "Well, I've been hunting pearls up and down the South Seas for twenty years, and never had a chance of making good like this." But Rachel did not hear the conversation, or she might have been able to change the course of events considerably. She might even have taken an opportunity of explaining to Marie that the real pearls were in the bank at home, and that the necklace in her trunk was a clever imitation, useful when she wished to adorn herself without too much responsibility, and worth about thirty-five pounds in London, or perhaps a little more than one hundred and fifty dollars in New York. But Rachel knew nothing of all this; and so, on a certain morning, when the Seamew dropped anchor off the coral island of her dreams, she went ashore without any misgivings. It was an island paradise, not recognized by any map that she had seen, though Captain Ryan seemed to know all about it. Rachel had particularly wanted to hear the real music of the islanders, and Captain Ryan had assured her that she would find it at its best among the inhabitants of this island, who had been unspoiled by travelers, and yet were among the most gentle of the natives of the South Seas. Marie Mendoza pleaded a headache, and remained on board; but the Captain and his wife accompanied Rachel up the white beach, leaving the boat in charge of the Kanakas. A throng of brown-skinned, flower-wreathed islanders watched them timidly from under the first fringe of palm trees; but the Captain knew how to ingratiate himself; and, after certain gifts had been proffered to the bolder natives, the rest came forward with their own gifts of flowers and long stems of yellow fruit. Two young goddesses seized Rachel by the hands, and examined her clothes, while the rest danced round her like the figures from the Hymn to Pan in "Endymion." Before the morning was over, Rachel had made firm friends of these two maidens, who rejoiced in the names of Tinovao and Amaru; and, when she signified to them that she wanted to swim in the lagoon, they danced off with her in an ecstasy of mirth at the European bathing dress which she carried over her arm, to their own favorite bathing beach, which was hidden from the landing-place by a palm-tufted promontory. It was more than an hour later when she returned, radiant, with her radiant companions. She was a superb swimmer, and she had lost all her troubles for the time in that rainbow-colored revel. She thought of telling the Captain that they would stay here for some days. She wanted to drink in the beauty of the island, and make it her own; to swim in the lagoon, and bask in the healing sun; to walk through the palms at dusk, and listen to the songs of the islanders. But where was the Captain? Surely, this was the landing-place. There were the foot-prints and the mark of the boat on the beach. Then she saw—with a quick contraction of the heart—not only that the boat was missing, but that there was no sign of the yacht. She stared at the vacant circle of the sea, and could find no trace of it. There was no speck on that blazing sapphire. IIHer last doubt as to whether she had been deliberately marooned was removed by Tinovao, who pointed to a heap of her belongings that had been dumped on the beach, all in accordance with the best sea-traditions, though it was due in this case to a sentimental spasm on the part of Marie Mendoza, who remembered the kindness of Rachel at San Diego. The heap was a small one. But Rachel was glad to see that it included her violin-case. She knew that her stay was like to be a long one. They had been looking for islands out of the way of ships; and she knew that it might even be some years before another sail appeared on that stainless horizon. The thieves would disappear, and they were not likely to talk. Her own movements had been so erratic that she doubted whether her friends could trace her. But she took it all very pluckily; so that the round-eyed Amaru and Tinovao were unable to guess the full meaning of her plight. They came to the conclusion, and Rachel thought it best to encourage them in it, that she was voluntarily planning to live amongst them for a little while, and that the yacht would of course return for her. They had heard of white people doing these strange things, and they were delighted at the prospect. In a very short time, they had lodged Rachel in a hut of palm leaves, with all the fruits of the island at her door. They carried up the small heap of her possessions, and she gave them each a little mirror from her dressing bag, which lifted them into the seventh heaven. Thenceforward, they were her devoted slaves. Rachel discovered, moreover, while they were turning over her possessions and examining her clothes, that her ignorance of their language was but a slight barrier to understanding. They communicated, it seemed, by a kind of wireless telegraphy, through that universal atmosphere of their sex. They helped her to do her hair; and, as it fell over her shoulders, they held it up to one another, admiring its weight and beauty. When it was dark, there came a sound of singing from the beach; and they crowned her with fresh frangipanni blossoms, and led her out like a bride, to hear the songs of the islanders. It was a night of music. In the moonlight, on the moon-white sands, a few of the younger islanders, garlanded like the sunburnt lovers of Theocritus, danced from time to time; but, for the most part, they were in a restful mood, attuned to the calm breathing of the sea. Their plaintive songs and choruses rose and fell as quietly as the night-wind among the palms; and Rachel thought she had never heard or seen anything more