Chapter XXVI: The Gentle Martyr

All these matters took time, and while their hands and hearts were full of them there came to them certain other little matters which filled both hands and hearts to overflowing.

To Kenneth and Jean Blair was born a son, and a month later to Charles and Alison Evans a daughter, and it is doubtful if anything in the history of Kapaa'a had ever stirred the feminine portion of the community to such a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm as did the arrival of these little white strangers.

"Now," said the brown women, with deeper lights in their lustrous eyes, as they gazed admiringly on the little pink-and-white squirmers, "you belong to us indeed, since you have borne children among us."

And every day they made pilgrimages to the two new shrines, and sat worshipfully, while the unconscious little saints performed their morning ablutions and then lay gazing placidly out of their blue eyes at the sights which no one else could see. Those striking blue eyes--the blue of the sky up above--completed the capture of the dark-eyed ones. There were blue eyes in plenty among the grown-up whites, but never were blue eyes like these, and the dark eyes never tired of gazing at them.

Of the rapturous joy of the two mothers, and the deep thankfulness of the fathers, there is no need to speak. For a time the new maternal cares monopolised the former, and the latter went into their island work with new high lights in their faces and with even greater vigour than before.

Aunt Harvey exulted in those babies as though she had had not a little to do with bringing them about, and Mary Stuart gloated over them with blushing cheeks and kindling eyes that told their own hopeful stories.

Every man of the _Torch_ offered his services as nursemaid to carry them about the beach, and the numbers of small brothers and sisters they had all been in the habit of devoting their early years to was simply marvellous.

The christening ceremony--Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair and Alison Kaapa'a Evans--was an occasion of high festival throughout the islands, and Blair, with his life-work always large in his mind, turned it to account. Aunt Harvey was not present at that high ceremony, to her very great regret but more greatly to her honour. And this is how it came about.

Intercourse with the other islands had been constantly maintained by the regular visitations of the _Torch_ and the quondam _Blackbird_ schooner--renamed the _Jean Arnot_ and captained by Jim Gregor, first officer of the _Torch_; but, compared with what had been done on Kapaa'a, the advances had been small.

Blair had, for a long while past, recognised the fact that the greatest object-lesson he could possibly offer the other chiefs was the sight of what was being done on Kapaa'a. But at the first suggestion of taking them over in the ship to see for themselves, their suspicions were in arms. That was an old trick of the white men's. They had all heard how the brown men were decoyed on board the white men's ships under wonderful promises, and never heard of again. They accepted all he gave them, they listened to all he had to say, but sail away in the big ship they would not.

Here was a chance not to be missed. Surely never in this world was there seen a younger pair of missionaries than Master Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair--Kenni-Kenni to the natives--and Miss Alison Kapaa'a Evans--Alivani--when they set out, in their frills and furbelows, to wile the hearts of the brown men and women of the outer islands.

Ha'o and Nai went with them, to add their persuasions and the argument of their presence to the rest, and Aunt Jannet went because she knew something untoward would happen to those babies unless her eye was on them.

Blair knew it would be no easy matter at best, and it was not.

At Kanele, the first island they came to, the largest of the group after Kapaa'a, about thirty miles away, the old chief Maru received them with the heartiest of welcomes, and his old wife and her daughter-in-law and all the other women went into raptures over the blue-eyed babies.

But when the subject of the visit was cautiously broached, the old man stiffened at once with his natural suspicion and declined the invitation on the spot, and nothing they could say would persuade him to it.

They stayed the night, however, and Ha'o had much talk with the old man's son, a bright stalwart fellow over six feet high whose name was Kahili. In the morning Kahili announced his intention of going with the white men. Whereupon loud lamentations from his father and mother and wife and children, who clung to him wherever they could grip, and expressed their intention of anchoring him to his native soil at cost of their lives. He reasoned with them good-humouredly at first, but finally began to get angry at the exhibition, and the more they tried to dissuade him the more determined was he to go.

Then, suddenly, the old chief surprised them all by proposing a bargain. If the white men would leave their grandmother--Aunt Jannet Harvey to wit--as pledge of their honourable intentions, both he and Kahili his son would go in the big ship, and when they returned safe and sound the ship could take the grandmother away.

Blair laughed so much over the old fellow's 'cuteness that he came near to dispelling their suspicions. And the matter being explained to Aunt Jannet, without undue insistence upon the maturity of her new dignity, that good lady, with a somewhat forlorn attempt at nonchalance, accepted the offer on the spot, and said she would stop. And what it cost her no man may venture to say, for she had been looking forward to the christening of Jean's boy as a white stone day in her life.

