MAKERETA
MAKERETA.
In an evil hour Makereta and three other maidens, having caught a miraculous haul of crabs in Nandi Bay, shouldered their baskets with the double intention of presenting them to her sister and flirting with the gay and licentious soldiery. They climbed themountain-barrier, and in due time reached the camp. For the next few days I heard nothing of Makereta except her laugh, which triumphed over the half-mile of bush that lay between us. She was staying with her sister, and on some excuse or other the men found it necessary to consult their spiritual adviser several times daily. It was at these times that the higher tones of the laugh floated on the breeze like the cry of some animal in pain.
At length, as the novelist of the marvellous would say, “a strange thing happened.” An excited and dishevelled minister of religion came panting into my house, and this is what he said:—
“Sir, a terrible thing! Litiana and Makereta have been angry, and Litiana is much hurt. This was the way of it. Makereta was in the cook-house with some of the soldiers; they were joking, and Makereta laughed very loud. Then Litiana called to her, saying, ‘We are ashamed before the chiefs to-day;’ and Makereta replied with a very bad word, and Litiana went in to chastise her, and they fought, and Makereta bit Litiana, and her ear is gone, and——”
“And what?” I asked, as he hesitated.
“And, sir,” he said, solemnly, “we cannot find the ear.”
I went with him. It was too true. Litiana was sobbing in a corner, trying to stanch the blood from the site of her ear, and Makereta was panting between two restraining soldiers. Two others were carefully turning over the mats on what had been the battlefield. We searched everywhere but without success, and then I turned to Makereta.
“Where is your sister’s ear?” I asked.
She half smiled, and said she did not know.
“Do you remember biting her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bite her ear off?”
“I think it came off.”
“Did youswallowit?”
“Iss?” (who knows?)
A further ineffectual search left no doubt as to what had become of the ear. Litiana, smarting under her injuries, haled her sister before the native court, presided over by that magistrate who, in happier days, used to beguile the tedium of the bench with music on the Jew’s-harp. The damages were assessed at five shillings, and the little rift made the music between the sisters dumb.
“Was my ear only worth five shillings?” complained the elder.
“Is it sisterly to drag one’s sister to court like an Indian coolie-woman?” asked Makereta.
I don’t know whether they have ever met since. Makereta soon after this fell in love with a mild-mannered policeman, married him in defiance of her relations, and now rules him with an iron rod somewhere down Nadroga way. They both asked me to help them to bring it about, I being their father, which meant that I was to supply the pigs for the wedding-breakfast.
Romeo loved Juliet, there was not the slightest doubt about that; for although Juliet had been tattooed round the mouth, and had already married Tybalt, and had dug Tybalt’s yams and cut Tybalt’s firewood for the last two years, yet was Romeo ready to die for her. Verona slept peacefully in the bosom of a tiny green valley, shut in by great jagged mountains, and soothed by the lazy music of a tiny river whose water must travel many days before it mixed with the great salt ocean. The hot air quivered in the burning sun, which no breeze ever came to cool, and at night not even a mosquito broke the utter silence. No street brawls here in this Verona of Southern seas, for the humpbacked pig and half-clothed chicken were past getting up a brawl, and they were the only occupants of Verona’s single street. Old Capulet could tell youof brawls enough, in which club took the place of rapier, and the bodies of the slain were disposed of in a peculiar way; but that was before the white man and the measles arrived, when Mongondro still made the earth tremble, and before these white lunatics came and made him wrap calico round his loins, and practise incantations with a hymn-book (which were a waste of time, because nobody died of them as they do of the real incantations), and taught him, in outlandish Bauan, that when he was dead he would be made alive again to be burnt, and asked him to give a shilling every now and again to the Great Spirit not to burn him, and then took the shilling away with them. But old Capulet doesn’t talk about these things any more, because last year the teacher overheard him telling stories to the young men, and threatened to burn him up with a flash of lightning if he ever did it again.
Decidedly Verona was not an exciting place to live in; and so long as the yam-crop was good, and the missionary left them alone, and that other white man who came sometimes on a horse, and told them to hoe their roads, life was easy and monotonous.
Old Capulet had never heard of a romance. There wasn’t a word for it in his vocabulary, and so he, at anyrate, may be excused for what he did when Tybalt came and told him what had happened. Why, in Capulet’s day, women were not worth more than a whale’s tooth, however well they could dig! and as for a girl refusing to marry the man who had paid for her, or being untrue to the man she married—why, the thing was unheard of; or at least, if it ever had happened, the case had always been dealt with in the same way—the club, with sometimes the oven to follow.
So when Tybalt came that evening with the story about Romeo and Juliet his wife—Romeo, a man of the hated Noikoro clan,—it was not surprising that old Capulet repaired to Tybalt’s house with his long walking-staff, and, with Tybalt’s active co-operation, gave Juliet a rather severe thrashing. Nor did the old women see any more romance in the affair than did Capulet; and from the day when Tybalt’s suspicions became certainties, the course of true love ran very roughly indeed. Did poor Juliet don her newestliku, with a fringe nearly ten inches long, to go wood-cutting in the hope of a stolen meeting with her adorer, she was sure to find some old village hag dogging her steps. Did she put on Koroisau’s old pinafore to impress Romeo on Sunday with her superior sense of thedecencies, her most sacred feelings were sure to be harrowed in the evening by injurious remarks about her figure, and the folly of old women trying to pass for young girls.
Romeo, poor fellow, fared no better. He was no longer welcome in the village of his adoption. When the yams were boiled he was not even asked to partake of them. Some one trampled his yam-vines in the night, and, last insult of all, Capulet’s nephew threw a stone at his pig. He loved Juliet with a great and overwhelming passion. He did not know why. She was not beautiful, though her mouth, it is true, was a triumph of the tattooer’s skill; but time had over-ripened her charms, and the lines of her youthful figure were a trifle blurred and indistinct. Yet Romeo was quite sure in his own mind that nobody had ever loved as he did in the world before, and Juliet returned his passion—at least she said she did.
