Chapter IV: Part 4

His thirtieth birthday! His first youth was behind him, with all its heartburnings, its failures, its manifold humiliations. What had he done these years past but drift, forlorn, penniless, and unattached, over those shallows where others had stuck and prospered--a gentle decline all the way from college in hope and fulfilment? The army and civil service had alike refused him. In the colonies he had toiled unremittingly in half a hundred characters,--groom, cook, boundary rider, steamer roustabout,--always sinking, always failing. Then those last four years in the Islands, and his tumble-down store in Vaiala! Had life nothing more for him than an endless succession of hot, empty days on the farthest beach of Upolu, with scarcely more to eat than the commonest Kanaka, and no other outlet for his energies than the bartering of salt beef for coprah and an occasional night’s fishing on the reef? On the other hand, he was well in body, and had times of even thinking himself happy in this fag-end of the world. The old store, rotten and leaky though it was, gave him a dryer bed than he had often found in his wandering life, and the food, if monotonous and poor, was better than the empty belly with which he had often begun an arduous day in Australia. And the place was extraordinarily beautiful. Yes, he had always admitted that, even in his blackest days of depression, though the beauty of it seemed almost to oppress him at times. But beautiful or not, this was a strange place for his father’s son, a strange thirtieth birthday for one who had begun the world with every prospect of faring well and rising high in its esteem, and the sense of his failure again seized him by the throat.

The noise of an incoming boat drew him to the door, and he looked out to see the pastor’s old whaler heading through the reef. They had made a night trip to avoid the heat, and all looked tired and weary with their long pull from Apia, and the song with which they timed their paddles sounded mournfully across the lagoon. A half-grown girl leaped into the water and hastened up to the store with something fastened in a banana-leaf.

It was a letter, which she shyly handed the trader. Walter Kinross looked at it with surprise, for it was the first he had received in four years, and the sight of its English stamp and familiar handwriting filled him with something like awe.

“The white man said you would give us a tin of salmon and six _masi_,” said the little girl, in native.

Kinross unlocked the dingy trade-room, still in a maze of wonder and impatience, and gave the little girl a box of matches in excess of postage. Then he opened the letter.

MY DEAR NEPHEW [it ran]: Your letter asking me to send you a book or
two or any old papers I might happen to have about me has just come
to hand, and finds me at Long’s Hotel, pretty miserable and ill.
Yours was a strange note, after a silence of eight years, telling me
nothing on earth about yourself save that you are trading in some
islands, and seldom see a white face from one year’s end to another.
When a man is seventy years of age and is ill, and his nigh-spent
life unrolls before him like the pages of a musty old book, and
when he wonders a little how it will feel to be dead and done with
altogether, I tell you, my boy, he begins to see the spectres of
all sorts of old misdeeds rising before him. Past unkindnesses,
past neglects, a cold word here, a ten-pound note saved there and
an old friend turned empty away--well, well! Without actually going
the length of saying that I was either unkind or negligent in your
case, I feel sometimes I was rather hard on you as to that mess of
yours in London, and that affair at Lowestoft the same year. I was
disappointed, and I showed it.

I know you’re pretty old to come back and start life afresh here, but
if you have not had the unmitigated folly to get married out there
and tied by the leg for ever, I’ll help you to make a new start. You
sha’n’t starve if three hundred pounds a year will keep you, and if
you will try and turn over a new leaf and make a man of yourself in
good earnest, I am prepared to mark you down substantially in my
will. But mind--no promises--payment strictly by results. You’re no
longer a boy, and this is probably the last chance you’ll ever get of
entering civilised life again and meeting respectable folk. I inclose
you a draft at sight on Sydney, New South Wales, for two hundred and
fifty pounds, for you will doubtless need clothes, etc., as well as
your passage money, and if you decide not to return you can accept
it as a present from your old uncle. I have told Jones (you would
scarcely know the old fellow, Walter, he’s so changed) to send you a
bundle of books and illustrated papers, which I hope will amuse you
more than they seem to do me.

Affectionately yours,

ALFRED BANNOCK.

The trader read the letter with extraordinary attention, though the drift of it was at first almost beyond him--read it and re-read it, dazed and overcome, scarcely realising his good fortune. He spread out the bill on his knee and smoothed it as he might have patted the head of a dog. It spelled freedom, friends, the life he had been trained and fitted to lead, a future worth having and worth dividing. The elation of it all tingled in his veins, and he felt like singing. London, the far distant, the inaccessible, now hummed in his ears. He saw the eddying, crowded streets, the emptying play-houses, the grey river sparkling with lights. The smoke of a native oven thrilled him with memories of the underground, and he had but to close his eyes and the surf thundered with the noise of arriving trains.

The house could not contain him and his eager thoughts; he must needs feel the sky overhead and the trades against his cheek, and take all nature into his puny confidence. Besides, Vaiala had now a new charm for him, one he had never counted on to find. Soon, now, it would begin to melt into the irrevocable past; its mist-swept mountains, its forests and roaring waterfalls would fade into nothingness and become no more than an impalpable phantom of his mind, the stuff that dreams are made of. He wandered along the path from one settlement to another, round the great half-moon of the bay, absorbing every impression with a new and tender interest.