"It's for the good of the work, Kenneth, so get away with them before I change my mind," said she, bravely enough.

"Oh, Aunt Jannet, I shall miss you so," from Jean, with a suspicion of tears in her voice.

"Not a bit, child. You'll have far too much to think of, and I'll be perfectly all right here."

"But--you----" for Jean knew all her longing in the matter.

"I'll chum up with Mrs. Maru, and we'll be as happy as--h'm"--with a glance at the native houses among the trees--"well, as things in a rug, you know. You shall tell me all about it when I get back. Don't let Ken forget to send for me."

She kissed the babies as though she knew in her own mind that she would never set eyes on them again, waved her adieus gallantly from the white shell beach, and when the _Torch_ had swept out of sight round the corner she went up into a thicket of lemon hibiscus, and had it out all by herself there. Then she preened her ruffled plumes, and went down and rated Mrs. Maru for the untidiness of her dwelling-place, till the old lady regretted more than ever the exchange she had made. By degrees, however, Aunt Jannet's natural goodness and masterfulness overcame her disappointment. The two became capital friends, and talked away at one another, on a twenty-five per cent. basis of understanding, which left the most extraordinary views of the other's life on each of their minds.

Her self-sacrifice, however, bore excellent fruit. Old Maru and Kahili proved admirable bait for Blair's fishing. Persuaded themselves to a somewhat doubtful step, the step once taken they became most zealous partisans of their new cause. Assured, by the solid fact of Aunt Jannet's temporary residence on Kanele, of their own safety, they laughed to scorn the fears of others as doubtful in the matter as they themselves had originally been.

Their assured confidence amounted well-nigh to boastfulness.

"Look at us," they said, "we have no mistrust in going with the white men. Put away your fears, and come along."

The _Torch_ made a most prosperous collection, and returned to Kapaa'a laden with dusky notables.

It would have been difficult to imagine anything less like a Christian martyr than Aunt Jannet Harvey, sitting opposite her hostess on Kanele, conscientiously eating away at the food with which they kept her supplied, wrestling strenuously with the intricacies of the Kanelese dialect, and an object of extreme curiosity to all the other women, and of wonderment to herself. But martyrs are found in the strangest guise, and Aunt Jannet wrought well for Kapaa'a when she consented to stop on Kanele that day.

The strangers viewed with amazement the changes in Kapaa'a. They had raided there aforetime, and fought more than one bloody battle on the white beach of the lagoon. For Kapaa'a, the largest of the islands and the richest, had always been an object of envy to the rest, and more than one warrior chief of the outer isles had cast longing eyes upon it, and had planned and schemed till he could attempt its conquest.

Now they found it richer and stronger than ever in the white men's alliance. They saw its comfortable homes, and large plantations of strange new grains and fruits. They were introduced to the pleasures of the chase. They ate piglet and wild goat, and found them good. They tasted still deeper of the novel atmosphere of law and order, and found these things also very good.

They watched the boys at cricket and football, and the men, brown and white, fencing and boxing as though their lives depended on it, and no harm done. They watched the cutlass drill, and tingled to do likewise. They saw the white men bowl over coco-nuts with their Winchesters at many times the distance they could hurl a spear, and do the same again quicker than they could wink, and for their benefit Long Tom bellowed his loudest, and they heard the roar of him clang to and fro among the hills. They compared the new Kapaa'a boats with their own, and they sat open-mouthed and listened to the last squeals of an ironwood tree from up the valley, as the circular saw cleft it into planks which they could not have imitated with weeks of hardest labour. And--they saw men sleep without weapons by their sides, and without fear. And these things wrought powerfully upon them, and set them thinking.

The christening feast of Kenni-Kenni and Alivani was long remembered in the Dark Islands. Aunt Jannet Harvey always professed regret at having missed it, but Kenneth Blair always assured her, with a great light in his face, that in missing it as she had done she had rendered service to the mission which no words could express.

Aunt Jannet's exile ran into a longer term than she had expected, and there were many anxious faces and apprehensive hearts in the island villages before the _Torch_ came gliding quietly round the heads, and dropped her passengers at their homes.

They all came laden with presents, which already, before they landed, inclined them favourably towards similar trips in the future. But they brought with them also richer invisible freight of new ideas and new hopes, which kept their tongues wagging for weeks afterwards, and set their brains working.

For the visit had not by any means been confined to sight-seeing and enjoyment. The white men turned it to fullest account in the clear and definite explanation of their views and hopes for the whole group of islands, offering all an equal share in the new order of things on the sole condition of union and cohesion. The higher matters which lay closest to their hearts were touched on, but only lightly as yet. Blair had no faith in outward conversion born of a hankering after material good things. He had a firm belief in the advantages of hastening slowly. Get the savages out of their savagery, open the dark minds to the lower lights, and the higher would come in good time.

