CHAPTER XV

HIS TATTOOED WIFE

1

Something there is in the very bearing of the people in the Pacific which, despite the obvious differences between us, strikes a note of kinship in the mind of the white man least conscious of his true relationship to these brown folk. A certain chemical affinity, as it were, makes the problem of intermarriage with the Polynesians an altogether different matter from that among Eurasians. For in the marriage of an Occidental and a true Oriental there is the clashing of two antagonistic cultures each equally complex and tenacious, while "here there is evidence in the physique of the people that three great divisions of mankind have intermixed."

But in the Pacific islands the white man feels himself among his kind. The reason is hard to explain. Certainly it is not the loose and ungainly Mother-Hubbard gowns which are still the style of the native maiden. Yet the stoutish, portly individual who is introduced to you as a chief and who parades the street along the waterfront in a suit of silk pajamas might easily be a continental sleep-walker who has no remembrance of the thousands of years that lie between him and the men among whom he is waking. And the white man just arrived drops off under the anæsthetic influence of the tropics, forgetful of the thousands of years in which he has been busy laying up his treasures on earth.

Under this narcotic influence I wandered along the shores of Apia, Samoa, toward sundown, the day before my departure. Within me was a melancholy satisfaction, an unwillingness to admit even to myself the truth that I was glad to go, like one conscious of being cured of a delightful vice. I had had my fill of association with men whose main theme of conversation when together was the virtues of whisky and soda as an antidote for dengue fever, and when apart, the faults of one another. I had watched the process of acclimatization as it attacks the souls of men, and pitied some of them. Many would have scorned my pity. Some did not deserve it. Others did not need it. The story of one is worth while, though it has no solution.

He had been stationed in Samoa as a member of the military staff with police duties. Behind him he had left a wife and kiddies. He longed for them as only a man struggling against tropic odds to remain faithful to his promise needs must long. He was faithful, but she was fearful. She was writing to him daily not to forget. No woman forgets easily the ill-repute of her fellow-women, and all Northern women distrust their sisters of the warmer worlds. Women hear and believe that there is none of their kind of virtue in the tropics, and they do not trust the best of their men. They do not seem to be at all aware of the fact that faithfulness and devotion are as strong impulses in the breasts of the dark maidens as among themselves, and that semi-savage girls have hearts, too, which can be broken. So this man whose friendship I had won urged that I write to his wife and, in my own way, assure her of his loyalty. I have never heard the end. But if ever she reads this account, I hope she will believe in him.

For there are women in the tropics, just like her, who pray that their men will be faithful. I was walking along, thinking of him and of her. The evening glow, full to overflowing of tropic loveliness, was all about. The white foam of the breakers dashing themselves against the reefs out there, a quarter of a mile away, came softly in, over the smooth water, to land. The laughter of little children on the beach seemed to tease, the hiss of the sea, a combination of elemental things utterly without tragedy.

Just then I came upon a group of people gathered at the little pier. Strewn about their feet were trunks and bags and kits, indicating departure in haste, while the presence of a handful of soldiers, standing at attention, was an unspoken explanation of what was toward. The civilians clustered in a little group, quiet, communicating with one another in whispers. They comprised seventeen Germans, erstwhile the wealthiest plantation-owners, now prisoners of war, and their wives and children, from whom they were to be parted. The cause of their departure is not pertinent here. The human equation is.

As the officer issued his order for embarkation, there was a momentary commotion. Soldiers, by no means unfriendly to their prisoners, assisted them in the placing of luggage on the boat. The men, turning to their women and children with warm embraces, called in forced cheerfulness that they would soon be back. All the men stepped into the rowboats and with full, powerful strokes of Samoan oarsmen they were borne out across the reefs toward the steamer anchored beyond. Upon the beach remained bewildered native women and their half-caste children, some of them in an agony of grief now run wild. One family lingered, weeping silently. A group of two middle-aged women, a girl of about twenty, two small girls, and two boys stood gazing out toward the ship. They brushed away tears absent-mindedly. A little girl and boy cried quietly. And like that white wife in the temperate world, these dark-skinned women of the tropics were left to wonder whether their husbands would remain faithful to them in a world of which they had vague if not altogether wrong notions.