There were a dozen little villages to be passed before he could attain the rocky promontory that barred the western shore, pretty hamlets in groves of cocoanuts and breadfruit, in each perhaps a dozen beehive houses and as many sheds and boat-shelters. Between village and village the path led him under rustling palms and beside the shallow waters of the lagoon and across a river where he surprised some laughing girls at their bath. In the deep shade old men were mending nets, and children were playing tag and cricket with boisterous shouts, or marbles in sandy places. From one house he heard the clapping hands that announced the _’ava_; in another the song and stamp of practising dancers. Hard and lonely though his life had been, this Samoan bay was endeared to him by a thousand pleasant memories and even by the recollection of his past unhappiness. Here he had found peace and love, freedom from taskmasters, scenes more beautiful than any picture, and, not least, a sufficiency to eat. A little money and his life might have been tolerable, even happy--enough money for a good-sized boat, a cow or two, and those six acres of the Pascoe estate he had so often longed to buy. Only the month before, the American consul had offered them for two hundred dollars Chile money, and here he was with two hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket, seventeen hundred and fifty dollars currency! Cruel fate, that had made him in one turn of her wrist far too rich to care. He would buy them for Leata, he supposed; he must leave the girl some land to live on. But where now were all the day-dreams of the laying out of his little estate?--the damming of the noisy stream, the fencing, terracing, and path-making he had had in mind; the mangoes, oranges, and avocados he had meant to plant in that teeming soil, with coffee enough for a modest reserve? What a snug, cosy garden a man could make of it! What a satisfaction it might have been! How often had he talked of it with Leata, who had been no less eager than himself to harness their quarter-acre to the six and make of them all a little paradise.

Poor Leata! whom he had taken so lightly from her father’s house and paid for in gunpowder and kegs of beef--his smiling, soft-eyed Leata, who would have died for him! What was to become of her in this new arrangement of things? The six acres would provide for her, of course; in breadfruit, cocoanuts, and bananas she would not be badly off: but where was the solace for the ache in her heart, for her desolation and abandonment? He sighed as he thought of her, the truest friend he had found in all his wanderings. He would get her some jewellery from Apia, and a chest of new dresses, and a big musical box, if she fancied it. What would it matter if he did go home in the steerage? It would be no hardship to a man like him. She would soon forget him, no doubt, and take up with somebody else, and live happily ever afterwards in the six acres. Ah, well! he mustn’t think too much about her, or it would take the edge off his high spirits and spoil the happiest day of his life.

By this time he had worked quite round the bay, and almost without knowing it he found himself in front of Paul Engelbert’s store. Engelbert was the other trader in Vaiala--a passionate, middle-aged Prussian, who had been a good friend of his before those seven breadfruit-trees had come between them. In his new-found affluence and consequent good humour the bitterness of that old feud suddenly passed away. He recalled Engelbert’s rough, jovial kindness--remembered how Paul had cared for him through the fever, and helped him afterwards with money and trade. How could he have been so petty as to make a quarrel of those breadfruit-trees? He recollected, with indescribable wonder at himself, that he had once drawn a pistol on the old fellow, and all this over six feet of boundary and seven gnawed breadfruits! By Jove! he could afford to be generous and hold out the right hand of friendship. Poor old Paul! it was a shame they had not spoken these two years.

On the verandah, barefoot and in striped pyjamas, was Engelbert, pretending not to see him. Kinross thought he looked old and sick and not a little changed.

“How do you do, Engelbert?” he said.

The German looked at him with smouldering eyes. “Gan’t you see I’m busy?” he said.

“You might offer a man a chair,” said Kinross, seating himself on the tool-chest.

“Dere iss no jare for dem dat issn’t welgome,” said the German.

“I used to be welcome here,” said Kinross. “There was a time when you were a precious good friend of mine, Paul Engelbert.”

“Dat wass long ago,” said the trader.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Kinross, “that I’ve acted like a damned fool about those trees.”

“Dat wass what I wass dinking, too, dese two dree years,” responded the other.

“Take them; they are yours,” said Kinross. “You can build your fence there to-morrow.”

“So!” said Engelbert, with dawning intelligence. “The Yerman gonsul has at last to my gomplaint listened.”

“Hang the German consul! No!” cried Kinross. “I do it myself, because I was wrong--because you were good to me that time I was sick, and lent me the hundred dollars and the trade.”

“And you want noding?” asked Engelbert, still incredulous.

“I want to shake your hand and be friends again, old man,” said Kinross, “same as we used to be when we played dominoes every night, and you’d tell me about the Austrian War, and how the Prince divided his cigars with you when you were wounded.”

The German looked away. “Oh, Kinross,” he said, with a shining look in his eyes, “you make me much ashamed.” He turned suddenly round and wrung the Englishman’s hand in an iron grasp. “I, too, was dam fool.”

“A friend is worth more than seven breadfruits,” said Kinross.

“It wass not breadfruid: it wass brincible,” said the German. “Poof! de drees dey are noding; here it wass I wass hurted,” and he laid a heavy paw against his breast. “Ho, Malia, de beer!”

His strapping native wife appeared with bottles and mugs; at the sight of their guest she could scarcely conceal her surprise.

“Prosit!” said Engelbert, touching glasses.

“You know dem six agers of de Pasgoe estate,” he said, looking very hard at his companion. “Very nice leetle place, very sheap, yoost behind your store?”

