On the night of each return from the capital
“On the night of each return from the capital.”
But on the night of each return from the capital he could not escape from the ties of kindred. First, therecame his uncle, a plaintive old man, who carefully bolted the door before unburdening himself of his troubles. He had no lamp, for the kerosene was dry, and there was no sugar to drink with his tea, so he drank no tea, and his stomach felt so bad that he thought some foreign drink was the only medicine that would cure him. Then a peremptory voice from without summoned him to open the door, and Alivate, the chief’s henchman, was admitted. He had all the self-confidence that distinguishes those who bask in the smiles of royalty. “Greeting!” he said. “The chief has sent me to you to borrow your horse for to-morrow. I will take it now with the saddle. Also he wants a root ofyangona.”
“Will the chief send the horse back? The last time he left the horse at Namata, and the saddle was lost.”
“Perhaps he will send it back. Give me the saddle.”
He gave place to a man in a white shirt, with a book and pencil, all deprecating piety and smiles, who called Tauyasa “sir,” and seemed in his way of speaking to be perpetrating a cruel caricature of the neighbouring Wesleyan missionary.
“I have come, sir,” he said at last, with a little chuckle, “about thevaka-misonari. Paula has promised to give one pound, the same as you gave last year. It is written in the book that Paula will give this. You, sir, will doubtless give two pounds this year. Your name will then be printed so that all will know. I will write down two pounds, sir. Is it not so?”
After him came Savuke, Tauyasa’s second cousin, with a pitiful tale about her husband, sentenced that day by the courts to pay five pounds for beating an Indian with a stick. “If he does not pay to-morrow,” she said tearfully, “they will crop his hair, and he will work, and then who will feed me and the child? The Indian was a bad Indian, as they all are, nor did he beat him hard, but only twice—on the head. And I, knowing your pitiful nature, have come to you, Tauyasa, because you are my relation and have much money, and afterwards Joseva will pay you back.”
“Joseva owes me seven pounds already.”
“Yes, he knows that, and the remembrance is heavy with him. He is still seeking money with which to pay you.”
“Well, then, I will release him from the debt thathis mind may be at rest, but this money that you ask I cannot give.”
Then Tauyasa’s wife, who had been visiting a neighbour, came to greet her lord. Their child was lately dead, though Tauyasa had bought two cows and fed it upon milk, and otherwise followed all the directions for rearing infants that were printed in ‘Na Mata.’ She, too, was the bearer of bad news. Some one—presumably an enemy—had stolen the cows’ tether-ropes, and one of them, the spotted one, had been found in the Company’s cane-field, having damaged many stools of cane, and the white one could not be found at all. “I think it is the Indians,” she said; but Tauyasa thought otherwise, and said nothing.
The man with the book had accomplished his devastating raid, and had set down the names of half the village to give “to the Lord” more than they possessed. Therefore, rather than break faith so pledged, they must beg, borrow, or steal enough to meet their obligations. First, of course, they tried Tauyasa, but he had heard a friend of his, a white storekeeper, assailed in the same way, and he knew the logical answer. “If you must owe money at all, it is better to owe it ‘to the Lord,’ who can afford it, than to me who cannot.Besides, you would be giving my money and calling it yours, which is a lie, for which you would certainly be punished in hell.” But that night several of Tauyasa’s imported hens were missing.
At last they all went and left him alone to take the cure for all the cares of civilised life; and, a little less than half drunk, he went off to the store to associate with his equals. There his voice might have been heard haranguing the knot of grinning colonists who frequented the store, and his peroration ran thus: “God made a mistake when He made me black. Um [tapping his chest], black man! Um [tapping his forehead], white man!”
But though Tauyasa increased in wealth and substance, his life was not happy. It is true that his people had given upkerekere, and no longer begged his money from him; but they took no pains to hide their hatred and contempt. It was in vain for him to show them that so long as they held their goods in common they must remain savages. They preferred to live from day to day, as their fathers did, leaving the morrow to take care of itself. It was well enough for a foreigner, who knew no better, to work all day, and to hoard money, and to give nothing for nothing; but here wasone of themselves aping the ways of foreigners as an excuse to cover his natural churlishness and inhospitality. “To do like Tauyasa” became a by-word in the village. Truly, he was born before his time: he was of the stuff of which reformers are made, and he met the reformer’s fate. He had quarrelled with his wife because she gave away his things in his absence; his own people would have nothing to do with him, and the foreigners whom he imitated despised him.
