The Garden of God (Romance Classic). Henry De Vere Stacpoole
shadow that had touched the Ranatonga lying far below like a toy ship, when his companion roused him.
“Look!” said Lestrange. He was pointing to the west, to a place where the trees broke towards the lagoon bank, leaving an open space green to the water.
“Look!” said Lestrange. “Can you not see their house?”
“I see nothing,” replied the sailor, shading his eyes against the sun. “House! No, sir, I can see nothing.”
“There by the clearing, the shadow of the trees has taken it, not far from the water’s edge, close to that tree cluster that stands out a bit into the open.”
The sailor gazed again in the direction pointed out. Ah, yes, now that it was pointed out he could see something that was neither rock nor bush nor tree. Even at full moon it would not have attracted the eye of a casual gazer, small as it was and elusive, like a nest in a branch.
Yes, it was a structure of some sort, and even at this distance he thought he could make out a roof, but why, if it was a house, had the builders chosen their habitation in a spot so remote, so far from the break? The wind could not say, nor the untroubled sea, nor the great sun that builds everything from his habitation to the dreams of men.
“Come!” said Lestrange. He rose from his half recumbent position and began to descend from the rock. On the sward, where the rock’s shadow was lengthening itself, he stood for a moment with head bowed and eyes half closed; then, turning, he led the way downhill towards the west.
For quarter of a mile the cocoanut groves held, then came a great belt of mammee-apple, pandanus trees and bread-fruit, through which they passed to find a valley where the ferns grew high—the strangest surprise—for here great blocks of hewn stone lay cast about and terraces of stone stood in ruin, disrupted by the rains of the ages and the roots of screw pines working beneath them.
Fallen from its place, half prone amidst the ferns, lay a great stone idol, an island god of the long ago. The heat of the day lingered here where no wind came and where the ferns stood in stereoscopic stillness in a silence broken only by the faint hum of insects.
Stanistreet had seen temple places like this amongst the islands, but the sight was new to Lestrange. He stood for a moment gazing at the fallen god, the blocks strewn about, the terraces lit by the amber light of evening. Then he passed on down the valley and beyond, where a trodden path showed them the way past a grove of hootoo trees to the sward they had seen from the hill-top and where stood the house.
Close to the left-hand belt of trees and with a little garden beside it where toro grew, it stood, leaf-thatched and built of cane. It had no door. The light of evening entered, exposing all the simple contents, mats carefully and neatly rolled up, a shelf where stood bowls cut from cocoanut shell, a ball of twine, an old pair of scissors—all arranged neatly and in order. Some fish spears stood, leaning against a corner, and in a small bowl at the extreme end of the shelf some flowers, once bright but now withered. Yet for all the cunning of the construction the house had an unfinished look, as though the builders had been called away before its full completion.
Lestrange stood before the open door of the house, so trustful, so naive, so like a nest, this house built by the lost children whose forms he had seen but a day ago, whose voices he had not heard for so many years. It was the sight of the neatly rolled mats, the bowl of withered flowers and the carefully arranged things on the shelf that shattered for a moment the great contentment born of his vision and the surety that he was to meet the children soon. These things said “Emmeline” as plainly as a voice—Emmeline so neat, so careful of things, so fond of flowers.
The ghost child came running to him across the sands of memory, those sunlit sands that swallow so many and such great things.
He broke down and, leaning his arm against the door-post, hid his face.
Stanistreet turned on his heel and walked rapidly down to the lagoon edge, he was hit nearly as badly as the other. That house, coming after all the other things, would have moved the most callous heart.
He stood with his arms folded, looking across the lagoon water to the reef. The lagoon here was broad and shallow, corallised here and there by ridges of coral, the reef so low and far that he could see the evening light on the Pacific, the sound of whose surf on the far outer beach came like the voice of sleep.
Ah, well, it was the fate of everything and they had lived their day and been happy; there was no use in a man letting his feelings get the better of him—no use in snivelling; just as well they had come on the house: it would cure Lestrange of that madness about meeting them, it had broken down that terrible contentment—a bitter medicine, but better than the disease that threatened him.
He stood for a long while to give the other time to recover, then he turned.
Lestrange had recovered. He was standing before the house with one of the fish spears in his hand, examining it. Stanistreet walked up to him.
“Look,” said Lestrange, “how cleverly he has made the barbs; he was always clever with his hands.”
He placed the spear back where he had found it and then, with a last look at the house, turned away.
“Come,” said he, “we must get back to the ship, for there is much to be done before she sails, and I want her to sail to-morrow. I will go to her with you now and return in the morning.”
“Return?” said Stanistreet. “Are you not going with us?”
“I will never see San Francisco again,” replied Lestrange. “My home is here with my children who are coming to meet me, who have met me, for I feel them on either side of me. I cannot see them yet, but they will show themselves to me in time.”
Stanistreet made no reply for a moment. He stood looking round him at the fading lagoon soon to be showered with starlight, and the trees stirring to the wind in the ghostly light of evening.
“And the child?” said he at length.
“Their child will remain with me,” said Lestrange.
CHAPTER VII
THE KEEPER OF THE LAGOON
When Lestrange and Stanistreet had been rowed ashore, Bowers set the lads to work clearing up and putting things straight.
The Ranatonga was a schooner of the old Pacific type built at Velego and for the sandalwood trade by men who recognised that speed and cargo space are almost synonymous terms. Her lines were lovely, and her character; never would she play a man false and, to use Bowers’ words, a child might have steered her. He had fallen in love with her and the fo’c’sle hands cursed his passion, which kept them Flemish-coiling, polishing and deck-scrubbing—all but Jim, bo’sun’s mate and second in importance after Bowers.
Kearney was his other name, but it was never used. He had no letters; like Bowers, he could not write his name, but he was great with his fists in an emergency, and he could do anything with his hands.
Jim had been in the gold rush—there were dead men lying in One Horse Gulch and on Dows Flat that had known him, and the scars on his hide were many—but he had made no profit out of the business. Then the sea took him, and drink, and the sandalwood traders used him, so that he was never out of employment one way or another—always in schooner work and escaping by some miracle the whalemen’s crimps at a time when shanghaied men were bringing thirty dollars a head.
When Bowers had bathed and dried off Dick, the child had run to this scamp, clasped him round the legs and looked up into his hard-bitten face laughing and with evident approval.
It was a new moment in the life of Jim and the start of what almost amounted to a quarrel between him and Bowers, for Jim had danced the child in his arms, to say nothing of the fact that the child had shown a predilection for Jim.
Jealousy!