Life was becoming unbearable for both of them. They could not fly together, for whither could they fly? Romeo had once seen the sea from the mountain-pass at Naloto, and he had heard that the water closed in his land all round. He knew well enough that if he fled with her to any village he had heard of, in twoweeks they would be brought back; and as for the bush, the idea of living there alone was not to be thought of for a moment. There was one refuge. He did not know where it was, but he knew the path that led to it, which many another had trod before him. The white men said it was a very pleasant place if you were a missionary, but a very hot and uncomfortable place if you were only a mountaineer. But Romeo didn’t believe that. The spirits of the coast natives jumped from the north-west cliffs into the sea, and the wraiths of the old mountain chiefs lived in the thick forest—at least so the old men said; but as no one had ever been there and come back, how could any one know? True, the teacher said that a white man had been there and come back, but then white men eat biscuits and things out of tins, and have other gods, and so they probably go to a different place. For the place Romeo was thinking of, with bitterness gnawing at his savage heart, was Death, and the path that led to it wasLangaingai.
Romeo knew all aboutLangaingai, for had not Gavindi drunk of it last year and died, and those two Naloto girls, who smoked after drinking it to make it doubly sure, and Janeti, Buli Nandrau’s daughter,—only herrelations poured cocoa-nut milk down her throat when she had only traversed the path half-way? He knew not who had discovered it, for the old men did not know it. In their day the path was always open to him who would travel it—by an enemy’s club. Perhaps some wise woman taught Gavindi, and showed him how to mix orange-bark with it, and smoke away his life when he had drunk.
FRIAR LAURENCES HOUSE
FRIAR LAURENCE’S HOUSE.
Now Friar Laurence, though unconnected with the cloth, had in his time performed the last offices to a larger number of people than any other practitioner in the mountains. In his own person he had not unfrequently united the offices of both sexton and grave. But that side of his business was recreation rather than solid work. His real calling might rank as one of the fine arts. Like the painter and the author, his stock-in-trade was small, and easily obtained. The art lay in employing his properties with skill. They consisted in a bamboo, a banana-leaf, a bit of bark, a leaf or two, and a little human hair. Furnished with these simple tools, Friar Laurence would, for the trifling sum of a whale’s tooth, or a bolt of bark-cloth, lay low the head on which the hair had grown. So widespread was the Friar’s reputation that, when the mad white men hadcome and forbidden the noble art of war, he had found it convenient to reside for some months in an inaccessible mountain-cave, and had returned to Verona with his occupation gone, and a head crammed with the wisdom born of solitary meditation.
To Friar Laurence then did Romeo repair one dark still night. The wise man sat on a log at his threshold airing his shrunken legs. He eyed Romeo’s whale’s tooth with bleared and watery eyes, and asked enigmatically what tree he wanted felled. When he understood the situation he seemed disappointed, and only told Romeo to return the following night with a white man’s bottle full of the stuff they call kerosene. This entailed a journey of thirty miles the following day to fetch the precious liquid from the nearest store; but Romeo was ready to do more than this, and at sunset the Friar received the bottle, a square black one. He emptied into a cocoa-nut shell all the oil except a wine-glassful, and filled up the bottle with an opaque muddy-looking fluid.
That night beneath thetavola-tree, where they had their tryst, did Romeo tell Juliet that the moment for carrying out their sorrowful plan had come. She had just been telling him that her misery was so great thatshe could not bear to live longer. But when Romeo showed her in the dim light the ominous gin-bottle, two huge cigarettes, and a box of matches, and further whispered the dread nameLangaingai, life seemed suddenly to have become less unbearable than before. But Romeo was terribly in earnest, and she, half consenting, followed him. Silently they trod the narrow path that led to Romeo’s yam-patch. A babbling stream bordered it, and on the bank beneath a huge banyan-tree they sat down side by side. Juliet was weeping, but Romeo, with set face, stared at the bottle tight clenched in his hand. Sadly he lighted one of the cigarettes, and, handing it to Juliet, said, “You shall drink first, and when you are dead I will drink too, and follow you. You must smoke this as soon as you have drunk down to there,” and he indicated the place half-way down the bottle with his thumb-nail.
Juliet’s blood ran cold. With a little shiver she pushed the bottle away, saying, “Be of a good mind, Aisala, and drink first, for you are the stronger; and when you are dead it will be easy for me to die after you.”
But Romeo saw that she was dissembling, and thatblack fear filled her heart. He gloomily drew the cork, and put the neck of the bottle to his nose. It smelt horrible, for the kerosene was floating on the top. He turned fiercely upon Juliet.
“Are you going to fool me?” he cried. “Know now that you shall drink first, that we may die together.”
He seized her roughly by the wrist and tried to force the foul-smelling bottle between her lips. Life had never seemed so sweet to Juliet as at that moment. If Romeo chose to die—well, that was his affair; but as for her—she preferred life. She struggled and screamed, and with a bitter cry Romeo released her, and putting the bottle to his own lips drank greedily. Seeing this, and beside herself with fear, Juliet fled shrieking down the path to Verona, and roused the whole village with her cries.
“In his yam-patch,” she cried—“he is dead! He has drunkLangaingai.”
All Verona was soon beneath the banyan-tree—all Verona except Friar Laurence, who was accustomed to this kind of thing. There lay Romeo unconscious, his head pillowed on an empty gin-bottle, with a half-smokedsulukabetween his nerveless fingers. Gently they lifted him, and bore him to Capulet’s house, andlit torches, and drove out the women, and brought young cocoa-nuts, and prised open Romeo’s jaws with a digging-stick, and forced the milk down his throat; and all the while the teacher sat by in a clean white shirt, bursting to question the reviving Romeo about the details of his love affair, to draw a moral therefrom for his next Sunday’s sermon.
At last Romeo, half drowned in cocoa-nut milk, spluttered, coughed, and opened his eyes. He thought perhaps for a moment that he was in another world; but this was no time for vain regrets, for the teacher had them in his grip, and was cross-examining the frightened Juliet as to how many months theirliaisonhad continued. Meanwhile the village officer arrived with a rusty pair of handcuffs, and before daylight Romeo, but half recovered from his journey to “that bourne,” found himself embarked on that rougher journey over the rocky path that leads to the Tuatuacoko court-house.
Why could not the story have ended here, with the romance all unspoilt, with the old story of love till death, and faithless timorous beauty? But I must tell the story to the end as it really happened, and not as I would fain tell it.
