by Grant Allen
“But he hasn’t got any wife, papa,” Elma ventured to interpose, with a bright little smile; “so THAT can’t count either way.”
“He hasn’t a wife AT PRESENT, to be sure; that’s perfectly true, my dear; no wife AT PRESENT; but he will probably now, in his existing circumstances, soon obtain one. A Man of Property should always marry. Mr. Waring will naturally desire to ally himself to some family of Good Position in the county; and the lady’s relations would, of course, insist—”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to us, papa,” Elma answered maliciously; “for, as far as we’re concerned, you know; you’ve often said that nothing on earth would ever induce you to give your consent.”
The Gentleman of Good Position in the county gazed at his daughter aghast with horror. “My dear child,” he said, with positive alarm, “your remarks are nothing short of Revolutionary. You must remember that since then circumstances have altered. At that time, Mr. Waring was a painter—”
“He’s a painter still, I believe,” Elma put in, parenthetically. “The acquisition of property or county rank doesn’t seem to have had the very slightest effect one way or the other upon his drawing or his colouring.”
Her father disdained to take notice of such flippant remarks. “At that time,” he repeated solemnly, “Mr. Waring was a painter, a mere ordinary painter; we know him now to be the heir and representative of a great County Family. If he were to ask you to-day—”
“But he did ask me a long time ago, you know, papa,” Elma put in demurely. “And at that time, you remember, you objected to the match; so of course, as in duty bound, I at once refused him.”
“And what did your father say to that, Elma?” Cyril asked, with a smile, as she narrated the whole circumstances to him some hours later.
“Oh, he only said, ‘But he’ll ask you again now, you may be sure, my child.’ And I replied very gravely, I didn’t think you would. And do you know, Cyril, I really don’t think you will, either.”
“Why not, Elma?”
“Because, you foolish boy, it isn’t the least bit in the world necessary. This has been, all through, a comedy of errors. Tragedy enough intermixed; but still a comedy of errors. There never was really any reason on earth why either of us shouldn’t have married the other. And the only thing I now regret myself is that I didn’t do as I first threatened, and marry you outright, just to show my confidence in you and Guy, at the time when everybody else had turned most against you.”
“Well, suppose we make up for lost time now by saying Wednesday fortnight,” Cyril suggested, after a short pause, during which both of them simultaneously had been otherwise occupied.
“Oh, Cyril, that’s awfully quick! It could hardly be managed. There’s the dresses, and all that! And the bridesmaids to arrange about! And the invitations to issue!… But still, sooner than put you off any longer now — well, yes, my dear boy — I dare say we could make it Wednesday fortnight.”
THE END
The Great Taboo
The Great Taboo was initially published in Short Cuts under the title of A Cannibal God, before appearing in book format in 1890, published by Chatto & Windus. The novel draws heavily on the anthropology of Frazer’s The Golden Bough and the writings of Andrew Lang on myth and ritual. The protagonists Felix Thurstan and Muriel Ellis are washed overboard an Australian liner and eventually reach a Polynesian cannibal isle, where they are promoted to the status of gods of Rain and Clouds respectively. Their reign is short, however, as the cannibals intend to kill and eat them after several months. Opportunely, they learn the process by which the reigning supreme god, Tu-Kila-Kila, is replaced from the babble of an ancient parrot once owned by a sailor castaway, and with this knowledge Felix steals the golden bough from the sacred grove, while killing the incumbent in single combat.
Now Felix and Muriel introduce a new humane regime to the island folk. Before escaping on a passing ship, they promise to send colonial officials to continue their work of enlightenment. A page-turner that dramatises the network of taboos and the resulting endless fears and suspicions of far-off societies, the plot, however, is wildly implausible at times.
The first edition
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The first edition’s title page
PREFACE
I desire to express my profound indebtedness, for the central mythological idea embodied in this tale, to Mr. J.G. Frazer’s admirable and epoch-making work, “The Golden Bough,” whose main contention I have endeavored incidentally to popularize in my present story. I wish also to express my obligations in other ways to Mr. Andrew Lang’s “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Mr. H.O. Forbes’s “Naturalist’s Wanderings,” and Mr. Julian Thomas’s “Cannibals and Convicts.” If I have omitted to mention any other author to whom I may have owed incidental hints, it will be some consolation to me to reflect that I shall at least have afforded an opportunity for legitimate sport to the amateurs of the new and popular British pastime of badger-baiting or plagiary-hunting. It may also save critics some moments’ search if I say at once that, after careful consideration, I have been unable to discover any moral whatsoever in this humble narrative. I venture to believe that in so enlightened an age the majority of my readers will never miss it.
G.A.
THE NOOK, DORKING, October, 1890.
CHAPTER I.
IN MID PACIFIC.
“Man overboard!”
It rang in Felix Thurstan’s ears like the sound of a bell. He gazed about him in dismay, wondering what had happened.
The first intimation he received of the accident was that sudden sharp cry from the bo’sun’s mate. Almost before he had fully taken it in, in all its meaning, another voice, farther aft, took up the cry once more in an altered form: “A lady! a lady! Somebody overboard! Great heavens, it is her! It’s Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!”
Next instant Felix found himself, he knew not how, struggling in a wild grapple with the dark, black water. A woman was clinging to him — clinging for dear life. But he couldn’t have told you himself that minute how it all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.
He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the steamer’s lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for dear life all the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned woman!