So Tauyasa began to worry, and the native who does that is doomed, because he was born to a life free from care, and has had no training in the curse of Adam. He grew thin and irritable, and no longer joined the nightly meetings at the store. But the more he worried the bitterer were the taunts of his people, and a kind friend, of course, repeated them to him. Then a day came when the cutter’s sails were stripped, and the bananas hung uncut, although a steamer had come in these two days; for Tauyasa would ship no more bananas, having taken to his mat, and given out that he would die that day week. It was in vain for those of his white friends that had heard of his illness to send him soup, and medicines, and milk-puddings cunninglydevised, for Tauyasa would eat none of them, knowing that he must die, and caring not to live—for there was bitterness in his heart against the world and all men in it. And upon the day appointed Tauyasa died as he had said, and his body was wrapped in rolls of whitemasiand mats, and buried, and his spirit went to its own place.
Then it was found how many brothers Tauyasa had, and how many brothers his father and mother had. They all came to his house after the funeral to transact some little matters of business. There was a want of brotherly love at this meeting, for Tauyasa had owned a cutter worth £200, and a cutter cannot be satisfactorily divided among several eldest brothers. There was a horse, too, and a table, and cupboards, and many camphor-wood boxes made in China, and in one of the boxes there were many bottles that would each have cost the vendor fifty pounds in fines had the police known. There was not much said about Tauyasa. It was a sad thing, no doubt, that he was dead, but did not his possessions remain? At evening it was all settled. The eldest uncle had the house with the glass windows, and the brothers had all the rest: only Tauyasa’s wife got nothing because shewas a bad woman, and did not love Tauyasa; and besides, she belonged to a different tribe.
And on the Sabbath thelalibeat for service, and the same teacher took the pulpit that had come to Tauyasa about his contribution to thevaka-misonari. It was a powerful sermon—all about the wicked and hell, and such things, and it was none the less powerful that the preacher was mimicking the ravings and the whispers, and the cushion-thumping denunciations, of the district missionary who had taught him. They were all sinners, he summed up—they broke the Commandments every day: but there was forgiveness for all there present. Yet, he added in a hoarse whisper, there were some who could never be forgiven. Then with the roar of an angry bull he shouted, “Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” “On the Sabbath,” repeated the echo from the other side of the river. “Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” Then in the hushed pause that followed he whispered hoarsely, “Tauyasa! Tauyasa!”
Again he roared, banging the table with his fist, “Where is Tauyasa now? Where is Tauyasa now?”—“yasa now” cried the echo. He glared at the village policeman as if expecting him to answer, and liftedhis clenched fist before him, twisting it slowly from side to side, and hissing from behind his teeth, “Sa mongimongi tiko e na mbuka wanga. He is squirming in the everlasting fire.”
Thus ended Tauyasa, Reformer,—condemned in this world and the next, like his prototypes.
“We’re to have about nine hundred of the Jumna lot on this plantation. They seem to be an average lot of coolies, seeing that Mauritius and Demarara get first pick—sweepings of the Calcutta jails, with a sprinkling of hillmen from Nepaul. They cost a trifle over twenty pounds a-head to introduce; but I ought not to grumble, as they’ve thrown the Princess into my batch. Not heard of the Princess? She’s a howling swell from Nepaul—nose-rings and bangles from head to foot—husband pretender to the throne of those parts—beheaded, drawn, and quartered for high treason—Princess saved by faithful retainer—just time to clap the contents of the family jewel-case on her body before the lord high executioner called—weeks in the saddle disguised as a man—flung herself upon the mercy of the recruiting agent, and breathlesslypledged herself to work for ninepence a-day for five years trashing cane beyond the black water. That’sherstory, and she can show you the jewels and the faithful retainer to prove it.”
“And do you think she’ll work?”
“Can’t say, not knowing much of the ways of princesses; but if she don’t, you’ll see her in your court under section thirty-four of the Principal Ordinance, which has no proviso for princesses, and then it will be your pleasing duty to make her work.”
Then Onslow, the manager, rode off, leaving me to sign warrants for the batch of refractory coolies just sentenced.