Kinross nodded, but his face fell in spite of himself.

“I from the American gonsul bought him,” went on the German, “very sheap: two hundred dollars Chile money.”

Kinross looked black. Engelbert patted his hand and smiled ambiguously.

“Dey are yours,” he said. “Pay me back when you have de money. I buy dem only to spite you. _My friend_, take dem.”

“Paul, Paul,” cried Kinross, “I don’t know what to say--how to thank you. Only this morning I got money from home, and the first thing I meant to do was to buy them.”

“All de better,” said Engelbert; “and, my boy, you blant goffee. Cobrah, poof! Gotton, poof! It’s de goffee dat bays, and I will get you blenty leetle drees from my friend, de gaptain in Utumabu Blantation. You must go? So? Yoost one glass beer. Nein? I will be round lader.”

Kinross tore himself away with difficulty and started homeward, his heart swelling with kindness for the old Prussian. He exulted in the six acres he had so nearly lost, and they now seemed to him more precious than ever. It was no empty promise, that of the coffee-trees from Utumapu; these would save him all manner of preparatory labor and put his little plantation six months ahead. Then he remembered he was leaving Vaiala, and again he heard the hum of London in his ears. Well, he would explain about the trees to Leata, and would beg old Engelbert to help and advise her a bit. Poor Leata! she had lots of good sense and was very quick to learn. He could trust Leata.

He was crossing the _malae_, or common, of Polapola, when the sight of the chief’s house put a new thought into his head. It was Tangaloa’s house, and he could see the chief himself bulking dimly in the shadow of a _siapo_. Tangaloa! He hadn’t spoken with him in a year. The old fellow had been good to him, and in the beginning had overwhelmed him with kindnesses. But that was before he had shot the chief’s dog and brought about the feud that had existed between them for so long. It was annoying to have that everlasting dog on his verandah at night, frightening Leata to death and spilling the improvised larder all about the floor, not to speak of the chickens it had eaten and the eggs it had sucked. No, he could not blame himself for having shot that beast of a dog! But it had made bad blood between him and Tangaloa, and had cost him, in one way or another, through the loss of the old chief’s custom and influence, the value of a thousand chickens. But he would make it up with Tangaloa, for he meant to leave no man’s ill will behind him. So he walked deliberately towards the house, and slipped under the eaves near the place where the old chief was sitting alone.

“_Talofa_, Tangaloa,” he cried out cordially, shaking hands.

The chief responded somewhat drily to the salutation and assumed a vacant expression.

“That dog!” began the trader.

“That dog!” repeated the chief, with counterfeit surprise.

“Thy dog, the one I shot near my house,” said Kinross, firing up with the memory of its misdeeds, “the dog that chased my chickens, and ate my eggs, and plagued me all night like a forest devil--I want to take counsel with your Highness about it.”

“But it is dead,” said Tangaloa.

“But thy high-chief anger is not dead,” said Kinross. “Behold, I used to be like your son, and the day was no longer than thy love for me. I am overcome with sorrow to remember the years that are gone, and now to live together as we do in enmity. What is the value of thy dog, that I may pay thee for it, and what present can I make besides that will turn thy heart towards me again?”

“Cease,” said the chief; “there was no worth to the dog, and I have no anger against thee, Kinilosi.”

“You mock at me, Tangaloa,” said Kinross. “There is anger in thine eyes even as thou speakest to me.”

“Great was my love for that dog,” said the chief. “It licked my face when I lay wounded on the battle-ground. If I whistled it came to me, so wise was it and loving; and if I were sick it would not eat.”

“Weighty is my shame and pain,” said the trader. “Would that I had never lifted my gun against it! But I will pay thee its worth and make thee a present besides.”

“Impossible,” said Tangaloa. “When the cocoanut is split, who can make it whole?”

“One can always get a new cocoanut,” said Kinross. “I will buy thee the best dog in Apia, a high chief of a dog, clever like a consul, and with a bark melodious as a musical box.”

At this Tangaloa laughed for the first time. “And what about thy chickens?” he demanded, “and thy things to eat hung out at night?”

“It can eat all the chickens it likes,” returned Kinross, “and I will feed it daily, also, with salt beef and sardines, if that will make us friends again, your Highness.”

“Cease, Kinilosi; I am thy friend already,” said Tangaloa, extending his hand. “It is forgotten about the dog, and lo, the anger is buried.”

“And the price?” inquired Kinross.

“One cannot buy friendship or barter loving-kindness,” said Tangaloa. “Again I tell thee there is no price. But if thou wouldst care to give me a bottle of kerosene, for the lack of which I am sore distressed these nights--well, I should be very glad.”

“I shall be pleased indeed,” said the trader, who of a sudden assumed an intent, listening attitude.

“What is the matter?” demanded Tangaloa.

“Sh-sh!” exclaimed the white man.

“There is nothing,” said the chief.

“Yes, yes,” said Kinross; “listen, your Highness! A faint, faint bark like that of a spirit dog.”

“Oh,” said the chief, looking about uneasily.

“Dost thee not hear it?” cried Kinross, incredulously. “To me it is clear like the mission bell, thus: ‘Bow-wow-wow-give-also-some-sugar- and-some-tea-and-some-tobacco-to-his-Highness-Tangaloa-bow-wow-wow!’”