A full, mellow afterglow threw the ship for a moment into relief, and twilight lowered. Upon the end pile of the pier sat a young Samoan in a halo of dim light. From this modern scene which may some day be the theme for a South Sea "Evangeline" I moved away wondering what this cleavage of people would mean to the Polynesians. An unconscious curiosity led me into the village. It was night. From the various huts rang the voices of happy natives. Fires flamed under their evening meals. Dim lamps revealed shadow-figures of men and women. A slight drizzle brushed over the valley and disappeared. Then the firm tread of feet sounded in the dusty road. About twenty girls, two abreast, stamping their naked feet, passed by and on into the darkness to drop, matrice-like, each into her own home. Earlier that evening they had escorted to the ship the white woman who was their missionary teacher. One long skiff had held them all. Each had a single oar in hand, short and spear-headed, with which she struck the gunwale of the boat after every stroke, thus beating time to a native song. Here was another case of contact and cleavage. Their teacher was returning to her land, leaving them with the glimmer of her ideals, her notions of life and loyalty. How much of it would hold them? Coming and going, the fusion of races, once of a common stock, is taking place.

2

I cannot recall having received any definite invitation from any of the principals responsible for the party I attended one evening in Apia, but in the islands the respectable stranger does not find himself lonely. It was sufficient that I was a friend of one of the guests. Four young men who were leaving were given a send-off; and the celebrations were to take place in the little Sunday-school shack.

That evening the little structure was metamorphosed from crude solemnity by a generous trimming in palm branches and flowers, as though it had been turned outside in. Oil-lamps hung from the rafters by stiff wires, unyielding even to the weight of the light-giving vessels. The awkwardness of some of the natives in their relations with the whites could not be overcome even by their obvious inclination. But the music stirred us all into a whirl of equality. It was furnished by an old crone of a native woman. She was dressed in a shabby Mother-Hubbard gown and her feet were bare. Her stiff fingers worked upon the keys of an accordion in a sluggish fashion, as she confused old-fashioned barn-dances with sentimental melodies. She was stirred on to greater sentiment by the teasing approaches of one white man fully three-quarters drunk. As for the dancers,--what to them were half-expressed notes? Their own fresh blood more than overcame any lack.

Pretty young flappers, eager for the arms of the white chaps, moved about among stolid dames whose purity of race revealed itself in russet skins and slightly flattened noses. They had finer features than the matrons. The white "impurities" shone out of them. But they were not quite free, not quite absolved from the weight of their primitive forebears. They were shy and had little to say for themselves, and it seemed they wished they could just cast off the high-heeled shoes and tight garments and be that which at least half of themselves wished to be. Yet they were erect and proud,--and gay.

Behind the curtain which hung across the little rostrum stood tables fairly littered with bananas, mangos, and watermelons, mingled with the fruits of the Northern kitchen stove,--cakes, pies, and meats enough to satisfy a harvesting-gang. And when the call to supper came, the invasion of this hidden treasure island and its despoliation proved that however much mankind may be differentiated socially and intellectually, gastronomically there is universal equality.

There is another basis upon which the wide world is one, and that is in its affections. Long after midnight the party would have still been in progress but for the threat of the ferry-men. They wished to retire and announced that the last boat was soon to start across the moon-splattered reefs. There was a hurried meeting of lips in farewell. The silver light revealed more than one sweet face crumpled before separation. Then with the first dip of their oars into the sea the swarthy oarsmen began the song which, exotic and sentimental as it was, left every heart as aching for the shore as it did those of the simple half-caste maidens for their casual lovers of the colder Antipodes.

"Oh, I neva wi' fo-ge-et chu," drawled the oarsmen, and they on shore joined in with the softer voices of that gentler world.