In due course the “Jumna” batch were towed up the river in a sugar-punt, and turned loose into the new coolie lines. We could hear them at night settling down—a babel of strident voices, dominated at moments by a howling chant, with tom-tom accompaniment. A week later they had built in the verandah of the long building with partitions of empty kerosene and biscuit tins beaten flat. Filthy rags obscured every doorway; naked children were rolling in the sun-baked dust, and besmearing themselves with the fetid mud from the puddles of waste-water thrownoutside the doors. There a wild-looking mother squatted in the shade, performing the last offices to the head of her youngest, while two older children leaned against her back playing with her lank greasy hair. A girl of five, with tiny silver bangles on arms and ankles, was gravely marching the length of the building, supporting on her head with one hand a brass bowl of smoking rice, while with the other she held up her long petticoat; and over all there were flies, and noise, and stench, and happiness enough for a twelvemonth’s occupation. The new coolies were settling down. Somewhere in the building the Princess must have held her court, or perhaps she was in solitude learning “the sorrow’s crown of sorrow.”
Then the first tasks were set, and the trouble began. Friday’s informations for absence from work rose from twenty-three to sixty-seven, and on Tuesday at ten o’clock a vast crowd of the accused and their sympathisers, curious and bewildered, disfigured the grass-plot at the court-house door. A burly Fijian constable was surveying them with a disgusted curl of the nostril, such as may be seen any Friday afternoon at the reptile-house of the Zoological Gardens. The luckless overseer had but one story to tell—of tasks set but notattempted—light tasks, suitable for the new and inexperienced—five chains trashing Honolulu cane—no more. The pleas for the defence would have melted the heart of a wheel-barrow. “You are my father and my mother, but I am a stone-mason. The white sahib told me that I should work at my trade. I can build houses, but I cannot cut cane.”—“I am a goldsmith. I never said I would work in the fields.”—“What can I say? You are my judge. My belly is empty, and I cannot work,”—and so forth. They were discharged with a caution.
“That is all the men,” said the overseer; “the rest are women.”
“Arjuna!” cried the clerk.
“Arjuna!” repeated the Indian constable outside.
There was a pause.
“Is the woman here?” asked the interpreter impatiently.
“She is here,” returned the officer from without.
There followed sounds of persuasion, amounting almost to entreaty, such as are unusual from the mouths of minions of the law. Then when expectation had been wrought to the highest dramatic pitch, the sunlight from the door was darkened, and there burstupon our dazzled gaze a vision of gold ornaments and gauzy draperies.
“The Princess,” whispered the overseer, with a deprecating smile.
She was tall and willowy, and her slender limbs seemed to be weighed down with the burden of the bangles that almost hid them. Heavy gold circlets seemed to crush the tiny ankle-bones, and every slender toe was be-ringed. Besides earrings and the gold stud that emphasises the curve of the nostril, she wore no head ornaments, but the shawl that fell from her hair was of the finest striped gauze. She must have been fully twenty, but the brightness of her eyes was still undimmed by time. She surveyed the thatched court-house with a glance of cool contempt, and walked proudly to the reed fence that did duty for a dock.
“You are charged with absence from work.”
The Princess glanced sideways at the interpreter, and then stared straight at the beam over my head.
“She told the sirdar she didn’t mean to do any work.”
The evidence is interpreted to the accused.
“Has she anything to say?”
The interpreter might have put the question to the wall with as much result.
“Then tell her that she has come from India to work for five years, and work she must; if she does not, she will be punished, and eventually sent to jail, where she will be made to work.”
The accused slightly raises her royal eyebrows.
“She is fined three shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.”
At these words she turned round and beckoned to the bank of heads that had gradually filled the doorway. Four men broke from the group—Nepaulese by their looks—and came in. One of them, evidently the Keeper of the Privy Purse, making deep salaam, advanced to the clerk’s table and dropped twelve threepenny bits upon it. The feelings of the interpreter at the coolness of the whole proceeding were too deep for words, and before he could translate his explosive English into the vernacular, the Princess had left the court with her suite. Then followed comments in Hindustani from without that filled Ramdas, the wizened Indian constable, with righteous indignation. Translated they were, “Call this a court-house? Why, it is made of grass! They should see the court-houses in India!”
