The Great Taboo

THE CUSTOMS OF BOUPARI.

Human nature cannot always keep on the full stretch of excitement.  It was wonderful to both Felix and Muriel how soon they settled down into a quiet routine of life on the island of Boupari.  A week passed away—­two weeks—­three weeks—­and the chances of release seemed to grow slenderer and slenderer.  All they could do now was to wait for the stray accident of a passing ship, and then try, if possible, to signal it, or to put out to it in a canoe, if the natives would allow them.

Meanwhile, their lives for the moment seemed fairly safe.  Though for the first few days they lived in constant alarm, this feeling, after a time, gave way to one of comparative security.  The strange institution of Taboo protected them more efficiently in their wattled huts than the whole police force of London could have done in a Belgravian mansion.  There thieves break through and steal, in spite of bolts and bars and metropolitan constables; but at Boupari no native, however daring or however wicked, would ever venture to transgress the narrow line of white coral sand which protected the castaways like an intangible wall from all outer interference.  Within this impalpable ring-fence they were absolutely safe from all rude intrusion, save that of the two Shadows, who waited upon them, day and night, with unfailing willingness.

In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy one.  The natives brought them freely of their simple store—­yam, taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens.  They required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender recognitions.  Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar European one of “the higgling of the market.”

The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way altogether unpleasing.  It was their customs and superstitions, rather than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible.  Personally, they seemed for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures.  At first, indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix.  But by degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious courtesy.  The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen.  The old men would raise their eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes till she got almost out of sight.  The women would bring their pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of their favored little ones.  “The gods of Heaven,” they would say, with every sign of pleasure, “have looked graciously upon our Unaloa.”

At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and deference which the natives displayed toward them.  But after a time Felix at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.  The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel’s innocence and beauty.  As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own tongue, “Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds!  You are good.  You are kind.  You are a daughter of the Sun.  We are glad you have come to us.”

A young girl soon makes herself at home anywhere; and Muriel, protected alike by her native innocence and by the invisible cloak of Polynesian taboo, quickly learned to understand and to sympathize with these poor dusky mothers.  One morning, some weeks after their arrival, she passed down the main street of the village, accompanied by Felix and their two attendants, and reached the marae—­the open forum or place of public assembly—­which stood in its midst; a circular platform, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under whose broad, cool shade the people were sitting in little groups and talking together.  They were dressed in the regular old-time festive costume of Polynesia; for Boupari, being a small and remote island, too insignificant to be visited by European ships, retained still all its aboriginal heathen manners and customs.  The sight was, indeed, a curious and picturesque one.  The girls, large-limbed, soft-skinned, and with delicately rounded figures, sat on the ground, laughing and talking, with their knees crossed under them; their wrists were encinctured with girdles of dark-red dracæna leaves, their swelling bosoms half concealed, half accentuated by hanging necklets of flowers.  Their beautiful brown arms and shoulders were bare throughout; their long, black hair was gracefully twined and knotted with bright scarlet flowers.  The men, strong and stalwart, sat behind on short stools or lounged on the buttressed roots of the bread-fruit trees, clad like the women in narrow waist-belts of the long red dracæna leaves, with necklets of sharks’ teeth, pendent chain of pearly shells, a warrior’s cap on their well-shaped heads, and an armlet of native beans, arranged below the shoulder, around their powerful arms.  Altogether, it was a striking and beautiful picture.  Muriel, now almost released from her early sense of fear, stood still to look at it.

The men and girls were laughing and chatting merrily together.  Most of them were engaged in holding up before them fine mats; and a row of mulberry cloth, spread along on the ground, led to a hut near one side of the marae.  Toward this the eyes of the spectators were turned.  “What is it, Mali?” Muriel whispered, her woman’s instinct leading her at once to expect that something special was going on in the way of local festivities.

And Mali answered at once, with many nods and smiles, “All right, Missy Queenie.  Him a wedding, a marriage.”

The words had hardly escaped her lips when a very pretty young girl, half smothered in flowers, and decked out in beads and fancy shells, emerged slowly from the hut, and took her way with stately tread along the path carpeted with native cloth.  She was girt round the waist with rich-colored mats, which formed a long train, like a court dress, trailing on the ground five or six feet behind her.

“That’s the bride, I suppose,” Muriel whispered, now really interested—­for what woman on earth, wherever she may be, can resist the seductive delights of a wedding?

“Yes, her a bride,” Mali answered; “and ladies what follow, them her bridesmaids.”

At the word, six other girls, similarly dressed, though without the train, and demure as nuns, emerged from the hut in slow order, two and two, behind her.

Muriel and Felix moved forward with natural curiosity toward the scene.  The natives, now ranged in a row along the path, with mats turned inward, made way for them gladly.  All seem pleased that Heaven should thus auspiciously honor the occasion; and the bride herself, as well as the bridegroom, who, decked in shells and teeth, advanced from the opposite side along the path to meet her, looked up with grateful smiles at the two Europeans.  Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish recognition.  As the bride drew near, she couldn’t refrain from bending forward a little to look at the girl’s really graceful costume.  As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against the bride’s train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ground behind her.