The Commissioner’s court sat, the assessors were sworn, the charge was attempted suicide, the chief witness for the prosecution was Juliet, and poor Romeo was in the dock. He was quite the ugliest man I have ever seen—deeply pitted with smallpox, and with a mouth which, seen full face, might have extended completely round his head for all one could see to the contrary. The defence was ingenious. Romeo pleaded that the people of Verona had treated him so badly that they deserved a fright and a warning, and the alleged poison was nothing more noxious than a decoction of orange-bark mixed in an old kerosene-bottle; that he had drunk this off and shammed being dead until he saw the joke had gone far enough, and that then he came to life again. The empty gin-bottle was brought, the dregs poured into a saucer, and a policeman was sent into the bush to bring some realLangaingai. It was a slender, small-leafed plant, about eighteen inches in height, with a fibrous woody bark. The bark was scraped in court, and kneaded up with a little water, and strained. The result was a muddy-looking yellow fluid. The alleged poison smelt abominably of kerosene; but the liquids had to be compared somehow, and the assessors, one English andone native, volunteered to furnish the vile body. The court also tried half a teaspoonful of each. After imbibing the kerosene, one became conscious of an acrid biting flavour, unlike any known taste. There was no doubt that the liquids were identical. Of the after effects, I need only say that the court adjourned, and no more evidence was taken that day, both court and assessors spending their time in drinking cocoa-nut milk, and trying to resume control over their interior mechanism. When they did recover, Romeo was convicted.
“The woman knows no shame, she defies the law, she despises your orders, and she says she will never leave the white man.”
“Then let them marry.”
“I told her that, and she said it was not the foreigner’s wish to marry her. But you are the Governor. It is for you to punish evil-doers. All Vavau is ashamed because of this woman.”
“Arrest her, then, and bring her here.”
At sunset the chiefs had met at the ruinous wooden villa that is the Government House. In the central hall, once gay with paint and gilding, they sat cross-legged before thekava-bowl, young Laifone the Governor in the seat of honour. And into this august assembly Ana Finau, the abandoned contemner of public opinion and the law of the land, was ledtrembling, the only woman in the room. The men stopped talking and looked at her with hard unsympathetic faces. What pity should they have for a countrywoman of theirs who could stoop to one of these vile foreigners, and leave her own kind for the society of a trader—a white man?
The policeman who brought her told her roughly to sit down before the Governor, who glanced at her and bade his companion continue the story the girl’s entrance had interrupted. The chiefs who had come from a distance asked their neighbours who the girl was, and why she had been brought. She meanwhile sat on the floor, her feet doubled under her, as the manner is, her eyes cast down, but with a certain dogged air of resistance about her, as if she was prepared for the worst.
The story was finished. From Laifone’s hearty laugh it might be guessed that it was not over-refined, and the policeman called his attention to Ana Finau. It was no time for business, for thekavawas nearly pounded, the two kerosene-lamps were lighted, and Laifone was bored with the cares of office. He held up his hand, and the ringing thud of the poundingkava-stones ceased.
“Ana,” he said, “they say you are living with the white man. You were punished and told to leave him, and you have gone back.”
The girl reached for a straw on the dirty floor, and began to dissect it with her fingers, examining it intently.
“Why don’t you answer?” asked the policeman, roughly. She glanced up for a moment, and resumed her dissection of the straw.
“It is true,” she said.
“Why do you not marry him?”
“That is Falani’s affair. I suppose he is not willing that we should marry.”
“Then you must leave him at once,” said Laifone, with the air of having dismissed the subject, and turned to the story-teller with a question.
The girl did not move. She had pulled her straw to pieces, and now deliberately reached for another. She looked comely in the lamplight which touched the clear red skin, threw deep shadows into the eyes, and glinted through her glistening auburn curls. Thekava-stones rang out again, and conversation became general. The policeman touched her arm. She shook him off impatiently, threw her head back, and lookingLaifone full in the face, said, “I shall not leave Falani.”
There was a dead silence. Thekava-pounder paused with stone uplifted. Laifone stared at her, half amused and half angry.
“You must leave him, or be punished,” he said, and muttered something about a beautiful girl wasted.
But the policeman was scandalised and indignant. “You impudent woman,” he cried, “you have insulted the Governor and the chiefs. You have no shame, and you are impudent.” Then turning to Laifone he cried, “Is Vavau to become heathen because of this evil-minded woman? It has become a by-word. Religion is despised because of her. We look to you, Laifone. I pray you leave her to us, the police, to deal with her. We will bring her to obedience.”
“Take her away then.”
He sprang up, seized her roughly by the arm, lifted her to her feet, dragged her to the door, and, with a sudden jerk, pulled her whimpering out into the darkness. A man at the back of the room followed them out.
“A strong-minded woman,” said Laifone. “Pound thekava.”
The root is pounded, kneaded in the bowl, andstrained. “Fakatau,” cries the presiding Matabule. Then as the cocoa-nut is filled, the man at the bowl gives the piercing long-drawn cry, “Kava kuo heka,” and as he ceases, the cry is taken up from the darkness outside—a wail of agony.
“Hark! what is that?” says Laifone. It comes again and ceases in choking sobs—a woman’s voice.
A man runs out, and in a moment returns. “It is Ana Finau,” he says; “the police are doing something to her.”
The wail of agony comes again, mixed with the accents of a man’s voice in anger, and a dull sound like a blow.
“Go and tell them to be quieter,” says the presiding Matabule; “or stay,” he adds, “tell them to take her farther off. Don’t they know we are drinkingkava?”
Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered in Vavau when onecopra-trader spends the evening with another, for competition is strong and the milk of human kindness watery. There, in the mean little room at the back of the store, they sit at the only table, which is furnished with glasses, a cracked jug, and the inevitable square black bottle. Round the room are ranged a number of half-emptiedcases of cheap German prints and cutlery, whose contents are piled about, to be within reach if any of the shelves in the store should need replenishing. Franz Kraft, in a dirty flannel shirt and trousers, unkempt, perspiring, and bibulous, is not a fascinating-looking person, but he is prosperous and refined as compared with his companion. They have reached the quarrelsome stage of the evening,—anon they will be vowing eternal friendship,—and Franz is accusing his boon companion of the heinous crime of underselling him, and emphasising his forcible remarks with heavy blows with his fist upon the table. It is hard to realise that this squalid ruffian, who is content to live on fare that the forecastle of a whaler would reject, is worth ten or twelve thousand pounds, made by his own thrift and hard work.
