Part 21 (1/2)
As Gabrielle stopped and stared at the dusky horde of raised faces and tossing limbs beneath rows of hanging lamps, she seemed to awaken from her trance-like state. She raised her hands and gave a cry. The whole audience, who thought that cry was an exclamation expressing some ecstasy of the moment, renewed their volleys of applause. Only the Rajah knew the truth, the meaning of that cry. He hurried forward, gripped the girl's hand, breathed hotly in her face and murmured, ”Come, Bini, mine!
Wife!” Then the Rajah gave a start. Above the guttural cries of the tambu marriage a.s.sembly one voice had begun to ring out shrill and clear. It was the voice of Maroshe, the Rajah's long-cast-off tribal wife. She had been a beautiful Koiari maid when the Rajah, who was ten years her senior, had first wooed her. But her feminine attractions had been cruelly brief. The girls of the Papuan races leap into full-blown womanhood at fourteen, and at twenty-five, sometimes earlier, have apparently reached old age, their brows and cheeks being seared with wrinkles. But Maroshe still had a remnant of the old fire gleaming in her fine eyes. But it was a fire that boded no good for the amorous Macka as she stood amidst the motley audience and yelled: ”_Tao se cowana tumbi!_” (May the G.o.ds send thee twins!)
Macka heard that voice. It was the one voice on earth that could echo into the depths of his soul and awaken a tinge of remorse in him.
Indeed, as he gripped Gabrielle's wrist he looked against his will across the tiers of uplifted dusky faces till his eyes met the magnetic glance of the scorned Maroshe. Again she held her hand mockingly aloft, and once more yelled: ”_Tao se cowana tumbi!_” The tambu maidens ceased dancing, and stood with fingers to lips beneath the rows of hanging lamps. They knew Maroshe, and also knew that something in her voice revealed the fact that, after all, she still retained her old love for the Rajah. The huge wooden idol, its big eyes agog, was the only face that did not express the horror that seemed to transfix every heathen countenance.
Suddenly Maroshe waved her skinny hand thrice. Then at the sight of her late husband standing there with a new bride, and a white girl to boot, she lowered her wrinkled but still half-beautiful face and disappeared.
Macka gave a sigh of relief to see her go.
Suddenly the audience seemed to be awakened from their horrified stupor.
”Bang! To woomb!” It was the sound of a monstrous heathen drum banged twice only, somewhere in a mountain village.
Once more the Rajah gripped Gabrielle by the wrist. ”Come, my pretty putih bunga!”
According to the ceremonial rites of the creeds of Tumba-Tumba, Gabrielle Everard was now Macka's wife. That orgy of l.u.s.t, toddy and heathen seraglio chanting and dances was a genuine old-time New Guinea marriage ceremony.
Gabrielle hardly realised all that it meant for her. She placed her hand to her brow and stared as though she gazed on some strange sight afar off. The village priests and _darah tiki-tiki_ enchanters and enchantresses beat their skinny b.r.e.a.s.t.s to show their appreciation of the bride's beauty. Such an honour had never been theirs before; for had they not been the means of binding a beautiful white maid in marriage bonds to one of their own race.
Directly the Rajah got Gabrielle outside the tambu house he pressed hot kisses on her face. She struggled in that embrace. Her cries brought hordes of dusky, imp-like girls and mop-headed youths on to the scene.
He desisted in his matrimonial advances. In a moment he had decided to take her to his old _bapa_.
As Gabrielle once more prepared to enter the Rajah's homestead, old _bapa_, and his hideous, baboon-like wife, rushed forth from the palms just behind, and threw wedding gifts of a suggestive nature upon the trembling girl. After they had been in the presence of old _bapa_ for some little time, the Rajah altered his mind, and throwing his body on the sacred mats of his father's home expressed a wish to leave the parental roof and take his bride up to his own private establishment in the mountains (two miles off), a place where he had taken so many victims who had fallen under the lure of his university education and the glory of the Christian apostles.