The old chief fairly beamed. “Blessed was my dog in life, and blessed in death also!” he cried. “Behold, Kinilosi, he also barks about a few fish-hooks in a bag, and for a small subscription to our new church.”

“I think he says fifty cents,” said Kinross.

“No, no,” cried the chief; “it was like this--quite plain: ‘One-dollar-one-dollar!’”

“That ends it,” said Kinross. “I must haste to obey the voice of the spirit dog. Good-bye, your Highness.”

“Good-bye, Kinilosi,” returned the chief, warmly. “I laugh and talk jestingly, but my heart--”

“Mine also,” added Kinross, quickly, again grasping the old man’s hand.

He strode off with a light step, in a glow of enthusiasm and high spirits. It would be hard to leave the old village, after all. He might travel far and not find hearts more generous or kindly, and he vowed he would never forget his Samoans--no, if he lived a thousand years. And if, after all, the new order of things should fail to please, and he should find himself stifled by the civilisation to which he had been so long a stranger, could he not always return to this little paradise, and live out the number of his days in perennial content? He would search for some savings-bank in London, and place there to his credit a sum large enough to ship him back to the Islands. Whatever the pinch, it should lie there untouched and sacred; and as he toiled in the stern, grey land of his birth, the thought of that secret hoard would always be a comfort to him. But what if the bank should break, as banks do in those centres of the high civilisation, and he should find himself stranded half the world away from the place he loved so dearly? He shivered at the thought. There should be two hoards, in two banks, or else he would feel continually uneasy. The line to the rear must be kept open at any cost.

He found Leata sitting on the floor, spelling out “The Good News from New Guinea” in the missionary magazine. She was fresh from her bath, and her black, damp hair was outspread to the sunshine to dry. She rippled with smiles at his approach, and it seemed to him she had never looked more radiant and engaging. He sat down beside her, and pressed her curly hair against his lips and kissed it. How was it that such a little savage could appear to him more alluring than any white woman he had ever seen? Was he bewitched? He looked at her critically, dispassionately, and marvelled at the perfection of her wild young beauty, marvelled, too, at her elegance and delicacy. And for heart and tenderness, where was her match in all the seas? He threw his arm round her and kissed her on the lips.

“Of all things in the world what wouldst thou like the most, Leata?” he asked.

“To have thee always near me, Kinilosi,” she answered. “Before, I had no understanding and was like the black people in the missionary book, but now my heart is pained, so full it is with love.”

“But there are other things than love,” persisted Kinross. “Ear-rings, musical boxes, print for dresses.”

“Yes, many things,” she said. “But I trouble not myself about them, Kinilosi. But sometimes I think of the land behind our house and the fine plantation we will make there some day.”

“But if I gave you a little bag of gold shillings,” he said, “and took thee to Apia, my pigeon, what wouldst thou buy?”

“First I would give ten dollars to the new church,” she began. “Then for my father I would buy an umbrella, and a shiny bag in which he could carry his cartridges and tobacco when he goes to war. For my mother, also, an umbrella and a picture-book like that of the missionary’s, with photographs of Queen Victoria and captains of men-of-war. For my sister a Bible and a hymn-book, and for my brother a little pigeon gun.”

“O thou foolish Leata,” said Kinross, “and nothing for thyself?”

“There is still more in my bag,” she answered, “enough for a golden locket and a golden chain. And in the locket there will be your picture and a lock of your hair--like the one the naval officer gave Titi’s sister; and when I die, lo, no one shall touch it, for it shall lie on my breast in the grave!”

“To-morrow we shall go to Apia and buy them,” said Kinross. “This morning the pastor brought me a letter from Britain with a present of many dollars. The six acres I have already purchased, and in Apia I shall get prickly wire for fencing, and many things we need for the clearing and planting of the land.”

Leata clapped her hands for joy. “Oh, Kinilosi,” she cried, “it was breaking my heart. I feared the letter would make thee return to the White Country!”

Kinross looked at her with great gentleness. His resolution was taken, be it for good or evil.

“I shall never go back,” he said.

Then in a rousing voice he cried, so loudly that the natives in the neighbouring houses started at the sound: “In Vaiala shall I live, and in Vaiala die!”

FATHER ZOSIMUS

FATHER ZOSIMUS

Many years ago, before the steamers came to Samoa, when the whites depended on sailing-ships for their precarious supplies and their meagre news of the outside world, the Rev. Wesley Cook reached the Islands to take up the Lord’s work in that troubled field. He was a good-looking young man with a weak chin, rather regular features, and an abundance of yellow, fluffy hair, who had trod since earliest infancy the narrow path that leads to a missionary career. An assiduous church-member, a devout Sunday-school scholar, he had climbed, rung by rung, the religious ladder, and his sanguine, sensitive nature had flowered in an atmosphere which would have stifled a bolder boy. At nineteen he was fed into a sectarian college like corn into a mill, and at twenty-two the machine turned him out into the world, an undistinguishable unit of the church to which he belonged. Then, after a quiet month with his old mother, whose heart overflowed with the measure of her son’s success, the Rev. Wesley was bidden to marry and depart.