exquisite. The beauty of the night was deepened a thousand-fold by her new loneliness. The music plucked at her heart-strings. Beautiful shapes passed her, that made her think of Keats: "Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain." She murmured the lines to herself; and while her lips yet moved, a young islander stood before her who might have posed as the model for Endymion. He was hardly darker than herself, and, to her surprise, he spoke to her in quaint broken English. "Make us the music of your own country," was what she understood him to say, and Tinovao confirmed it by darting off to the hut and returning with the violin. Rachel took it, and without any conscious choice of a melody, began to play and sing the air which had been pulsing just below the level of her consciousness ever since she had left England: "Like dew on the gowan lying is the fa' of her fairy feet, And like winds in simmer sighing, her voice is low and sweet, Her voice is low and sweet, and she's a' the world to me, And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I'd lay me doon and dee." The islanders listened, as if spellbound; but she could not tell whether the music went home to any of them, except the boy who lay at her feet with his eyes fixed on her face. When the last notes died away, the crowd broke into applause, with cries of "Malo! Malo!" But the boy lay still, looking at her, as a dog looks at his mistress. Then the moonlight glistened in his eyes, and she thought that she saw tears. She bent forward a little to make sure. He rose with a smile, and lifted her hand to his face, so that she might feel that his eyes were wet. "Tears," he said, "and I only listen. But you—you make the music, and no tears are in your eyes." He looked into her face. "No," she said, "there are no tears in my eyes." Then she continued hurriedly, as if speaking to herself (and perhaps only a musician would have felt that the catch in her voice went a little deeper than tears): "That's one of the things you lose when you go in for music. It used to be so with me, too." "I like your music," the boy went on. "My father—English sailor. My mother—learn speak English—from him. She teach me. My father only stay here little time. I never see English people before this." Rachel looked at him with a quick realization of what his words meant. The boy was at least eighteen years old. "You remember no ship coming to this island?" she said. "No. I never see my father. He only stay here little time. My mother think for long time he will come again. That is how she die, only a little time ago. Too much waiting. Make some more music. You have made my ears hungry." But Rachel was facing the truth now, and she played and sang no more that night. IIIFor a week or two, Rachel spent much time alone, thinking hard, thinking things out as she had never done before. She did not quite understand her isolation till the first shock of the full discovery had passed. Then, one morning, sitting alone, and gazing out over the spotless blue, she found herself accepting the plain fact, that this might indeed be for ever. She found herself weighing all the chances, all that she had lost, and all that yet remained to her. It dawned upon her, for the first time, that youth does not lightly surrender the fulness of its life, at the first disillusionment. She knew now that she would have recovered from that first disastrous love-affair. She knew now that she had always known it, and that her search had been only for some healing dittany, some herb of grace that would heal her wound more quickly. She faced it all—the loss of her birthright as a woman, the loss of the unknown lover. She saw herself growing old in this loneliness. She weighed everything that was left to her, the freedom from all the complications of life, the beauty of her prison, the years of youth and strength that might yet rejoice in the sun and the sea, and even find some companionship among these children of nature that rejoiced in them also. She compared them with the diseased monstrosities, the hideous bodies and brutal faces that swarmed in the gray cities of Europe. She saw nothing to alter her former opinion here. She was condemned at any rate to live among a folk that had walked out of an ode by Keats. But always, at the end, she pictured herself growing old, with her own life unfulfilled. Then, one day, a change came over her. She had lost all count of time in that island of lasting summer; but she must have been marooned for many months when it happened. One afternoon, when she had been swimming with Tinovao and Amaru, the two girls had run up into the woods to get some fruit, leaving Rachel to bask on the beach alone. The sunlight of the last few months had tinted her skin with a smooth rosy brown that would have made it difficult to distinguish her from a native, except for the contours of her face and the deep violet of her eyes, as she lay on that milk-white sand. Before she followed her friends, she thought she would take one more ride through the surf. She made her way out, through the gap in the reef, till she had reached the right distance. Then she rested, treading water, while she waited for the big comber that was to carry her back again. It was her civilized intelligence, perhaps, that betrayed her now, for she turned her back to the sea for a moment, while she drank in the beauty of the feathery green palms and delicate tresses of the ironwood that waved along the shore. She was roused from her dreams by the familiar muffled roar of the approaching breaker, and she turned her head a few seconds too late to take the rush of it as it ought to have