Part 9 (1/2)
It is difficult to find an excuse for Miss Matilda She was a hter, committed to the sacred cause of respectability in a far land Motauri was a gentleh chief and a descendant of kings; but he was also a native and a pagan Strictly, it should have been nothing to Miss Matilda that Motauri lookedwoodland God, with a skin the exact shade of new heather honey, the ringlets of a faun, the features of a Ro a chief in the flower valley of Wailoa meant that Motauri owned a stated nu except to swih, to chase the rainbow-fish a fatho as handsoh after hi of his gentle glance This was all very well so long as thehis own people It took a different aspect when he turned the said glance on Miss Matilda, hite and sli and did creork in the veranda of her father's house behind the splendid screen of the passion-vine
Now falling in love with a s that are not done--that scarcely endure to be spoken of We have it on the very highest authority that the East has a stubborn habit of never being the West Where two eligible persons of opposite sex are concerned the stark geographic, not to say ethnologic fact corimly into play, and never these twain shall ht
Yet Miss Matilda had beenMotauri Perhaps the passion-vine was to blaether respectable One cannot live in an atmosphere of passion-vine--and that embraces all the heady scent and vivid tint and soft luxuriance of the islands where life goes as sweetly as a song; the warm caress of the trade-wind, the diaan-pipe of the reef, the bridal-veiling ofof palnal of fireflies at dusk--one cannot live with all this and confine one's eray and blue worsted yarns At least one has trouble in so doing while the thrill and spring of youth reuarded by natural discretion
Nothing could have been cooler than the gleaham, as she moved sedately down themore demure than the droop of her lashes under the rim of the severe, Quakerish bonnet, as she smote the wheezy old melodeon for the dusky choir In that flawless face, a little faded, a little wearied, you would have sought vainly for any hint of hard repression, for any ravaging of secret revolt--unless, like Hull Gregson, the trader, you had e before your hot eyes throughout long, sleepless nights; unless, ed to see it by the h the rifts of the passion-vine Then, perhaps
Certainly her excellent father would have been the last unprompted and of his own motion, to develop any such suspicion Pastor Spener had learned to fight shy of so many suspicions, so many discoht have been led to wonder occasionally at his own presence and his oork; at the whole imposed and artificial shadow of a bleak civilization upon these sunny isles, these last remnants of an earthly paradise
He seldoular inadequacy ofconverts, and keeping them But there were times when he chanced to consider, perhaps, some drunken derelict outsprawled by a hospitable breadfruit, or again so past in all the naive absurdity of Mother Hubbard and brogans--these were ood pastor; led races, of white exile and brown host, of lonely invader and docile subject
”We have our little trials--” he said, and sht be, from his pink, bald brow and laid therayed hair atop
For had he not also his mission, his infant class, his home, his books, his reports?--a whole solid and established institution from which to draw the protective formulae of respectability Even in the lands of the passion-vine, the Pastor Speners will inevitably gather such formulae about them as a snail secretes its shell
”Undeniably,” he said, abstractedly, ”we have our perplexities Guidance is not always forthco in these matters Would you take the littleto purchase a new oil lamp for the chapel--would you take that money to buy yellow ribbons for Jeremiah's Loo?”
”Why does Jereoing to marry that tramp shell-buyer from Papeete At least she consents to a cereirl I've never had much hold over her It would be in sohter were seated in the arbored veranda at the daily solemn rite of tea For many years Pastor Spener had been used to hold forth on sins and vanities at this hour before twilight For many years the meek partner of his joys and sorrows had assisted there, dispensing the scantthe prim bulk of the tea-urn--that sure rock of respectability the world around And since she had passed to the tiny cemetery on the hillside, it had not been easy to alter the patriarchal custom; not easy always to remember that the place across froer, and in the ways of the world and the flesh, a wholly innocent auditor
Ordinarily Miss Matilda did little to remind him Ordinarily she listened with the same meek deference But Miss Matilda's state of mind for some time past had been very far from ordinary; it chanced that on this particular afternoon the private, the very private, affairs of Miss Matilda had brought her to a condition altogether extraordinary--alested, ”or anything about hiood”
”Still you are willing to marry the one, but considering all things perhaps not strange
For the last thirty e below, Miss Matilda had been conscious of a tension in the domestic air
Up to his mention of Jeremiah's Loo an oppressive silence had brooded, and fro her over his teacup there was reason to fear that so more troublous than yellow ribbons had ruffled his pink serenity If Miss Matilda had been the tre kind she would have trembled now at her own temerity--the result of indefinable impulse And yet when his answer caer, with an unwonted touch of embarrassment
”What would you have ely primitive How many months is it since you saw another white woman here in Wailoa, for instance?
They wish to wed--that's enough”
”The irl is a native, and you would marry them so readily?”
Miss Matilda put the query with perfect outward calm The Reverend Spener himself was the one to clatter his cup