There were plenty to advise him at this juncture, and half a dozen young ladies were entered, so to speak, for the matrimonial steeplechase. But Wesley, contrary to all expectation and not a little to the chagrin of the narrow set in which he moved, showed some determination to have his own way in this important matter, and after a brief courtship he carried Miss Minnie Chandler to the altar. She was the proud and defiant beauty of the town, the self-willed, high-spirited young woman whose name was in every mouth, and whose rejected suitors numbered half the bachelors in the neighbourhood. Many wondered at her choice, until it was whispered about that she was heartsick over her affair with Harry Jardine, the manufacturer’s son, and that she preferred the missionary wilds to life in the same country with the man who had broken his troth. Be that as it may, she was joined to Wesley Cook in the bonds of holy matrimony, and after a quiet wedding, at which the breakfast was frugal and prayer abundant, the young couple bade farewell to their relations and departed for the uttermost isles of the sea.

Six months later the _Morning Star_ hove to off the iron-bound coast of Savai’i, and her surf-boats landed the Rev. Wesley on the shores of his new home, together with a ton of provisions, some cheap furniture, a box of theological books, and a Samoan grammar. He found a concrete house already prepared for him, a church with sand-bagged windows and a plank door still studded with bullets,--an alarming reminder of the unsettled state of his district,--and an obsequious band of church elders, sticky with oil, and, to his notion of things, almost naked in their kilts of paper cloth. Bewildered and unhappy, with his wife in tears beside him, he gazed despairingly at the fast-dwindling ship, which he could not hope to see again for the space of a year.

The natives hung about like flies, buzzing through the stuffy rooms of the old mission-house so long closed to their little world, or bestirred themselves with noisy good will to the task of bringing up the freight and the pastor’s scanty boxes. He, poor fellow, with haggard face and eyes smarting with sweat, checked off the tally on an envelope, and strove to bear himself like the picture of the martyr Williams in “The Heroes of the Cross.” Numberless old men shook him by the hand, and talked to him loudly as though he were deaf, or drew him off to a distance and, leaning on long sticks, barked orations at his head. Bands of youths staggered in, singing, with loads of squealing pigs, and unsavoury victuals in baskets, while shaven-headed children tied chickens to the verandah-posts, and women and girls unfolded offerings of prawns and snaky eels. There was a live turtle in the sitting-room, a bull-calf in the kitchen, and at every turn veritable mountains of half-roasted pork. It was a wild scene for a man new come from quiet England, and the long, even days of life at sea; the unceasing press and bustle of the multitude, the squawking of chickens, and the screams of fettered pigs, all wore on his nerves until his head was giddy and his pulse throbbing. It was late in the afternoon before the mob scampered off with the suddenness and decision of a flock of birds, leaving the missionary and his wife to the peace they so sorely needed. The poor exiles, with sinking hearts, brewed their tea beside a packing-case, and wondered (much in the spirit of convicts who have left another world beyond the prison door) whether the captain had won his philopena of Mrs. McDougall, or if Miss Mossby had made it up with young Sturgis.

A year later the new missionary found himself somewhat at home in Fangaloa. He had preached a halting sermon in the native tongue, which, though no one could understand it, had evoked a respectful admiration. The school was now on its feet, and the children came eagerly, seemingly pleased with the rudiments of learning he managed to teach them. His parishioners, too, began to give evidence of their finer and nobler qualities, and warmed his heart by their kindness, generosity, and intelligence. Their laborious talks, as they sat at night round the fires, or on mats beneath the tropic moon, revealed to him a tenderness and refinement he was little prepared to find; and, from a task, these gatherings became an entertainment to be prepared for by anxious study of the phrase-book, and bewildering consultations with an old man who was supposed to understand English. Cook liked the admiration and deference of these ragged chiefs; he loved to note the bustle that heralded his own approach; the shaking out of the finest mats for his special seat; the polite chorus of “_Maliu mai, susu mai Tutumanaia_” (“You are high chief come, Cook the Handsome”); the closing up of the ranks, and the row of expectant faces. He was the little god of Fangaloa Bay, and in a hesitating, humble way he began to taste the sweets of power and authority.

But with his wife it was very different. Her beautiful face grew pale and sharp, as the days rolled on in a blank succession of household tasks begun and ended. In the long night hours, when the heat made sleep impossible, and her heart turned to England and those dear ones she could not hope to see again for years, she would abandon herself to despair. She never complained, but went about her duties with sad-eyed patience, mixing very little with the many servants provided for her--the young men who studied for the ministry in the intervals of bread-making and waiting at table, and the girls of rank whose fathers were eager for them to keep pace with the strange new times they lived in. She never chid them, as most missionaries’ wives would have done, for trifling faults or petty forgetfulnesses. She never realised the enormity of breaking a plate, or the crime of tinting the pudding with washing-blue to enrich the colour; she allowed things to take their untroubled course in a way that amazed her household. When one’s heart is slowly breaking, it is hard to count the sugar in the bowl or watch the soap with housewifely care. In the hot afternoons she would take her work and seek the shadow of a tall cocoanut-grove which stood on a hill behind the town, and there remain for hours, gazing out at the vast shining bosom of the ocean, or at the blue mountains of Upolu, far across the strait. So regular was her visit to this little grove that her boys built a bench of _tamanu_ wood for her to sit on, and raised a roof overhead to protect her from passing showers or the glancing rays of the sun; and the place was called “_o le Nofoali’i o Misi Mini_,” or the Throne of Mrs. Minnie, which name it bears to the present day, though all the actors in this story have long been laid beneath the sod. Once, after a solitary vigil of more than usual length, she returned and sought her room, now a little sanctuary of her irrevocable life; for here were gathered the treasures of her past; the photographs, mementoes, and keepsakes that she had clung to in her exile. Here she breathed again the air of home; here she could caress the fading photographs that were so dear to her, and indulge unstinted in passionate rebellion against her fate. On the day of which we write she found no comfort in her shrine. The faces of her friends looked down mournfully at her from the walls, tormenting her with a thousand recollections. Existence was unbearable enough without such added bitterness. These things, inanimate though they were, devoured her while they pretended to comfort; they broke her heart while she looked to them for solace. For a moment she saw the truth and trembled for herself. Madness lay on the road she had begun to follow.