He suggested regular meetings of the headmen on Kapaa'a, and the idea was received with acclaim. Kapaa'a was a storehouse of good things. They desired no better than to come there often. And in that he saw the germ of a united nation. Ha'o, as the most advanced among them, would naturally preside. Of Ha'o's loyalty and level-headedness he had no doubt. He was years ahead of the rest already. Blair believed his influence would grow, and in time make itself felt throughout the whole group, and through Ha'o he hoped to win them all to the higher life.

If on these highest matters of all he touched as yet but lightly, in others, concerning their material welfare, he gave them some very straight talk, by way of putting them on their guard against that which might come any day.

He told them that other white men would come offering to trade with them, to buy their land, to do great things for them, and of such he begged them to beware, and to allow him to deal with them.

He told them just what had happened in other places, where grasping white traders had pushed themselves in, bringing in with them drink, disease, and dispossession. He showed them how they, the heads of the communities, were responsible for their people. And he promised them every advantage these other men could offer them without any of the penalties.

"What do these traders come for?" he asked them, and answered himself, "To benefit themselves. And what do we come for? To benefit you. The time may be close at hand when you will have to choose between us. As you choose, so will your future be."

So the notables went back to their island homes with much to think about, and Aunt Jannet came back from Kanele, and Kenneth Blair and his friends had good reason for high hopes of the future.

It was a spring-time of hope for all of them. The work was prospering, and their hearts were full of gladness.

"Quite happy, Jean?" asked Blair, as he came up quietly and sat down beside her, where the sweet water ran into the salt, and the small waves of the lagoon creamed softly up the white sand.

"Happy, dear? Could any one possibly be happier? Look at that!"--Master Kenni-Kenni rolling gleefully on a white spread at her feet in a state of nudity, and gurgling paroxysms of happiness.

"He's a fine little fellow"--and he poked his son playfully in his fat little stomach, provoking fat-creased laughter and dimples and more gurgles.

"He's the finest little fellow in the whole world, and he's yours and mine, Ken. God has been very good to us, dear. I sometimes feel as if we had no right to be quite so happy while----"

"While?"

"One can't help thinking of the poor little souls in the slums and alleys at home. It really doesn't seem right, somehow. If we could only bring them all out here----"

"I wish it were possible, but it isn't. Meanwhile, this is our chosen work, and by God's grace it seems like to prosper. I am very grateful that you are content here, dear. After London----"

"London! I'd give the whole of London for one curl of Kenni-Kenni's hair. Isn't it beautiful? There never was any silk like it in this world."

"Never!" said Blair with conviction.

Then Alison Evans and Mary Stuart came across to them, Mary carrying Alivani.

"We have come to worship too," said Alison. "I wish you'd order Mary to give me my baby, Mr. Blair. I can hardly get touching her when she's about."

"Well, Jean won't let me have hers," laughed Mary in self-defence.

"Jean was just valuing the whole of London Town against one curl of that young man's hair. So you see what the whole of him's worth, Mary. Oh yes, you may touch him, if you'll promise not to spoil a hair of his head."

Mary laid Alivani down on the white spread by Kenni-Kenni, and the two gurgled and kicked in company, while she knelt over them with absorbed face and happy lights in her eyes.

"Jean was wishing she could bring all the poor children in London to kick on the beach here," said Blair.

"Yes. I often think how very much better off the children here are," said Alison Evans.

"In some respects."

"In all respects, I'm inclined to think. Their fathers and mothers almost worship them. Cruelty to children is unheard of. Bodily they are miles ahead----"

"And morally and spiritually?" he said, to draw her on.

"I have seen children at home, in Glasgow and Edinburgh, almost as benighted as these, and not half so pleasant to deal with. Now, with the chances we are giving them, I think these are infinitely the better off."

"Under the new order of things, perhaps. But hitherto you must remember that death dodged life round every corner here, and life broke off very short at times. However, we cannot clean up all the world; but, please God, we'll do our best with this little bit of it. And now," jumping up, "I must get back to work, or your masters will be calling me names. Don't kill those two infants with kindness, Mary."

He stood looking down upon them all for a moment, while the women all bent over the wrigglers on the white cloth.

"Is it possible that not one of you ever feels a longing for the fleshpots of Egypt?" he asked, with a smile.

"Do we ever show any symptoms?" asked Jean.

"You certainly do at the moment. You all three look as if you would like to devour those children on the spot," and he went away to grind out dialects with Matti and Ha'o.