“You haf for dwenty bounds of kreencobraone shilling given, I say. Finau, she tell me,” he cries, with emphasis born of gin.
The door behind him opens, and a gust of wind extinguishes the kerosene-lamp. Franz swears as he gropes for the matches. But when they are found the lamp-funnel is too hot to hold, and the match goes out. The boon companion slams the door to with his foot,and in doing so stumbles against a soft body on the floor.
“Who the h—ll is it?” he cries; “some d—d nigger. A woman, by G—d!” he adds, as the body groans in answer to his kick.
Franz having succeeded in lighting the lamp, turns to look at the intruder. A woman lies face downwards on the floor sobbing. The Englishman takes her roughly by the arm, and turns her over.
“By G—d! Kraft, it’s Finau, and badly knocked about too! Here, you’d better see to her. I’m off home.”
Kraft stooped, lamp in hand, saw the tornvalaand the poor bruised face, and knew who had done this, and why. But as he raised her, he asked all the same.
“The police,” she answered, “because I would not leave you.”
Long after she has sobbed herself to sleep Kraft was muttering his opinions of the police and the authorities generally in forcible German. To-morrow he will beard the Governor Laifone, and tell him what he thinks of him. He will take Finau away to Samoa or Fiji, where the moral code is less strict, and she will be left inpeace; for the girl is a good girl, can cook well, can even be trusted to mind the store, will spy on the doings of the neighbouring traders—is, in short, necessary to him. And she is better than Hinz’s and Schulze’s women, who have children to squall and get in the way. Besides, she will stay with him till he takes his long-projected trip to Hamburg. When that time comes she can go back to her relations, and the police will leave her alone.
But when the morrow came Kraft heard that the Government oranges were to be sold to the highest bidder—a whole season’s crop. There is money in it, and it will never do to quarrel with the Governor; and as for going to Fiji or Samoa in the middle of thecopraseason—of course that is out of the question. Finau had told him the details of her trial overnight, and the outrage, and she dared to hint that marriage would shield her for the future; but Kraft was too old a bird to be caught in such a trap as young Elliston was, for the chief object of the coming trip to Hamburg was the carrying out of a long-cherished scheme. He would figure in his native town as a wealthy planter, with vast estates in the Pacific, and dazzle the eyes of some young girl with adot, then settle down as analtogether respectable character. Of this part of the scheme Finau knew nothing.
Christmas, with its feasting and church-going, with its stifling heat and drowning showers, has come and gone. The oranges have turned to gold on the trees as they were in Hesperus’s garden of old, and are falling in thousands among the long grass, because there are not thirsty mouths enough to suck them. The traders have bickered and wrangled all the long season through, till they are scarcely on drinking terms. The monthly steamer is here for her last cargo of oranges. From dawn till sunset carts laden with the golden fruit plough the miry roads, and the tap of the hammer nailing down the fruit-cases is never silent. Once a-month this “sleepy hollow” of the Pacific assumes an air of energy and bustle, and then sinks into coma, exhausted by the effort, as the steamer glides round the point. The fit is upon it now. The whole population is either at work or encouraging the workers,—the girls and children pelting the men with oranges as they sweat under the heavy cases on the wharf. All save one. Up there in Kraft’s store, where the laughter and shouts from the wharf are faintly echoed, a woman, half blinded by her tears, is on her knees before aniron trunk. It is Finau learning the lesson that men teach women,—sometimes when the skin of both is white, generally when one is brown. She only heard last night that Falani was called away topapalagi, and that one of those strange necessities that govern the lives of white men forced him to leave her. But who knows? All her friends prophesied that this would happen when she first came to Falani. And there was Maata, who went to William, the white man, because he said he would marry her; and he kept putting it off, and then, when she had had her first child, he went topapalagi, saying he would return in a month. That was six years ago. And now Falani was going.
If she had had a white skin, and the man did this to her, she would perhaps have been strengthened by the sense of bitter wrong that he could take her all, let her slave for him, and suffer for him, and then lightly cast her aside without even the grace to take her into his confidence till the last morning; or she would have been cast into the black depths of despair by her utter desolation: but being only a native woman with a brown skin, she felt neither of these, and helped him to pack his trunk.
Kraft himself, returning from the steamer, breaks inupon her reverie, bustling and eager. She sees the half-concealed delight in his face, and even that does not repel her, being, as I have said, a native with none of the finer feelings.
“Falani,” she says solemnly, “tell me truly why you are going. Is it because you are weary of me, or because I have borne you no children?”
“Ah, Finau, do not worry, or say foolish things. You know it is because I cannot help myself, and in six months I shall be back with you, and I shall write to you often. Do not be foolish.”
“Falani, you will forget me,” she persists, “and marry some white woman, as Mr Leason did. And you swore so often you would never leave me. Only a week ago you swore it.”
This being true is too much for his patience.
“You will make me tire of you, Finau, if you talk foolishly, and get angry. I have told you the truth. In six months I shall be back, and then we will be married by the missionary—that is, if you are good, and do not talk foolishly.”
This has the desired effect of making Finau cry; and as even a Germancopra-trader has a soft spot in his composition, a sudden impulse of tendernessand remorse makes the man take her in his arms and try to soothe away her trouble. For the moment he almost realises that this woman has loved him as he never deserved to be loved,—that she has not even shrunk from death itself for his sake, and that in return she only asks him to let her go on serving him; and for all this he is about to stab her in the back, to lie to her, to desert her. Is it too late?
So they sit in the steamy air, laden with the hot smell of rotting fruit, while the laughter and shouts float up to them from the wharf, and he, half wavering, caresses her, and whispers comforting promises into her ear.
But the shrill whistle of the steamer pierces the air, drowning all other sounds in its own vulgar yell. The spell is broken. Kraft has paid his passage, and the steamer is going. All the rest is folly, born of an over-tender heart.