been taken. It was a giant and, for almost the first time in her life, she knew the sensation of fear in the sea, as the green crest crumbled into white high over her. In that instant, too, she caught a glimpse of a figure on the reef watching her. It was the figure of Rua, the boy who spoke English; and, as the breaker crashed down with all its tons of water over her head, she carried with her the impression that he was about to dive to her rescue. She was whirled helplessly, heels over head, downward and downward, then swept forward with the rushing whirlpools in the blackness below, like a reed in a subterranean river. She knew that if she could hold her breath long enough, she would rise to the surface; but she had reckoned without the perils of the gap in the reef. Twice she was whirled and caught against a jagged piece of coral, which would probably have killed her if it had struck her head. She took the warning, and held her arms in the best way she could to ward off any head-blow. A lacerated body would not matter so much as the momentary stunning that might prevent her from keeping afloat when she rose. At last, when it seemed that she could hold her breath no longer, she shot with a wild gasp to the surface again. She found that she was only half-way through the gap, not in mid-stream where she would have been comparatively safe, but in an eddy of boiling water, close to the reef and among sharp fangs of coral that made it impossible to swim. All that she could do, at the moment, was to hold on to the coral and prevent herself from being lacerated against it. The sharp edges of the little shells, with which it was covered here, cut her hands, as the water swirled her to and fro; but she held on, and looked round for help. Then she saw that she was not fated to receive help, but to give it; and, like lightning in a tropic night, the moment changed her world. She had no time to think it out now; for she saw the face of Rua, swirling up towards her through the green water, and it looked like the face of a drowned man. His head and arms emerged, and sank again, twice, before she caught him by the hand and drew him, with the strength of a woman fighting for life, to her side. She was not sure whether he was alive or dead; but she saw that, in his hasty plunge to help her, a dive that no native would have taken at that place in ordinary circumstances, he had struck one of the coral jags. Blood was flowing from his head and, as she held him floating there helplessly for a minute, the clear water went away over the white coral tinted with little clouds of crimson. She waited for the next big wave, thinking that it would save or destroy them both. Happily, it had not broken when it reached them; and, as they rose on the smooth back of it, she held her companion by the hand, and struck out fiercely for a higher shelf of the reef. It had been out of her reach before; but the wave carried them both up to its level, and left them stranded there. From this point, the reef rose by easy stages; and, with the aid of two more waves, she was able to lug Rua to a point where there was no risk of their being washed away, though the clear water still swirled up about them, and went away clouded with red. She lay there for a moment exhausted; but, as her strength came back to her, the strange sensation that flashed through her when she had first come to the surface returned with greater force. Much has been said and sung about the dawn of wonder on the primitive mind. This was an even stranger dawn, the dawn of wonder on a daughter of the twentieth century. It seemed to her that she was looking at the world for the first time, while she lay there panting and gazing out to sea, with those red stains on the white coral, and her hands gripping the slender brown hands of the half-drowned islander. It seemed that she had returned to her childhood, and that she was looking at a primal world that she had forgotten. She saw now that Rua was breathing, and she knew instinctively that he would recover. The wave of joy that went through her had something primitive and fierce in it, like the joy of the wild creatures. She felt like an islander herself, and when the sea-birds hovered overhead, she called to them, in the island tongue, and felt as if she had somehow drawn nearer to them. She looked at the sea with new eyes, as if it were a fierce old play-mate of her own, an old tiger that had forgotten to sheath its claws when it buffeted its cubs. There was a glory in the savor of life, like the taste of freedom to a caged bird. Only it was Europe now, and the world of houses, that seemed the cage. The sea had never been so blue. The brine on her lips was like the sacramental wine of her new kinship with the world.... Then, looking at Rua's face, as the life came back to it, a wave of compassion went through her. Every contour of that face told her that this boy also was a victim of her own kindred. He, too, was marooned, and more hopelessly than herself, for there must be a soul within him that could never even know what it had lost or what it hungered for, unless, ... unless, perhaps, she could help him out of the treasures of her own memory, and give him glimpses of that imperial palace whence he came. It was growing dark when they slipped into the water of the lagoon and swam slowly towards the beach. There, she helped him to limp as far as his hut, neither of them speaking. He dropped on his knees, as she turned to go, and laid his face at her feet. She stayed for a moment, looking at him, and half stooped to raise him; but she checked the impulse, and left him abruptly. At the edge of the wood, she