For the next two weeks the Princess was known tothe outer world by rumour only, which had it that she was scarcely behaving as a widowed Princess should behave. The Keeper of the Privy Purse had, it was said, been encouraged to aspire to the consort’s chair, and the other Ministers were becoming jealous. Nor was this all. There were aspirants for royal favour outside the Ministry, who threatened to disorganise the household. Within the month her name reappeared in the charge-sheet. It was a second offence, and the fine was therefore heavier; but again her almoner satisfied the demands of the law. After that there was quiet for a space, because the suite took it in rotation to perform their mistress’s task besides their own. There were even rumours of subscriptions among her sympathisers to buy out her indentures from the manager. But there came a change. Competition for royal favour must have become so keen, or the Princess herself must have behaved in so unroyal a manner, that a day came when the smouldering feuds in the household burst into flame, and there was something very like a riot. In the actions and counter-actions for assault brought by the men of Nepaul against one another, the royal name was bandied about very freely, and it became evident thata part at least of her vassals had thrown off the yoke. Money, moreover, had been lent, and the borrower denied the debt, and brought four witnesses at a shilling a-head to counterbalance the plaintiff’s four engaged at the same rate. Between the eight witnesses swearing irreconcilable opposites, the court had to decide whether money had passed or not. Then the wily old Ramdas, constable and priest, came softly to the bench and whispered into its ear, “S’pose me fetchum Kurân, dis feller no tellum lie; he too much ’fraid.” Armed with authority, he left the court, going delicately, and presently returned on tiptoe, carrying on his extended hands a massive volume as if it was an overheated dish. Pausing before the table he said with due solemnity, “By an’ by he kissum, dis feller he plenty ’fraid. Dis Kurân belonger me. Abdul Khan he sabe readim, me no sabe, on’y little bit, other feller he no sabe! On’y Abdul Khan sabe!” Then bending forward with bated breath he said, “He cost three pound twelve shillin’ along Calcutta.” His own reverence seemed doubled as he recalled the stupendous cost of the volume. Then with great ceremony he gave Joynauth the book and made him swear, laying it upon his head.
“Joynauth, did Benain give you this money?”
“Sahib, he did; with my eyes I saw him!”
Ramdas’s excitement was great. He was going about the court-house on tiptoe, holding his sides with both hands, and blowing softly from his mouth.
“Dis feller no lie. He makim swear along Kurân, he too much ’fraid;” and he glared at the defendant triumphantly as who should say, “You are convicted, and mine is the hand that did it!”
The defendant was recalled. “Swear him too, Ramdas.”
He paused in holy horror at carrying the awful test further.
“What for dis feller makim swear, sahib? Joynauth, he no lie, heplentytoo much ’fraid.”
“Swear him, Ramdas.”
Threateningly he gave Benain the book, and the dread oath was administered.
“Benain, did you give Joynauth this money?”
“Sahib, he lies; I did not.”
The shock to poor Ramdas’s feelings was too great for words. He could only gasp, and dance from one foot to the other. “Oh,” he cried at last, “one man he die very soon, one week, I think!” For it was evidentthat to one at least of the parties a Kurân that had cost three pound twelve in Calcutta was no more sacred than the book the Kafirs kissed. It mattered nothing to him what decision the court came to. He had simply to watch the stroke of doom fall, as fall it must, upon the perjurer. But two years have passed since that day, and both the witnesses survive, while a stroke of doom, if dismissal from the police force can be so called, has fallen upon Ramdas himself in connection with an adventure in which a bottle of spirits took a leading part. But Ramdas now touts for cases for a solicitor in coolie practice, and is a light and an expounder of the Scriptures to the faithful; and since both these occupations pay better than the police, perhaps he discerns the hand of Allah in his dismissal, and still awaits his vengeance upon the perjurer.
Since open feuds had weakened the ties of loyalty, the poor Princess found that she must either wound her slender hands with the sharp-edged leaves of the Honolulu cane for a slender pittance of ninepence a-day, or again figure in the charge-sheet. She chose the latter as being more in consonance with her dignity. In due course the blue paper that she refused to take was flung at her feet by a policeman, andfor the third time she underwent the ordeal of prosecution with a self-possession born of practice. This time—her third offence—no almoner would avail, for she was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard labour without the option of a fine.
Ramdas would have pounced upon her and haled her forth as soon as the sentence was pronounced if he had not been restrained. The indignity of being herded with the other dirty and dishevelled female prisoners was enough without that. At daybreak the wooden station drums sounded for work, and the Princess’s troubles began. It was Meli’s daily triumph to muster the Indian prisoners in a row, and bring up the stragglers into their places with a jerk that audibly clashed their teeth together. These spindle-shanked, stinking coolies called him a bushman!—him, Meli, versed in all chiefly ceremonial, a bushman! Therefore should they know the strength of his arm. The women had sulkily taken their places in obedience to the peremptory command of their tormentor; but the Princess, herself accustomed to command, stood afar off under a clump of feathery bamboos, indifferently watching the scene.
