Part 3 (2/2)

I went with that lovely boy on sh.o.r.e. The Captain could not resist my persuasive appeals for a short leave of absence, and so I went. Perhaps it would not have been advisable for him to have suppressed me; and he made a courteous virtue of necessity.

I had leave to stop till evening, unless I heard a signal gun, upon hearing which I was to return immediately on board, or suffer the consequences.

Now, I am free to confess, that the consequences didn't appal me as we swung off from the vessel, where I had been an uneasy prisoner for many days; and I fell to chatting with Niga, my dusky friend, in a sort of desperate joy.

Niga was a regular trump. He had more than once piled on horseback behind me, in the sweet days when we used to ride double,--yea, and even treble, if necessary. There was usually a great deal more boy than horse on the premises; hence this questionable economy in our cavalry regulations. Niga told me many things as we drew near the reef: he talked of nearly everybody and everything; but of all that he told me, he said nothing of the one I most longed to hear about. Yet, somehow or other, I could not quite bring myself to ask him, out and out, this question. You know, sometimes it is hard to shape words just as you want them shaped, and the question is never asked in consequence.

The reef was growling tremendously. We were drawing nearer to it every moment. I thought the chances were against us; but Niga was self-possessed, and as he had crossed it once that morning, and in the more dangerous direction of the two,--that is, against the grain of the waves,--I concluded there was no special need of my making a scene; and in the next moment we were poised on a terrific cataract of glittering and rus.h.i.+ng breakers, s.n.a.t.c.hed up and held trembling in mid-air, with the canoe half filled with water, and I perfectly blind with spray.

It was a memorable moment in a very short voyage; and the general verdict on board s.h.i.+p, where they were watching us with some interest, was, that it served me right.

When my eyes were once more free of the water, I found myself in the midst of the natives, who had been waiting just inside of the reef to receive us; and, as they recognized me, they laid a hand on the canoe, as many as could crowd about it, fairly lifting it out of the water on our way to the sh.o.r.e, all the while wailing at the top of their voices their mournful and desolate wail.

It was impossible for me to decide whether that chant of theirs was an expression of joy or sorrow; the nature of it is precisely the same, in either case.

So we went on sh.o.r.e in our little triumphal procession, and there I was embraced in a very emphatic manner by savages of every conceivable s.e.x, age, and colour. Having mutely submitted to their genuine expressions of love, I was conducted--a willing and bewildered captive--along the beach, around the little point that separates the river from the sea, and thence by the river-bank to the house I knew so well. I believe I looked at every dusky face in that a.s.semblage, two or three times over, but saw not the one I sought.

What could it mean? Was he hunting in the mountains, or fis.h.i.+ng beyond the headland, or sick, or in prison, that he came not to greet me?

Surely, something had befallen him,--something serious and unusual,--or he would have been the first to welcome me home to barbarism!

A strange dread clouded my mind: it increased and multiplied as we pa.s.sed on toward the house that had been home to me. Then, having led me to the outer door, the people all sat there upon the ground, and began wailing piteously.

I hastily crossed the narrow outer room, lifted the plaited curtain, and entered the inner chamber, where I had spent my strange, wild holiday long months before.

I looked earnestly about me, while my eyes gradually became familiar with the dull light. Nothing seemed changed. I could point at once to almost every article in the room. It seemed but yesterday that I had stolen away from them in the grey dawn, and repented my desertion too late.

I soon grew accustomed to the sombre light of the room. I saw sitting about me, in the corners, bowed figures, with their faces hidden in grief. There was no longer any doubt as to the nature of their emotion.

It was grief that had stricken the household, and the grief that death alone occasions. I counted every figure in the room; I recognized each, the same that I had known when I dwelt among them: he alone was absent.

I don't know what possessed me at that moment. I felt an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh, as though it were some _masque_ gotten up for my amus.e.m.e.nt. Then I wished they would cease their masking, for I felt too miserable to laugh. Then I was utterly at a loss to know what to do; so I walked to the old-fas.h.i.+oned bed--our old-fas.h.i.+oned bed--in the corner, looking just as it used to. I think the same old spider was there still, clinging to the canopy; the very same old fellow, in his harlequin tights, that we used to watch, and talk about, and wonder what he was thinking of, to stop so still, day after day, and week after week, up there on the canopy. I threw myself upon the edge of the bed, my feet resting upon the floor; and there I tried to think of everything but that one dreadful reality that would a.s.sert itself, in spite of my efforts to deny it.

Where was my friend? Where could he be, that these, his friends, were so bowed with sorrow? The question involved a revelation, already antic.i.p.ated in my mind. That revelation I dreaded as I would dread my own death-sentence. But it came at last. A woman who had been humbling herself in the dust moved toward me from the shadow that half concealed her. She did not rise to her feet; she was half reclining on the mats of the floor, her features veiled in the long, black hair of her race. One hand was extended toward me, then the other; the body followed; and so she moved, slowly and painfully, toward the bedside.

It was his mother. I knew her intuitively. Close to the bed she came, and crouched by me, upon the floor. There, with one hand clasped close over mine, the other flooded with her copious tears, and her forehead bowed almost to the floor, she poured forth the measure of her woe. The moment her voice was heard, those out of the house ceased wailing, and seemed to be listening to the elegy of the bereaved.

Her voice was husky with grief, broken again and again with sobs. I seemed to understand perfectly the nature of her story, though my knowledge of the dialect was very deficient.

The mother's soul was quickened with her pathetic theme. The frenzy of the poet inspired her lips. It was an epic she was chanting, celebrating the career of her boy-hero. She told of his birth, and wonderful childhood; of his beautiful strength; of his sublime affection, and the friend it had brought him from over the water.

She referred frequently to our former a.s.sociations, and seemed to delight in dwelling upon them. Then came the story of his death,--the saddest canto of the melancholy whole.

How shall I ever forgive myself the selfish pleasure I took in striving to remodel an immortal soul? What business had I to touch so sensitive an organism; susceptible of infinite impressions, but incapable, in its prodigality, of separating and dismissing the evil, and retaining only the good,--therefore fit only to increase and develop in the suitable atmosphere with which the Creator had surrounded it?

Why did I not foresee the climax?

I might have known that one reared in the nursery of Nature, as free to speak and act as the very winds of heaven to blow whither they list, could ill support the manacles of our modern proprieties. Of what use to him could be a knowledge of the artifices of society? Simply a temptation and a snare!

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