turned to look again, and he was there still, in the same attitude. There was a dumb pathos in it that reminded her curiously of certain pictures of her lost world, the peasants in the Angelus of Millet, though this was a picture unmarred by the curse of Adam, the picture of a dumb brown youthful god, perfect in physical beauty, praying in Paradise garden to the star that trembled above the palms. Many women (and most men) in their unguarded moments, impute their own good and evil to others; read their own thoughts in the eyes around them; pity their own tears, or the tears of Vergil, in the eyes of "Geist." But Rua was praying to the best he knew. IVThe prayer was a long one. It lasted, in various forms, for more than a year. At dawn, she would wake, and find offerings of fruit and flowers left at her door by her faithful worshiper; and often she would talk with him on the beach, telling him of her own country, about which he daily thirsted to hear more; for the more he learned, the more he seemed to share her own exile. Music, too, they shared, that universal language whose very spirituality is its chief peril; for it is emotion unattached to facts, and it may mean different things to different people; so that you may accompany the sacking of cities by the thunders of Wagner, or dream that you see angels in an empty shrine. Sometimes, in the evening, Rua would steal like a shadow from the shadows around her hut, where he had been waiting to see her pass, and would beg her to play the music of her own country. Then she would sing, and he would stand in the doorway listening, with every pulse of his body beating time, and one brown foot tapping in the dust. One night, she had been wandering with Tinovao and Amaru by the lagoon, in which the reflected stars burned so brightly that one might easily believe the island hung in mid-heaven. She looked at them for a long time; then, with her arms round the two girls, who understood her words only vaguely, she murmured to herself: "What does it matter? What does anything matter when one looks up there? And life is going ... life and youth." She said good-night to her friends, and laughingly plucked the red hibiscus flower from behind the shell-like ear of Tinovao as they parted. When she neared her door, a shadow stole out of the woods, and stood before her on the threshold. His eyes were shining like dark stars, the eyes of a fawn. "Music," he pleaded, "the music of your country." Then he saw the red flower that she wore behind her ear, exactly as Tinovao had worn it. He stared at her, as Endymion must have stared at Diana among the poppies of Latmos, half frightened, half amazed. He dropped to his knees, as on that night when she had saved him. He pressed his face against her bare feet. They were cold and salt from the sea. But she stooped now, and raised him. "In my country, in our country," she said, "love crowns a man. Happy is the love that does not bring the woman to the dust." There followed a time when she was happy, or thought herself happy. It must have lasted for nearly seven years, the lifetime of that dancing ray of sunlight, the small son, whom she buried with her own hands under a palm-tree. Then Rua deserted her, almost as a child forsakes its mother. He was so much younger than herself, and he took a younger wife from among the islanders. When she first discovered his intention, Rachel laughed mockingly at herself, and said—also to herself, for she knew that she had somehow lost the power to make Rua understand her,—"Have you, too, become an advanced thinker, Rua?" But Rua understood that it was some kind of mockery; and, as her mockery was keeping him away from his new fancy, and he was an undisciplined child, he leapt at her in fury, seized her by the throat, and beat her face against the ground. When she rose to her feet, with the blood running from her mouth, he saw that he had broken out two of her teeth. This effectively wrecked her beauty, and convinced him, as clearly as if he had indeed been an advanced thinker, that love must be free to develop its own life, and that, in the interests of his own soul, he must get away as quickly as possible. Thereafter, he avoided her carefully, and she led a life of complete solitude, spending all her days by the little grave under the palm-tree. She lost all count of time. She only knew that the colors were fading from things, and that while she used to be able to watch the waves breaking into distinct spray on the reef, she could only see now a blur of white, from her place by the grave. She was growing old, she supposed, and it was very much like going to sleep, after all. The slow pulse of the sea, the voice of the eternal, was lulling her to rest. When the schooner Pearl, with its party of irresponsible European globe-trotters, dropped anchor off the island, it was the first ship that had been seen there since the arrival of the Seamew, the first that had ever been seen there by many of the young islanders. The visitors came ashore, shouting and singing, the men in white duck suits, with red and blue pareos fastened round their waists; the women in long flowing lava-lavas of yellow and rose and green, which they had bought in Tahiti, for they were going to do the thing properly. The lady in yellow had already loosened her hair and crowned herself with frangipanni blossoms. The islanders flocked around them, examining everything they wore, and decorating them with garlands of flowers, just as they had done with Rachel's party. The new arrivals feasted on the white beach of the lagoon, in what they believed to be island fashion; and when the stars came out, and the banjos