Part 8

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 drunk _Langaingai_.”

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-smoked _suluka_ between his nerveless fingers. Gently they lifted him, and bore him to Capulet’s house, and lit 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 their _liaison_ had 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 real _Langaingai_. 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 and one 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 FINAU.

“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 the _kava_-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 led trembling, 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 the _kava_ was 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 pounding _kava_-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. The _kava_-stones rang out again, and conversation became general. The policeman touched her arm. She shook him off impatiently, threw her head back, and looking Laifone full in the face, said, “I shall not leave Falani.”

There was a dead silence. The _kava_-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 the _kava_.”

The root is pounded, kneaded in the bowl, and strained. “_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 drinking _kava_?”

Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered in Vavau when one _copra_-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-emptied cases 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 kreen _cobra_ one 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 torn _vala_ and 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 in peace; 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 the _copra_ season--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 a _dot_, then settle down as an altogether 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 an iron 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 to _papalagi_, 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 to _papalagi_, 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 in upon 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 German _copra_-trader has a soft spot in his composition, a sudden impulse of tenderness and 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,” she murmurs; 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 her _vala_.

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. _They_ did 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 the _gatu_-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, “The _gatu_ [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 the _kava_-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 her _kofu_, 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 live without 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 the delighted 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.