The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the captain’s bridge, to be sure: “Man overboard!” — three sharp rings at the engine bell:— “Stop her short! — reverse engines! — lower the gig! — look sharp, there, all of you!” Passengers hurried up breathless at the first alarm to know what wa
s the matter. Sailors loosened and lowered the boat from the davits with extraordinary quickness. Officers stood by, giving orders in monosyllables with practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil, yet with a marvellous sense of order and prompt obedience as well. But, at any rate, the people on deck hadn’t the swift swirl of the boisterous water, the hampering wet clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal danger, to make their brains reel, like Felix Thurstan’s. They could ask one another with comparative composure what had happened on board; they could listen without terror to the story of the accident.
It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward, against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt shore, which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached Honolulu, en route for San Francisco.
Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All grew dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped off for whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their own state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and chatting near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the ship Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked with a certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.
There’s nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You’re thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your fellow-passengers’ inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than you would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart that she really liked him — well — so much that she looked up with a pretty blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his hat to her. Muriel was an English rector’s daughter, from a country village in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year’s visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with that nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were, beside her. For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka, in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six years’ service in that new-made colony.
“How delightful it would be to live on an island like that!” Muriel murmured, half to herself, as she gazed out wistfully in the direction of the disappearing coral reef. “With those beautiful palms waving always over one’s head, and that delicious evening air blowing cool through their branches! It looks such a Paradise!”
Felix smiled and glanced down at her, as he steadied himself with one hand against the bulwark, while the ship rolled over into the trough of the sea heavily. “Well, I don’t know about that, Miss Ellis,” he answered with a doubtful air, eying her close as he spoke with eyes of evident admiration. “One might be happy anywhere, of course — in suitable society; but if you’d lived as long among cocoanuts in Fiji as I have, I dare say the poetry of these calm palm-grove islands would be a little less real to you. Remember, though they look so beautiful and dreamy against the sky like that, at sunset especially (that was a heavy one, that time; I’m really afraid we must go down to the cabin soon; she’ll be shipping seas before long if we stop on deck much later — and yet, it’s so delightful stopping up here till the dusk comes on, isn’t it?) — well, remember, I was saying, though they look so beautiful and dreamy and poetical— ‘Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea,’ and all that sort of thing — these islands are inhabited by the fiercest and most bloodthirsty cannibals known to travellers.”
“Cannibals!” Muriel repeated, looking up at him in surprise. “You don’t mean to say that islands like these, standing right in the very track of European steamers, are still heathen and cannibal?”
“Oh, dear, yes,” Felix replied, holding his hand out as he spoke to catch his companion’s arm gently, and steady her against the wave that was just going to strike the stern: “Excuse me; just so; the sea’s rising fast, isn’t it? — Oh, dear, yes; of course they are; they’re all heathen and cannibals. You couldn’t imagine to yourself the horrible bloodthirsty rites that may this very minute be taking place upon that idyllic-looking island, under the soft waving branches of those whispering palm-trees. Why, I knew a man in the Marquesas myself — a hideous old native, as ugly as you can fancy him — who was supposed to be a god, an incarnate god, and was worshipped accordingly with profound devotion by all the other islanders. You can’t picture to yourself how awful their worship was. I daren’t even repeat it to you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a hut by himself among the deepest forest, and human victims used to be brought — well, there, it’s too loathsome! Why, see; there’s a great light on the island now; a big bonfire or something; don’t you make it out? You can tell it by the red glare in the sky overhead.” He paused a moment; then he added more slowly, “I shouldn’t be surprised if at this very moment, while we’re standing here in such perfect security on the deck of a Christian English vessel, some unspeakable and unthinkable heathen orgy mayn’t be going on over there beside that sacrificial fire; and if some poor trembling native girl isn’t being led just now, with blows and curses and awful savage ceremonies, her hands bound behind her back — Oh, look out, Miss Ellis!”
He was only just in time to utter the warning words. He was only just in time to put one hand on each side of her slender waist, and hold her tight so, when the big wave which he saw coming struck full tilt against the vessel’s flank, and broke in one white drenching sheet of foam against her stern and quarter-deck.
The suddenness of the assault took Felix’s breath away. For the first few seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his grasp, and was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy nature of the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it, in the tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to glide imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an ill-caught cricket-ball do in his school-days. Then he saw he was on his hands and knees on the deck. The wave had knocked him down, and dashed him against the bulwark on the leeward side. As he picked himself up, wet, bruised, and shaken, he looked about for Muriel. A terrible dread seized upon his soul at once. Impossible! Impossible! she couldn’t have been washed overboard!
And even as he gazed about, and held his bruised elbow in his hand, and wondered to himself what it could all mean, that sudden loud cry arose beside him from the quarter-deck, “Man overboard! Man overboard!” followed a moment later by the answering cry, from the men who were smoking under the lee of the companion, “A lady! a lady! It’s Miss Ellis! Miss Ellis!”
Only those who have known such accidents at sea can possibly picture to themselves the instantaneous haste with which all that followed took place upon that bustling quarter-deck. Almost at the first cry of “Man overboard!” the captain’s bell rang sharp and quick, as if by magic, with three peremptory little calls in the engine-room below. The Australasian was going at full speed, but in a marvellously short time, as it seemed to all on board, the great ship had slowed down to a perfect standstill, and then had reversed her engines, so that she lay, just nose to the wind, awaiting further orders. In the meantime, almost as soon as the words were out of the bo’sun’s lips, a sailor amidships had rushed to the safety belts hung up by the companion ladder, and had flung half a dozen of them, one after another, with hasty but well-aimed throws, far, far astern, in the direction where Felix had disappeared into the black water. The belts were painted white, and they showed for a few seconds, as they fell, like bright specks on the surface of the darkling sea; then they sunk slowly behind as the big ship, still not quite stopped, ploughed her way ahead with gigantic force into the great abyss of darkness in front of her.