Almost before they could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose, as if by magic, in the crowd around them.  Loud cries of “Taboo!  Taboo!” mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled natives.  In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry, threatening throng, who didn’t dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the strangers’ faces.  The change was appalling in its electric suddenness.  Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm.  “Oh, what have I done!” she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support.  “Why on earth are they angry with us?”

“I don’t know,” Felix answered, taken aback himself.  “I can’t say exactly in what you’ve transgressed.  But you must, unconsciously, in some way have offended their prejudices.  I hope it’s not much.  At any rate they’re clearly afraid to touch us.”

“Missy Queenie break taboo,” Mali explained at once, with Polynesian frankness.  “That make people angry.  So him want to kill you.  Missy Queenie touch bride with end of her dress.  Korong may smile on bride—­that very good luck; but Korong taboo; no must touch him.”

The crowd gathered around them, still very threatening in attitude, yet clearly afraid to approach within arm’s-length of the strangers.  Muriel was much frightened at their noise and at their frantic gestures.  “Come away,” she cried, catching Felix by the arm once more.  “Oh, what are they going to do to us?  Will they kill us for this?  I’m so horribly afraid!  Oh, why did I ever do it!”

The poor little bride, meanwhile, left alone on the carpet, and unnoticed by everybody, sank suddenly down on the mats where she stood, buried her face in her hands, and began to sob as if her heart would break.  Evidently, something very untoward of some sort had happened to the dusky lady on her wedding morning.

The final touch was too much for poor Muriel’s overwrought nerves.  She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.

Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind again as if by contagious magic.  A loud shout of “She cries; the Queen of the Clouds cries!” went up from all the assembled mob to heaven.  “It is a good omen,” Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look.  “We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.”  Almost before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her.  Many of the women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second against Muriel’s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner.  The happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy.  “No more drought!” they cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations.  “The Queen of the Clouds is good:  she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!”

Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd was now nothing but affection and sympathy.  Slowly they gathered in closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and pressed it sympathetically.  Mali explained their meaning with ready interpretation.  “No cry too much, them say,” she observed, nodding her head sagely.  “Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much.  Them say, kind lady, be comforted.”

There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy.  “They say, ’It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,’” Toko said, with frank bluntness; “’but not too much—­for fear the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.’”

By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and, smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low voice to Felix’s Shadow.  The Shadow turned most respectfully to his master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in a very doubtful voice, “She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just for to-day, to wear this ornament?”

Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to the bride with polite gallantry.  “She may wear it forever, for the matter of that, if she likes,” he said, good-humoredly.  “I make her a present of it.”

But the bride drew back as before in speechless terror, as he held out his hand, and seemed just on the point of bursting out into tears again at this untoward incident.  The Shadow intervened with fortunate perception of the cause of the misunderstanding.  “Korong must not touch or give anything to a bride,” he said, quietly; “not with his own hand.  He must not lay his finger on her; that would be unlucky.  But he may hand it by his Shadow.”  Then he turned to his fellow-tribesmen.  “These gods,” he said, in an explanatory voice, like one bespeaking forgiveness, “though they are divine, and Korong, and very powerful—­see, they have come from the sun, and they are but strangers in Boupari—­they do not yet know the ways of our island.  They have not eaten of human flesh.  They do not understand Taboo.  But they will soon be wiser.  They mean very well, but they do not know.  Behold, he gives her this divine shining ornament from the sun as a present!” And, taking it in his hand, he held it up for a moment to public admiration.  Then he passed on the trinket ostentatiously to the bride, who, smiling and delighted, hung it low on her breast among her other decorations.

The whole party seemed so surprised and gratified at this proof of condescension on the part of the divine stranger that they crowded round Felix once more, praising and thanking him volubly.  Muriel, anxious to remove the bad impression she had created by touching the bride’s dress, hastily withdrew her own little brooch and offered it in turn to the Shadow as an additional present.  But Toko, shaking his head vigorously, pointed with his forefinger many times to Mali.  “Toko say him no can take it,” Mali explained hastily, in her broken English.  “Him no your Shadow; me your Shadow; me do everything for you; me give it to the lady.”  And, taking the brooch in her hand, she passed it over in turn amid loud cries of delight and shouts of approval.

Thereupon, the ceremony began all over again.  They seemed by their intervention to have interrupted some set formula.  At its close the women crowded around Muriel and took her hand in theirs, kissing it many times over, with tears in their eyes, and betraying an immense amount of genuine feeling.  One phrase in Polynesian they repeated again and again; a phrase that made Felix’s cheek turn white, as he leaned over the poor English girl with a profound emotion.

“What does it mean that they say?” Muriel asked at last, perceiving it was all one phrase, many times repeated.

Felix was about to give some evasive explanation, when Mali interposed with her simple, unthinking translation.  “Them say, Missy Queenie very good and kind.  Make them sad to think.  Make them cry to see her.  Make them cry to see Missy Queenie Korong.  Too good.  Too pretty.”

“Why so?” Muriel exclaimed, drawing back with some faint presentiment of unspeakable horror.

Felix tried to stop her; but the girl would not be stopped.  “Because, when Korong time up,” she answered, blurting it out, “Korong must—­”

Felix clapped his hand to her mouth in wild haste, and silenced her.  He knew the worst now.  He had divined the truth.  But Muriel, at least, must be spared that knowledge.