One by one, she gathered them together; the picture of her father and mother, the photographs of her relations and girl friends, old Christmas cards, bits of ribbon, little odds and ends that had played each a part in those bygone days. There were letters, too, precious bundles of letters tied with ribbon, which she kissed and cried over before consigning to destruction; and from one such packet dropped the likeness of a man in uniform, which she pressed to her breast before tearing it into a hundred pieces. When at last the room was stripped of everything, she bore the heap of tender rubbish to the fire, and, with a stony face, fed it to the flames.

The Rev. Wesley Cook and his wife were not the only whites in their corner of Savai’i, as indeed they had first imagined themselves to be. There was still another in Fangaloa, an old, white-haired Irish priest called Father Zosimus. No one could remember how many years had passed since Father Zosimus came to Fangaloa and built the tiny house and chapel in the mango-grove; for he was an old, old man, and had come to that sleepy hollow when his hair was as black and his feet were as light as those of the nimblest warrior of the bay. He had no followers to speak of, for Fangaloa was Protestant to the core, and his congregation numbered no more than one family of eight, three transient young men who had run away with as many girls from Upolu, and Filipo, the aged catechist, who acted as his servant. But Father Zosimus never faltered in the path he had set himself to follow. For seven and forty years he had daily broken the stillness of the grove with the tinkle of his little bell, and never failed to carry on the service of his church. He scarcely heeded the new arrivals, and more than once he had had to chide old Filipo for gossiping about the _papalangi_ on the hill. He never gave them a second thought, in fact, until one day he happened to see Tutumanaia passing on his way to church. The sight of that fresh, clear-eyed youngster greatly moved the old priest. He was troubled and uneasy as he walked home, and his heart ached a little. The new missionary belonged to his own race; he had the air of a scholar, and the frank, open face and quick eyes of a man full of enthusiasms and generous impulses; yet, so mused Zosimus on his homeward way, this charity, this noble purpose, were all for the aborigines alone. There would be none to spare for an old man to whom no music was so sweet as his mother-tongue, and whose loneliness was intensified by the burden of advancing years. For nearly half a century Father Zosimus had lived in exile, and his soul continually thirsted for the companionship which had been denied him all his life. The few whites who had come his way before had been scrubby traders, a priest or two a year, or some nondescript beach-comber, rough and foul-mouthed, begging brandy and food. True, he had spent eighteen years within a furlong of the Rev. Josiah Fison, Cook’s predecessor in Fangaloa; but that gentleman’s Christian charity stopped short at what he called a “rank Jesuit,” and they had never exchanged even so much as a word. In Father Zosimus there was a strain of Irish gaiety; he loved talk, and laughter, and argument; and the humblest white man who could speak English was welcomed to his table and treated to the best that Fangaloa afforded. Indeed, among the “squires of Savai’i” he was honoured and respected, from Falealupo to the strait. But these men were, most of them, gross and common. In Wesley Cook he saw a being of another world, a young man of refinement and spirituality, a fellow-missionary, a fellow-countryman, with whom all intercourse was inexorably barred, with whom he should live out the balance of his days and know no more than if an ocean rolled between them. No longer did he stem the tide of old Filipo’s gossip; on the contrary, he could now never learn enough of the new arrivals, and little passed in the mission-house that was not reported to him at once. He learned, with a singular feeling of delight, of the young minister’s kindness and ability; how he had mastered the language in less time than a foreigner had been ever before known to take; how he had raised the dying, nay, the breathless dead themselves, back to life with the costly medicines he never stinted to the poorest. “Oh, he is a minister wise and good,” said Filipo, “and his heart is not stony against us Catholics like the last pig-face; only yesterday he said that thou, Zosimus, wert honourable, and deserving of respect as a man who had trod the narrow road his whole life long.”

The old priest hung upon his words as though Filipo were inspired. The next day he went purposely out of his way to gain another look at Tutumanaia, and came back more affected than he had been before.

“Had I not entered the priesthood, I might have had a son like that,” he mused to himself, as he trudged homeward. “But that I gave to God, scarce knowing the sacrifice.” Then he rebuked himself for his impiety.