were tired, they called on the islanders for the songs and dances of the South Seas. The lady in yellow tittered apprehensively, and remarked to her neighbor in green, that she had heard dreadful things about some of those dances. But she was disappointed on this occasion. The plaintive airs rose and fell around them, like the very voice of the wind in the palm trees; and the dancers moved as gracefully as the waves broke on the shore. When the islanders had ended their entertainment, amidst resounding applause, one of the young native women called out a name that seemed to amuse her companions. They instantly echoed it, and one of them snatched a banjo from the hands of a white man. Then they all flew, like chattering birds, towards a hut, which had kept its door closed throughout the day. They clamored round it, gleefully nudging each other, as if in expectation of a huge joke. At last, the door opened, and a gray, bent old woman appeared. She was of larger build than most of the islanders, and there was something in her aspect that silenced the chatterers, even though they still nudged each other slyly. The native with the banjo offered it to her almost timidly, and said something, to which the old woman shook her head. "They say she is a witch," said the Captain of the Pearl, who had been listening to the conversation of the group nearest to him. "They want her to give us some of her music. She used to sing songs, apparently, before her man drove her out of his house, in the old days, but she has not sung them since. They think she might oblige our party, for some strange reason. Evidently, they've got some little joke they want to play on us. You know these Kanakas have a pretty keen sense of humor." The visitors gathered round curiously. An island witch was certainly something to record in their diaries. The old woman looked at them for a moment, with eyes like burning coals through her shaggy elf-locks. They seemed to remind her of something unpleasant. A savage sneer bared her broken teeth. Then she took the banjo in her shaking hands. They were queerly distorted by age or some disease and they looked like the claws of a land-crab. She sat down on her own threshold, and touched the strings absently with her misshapen fingers. The faint sound of it seemed to rouse her, seemed to kindle some sleeping fire within her, and she struck it twice, vigorously. The banjo is not a subtle instrument, but the sound of those two chords drew the crowd to attention, as a master holds his audience breathless when he tests his violin before playing. "Holy smoke!" muttered the owner of the banjo, "where did the old witch learn to do that?" Then the miracle began. The decrepit fingers drew half a dozen chords that went like fire through the unexpectant veins of the Europeans, went through them as a national march shivers through the soul of a people when its armies return from war. The haggard burning eyes, between the tattered elf-locks, moistened and softened like the eyes of a Madonna, and the withered mouth, with its broken teeth, began to sing, very softly and quaveringly, at first, but, gathering strength, note by note, the words that told of the love of a soldier who fought in Flanders more than a hundred years ago: "But it's a white woman," said the lady in the yellow lava-lava, who had expected only the islanders to shock her, "a white woman gone native! How disgustin'!" "Ssh!" said somebody else, "she's going to give us more." The old witch hardly seemed conscious of their presence now. The slumbering sea of music within her was breaking up the ice which had sealed and silenced it for so long. She nodded at them, with shining eyes, and muttered thickly, an almost childlike boast: "Oh, but I could do better than that once. My fingers are stiff. Wait!" She went into her hut, and returned with the violin. Tremblingly, she opened a little packet of violin strings. "It's my last," she said. "I've kept it very carefully; but it won't be as good as it used to be." The throng watched her breathlessly, as she made ready, and the trade-wind hushed itself to sleep among the palms. "When I was in Europe last," she said, "it seemed to me there was darkness coming. People had forgotten the meaning of music like this. They wanted discord and blood and wickedness. I didn't understand it. But you could see it coming everywhere. Horrible pictures. Women like snakes. Books like lumps of poison. Hatred everywhere. Even the musicians hated each other; and if they thought any one had genius, O ever so little of that—do you know—I think they wanted to kill. Of course, I chose wrong. I ought to have stayed and fought them. It's too late now. But you know the meaning of this? It's the cry over the lost city, before the windows were darkened and the daughters of music brought low." "Crazy as a loon!" whispered the lady in the yellow lava-lava. The old woman stood upright in the shadow of a tall palm-tree, a shadow that spread round her on the milk-white beach like a purple star. Then her violin began to speak, began to cry, through the great simple melody of the Largo of Handel, like the soul of an outcast angel. At the climax of its infinite compassion, two strings snapped in quick succession, and she sank to the ground with a sob, hugging the violin to her breast, as if it were a child. "That was the last," she said. They saw her head fall over on her shoulder, as she lay back against the stem of the palm, an old, old woman asleep in the deep heart of its purple star of shadow; and they knew, instinctively, even before the Captain of the Pearl advanced to make quite sure, that it was indeed the last. |