“Finau, I must go!” he cries; “give me the box, and say good-bye, or I shall be late.”
“Oua leva” (wait), she says, and running to the box under pretence of rearranging its contents, she strips off her scented neckerchief, and buries it among the clothes. “He shall take my shadow with him,” shemurmurs; and then turning to him, she asks him to throw his handkerchief into the sea when the steamer sails, “to be your shadow with me.” She is so earnest about this little superstition that, half laughing, he promises.
The whistle blows again, a hurried kiss, and he goes off, box on shoulder, while she, stifling her sobs, walks wearily to the hill above the harbour and sits down, covering her head with hervala.
She sees the mate drive the crowd of natives over the gangway on to the wharf, the hawser cast off, and she sees Falani distinctly leaning over the rail and laughing with the other white men with whom he has just parted. She watches him as the steamer glides down the harbour. Now he will throw his handkerchief, and be bound irrevocably to come back to her. Now, surely, he will throw it. What, not yet? Ah! he is waiting till the vessel nears the point. She stands up in her eagerness. “He must throw it,—he promised!” she cries aloud in her agony. But the vessel is half behind the point now—a moment more and she is out of sight—and he never threw it: so he is gone for ever, and will never return to Finau as long as they both shall live.
Kraft had forgotten his promise until, looking up, he saw and recognised a lonely figure, with arms outstretched, upon the hill; but feeling in his pocket, he found he had only one handkerchief, and it was not worth sacrificing a good handkerchief for a silly native superstition.
Under the first sense of utter loneliness the sneers of her own people were easy enough to bear.Theydid not understand. And then, when she had returned to the old life at Latu’s house with her own people, living their life, sharing their interests, the sorrow faded (as sorrow always does fade, thank heaven!), and the past became a little hazy and unreal. It is good to be a child, or to have a brown skin, which is the same thing, for with them time will heal in days wounds that cripple us for years, and leave scars behind them: and so the sun shines again as brightly as before, and the growth is not stunted. Only sometimes at thegatu-board Finau’s mallet would stop beating, and her eyes would wander away there to the point in the harbour that shuts out the channel, with a wistful far-off look, until the woman next her, indignant at being left to beat for both, would cry out, “Thegatu[bark-cloth] is hardening while Finau is looking for Falani;”and during the coarse laugh that followed Finau would beat the yielding bark with ringing blows, changing her mallet from hand to hand as each tired.
So six months passed away. Finau had long given up asking at the post-office for a letter when the steamer came in; and when young Beni, the post-office clerk, threw her one at thekava-drinking in Latu’s house two days after the steamer had left, she thought for a moment there had been some mistake. Beni, with the privilege appertaining to his office, had as usual opened it and circulated it among his acquaintances for the two days that had intervened since the arrival of the mail; but being in some white man’s language, his curiosity was still ungratified. Finau thrust it into the bosom of herkofu, and contained her soul in patience until the morning. She was at Müller’s door before he was up next morning. After he had promised inviolable secrecy the German letter was produced, read, and translated into dog-Tongan, while Finau sat on the floor with glistening eyes. The joke was altogether too good for Müller to keep to himself, promise or no promise, and before evening all in Vavau who cared to know, whether white or brown, were duly made aware that Franz Kraft could not livewithout Finau,—that though his body was in Germany his heart was in Vavau,—and that though the German ladies of high degree all made love to him, yet none was so beautiful as Finau, and he was adamant to them. The whole effusion did great credit to Kraft’s wit; and the best of the joke was that Finau swallowed it all, including the paragraph about his tearing himself away from Hamburg because he could not bear the separation any longer, only the chiefs in Hamburg would not let him go for some inscrutable reason of their own. Truly Franz Kraft was a most humorous fellow. The one sentence Müller did not translate was a heading, in execrable Tongan, that she was to get the drunken Wilhelm Kraft, Franz’s brother, to read the letter, and on no account to take it to Müller or any one else.
But what cared Finau that the contents of her letter were public? They might laugh as they would—her husband had not forgotten her: he was coming back to marry her, and she would toil for him all her days, and be happy. Next month would come another letter to say he was starting, and in three months more he would be here. Ah, those months would be so easy to live through now! She gravely dictated to thedelighted Müller an answering love-letter. She never ceased to think of him; and she had had no rest since he went; and would the good God guard him, and bring him safely back to her,—a very tame composition beside Kraft’s love-letter, but as Müller never sent it, the lack of style was of no consequence.
But the letter that should have come by the next steamer must doubtless have been lost in the post; or perhaps Kraft was starting, and did not think it worth while to write. Another mail, and still no letter. Ah! it is now clear. Poor Falani must be ill. The old letter was getting quite worn out now, from being carried in the bosom and slept on at night, but the writing was still visible through the oil-stains. It certainly did look shaky,—yes, decidedly Falani must be ill.
And then the third steamer came, and Beni said there was no letter. That evening brother Wilhelm paid Latu a visit, three sheets in the wind, as was usual with him at that time of night. He wanted Finau; he was labouring with a message for Finau. She is fetched from the cook-house. The difficulty is to find words for the message to Finau, for the message requires “breaking gently,” and it is difficult to break news gently under the influence of gin.
“Finau,” hiccoughs brother Wilhelm, “Falani has written. He told me to tell you—he is married.” The instructions were to break the news gently, and having carried them out to the satisfaction of his own conscience, brother Wilhelm takes himself to where the bottles are square and black, and the night may be profitably spent.
Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living; thither go the poets of thelakalakafor inspiration; thither go the girls of Halaufuli for flower-garlands, but not alone, for the spirits of the dead roam among the rocks of Liku, and must be scared away by numbers. Jutting out from the precipice is a single shaft of rock round which, even in calm weather, a furious wind eddies. With a goodhead one may climb out to this pinnacle, and, holding on firmly, see nothing between his feet and the foaming surf a thousand feet below.