As the Rajah once more went forth, taking his pretty _putih bini_ up the little village track that led under the feathery palms and ivory-nut trees, he gazed upon Gabrielle's form as only Macka the ex-missionary could gaze. At last they arrived outside a large wooden building (made of thick, rough-hewn mahogany logs) situated on the lower slopes of the Tomba-Tomba Mountains.
The Rajah at once took Gabrielle within. Heaven only knows what the white girl went through before the Rajah realised that it was no brown woman he had in his vile power. There had been considerable trouble before he was finally vanquished and sent about his business; he had done his best before leaving to become friendly with the girl again. He knew by her desperate act in jumping overboard on the _Bird of Paradise_ that she was quite likely to attempt to take her life again. The look in her eyes spoke volumes to him. He told off two of the old ki-ki chiefs, ordering them to keep strict watch over that wooden building where she was imprisoned. So the two barbarian sentinels grunted and smoked by the door and Gabrielle lay down on the thick sleeping mats and tried to rest.
On the second night the Rajah once more crept into her chamber. He fell on his knees. He swore she was his beloved spouse in the eyes of G.o.d and the heathen apostles of his own heathen land. He began chanting and making weird pa.s.ses, swearing all the while that the idols of the tambu temple had been placed in the glow of the moonbeams and had spoken.
”They have teller me to come to thee. They say that you must giver yourself up to me and to my G.o.ds. You understand?”
Gabrielle looked in wonder at the man as he fell at her feet, groaning and wailing. He even wept. She saw the tears in his eyes.
”Gabri-e-arle. I lover th-ee. Thou art my own, my putih bunga,” he repeated over and over again. He pressed hot kisses on her face. But the girl struggled and overcame him. Then he diverted her attention and swiftly placed his old ki-ki drugs in her water goblet. Drugging was, and is, the highest art in New Guinea, and so he had little fear of the results not being according to his requirements. Then he went away. He had not been gone an hour before Gabrielle was startled by hearing the sound of jabbering outside the tambu door. She could distinctly hear a pleading voice, as though some native woman wailed and talked to the sentinels. Then the silence returned, but to her surprise the tappa curtains of her little chamber were suddenly thrown aside, and a strange-looking native woman stood before her. It was Maroshe, the late divorced! She held no stiletto in her hand. No malignant gleam of hatred shone in her eyes; only a weary look of sorrow as she stood before Gabrielle. The unexpected visitor fell on her knees and at once began to chant and mumble mysteriously, as though she thought Gabrielle understood all the magic of her land.
Gabrielle noticed the note of appeal in her voice. She at once took heart and bade her rise.
”What's the matter? What you want?” said Gabrielle, as she tried to speak to the wailing woman in pidgin-English and made many gesticulations. At last the white girl seemed to understand.
It was wonderful how swiftly the souls of two women of different races fathomed each other's secrets, peered into each other's eyes and read all that they wanted to read.
Gabrielle's sorrow had probably brought to the fore the old instincts with which Nature originally endowed the human races so that they might scent danger before it was actually upon them.
Maroshe it seemed could speak a little pidgin-English, and so the two women were able before long to understand the exact position of things.
Then the native girl, for she was not much more than a girl, kissed Gabrielle's hands, fell p.r.o.ne and touched her feet in grovelling subjection. Tears came into Gabrielle's eyes as she realised the woman's sorrow and observed the swift glance of delight in her eyes as she heard that she, the white girl, was a most unwilling prisoner in the tambu marriage chamber. ”I comer gain. Me goer now, nicer, whi ladi. You no putih bunga. Ah!” she said.
Before Gabrielle had realised that the woman was going, Maroshe had slipped out of the door. But she came again, and under circ.u.mstances that Gabrielle never cared to recall.
The next night the Rajah returned again to the solitary building by the mountains of Tomba-Tomba. He sent his chieftain sentinels away to their huts. He stooped his turbaned head as he entered the low doorway, and approached the girl with the old fascinating look in his fiery eyes.