“Lako sara mai koiko.You there! What are youdoing? You female roasted corpse! Come here.Kotemiu!(G—d d—n.) Come here,vulari vulu” (—— fool).
The Princess regarded him with lazy curiosity. Then there was the sound of swift running, and as a falcon stoops to the trembling rabbit, so did Meli swoop down upon the now frightened Princess. There was the hurtling of a body through the air, a misty vision of flying draperies and shining gold, a chinking together of many metals, and the Princess was in her place in the line, dishevelled and bewildered, but in the finest rage that it had ever been Meli’s fate to call down upon his woolly head. The storm burst, and all discipline was at an end. He succumbed without a murmur, knowing instinctively that to attempt to check such a torrent would bring down upon him the angry flood of thirteen other female tongues. His colleague left his gang in the bananas to look on, and the male prisoners threw down their hoes and peered, grinning, from among the broad shining leaves, to see his discomfiture. It is not necessary to repeat all the Princess said. Her past history, her present wrongs, her opinion of bushmen in general and Meli in particular, the glories of the Government of India, and the infamy of theGovernment of the colony, were all exhaustively discussed in language more forcible than elegant. Long after Meli had hustled her companions off to their work, she was still declaiming in a voice that cut the ear like a knife. But when she became conscious that her audience had dwindled to five grinning native prisoners who did not understand her, the outbursts of eloquence became spasmodic, and at last she fell back upon the jail to brood over her wrongs. Then Meli’s courage returned to him, and, armed with a murderous-looking weeding-knife, he followed her to her lair. In two minutes, loudly protesting, she found herself sitting on the grass path with her fingers forcibly closed upon the handle of the knife, which, resist as she would, cut the grass before her with the superior force of Meli’s arm. When left to herself she furiously flung the knife into the bananas, and wept tears of impotent rage. But the native warder, who sat perched on the fork of a dead tree watching the male prisoners as they weeded the bananas, took no notice of her, and so she dried her tears and fell to watching him as he threw stone after stone from the pile in his lap with unerring aim at the prisoners guilty of shirking their work.
But later in the day two Nepaulese, aspirants for court favour, appeared on the scene and energetically cut the grass set for their liege-lady’s task, while she sat listless and indifferent, condescending now and again to pluck with her slender fingers a single blade of grass, with an insolent affectation of satisfying the requirements of the law, whenever the official eye fell upon her. She may have plucked thirty blades of grass in the working day, perhaps not quite so many; but it was much to have vindicated the discipline of the jail, and more to have made the Princess do any work at all. Her spirit was so far broken, and the romance of her story may be said to have ended here.
Coolies may buy out their indentures for a round sum, and by some means this sum was raised among her admirers. There were burglaries in the neighbourhood about that time; and one indeed of the suite was arrested on suspicion by the European sergeant of police, who said as usual, when called upon to produce evidence, “It’s a well-known fact that he’s a noted scoundrel, and I submit to your worship that that’s evidence.”
“Ië, Setariki, how long did the foreigner say that I must stay bound? Until the month January? That is, after the day of the New Year, and there are four moons to set till then. It is always the way of the Government—wait, wait—till the bones of those who wait crumble away. If Imustdie, let me die now, Setariki. I told the foreigner in the court that I slew the woman, and the payment is death; therefore, where is the use of waiting? You are a policeman and know the law?”
“The law is this—that you be judged in the Great Court that is held but four times every year. Na-vosa-vakadua [He-who-speaks-once] will judge you, and the foreigners in turbans of sheepskin will dispute and quarrel about you in their own tongue, so that you cannot understand, and the witnesses will swear to speakthe truth, and will make all things plain; but one of the foreigners with sheepskin on their heads will ask them many questions to entrap them, and speak angrily to them, seeking to hide the truth, so that their senses will fly from them for fear, and they will lie, and the truth be darkened. Thus did Manoa escape, and that other woman who drowned the white man, although they themselves bore witness that they had done the thing of which they were accused. But they were women, and you, being a man, I greatly fear that you will not escape. The ways of the foreigners are strange, and you cannot understand them; but I, being a policeman in the service of the Government, understand them all; and this I know, Leone, that it is better to be judged in the Great Court, where the judge knows nothing of our tongue, than in the court of the province; for in the Great Court there is much disputing and much darkening of the truth, so that many of the guilty escape.”