There was a faint light in the western horizon where the moon had set. The stars were veiled by fleecy clouds—only where Venus hung low in the sky, casting a silver trail over the sea, was the night clear. The strong south-east trade-wind was turning cold, as it does before dawn, and Finau, breathless from her unconscious journey, instinctively wrapped hervalaround her shoulders. As she ran from the shelter of the roaring palms on to the cliff’s edge, the thunder of the surf made the rock on which she stood tremble, and the south wind, wet with spray, drenched her with tiny particles of water. The path ended here: it was only used for the last journey of the dead, who slept all around her in their shrouds of white sand glistening in the dim starlight. The sight of the precipice before her brought reflection to her maddened brain. She was on the Liku where the spirits are, and at night, when the spirits oftenest are abroad. But she felt no fear now, for a sudden thought had taken possession of her. She remembered how, not many months since, Laubasi, the beauty of Neiafu, had disappeared; howthey had searched for her, following the girlish footprints in the muddy path; how Palu the fisherman had crept down the cliff-face at Anamatangi, and seen far below him a body lying on a rocky ledge; how at first it was thought that she had been swept down by the furious wind that roars across the cave’s mouth in all weathers, boisterous or calm, until the body was brought back, and then the women gave another reason—for Laubasi was a Wesleyan class-leader, much regarded for her character, and in a month or two that would have been gone had she lived. The Anamatangi was scarce half a mile from where Finau stood. With set purpose in her dark face she walked quickly along the narrow path, hedged in by overhanging trees that led along the edge of the cliff. In half a mile she emerged upon a grassy plain sloping down towards Neiafu, whence in the daytime the thousand isles of Haafulu Hao could be seen as in a map. Here she turned seawards, and passed down a stony narrow path among the trees. The path became narrower and steeper, then rose a little, and suddenly Finau found herself standing upon a razor edge of rock, the apex of a buttress jutting many feet beyond the main cliff, whose base had been worn away by the surf of ages.
It was too dark to see below, but as every long roller crashed into the caves at the cliff’s base the pinnacle trembled, and she knelt, grasping the rugged moss with her fingers. Only not to think—not to think of what she had come here to do,—not to think of what lay below her in the darkness,—not to think of what was beyond if she passed the gate! She remembered Paula’s sermon when Laubasi’s fate was known,—how he described her burning in the flames, as if he had been there to see; but he had said that of so many people, and Falani said it was all an invention of the missionaries to make the people give them money. How white, how still and restful, those graves had seemed, in one of which Laubasi lay; but how the sharp-pointed rocks must have torn her flesh when she fell! It must have been a worse agony than the police inflicted, and that was too much to bear! So she lay face downward on the rocky pinnacle, her courage waning, filled with despair, and with a terror that was worse than despair. The east turned grey, and the morning star was quenched by the growing light which flecked the sea with foaming wave-tops, unseen till now. And with the dawn the wind grew stronger, till it would have been unsafe for Finau tostand up, even if she would. The face of the cliff, too, behind her became visible, and she saw with terror the dangers of the path she had traversed by the dim light of the stars. One false step and her body would have fallen down there, where ledge upon ledge and pinnacle upon pinnacle of grey limestone-rock are half hidden by ferns and creepers, as the thorns of thematoluare hidden by its velvet leaves, and beneath all a white hell of roaring waters.
As the light grew, she saw in the face of the precipice behind her a black hole large enough to admit the body of a man. To reach it one must creep along a ledge, slanting from the place where she lay. This was the cave of the winds, into which only Tubou the fleet-footed had penetrated, and Lolohea, who, tradition said, had fled when Feletoa was taken, and who, after peace was made, still dwelt in the wild Liku, communing with the spirits, and accumulating wisdom. It was on this very spot he stood when King Finau’s men brought him to bay till their chief should speak with him; and it was here that he was offered lands, slaves, and the choice of the fairest maidens of Vavau, only to refuse them for the solitude of this awful place. The wind was increasing in force, and it boomed across themouth of the cave like a great organ-pipe. In the lulls a hollow roar seemed to come from the very bowels of the island. Somewhere far below the great ocean-rollers poured in, driving the imprisoned air through the mouth with terrific force. Surely no living man could dare the feats of those old heroes of tradition?
No! Death in such a place, and in such a way, were too horrible, and Finau, trembling and weak, looked round for a way of escape. The ridge she had crossed was now vibrating like a tense wire. She tried to rise, clinging to the rotten fern with her hands, and nearly lost her balance in a sharp gust of wind. It was hopeless. So she must die after all! And she lay there, dazed and bewildered, with all other desire gone but that of living.
* * * * * * *
“Here is the woman Finau. Her mind is foolish, but I have brought her back alive. Take better care of her, lest we of the Liku be again obliged to save her and carry her these four miles. Next time she goes to the cave of the winds she will fall perhaps where Laubasi did, and then we shall have to bury your dead.”
Finau’s uncle is awakened by a pinch on the leg, and goes out sulkily into the darkness with the man towhere his cart stands. The jolting over the stony roads from Halaufuli has wakened Finau from her stupor, and she talks wildly and incoherently as her helpless body is lifted from the cart and laid on the mats near the lamp.
“The police will come to ask questions, for they stopped me as I was coming. I don’t want to get into trouble, so I shall go.” The cart rumbles away into the night.
It is weary work tending Finau week after week, for there are limits even to the claims of kinship. A relation may be ill and helpless for a week, or even two, and who would complain? But when it passes into months, and the relation has fits of blind anger, and talks foolishly, and is ungrateful, who can be blamed for wishing to get rid of her? Thus reasoned Ana, Finau’s aunt by marriage, after the manner of her kind, and not being ashamed of her opinions, she gave them to all Neiafu, including John Mason, the drunken carpenter, a grass-widower three times deep. And when Ana understood that there was a vacancy in the Mason household, and that the householder himself had had great difficulty in supplying the vacancy, she enlarged upon the charms and attractions of Finau,—herwashing and ironing, her cooking, and her undoubted experience in providing for the comfort of a husband overcome with nocturnal convivialities. To Finau, in Mason’s absence, she made returning life a burden. It is better to die than to lie weak and helpless, eating food grudgingly given, and sheltered by an unfriendly roof. And after each of Mason’s friendly visits Ana would say, “Why does he come here? Why? because he desires you, of course! I heard him say that your face was beautiful, and that he wanted you to live with him. Drunken? Not more than Falani or the other white men, and when he is drunk he would not ill-treat you. Used to beat Mele, did he? Ah, that was another of Mele’s lies! She was always seeking an excuse to leave him, because she liked Lavuso better. No. Jone Mesoni was not the man to beat his wife unless she deserved it, and even then not hard with a stick, but with his hand!”