More than once, as time passed, he turned over in his mind the possibility of calling at the Protestant mission. But no young girl could have shown more timidity than Father Zosimus. Many a time he brought out his best cassock, and brushed his best hat, and took a long look at himself in the cracked shaving-glass. But he would sigh as he saw the image of that wrinkled, shaggy-haired old man. “You’re nothing but a frowsy old frump, Zosimus,” he would say to himself, “nothing but the husk of what was once a man. Sure, they would have little use for you, that handsome boy and girl in their elegant home.” For to Father Zosimus the whitewashed, coral-built mission-house, with its shining windows and its trim garden laid out in plots, was a fairy palace resplendent with luxury and filled with a thousand treasures. In his simple heart, half prepared as it was to believe anything that redounded to the honour of his hero, he had received with all confidence the glowing tales the natives brought him; and the very glamour with which his imagination endowed the spot helped to keep him back. “If the boy cares to know me, he will come himself,” he said; and the camphor-wood chest would close, perhaps for the twentieth time, on the father’s Sunday best.

But the boy never came. He, too, was timid, and though he often noticed the gaunt old priest, and longed also to speak his mother-tongue with the only creature save his wife who could understand it in all Fangaloa, the opportunity never came to break the ice. A whole year passed, and the Rev. Wesley Cook and the Rev. Father Zosimus, S. J., were no nearer an acquaintance than before. Yet there was seldom a day but they saw each other from afar, the one shy and kind, half hoping to receive the first advances, the other no less eager and no less restrained.

One day Filipo brought a rumour to his master which the latter listened to with deep concern. For a whole afternoon he gave up his usual digging in the garden and paced his little verandah to and fro. Once he even washed and dressed himself in his best, and trimmed his ragged beard; but he took off his clothes again and smoked another pipe instead of paying the visit he had so nearly decided to make. He called in Filipo from the taro-field, and bade him waylay Misi’s girls every day and bring news of Mrs. Cook’s condition.

Day by day the two old men discussed the coming event, and Father Zosimus grew by turns glad and fearful at the prospect. The news came to him one morning in October, as he was kneeling to implore divine aid in the hour of a woman’s agony. Dawn was breaking as Filipo rushed into the chapel, coughing and panting. “It is all over,” he cried,--“the mother well and happy, and the child a little chief, of a strength and beauty the like of which has never been seen in Fangaloa.”

“God be thanked!” cried Father Zosimus, throwing himself once more on his knees.

With the later hours there came less assuring news of the mother and the little chief. There was a devil in Misi, said Filipo; a devil that caused her to lie as dead, or to burst forth furiously into strange tongues, so that all about her stood amazed and trembling. The little chief lay helpless in old Sisimaile’s arms, and the flame of its tiny life was that of a flickering torch. Yes, the _papatisonga_ had not been neglected. Old Tuisunga and Leotele, the speaking-man, were the godfathers at the font; and Tutumanaia read fast, with tears in his voice, lest the babe should die before it had been joined to the Tahitian religion. For Master Wesley Chandler Cook was not destined long to be a member of Christ’s church on earth. As they bore him back to the room where his mother lay, he closed his eyes for ever.

Father Zosimus was stunned when the news first reached him, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he listened to Filipo. Then he went indoors and rummaged the old chests where he kept his treasures, turning out some trashy velvet with which he had meant to decorate the chapel, a bottle of varnish, some brass nails, and a bundle of well-seasoned, well-polished _maalava_ boards that he had laid away to build himself a desk. He spread them out on the rough table, and studied them long and earnestly. In his youth he had been a joiner and a worker in wood, and though his hand was palsied with age, and his eye not so true as it once had been, he was still more than a fair craftsman. He brought out his tools, clamps, and measures, and asked Filipo what he judged to be the bigness of the chief-son of Tutumanaia.

“Not very long,” said the old retainer,--“scarcely more than the half of your Highness’s arm.”

Father Zosimus put on his spectacles, measured off the velvet, scanned his materials and tools with a workmanlike eye, and then, when all lay ready to his hand, he went outside and began to pace up and down his verandah. The devil of irresolution and doubt was again gnawing at his heart. Unsought and unasked, what business was it of his to make a coffin for the dead child? There was not a soul in Fangaloa but knew that Father Zosimus was skilled in such matters, as his house and chapel so abundantly testified. Were his help required, they would come and seek it. Would it not look strange for him to make a coffin unbidden? Would it not appear forward, grasping, perhaps as though he expected payment for his work? For an hour he wrestled with the problem. Finally he told Filipo to spread the news about the village that the old priest looked to undertake this task for nothing, and was waiting only to be asked. With that he shut himself up in the chapel, and spent the forenoon in reciting prayers for the dead. But, devout though he ordinarily was in everything touching the services of his church, Father Zosimus found it hard, on this occasion, to dwell on things heavenly when all the while his body was quivering with suspense, and his soul hearkened for that footfall on the coral floor. Again and again he seemed to hear the sound of voices, Filipo answering with soft deliberation, the minister agitated and saying with mournful earnestness, “Tell the _ali’i patele_ I must see him instantly.” But no message came; no discreet cough or dog-like scratching against the door warned him that his attention was desired; and the stillness of the chapel remained untroubled save for the murmuring surf and the coo of wild pigeons in the forest.

