Sestrina

“ But Sestrina’s fears were groundless, Hawahee had no intention of swerving from his resolve to build a raft and leave the isle.
“Beloved Sestra, do not fear: the shells and the gods will still moan on in the temple of the valley when we are far away and helpless on the great waters.” ”

“ Just before sunset on that same day, Sestrina came back from her swim in the lagoon and stood before Hawahee, who at once stopped chopping firewood and gazed upon her. A deep light shone in Sestrina’s eyes as she stood before the Hawaiian arrayed in the tappa bodice, rami and sandals.
On seeing the light in the girl’s eyes Hawahee’s eyes also brightened, the lines of care at once smoothed from his brow. The next moment Sestrina blushed deeply and realised, for the first time, that, however hard a woman strives to conceal the secret thoughts of her heart, her eyes must give her away. ”

“ Every hanging bough sparkled with the steady lights of the hundreds of hanging garden lamps. The mystery of night and the stars and the dark orange groves was in perfect harmony with Sestrina’s type of beauty. Perhaps Sestrina knew this, for she stood perfectly still under the mahogany tree’s branches, staring earnestly at Clensy as the warm scented winds drifted her tresses in confusion over her shoulder. The young Englishman could hardly believe his luck as the girl took his arm and walked away with him into the shadows as though he was a very, very old acquaintance! ”

“ The flush of health, the oval, dimpled face, the coral red lips and lustrous eyes might well have brought the light of admiration to the eyes of men placed in less loneliness than that which passed over the Hawaiian’s solitary days. Perhaps it was the glory of Sestrina’s mass of hair that made her look like some wonderful picture that represented the zenith of woman’s physical loveliness. But the perfect beauty of Sestrina gleamed in the earnest, spiritual light of her eyes, the expression on the tremulous mouth, and the calm pure brow. ”

“ And as he gazed down the moonlit orange groves he fancied he could see the happy phantoms of his imagination dancing in impish delight on the footpath. The rich odours from decaying pineapples and the hanging overripe lemons and limes made a perfect atmosphere for Clensy’s romantic meditations. And Sestrina?—her heart fluttered, it was almost like a dream to her, too! ”

“ And so Sestrina was not greatly surprised when Hawahee came back, after his sudden departure for the yam patch, and said: “Who is this man who haunts your dreams so much by night, Sestra, he whose eyes dwell in the bosom of your imagination, aye, so deeply that the gleam sears my lonely soul like fire?” ”

“ He had placed a withered flower that had faded in the statue’s reality—in Sestrina’s hair—in the small, cold hand’s palm.
“O Atua, O Pelé, goddess of beauty and innocence, why is my heart afflicted? Why are the visionary shadows of my unhappy soul when shaped into cold stone, sweeter than the realities I touch with living desire, sweeter than the wines of love, sweeter than the touch of passionate lips?” ”

“ Sestrina saw Clensy as some wonderful apostle of her own simple faith, the religion which was Père Chaco’s, the Catholic priest, the one who had encouraged the girl’s spiritual dreams since she was a toddling child. It was a pure woman’s faith, and was destined to expand, to grow like a lovely tree on the lonely desert isle—the soul which is in all of us—set in the boundless seas encircled by the dim starlit horizons of mortal imagination. ”

“ How strange is human nature with all its habits and old faiths and long-nursed beliefs!
The next moment a flood of sympathy came to Sestrina’s heart—her jealousy of the gods had vanished—she felt a great wave of sorrow come to her soul in the thought of the poor shells moaning in the valley and she and he so far away!
“Hawahee, we shall be happy when we are out on the great water?”
“Sestra, we will; and see, already the hands of the gods are painting the colours of the sunset with gold and the warm blood of my desires; ’tis a sure sign that they will not be angry.” ”

“ Might stand astonished staring at the stars! EIGHT years had passed since the winds had drifted Sestrina and the lepers into the vast solitude of that isle in the Pacific Ocean. Even on that lonely island world, Time’s flight had wrought wondrous changes.
On the elevation, just above the shore reefs by the lagoons, stood five lumps of coral stone which had been fashioned so as to resemble crosses. It was the tiny necropolis where the lepers, Lupo, Rohana, Steno and their two blind comrades lay asleep with all their mortal desires and sins in the dust under the waving palms. ”