And so at last, when one evening Mason came with a biggerkava-root than usual, and took his bowl from Finau’s hands, and stayed after the others had gone, she, feeling bitter anger in her heart towards the man, but a greater bitterness towards the relations whodrove her from their door, would resist no more. Mason wasted no time over courtship. He crawled over to where she sat, and roughly threw his arm round her in the presence of them all. She pushed him away with a gesture of disgust.
“Finau,” he said, in a voice broken with vinous emotion, “it is well that we should live together. You will come to myabito-morrow?”
Finau sat with her face hidden in her hands, but Ana, the matchmaker, answered for her.
“Yes. I will bring her before mid-day, so that she may prepare dinner.”
* * * * * * *
The steamer is in again from New Zealand. After the miscellaneous crowd of natives from the southern islands have disembarked, and sniffed and wept over their friends of Vavau, there is a flutter of excitement among the onlookers.
“Dies kann doch nicht Franz Kraft sein, Pots Tausend! was für ein eleganter Herr!” cries Karl Müller; for lo! Franz Kraft, the dishevelled, the disreputable, shaved, transfigured, and glorified in a black coat and billycock hat, silver-mounted walking-stick in hand, is there. And more than this, Franz Kraft is leading alady over the gangway, for all the world as if he were handing her out of a tram-car at the Thiergarten-gate His old boon companions whisper together in derisive curiosity as Franz, affecting not to see them, paces the wharf with dignity, his companion on his arm. She, poor thing, makes a curious figure against the palm-trees and white sand—for black satin, white cotton stockings, and German hats do not go well with palm-trees.
She was looking timidly and wonderingly at the mean iron-roofed houses that line the beach, for the cunning Franz had crammed her flaxen head with pictures of South Sea splendour, in which Neiafu appeared as a city, and Franz himself as a benevolent planter of great possessions. Of her future home Franz had been reticent, but she had formed a mental picture of a mansion she had seen in a printseller’s window in theUnter den Linden, all colonnades, and cool palms, and haunted by numbers of dusky servants. The city must be farther inland, she thought, as they passed up the beach. They were opposite a tumble-down wooden house, larger than the rest. It might be, she thought, a smallwirthhaus, where they drank beer in the back garden. She timidly asked Franz. “It’s the king’shouse,” he answered roughly. Surely he must be joking, for he had told her so much about the king’s palace, and the soldiers, and the rest of it. Yes; certainly Franz must be joking, for her great strong Franz could make jokes sometimes.
A few steps more, and Franz stopped—stopped at the meanest hovel of them all,—a rickety wooden cottage, with iron roof, perched above the sea, without even a tree to give shade or a fence to hide its ugly squalor from the road. Telling her to wait, he went to the next cottage and returned with a key. She was speechless with astonishment and a vague fear. The door swung back, and he beckoned her to follow. Within was a damp, ill-smelling, little shop, with dirty stained counter, and shelves tenanted only by a few rusty tins of meat. Beyond this a small unceiled room, furnished with a bare deal-table, and dirty like the shop; and beyond this again a room containing a canvas stretcher, overhung by a rotting mosquito-screen. That was all, and the all was pervaded by the sickening rancid smell ofcopra, and unspeakably dirty. The windows showed a large iron shed in whichcopra, the currency of the country, was stored. This was the home he had brought her to!And away there in Berlin her father, the stationer, was still boasting of the brilliant marriage she had made.
It took two days for Franz to appear in his usual oily shirt-sleeves at the counter, and he did not respond to the inquiries about his wife. Thenceforth she became a person of mystery, for she was not seen at all for two months; and when she did leave the house, there were lines about the meaningless mouth, and the blue eyes were dull and red. Franz now ventured on his first social entertainment. The guests were bidden, and Franz, in a clean shirt, received them in the sitting-room,—nine in all, including the two ladies of the place. There was an awkward pause, for Frau Kraft had not appeared. Then Franz went into the bedroom to bring their hostess. There was a whispered altercation, then silence, then a burst of sobbing—and before he returned his guests had all fled. Not even the faithful Müller stayed to break the square black bottle that was to have been the gist of the entertainment. Scandal was now satisfied, for it was evident that Franz did not get on with his wife, and was not above striking her.
But thecopraseason had begun, and Kraft, if hewould live, must buycopralike the rest. Early one morning he started with his wife for Halaufuli, where Fisher, a friendly rival, had a station. Fisher’s house adjoined John Mason’s modest establishment. The Krafts were given the only bedroom in the house—a long low room, in which a platform filling up the end and covered with a pile of mats and a mosquito-screen formed the bed.
When Mason, the man who could not beat his wife, steered an oblique course towards his door, stumbled in, and, being a little less drunk than usual, succeeded in finding his walking-stick, he was at that stage of inebriation when the punishment of somebody for something seems to a man a solemn and sacred duty. Unluckily poor Finau had heard him coming, and ran to his rescue. He fell upon her savagely. Her shrieks broke through the wooden walls, and interwove themselves with Kraft’s dreams. Suddenly he hears his own name, and starts from his sleep to listen to a voice he knows crying in an agony of need. It is Finau calling to him, and without thinking where he is, he springs up to go to her rescue. A blow or two directed by the dim light of the kerosene lamp disposes effectually of Mason,and Franz, furious with anger, yet not knowing what to do, creeps back to his room. His wife is still asleep, as he can hear by her regular breathing; but Finau has followed him, and whimpering she creeps into the room, and leans sobbing against the wall. What could he do—this man who has so injured her? She had loved him and suffered for him. Was he to cast her out when she came to him in her need? And what harm was there in protecting her? He whispers to her not to be afraid and to stop crying, but she only sinks to the ground and sobs the louder. When he speaks again she creeps towards him, as if in bodily fear of the man who has been left outside the door. Franz looks at the screen: his wife still sleeps. And so he speaks to her in a low voice, and strokes her bowed head, and she, in the abandonment of her wretchedness, puts her arm round him. And as he murmurs comforting words to her in her own tongue, he chances to look towards the bed where the dim light is burning, and as he looks there is a movement, a hand from within lifts up the screen, and eyes with a life’s tragedy written in them look out at him.