“Nay, Setariki; even though they darken the truth until none shall know it from the false, yet cannot I escape, for I have told the bald-headed magistrate that I slew Lusiana.”
“The foreigners I have told you of, whose business itis to twist the truth—loyathey are called—will come to you in the prison, and teach you how to lie before the court, and will even lie themselves on your behalf if you will first give them money. The Indians do this every day, feeding theseloyawith money, and they in return save the Indians from the law. Therefore send to your relations to gather money together for theloya. Send to Vita, who has the rent of your land where the store is; tell him not to spend that money, but to sell copra to add to it. Now tell me the manner of the accusation.”
“What is there to tell? I am Leone of Notho, of the fishermen clan. I did in truth slay the woman Lusiana my wife. It fell thus. I gave the marriage gifts, and my house was built as the law requires; then I took her and we were married. This was ten Sabbaths ago. She was of good report, and none knew aught to her dishonour, so that I feared no other man when I took her to be my wife. She was a woman of a mild spirit and obedient, and I rejoiced greatly in her. Then, one night as we lay upon the one mat under the screen, I, being nearly asleep, heard a tapping upon the bread-fruit tree that grew near the door—such as asesemakes with its beak upon abranch when it eats grasshoppers, only louder; and as I lay wondering what it might be, the sound came again, and from the mat where Lusiana lay there was the sound of tapping as if in answer, but very softly; and I, feigning sleep, breathed heavily, but turned my eyes towards her. Now a lamp was burning in the house, but it was turned low, for the kerosene was nearly dry, and I had no shillings. She seemed to be asleep, but when the tapping sounded again I saw the screen shake, for she had her left arm extended beneath it, and was tapping on the mat with the ends of her fingers. Then I lay very still to see what would happen, and presently she rose softly and crawled out of the screen to the fireplace as if to light hersulukafrom the embers. After a little she went softly to the door and out; and I, fearing some evil, rose and went swiftly out by another door, taking my clearing-knife from the leaves as I passed. The moon shone brightly. And as I looked from the corner of the house I saw Lusiana, my wife, standing in the shadow of the bread-fruit with a man, who spoke earnestly to her as if to draw her away. Then my blood flowed down in my body, and I came upon them suddenly, and the man fled, but I knewhim in the moonlight for Airsai the village constable. But the woman stood and looked at the ground. And I said, ‘Who is that man? Is this your habit when I am lying asleep?’ But she looked always at the ground, and would not answer. Then my anger increased, and I said, ‘Answer me, answer, you light woman!’ But she still was silent. Then I took her by the hand to lead her to the house—I swear to you that I only meant to lead her to the house,—but she resisted me, and tried to draw away her hand from mine. Then I let her go, and great rage entered into me. ‘Will you neither speak nor come with me?’ I shouted. But the woman stood with her back to me, still looking at the ground. And a great strength came upon me, and the knife in my hand became lighter than a reed, and I swung it once in the air, making it hiss, and crying, ‘Speak, woman!’ Then I struck—and her head being bowed, I struck the neck at the back where it looked red in the moonlight that shone between the bread-fruit leaves. The knife paused not, but shore through all, for it was a mighty blow; and the head rolled to the foot of the tree, turning the sand black, and the body sank down where it stood, and struck my knees, spurting blood. Thusmysuluand my legs and feet were all wet. Then I cried for the others to come and see what I had done, and they all came running: first the women, chattering like parrots at sunset, then the men and children, and last of all the village policeman, Airsai. And they took the knife from me, and one brought a clean sulu and put it on me, taking mine to show to the courts; and they went with me to the river to wash the blood from my legs. But when they would ask me questions, I said, ‘Peace! I slew Lusiana. Bind me.’ So they bound my hands with sinnet, and brought me hither, not resisting, for the woman deserved to die.”
“Is that all, Leone?”
“That is all. But one thing is clear, that I cannot escape the law.”