“ Clensy bade her sit down on the couch. And there, as Clensy held her hand, while the fireflies danced about the wine-scented flowers of the open casement and the Haytian nightingale sang in the palms, Sestrina took delicate sniffs from her salt-bottle and slowly told him all that troubled her. ”

“ When the sun had set and the shadows were thickening the stars over the seas, Sestrina stole from her chamber. She knew that Hawahee had gone down to the shell-temple to pray to his beloved gods. As she passed by the bamboos on the ridge of the little hill to the right of the valley she looked seaward. Even the big, calm, bright moon seemed to stare with curiosity as it peered gently over the sea’s horizon, its lovely eye sending a searchlight stream of ethereal beams over the dark palms of the isle. Away she ran! ”

“ Just as the Greek goddess brought Promethean fires from Heaven, and ills to destroy peace of mind, Sestrina had brought a fatal casket of love and passion to that isle’s sole humanity—Hawahee’s sorrowing heart. She too was fatally All-gifted. Some far-seeing Aphrodite of inscrutable spite had robed her with beauty’s charm only that she might stir the heart of man to rebellious thoughts, turning his dreams from the gods to misery, and plunging her own peace of mind into the depths of despair, Hope alone remaining. ”

“ The sorrow and uncertainty of their parting became his calvary of anguish and the heart-crying creed which nourished a dim yearning hope of some future. He vaguely realised that, though he might never see Sestrina again, she had brought him boundless wealth; that he could kneel at the altar of his great faith in her love and get as near the realisation of his best ideals as man can get when he imagines the world holds things that will correspond with his soul’s conceptions of the beautiful. ”

“ The delicate hint thrown out in that epistle thrilled Clensy. What else could Sestrina mean than to hint that he could, with ease, climb up the grape-vine which grew thickly on the walls below her chamber? In another moment he had taken a small bit of paper from his pocket and had written:
“Beloved Sestrina,—If woman loves deeply, how deep must be the love of man? I will be with you to-morrow night a few moments after dusk. The grape-vine outside your chamber’s window will bear the sweetest thoughts and fruits of love as it brings me to your lips and eyes. ”

“ Sestrina’s wakeful brain noticed these things, and she looked into Hawahee’s face and smiled.
“All is well; you are safe, Wahine,” he muttered. Then he left her and hurried down to the beach to see how it fared with his comrades. No sooner was he out of sight than Sestrina sat up and stared around her. Her brain was the swift-seeing, imaginative kind. As she looked towards the distant moonlit seas and heard the palms sighing over her head, a cruel flash of intense realisation came to her.
“’Tis an isle where no one lives. I am cast away, lost for ever. ”

“ And it was this weird, mournful chime which came to Hawahee’s and Sestrina’s ears as they crept under the tall breadfruit trees, so that they might kneel in prayer before the altar of the shell-gods!
It was a grand, masterly fashioned work, a temple of the highest art attainable by mortal man. With the infinite patience of religious fervour, and a deep insight and belief in the divine omnipotence of his pagan gods, Hawahee had scraped and cut, through years of toil, three of the larger shells till they resembled the faces of the goddess Pelé and the gods Kauhilo and Atua. ”

“ Even the four blind men would stand out on deck and bathe in the hot sunlight. It was a terrible sight, though. Sestrina would turn her eyes away as they put forth their withered, almost fleshless hands and chanted strange prayers to the skies. On the fourth night after the typhoon, one of the blind lepers rushed out of the forecastle and jumped overboard. Sestrina and Hawahee, who were standing aft by the cuddy with an oil-lamp, sorting out tinned fruits that they had found in the lazaretto, heard a cry and at once rushed forward. ”

“ Had not Sestrina told him a few moments before that she was not allowed away from the palace precincts without old Claircine?
“Ah, foolish Engleesman,” said Sestrina as she fell back on her fascinating patois, and placing her finger to her lips as though in deep meditation, gave Clensy a roguish glance. Ah, how swift-witted is woman in comparison with dull-witted man? Sestrina had solved the problem as to the means of their meeting again. She well remembered how Dumas’ heroes and heroines managed such delicate matters as lovers’ meetings when a parent stood in the pathway of happiness. ”