It was late in the afternoon, and the fierce heat of day was already melting into the softness of night, when the minister’s little son was borne to his rest. Under the equator burial follows swiftly on the heels of death, and life no sooner leaves the body than the diggers must sweat and the hammers fly. There can be no decorous pause to soften the blow or strengthen the bereaved for that last farewell beside the grave. Ashamed, he knew not why, with a desolate sense of defeat, Father Zosimus was drawn to gaze on the burial from afar, crouching on a knoll that overlooked the spot. He watched, with an emotion not to be expressed in words, the affecting scene which played itself out before him. Across the strait blue Upolu sparkled in the setting sun; the foaming breakers outlined the coast like a fringe of silver, and thrilled faintly on the ear; the evening star quivered in the blackening sky, and the constellation of the Southern Cross gleamed in the heavens, the bright solace of many a Christian heart.

The coffin lay on a rough bier of mingled boughs and flowers, borne in procession by eight solemn little boys all of a size, who were tricked out in a uniform of white cotton. Behind them, very pale and handsome, walked Tutumanaia, in duck clothes and a pith helmet. On his one hand was the smug-faced native pastor from the next bay; on the other, Tuisunga, the towering old chief, imperious of eye, stately in manner, as befitted the occasion and the man. Behind these again, and at the head of the elders and speaking-men with their fly-flappers and Bibles, strode the _taupou_ of Fangaloa, in a striped silk _apana_ and a skirt made of a fine mat. The village matrons made up the middle of the procession, with their hands full of hibiscus, frangipani, stephanotis, and _moso’oi_, followed by groups of young girls and young men, decorously apart, as convention demands; the former in bright _lavalavas_ and little shirts of flowers and leaves, or with their brown bosoms glistening through entwined _laumaile_ and necklaces of scarlet _singano_; the latter with lime-whitened heads and flaming _aute_-blossoms behind their ears. Throughout swarmed the village children, with shaven heads and eager faces, and ears all unmindful of the click-click of their warning parents, romping, quarrelling, and chasing one another through the crowd.

The pall-bearers laid down their burden beside the empty grave, and knelt on the grass in a little semicircle. Tutumanaia and his two companions threw themselves on a mat which a woman unrolled and spread out for them. The _taupou_ took her position at the head of the coffin, and raised her silken parasol, less to shade her eyes than to display a cherished possession. At a respectful distance, the chiefs, elders, and speaking-men formed the first rank of a great circle, their deeply lined faces overcast and solemn. The silence was first broken by a shrill hymn, and then Cook rose to his feet, drew a Testament from his pocket, and began to address the village. What he said was commonplace enough, and only the echo of what he had said a hundred times before, but the stress of a deep emotion ennobled his ready phrases and impassioned the narrow vocabulary of Samoan woe. It seemed to Father Zosimus that he was listening to an angel, or to one of those inspired beings on whom the church is founded; and, indeed, a painter would have found a saint to his hand in the tall, shining white figure of the young minister, with his aureole of golden hair, his hand uplifted to the sky, and his pale, rapt face raised to God.

He faltered as he drew near the close of his address, and when at last he looked down and pointed to the little coffin, the stream of his eloquence suddenly ran dry. He tried to go on, hesitated, and covered his face with his hands, leaving it for the pastor to continue. This the Rev. Tavita Singua did without further loss of time. He expatiated on the godlike virtues of Tutumanaia in a strain that would have made an angel blush, and did not spare the poor clay that had lived but to die. Another piercing hymn preceded the third address. Old Tuisunga now stepped forward, his battle-scarred chest naked to the heavens, the bunching tapa round his loins his only garment. Slowly, softly, with the tenderest deliberation, he began to speak. He was a born orator, and knew the way to men’s hearts, rugged old barbarian though he was. His theme was the bond that this little grave would for ever be between the missionary and themselves, and his voice thrilled as he invited Wesley into the fellowship of the bereaved, and told of the tragedy that underlies the life of man. He drew familiar instances from the village history; here a cherished boy destined for a name renowned; there a young maid struck down in all her bright promise. He called to mind his own son Rafael, who had fallen beside him on the battle-field, his Absalom, for whom he would have died a thousand deaths. He spoke, he said, as one man of sorrow to another, one whose heart lay beneath a fathom of Samoan earth. He drew to a close by declaring that no common hand should touch the coffin of their beloved. He, the son of chiefs, the father of famous warriors, would lay the little body to its last repose, so that it should say when its spirit reached the angels, “Behold, I am the son of Tutumanaia, and my servant Tuisunga laid me to rest in the house of sandalwood.” He tenderly lifted the coffin in his arms, pressed his lips against the unpainted boards, and lowered it into the grave.

* * * * *

An hour later, a gaunt, black-robed figure made its way through the trampled grass and fell on its knees beside the grave. It was Father Zosimus, bowed in supplication before the throne of grace.

* * * * *

It was strange what a simple matter at last brought about the acquaintance of the only two white men in Fangaloa. Each had timidly waited for the other to make the first advances, and each had gone his solitary way, sick at heart, and hungering for the companionship which would have been so eagerly accorded. It befell that Cook’s well went dry, and there being no other water in the village save the brackish fluid the natives were content to drink, one of the mission boys suggested that they apply to the old priest. So Tutumanaia sat down and wrote a polite note, explaining his predicament, and begging for a little water. The note was sent by a messenger with a bucket. Father Zosimus was overwhelmed when he opened and read the letter; he was dazed by the suddenness of his own good fortune; he bade Filipo feed the boy with the best the house afforded, with sucking pig and _palusami_ unstinted, while he hurriedly made ready for the visit that he was at last to pay.