“Nay! Take rest for your mind, Leone. I know a foreigner in the town—aloya—who is skilled in the law, being wont to dispute in the courts. Of late few have paid him money to dispute, and he is hungry for money—for foreigners eat money as we eat yams. For him, skilled as I have said, it will be easy to darken the truth of this thing so that the judge cannot find it, and will doubt whether it was Airsaiwho slew the woman, or you, or whether she slew herself, or whether, indeed, she was slain at all. Such things has he done for others, and this he will do for you too, if you but pay him sufficient money before the trial.”
Vere did not tell me the story himself. He does not talk about his past; but squalid as his life is, he cannot help looking like a man with a history, albeit unkempt and half-starved in the struggle to keep his half-caste brats from want. Hoskins, the father of district magistrates, is my authority. He saw no pathos in it, only thought it “an awful pity”; but years of tinned provisions are apt to dull the sense of poetry in any man.
Vere was the usual kind of younger son who leaves a public school with more knowledge of field-sports than Latin, and having passed the limit of age for the army, straightway joins the hosts of unemployed whose ultimate refuge is the States or the Colonies. Unlike most of the young gentlemen who graduate at an army crammer’s, Vere had no vices, and when histurn came to tackle station-life in Australia, he found no temptation to take the usual downward plunge, but hated the life with all his heart. His letters home brought him unexpected relief. The Colonial Office was asked to find a few young men to recruit the Civil Service of a South Sea colony, and Vere, in common with half-a-dozen others, was appointed, through the medium of a friendly chief clerk.
He was kept at headquarters just long enough to wear off the novelty, and to wonder why English-speaking mankind, especially when they hail from Australia, succeed so wonderfully in stamping out all that is picturesque from their surroundings; and then he was sent to Commissioner Austin to be instructed in the mysteries of the native language and customs, until such time as he should be fit for the responsibilities of a Commissioner himself. Now Mr Commissioner Austin was not a gentleman to be entrusted with the care of youth, and to do him justice, he was the last person in the world to desire such a responsibility. The Government had taken him over with the other fixtures of a formerrégime, and if he had any belongings for whom he ever cared, he had long ago forgotten them. In his own province theCommissioner was a very great man indeed—that is to say, the natives grunted at him when he passed, clapped their hands after touching his, and generally left his presence smacking that part of the human frame that is held in least esteem. But the law of the honour paid to prophets is reversed in the islands, and the Commissioner found that his importance in the social scheme sensibly diminished with every mile from the boundaries of his district, and had therefore allowed his visits to the capital to become very rare. Vere found the great man affable and not inhospitable. “You will stay with me until you can make your own arrangements,” he said; and Vere, not caring to prolong his visit upon such terms, though he had nothing with him but his clothes, lost no time in invoking the good offices of a friendly storekeeper. With his help he found himself in a few days established in a small native house, belonging to a petty chief, without a stick of furniture but the mats that belonged to his landlord, and a mosquito-screen. He wanted nothing more. The mats, with dried grass under them, were soft enough to sleep on, and the floor was cooler and more comfortable than any chair. For the first few days he attended the office regularly in thehope of finding work to do, but his chief never seemed to want him. “No, thanks, Mr Vere, not to-day. This work would be a little beyond you. Perhaps you could not do better than work at the language.” Vere realised later on that the Commissioner had the best of reasons for not finding work for him. He had not enough for himself. There were no coolies in his district, and the native magistrates disposed of the court work. So Vere worked at the language in the only effective way—that is, he spent day after day with his landlord’s family fishing from a canoe, diving forfigota, and drinkingyangona. He bathed in a stream a few yards from his hut, and had his meals with his native landlord or with a neighbouring storekeeper. The life was too new to be monotonous.