“ She became the unattainable, the mystery and spiritual wonder of the great undiscovered lands that must ever lie beyond the skylines of mortal dreams, filling human hearts with passionate longing and yearning for far-off divine things. All that was beautiful in sounds lingered in Clensy’s memory of Sestrina’s voice; her songs resolved into a dream, and became the unheard music of his own soul, till he seemed to hear the dim murmurings of the shells on the shores of the ocean that divides romance from reality. ”

“ I, Hawahee the leper, might make thee unclean. I, who love thy shape, might cast the reality of your loveliness as a loathsome object into the grave by the side of Rohana, Steno and the rest.” In the terror of his thoughts and the possibility that he had lost Sestrina for ever, he leaned forward to embrace the passionless grace of that symbolical form which his imagination had incarnated, endowed with his soul’s ideas. In the agony of his unsatisfied imagination, he embraced the air. The winds wafted the rich odours of the breadfruits to his nostrils. ”

“ Saying this, he and Sestrina turned their footsteps and walked up to the palm-sheltered spot where Lupo, Steno, Rohana and the rest lay buried.
Each one of the lepers had died with Hawahee’s blessing to soothe their souls. For when they were at last stricken deep by the ravages of the terrible scourge, they had crept up to Hawahee’s and Sestrina’s dwellings and begged forgiveness—forgiveness which had at once been given. Lupo had been the first to go. ”

“ And often, when Hawahee had crossed the hollow and entered his hut for sleep, the imaginative castaway girl would lie in her own chamber and fancy she could hear the dead laughter of children and the calling voices of the dying lepers, shrieking and calling somewhere out in the wind swept palms, that sighed fitfully on the valley’s ridge by her homestead. In these dreams Sestrina fully realised that, to the lepers at least, her lonely desert isle was a haven of refuge, an oasis in the desert of their life’s misery. ”

“ Though Royal Clensy had never heard Sestrina make one remark that could be construed as “clever” by a worldly or deadly sane man, she had set her magic seal on his soul. From that moment it was Sestrina’s advice and views that would impress him more than the advice of great philosophers. Had he been writing a book or building a new kind of house, he would have yearned to plan the book’s plot or build the house according to Sestrina’s views on the matter. Old men who took snuff and weighed their words well and wisely before they spoke, would tug their beards of wisdom—in vain! ”

“ Directly Hawahee entered his hut, he rubbed his eyes and remembered what a strange thing he had done. Tears were in his eyes as he thought of Sestrina’s grief. “I have brought pain to her heart, Sestra, the flower, the light of my soul, the goddess of my soul’s misery! Surely the gods of the valley have deserted me that they should make me feel that I was as one dead, for did I not go and dig my grave by the side of Rohana’s sleep, and my other comrades who dwell in Langi? ’Tis the madness of desire, the long darkness and thirst which has made me forget I still breathe the light.” ”

“ All the visionary beauty of woman shone on her brow and in the fear of her parted lips as she called his name.
Slowly, as though in some terror of the fascination and dread over which her soul had no control, her pale hands clung, pulled at the canvas folds of the doorway’s old curtain. Again and again she pushed and pulled till slowly that fragile curtain, which divided the wandering Sestrina from the sleeper, was swept aside, revealing Hawahee’s handsome form and sleeping face. He tried to rise. He knew that he dreamed, and yet he knew that his dream was the unseen reality of the truth! ”

“ Sestrina had taken a flower from her hair and was fastening it on to the lapel of his coat, and, as she leaned forward, he kissed her brow and touched her shining tresses with his lips.
“But surely there are beautiful girls in Angleterre! I’ve read about them in books,” murmured the pretty Haytian maid as she looked up into Clensy’s face in a wistful way. ”

“ Listen; I have a plan in my heart that will outwit the gods; but Sestra, you too must pray well; and in a very little while we shall be able to fall into each other’s arms far away from the power of the gods that I have made out of the reverence of my soul’s sorrow. Maybe, O Sestra, I know that the great White God of Langi is a kind god, but still, Atua, Kauhilo, and Pelé have been kind to me—I am cured of the kilia (leprosy) . ’Tis the gods who have done this thing to me, so how can I sin in their sight?”
“Cured! Hast thou no fear of anything?” Sestrina gasped. ”