In those days, sir, there were no white men, living on Kandavu, but many whaling-ships used to come and lie at anchor for months at a time. Run away? Why, the crews always ran away. We used to persuade them to run away by means of our women, and then we caught them, and tied their hands, and hid them in the forest until a reward was paid by the captain—a musket sometimes, and many knives and axes. They were not white men like you, sir, but they had dark skins like the Indian interpreter, and came from a land called “Portugee.” These men were very wicked; but there were others with them with blacker skins who were less wicked: their place was only to serve the rest and prepare food. Yes, some ofus used to sail away with them—some from curiosity because they wished to see other lands, and others because the chiefs sent them, being persuaded with great rewards.
It was with Captain Aneli that I first sailed. We went hence to Vatulele, my mother’s island, and lay there several weeks, helping the Vunisalevu against Korolamalama, by lending him muskets and powder, and by sailing round to the rocky point, where we shot many as they fled from their enemies on the land. Ah, the captain was a good man, and the Vunisalevu loved him well! No; he asked for no reward, but did this out of his great love for the Vunisalevu, whose brother the people of Korolamalama had killed. You may see the site of the town away here among the caves at the western point; but do not go there, sir, at night or alone, for the spirits that dwell there hate white men as they hate us. The people are all gone, except the women, of whom my mother was one, for they were more numerous than we; and when Captain Aneli would go, the Vunisalevu strove to detain him, lest, when he was gone, they should take their revenge. But the white man was wise, and imparted to us his Wisdom, saying, “Invitethem to a feast and slay them;” and the Vunisalevu, knowing that conquerors do not make feasts for the conquered, sent a messenger bidding them plant bananas for him. But they were afraid, and answered that they would send all their bananas and yams rather than come themselves, and with their answer was brought a whale’s-tooth to turn the chief’s heart. But he refused the tooth, and sent again, saying that it was not meet to suspect plots in time of peace, and that he would pledge their safety, for they might come armed while he and his people would be without weapons, but would peacefully bring up the feast as hosts should do to guests.
And when the appointed day came, the captain pitied him, and landed thirty men, who hid among the bushes where you see thoseivi-trees, and the Korolamalama men came, two hundred strong, each with his bundle of young banana-shoots, his spear in his left hand, and his throwing-club in his girdle. None were left behind, for they feared lest, if they were divided, we might attack them. As for us, we were hidden in the undergrowth along the path, our arms hidden near us where we could find them; and for the feast we had brought a rottentaroeach inderision of our enemies, who were to die that day. We would have set on them at once, but the white men said, “Not so, let them first plant your bananas, so that they be wearied, and you will have made use of them as long as they can be useful.” This wise counsel pleased us; so we waited, and even came unarmed to look at the men as they sweated beneath the sun, digging the holes and stamping the earth round the shoots, each man with his spear stuck in the ground behind him: and as we watched we saw that, when a man moved on to dig a fresh hole, he first moved his weapon to the new place. And as the sun dipped towards the west, slanting the black shadows of theivi-trees across the clearing, we went for ourtaroand heaped it ceremoniously beneath the shade of the trees, and sat down to present it to them. And they, seeing us unarmed, were ashamed to bring their spears with them, for it is forbidden by our customs to receive the feast with arms. So they left their spears, each man where he had been digging, and came and sat before us. And while they sat with their backs to the clearing, the boys crept among the newly planted bananas as if playing, and took their spears, heaping dead grass upon them so that theycould not be seen. Then Mavua the herald took a decayed root ofyangona, and going forward, presented it and the feast in the customary words, and their herald came forward to touch the feast. But when he took the root and saw that it was rotten, and touched thetaroand knew that it was decayed, he was speechless a moment in fear and anger, for the insult was very gross. Then he leapt to his feet, crying, “A plot! a plot! we are undone to-day.” And they sprang up to go for their spears. But we had snatched up ours already, and were upon them, stabbing and spearing them as they dodged among the bananas looking for their spears.
But when they saw that they were gone, the herald uttered a great and bitter cry, cursing us and bidding them follow him, and he ran for the forest towards the west where Korolamalama lies; but there he met the white men, and from the tree came the thunder of the muskets and the bark of the little guns, and cries, and evil words, and a thick smoke, while we lay on our faces in the clearing hearing the bullets scream over our heads. And when some of them ran back to escape the guns, we stabbed at them, smiting some, and driving some back again to the white men,so that when all was done, only one was left alive of them all, and he, being found hiding in a water-hole, was dragged out and led to the beach among the boys, and Uluisau held his arms while the boys beat him to death with their toy clubs.
Then the bodies were dragged to the town. To be eaten? How should I know, when I was sent with the others to Korolamalama to fetch the women and children? And when we neared the place they thought that we were their own men returning from the banana-planting, and they came out to meet us. But the two who saw us first ran shrieking to the others, and Butho, he who held the basin at the missionary collection last Sunday, followed close after them, making signs to us to keep unseen. And he deceived the women, saying that their chief had sent him to bid them bring crabs and yams to him in the plantation (for they had just come from fishing on the reef). But they, still doubting him, half followed and half held back, until they reached the thicket where we lay. Then Amori, whose husband we had slain, raised a great uproar, crying to the others to flee, for there was treachery; and they scattered into the bush, screaming like a flock ofparoquets. But Butho, who feared nothing, flung hisulaat the woman Amori and struck her on the back so that she fell on her face, and he slew her with his club where she lay, and we others pursued the women, striking down the elderly, who made the greatest uproar, and saving the young girls alive. These we led with the children to the Vunisalevu.
Did they weep? No; they dared not weep, for Butho, the fearless, who led us, told them that she who first wept aloud should die; and thereafter, when Ina, the daughter of Naikele, lifted up her voice, he struck her on the mouth with his short throwing-club. Ah! she was never called “Ina the beautiful” more, for her teeth were all broken, and her nose crushed, so that no man desired her as before, and she became a kitchen-woman, and carried firewood for the chief’s kitchen all her days. So the women feared to weep aloud lest Ina’s fate should befall them.