One night as he was dropping off to sleep on his mats, tired out with doing nothing all day, he heard the distant note of a conch-shell mingled with the eternal murmur of the reef. “Turtle-fishers returning with a big bag,” he thought, trying to remember what natives blow conch-shells for, and turned over on the other side. But presently distant voices, as of people aroused and hurrying, awoke the lazy curiosity of one bound to study native customs. A light breeze fromthe sea was rustling the great palm-leaves like heavy curtains, and though the moon had set, the stars gave light enough to show the dim outline of the rocky island near the anchorage. A light was creeping in towards the beach, and he could just make out the huge triangular sail of a double canoe. Then a hoarse voice from the canoe shouted to the people who were assembling on the beach. Immediately, with a deep exclamation, the babble of voices ceased, and every figure squatted as if by word of command. Two or three men ran off into the village, and Vere drew near the group in the hope of finding some one to explain the situation. He soon found his landlord, who, in pidgin English, told him that the dusky potentate who had despoiled the district for many years had gone to his own place, and that his son reigned in his stead, and had come to receive their homage. The men who had run to the town came back with whale’s teeth, and as the canoe grated on the coral sand the grey-headed village chief squatted with his feet in the sea, and gave the deep grunt of respect, and delivered in low voice a rapid and unintelligible harangue. The crew sprang into the water, and standing waist-deep, dragged the canoe through the yielding sand until herprow rested above the dry beach, and the old man, still squatting, gave the whale’s teeth, hanging in a bunch, to the new-comers. A fire of dead palm-leaves threw a red glare upon the brown faces and glistening bodies of the strangers as they disembarked. A tall young man, evidently the new chief, was the first. He was followed by a number of men and women, who stood aside to wait for another woman who now rose from the little thatched house on the deck. From her bearing, and the respect paid to her, Vere saw she was to be classed far above any he had yet seen. The chief seemed to ask in a whisper who the strange white man was, and learning probably that he was a Government officer, stopped to shake hands with him. The girl stopped too, and looked at Vere as if expecting to be spoken to; but before he could take her hand, she hurried off after the others. They were followed by the whole village into the deep shadow of the palms, and Vere was left alone with the dying fire to watch the crew of the canoe making her snug for the night.
Vere heard all about the new arrivals next day. Of Nambuto he had heard before, a good deal that was discreditable, as is natural and proper to a young leaderof the people. The girl was all that an epidemic of measles had left of a line of chiefs beside whom the present rulers of the district wereparvenus. Weakened by the ravages of the disease that had thinned out his fighting men, her father had succumbed to the chief who was just dead, and both conquerors and conquered had agreed thatAndiRaluve should heal the hereditary quarrel by marrying Nambuto, the eldest son of the victor. It was a tribal matter, and in tribal matters women have no voice, least of all when they are of rank.
The villagers seemed to take their loss with much philosophy. They cut their hair and beards, it is true, and there was a run on black cashmere in the nearest store, but they wasted no time in vain regrets for one whose lightest word a week ago they would have tremblingly obeyed. They devoted all their energies instead to the entertainment of the living. Long-nosed slab-sided pigs were dragged by the hind-legs to the ovens, protesting indignantly, until a few dull thuds clearly explained the situation to them; and Vere’s friends chopped wood, butchered, and cooked under a dense cloud of flies as if their lives depended on their activity. Vere, driven to walk by himself,was idling about near the sea, thinking how a native canoe, improved on, would be an ideal sailing craft, when he came suddenly upon a figure sitting under a greatdilo-tree, bent almost double, and shaking with convulsive sobs. Now the natives of these islands are not given to displaying whatever emotions they have, and seeing that the figure was a woman’s, all his English chivalry was startled into life; so, forgetting that she could not understand him, he stooped down, saying, “What is the matter? Can’t I do anything for you?” In the tear-stained face that looked up he recognised Raluve, the lady of the previous night, her big black eyes round with surprise. Reassured by his evident concern, she gave him rapidly and in a low voice what might have been an explanation of her distress, but as it was in her own dialect, he understood not one word of it. With a desperate effort he plunged into Fijian. “If you are in trouble I will help you,” is not a difficult nor complicated sentence in any language. He attempted it, and the result exceeded his expectations, for the girl struggled a moment, and then burst into ringing peals of laughter. Evidently he had used the wrong word, and this girl’s manners were no better than any other savage’s. But she got up as hebegan to move off, and before they reached the village she had promised to teach him her language.
Next morning he received a visit of ceremony. His door was darkened, there was a whispering and a rustling outside, and then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms. She sank gracefully on the mats, doubling her feet under her, and the matrons giggled. There was a constrained pause. Clearly this girl could not be amused by the exhibition of a cunningly devised knife or an alarum-clock. Desperately he fell back on photographs. Raluve took each one, looked at it indifferently, and handed it to the nearest duenna, who, being skittish, gazed at it upside down, and poked her companion in the ribs, chuckling immoderately. But the photographs required explanations, and then the lesson began in earnest; for every remark Vere hazarded was first severely corrected, and then criticised by the two frolicsome dames, with vast amusement to themselves. The system of education was primitive, but it satisfied both pupil and mistresses.