3

I had been an unknown and unknowing guest, paying my rates for keep at the hotel. For most of an hour I had been in a small upper room with three or four white men whose sole object seemed to be to get as drunk as they could and to induce me to join them. In those clear moments that flash across leary hours, they gave voice to their disapproval of intermarriage with the natives. Then I learned of the wedding taking place below. My curiosity led me downstairs, and though an utter stranger, I made my way into the company. Not for a moment did I feel myself out of place. Such is the nature of life in the tropics. Among those present were pretty half-caste maidens, slovenly full-blooded native matrons, men and women of all ages and conditions of attire. There were German-Samoans, English, English-Samoans, American and American-Samoans, with a salting of no (or forgotten) nationality. Some were in Mother-Hubbard gowns, some in pongee silks, some in canvas and white duck, cut either for street or evening wear. One young chap, the clerk at the customs, came dressed in the latest tuxedo. And a half-caste chief appeared in a suit of silk pajamas.

The marriage-feast was as sumptuous as any that ever tempted the palate of man. It was spread not on acres, as in the olden days, but on a long table which stretched the length of the thirty-foot room. Photographs are everywhere sold displaying so-called cannibal feasts, with huge turtles and hundreds of tropical vegetables. However it may have been in those days, at this feast the guests were cannibal in manners only. They stood round the table and helped themselves with that disregard of to-morrow's headache and the hunger of the day after which is said to be primitive lack of economy.

As the guests were led out into the dance-hall, one young stalwart took the remnant of the watermelon rind he had been gnawing and slung it straight at the pretty back of a Euro-Polynesian girl in evening frock. She tittered at him. The jollity was running too high for any one to be disturbed by anything like that.

Soon the dance was in full swing. Not the tango, which we regard as primitive and wild, but sober editions of dances with us long out of date. The need is more pressing in the tropics among folk of part-white parentage than an appearance of real civilization. And though it is not so long in the history of the Pacific since the coming of the first white man, there is already an intermediate race growing up which, beginning with Samoa, spreads northward and southward and all around as far as the reaches of the sea. Nor is the mixture always to be deprecated.

The night wore on. The dancing ceased. Flushed faces and perspiring forms slipped out into the moonlight. The white collar which had adorned the tuxedo of the clerk was now brother to the pajamas. The white men who had tried to drown their objections to intermarriage had yielded to the lure of the pretty half-caste maidens. One of them now disappeared with his "tart."

A traveling-salesman from Suva, thin and wiry, had been in dispute with a new civil officer. They contradicted each other just to be contrary. The officer had a wife at home to whom he was bound to be faithful in matters of sex; in the matter of spirits he could not be unfaithful, since in that all the world is one. When the two of them and I left the party, they were still disputing the question of intermarriage, in which neither believed but on which both had pronounced complexes.

To change the subject, which was bordering on a fight, I asked: "Why do the palms bend out toward the sea?"

"Now, what difference does it make to you?" said the salesman. "You're always asking why this, why that?"

"Why shouldn't he?" grumbled the officer, more sober and more intelligent.

We rambled along. The salesman soon slipped into his hotel. The officer and I wandered toward the native village.

"Strange," he said, somewhat sobered by the sea air. "If I met him in Auckland I wouldn't speak to him. He's beneath me."

Free and easy as the relationship of marriage seems to be here, one not infrequently runs across descendants of very happy and desirable unions. I had gone on a little motor jaunt with some of the men of the British Club. Our way was along the road the natives had built in gratitude to R. L. S., and our destination the home of a friend of his, who had married a native woman. The house was of European construction, solid and comfortable, with a veranda affording a view of the open sea. The interior was in every way as typical of British colonial life as any I later saw in New Zealand. There were photographs on the wall, hanging shelves, bric-á-brac, a piano,--all importations of crude Western manufactories.

The hosts were Euro-Polynesians; the father a lawyer and son of a clergyman of Sydney, Australia, who had settled in the islands years ago. I do not recall whether, like his closest friend, Stevenson, he was buried on the island, but certainly he left by no means unworthy offspring, whatever prejudice may say.

Thus, in the mixture of emotions often sterile, and in the bones of white devotees is the reunion of the races of these regions being slowly effected. And at the two extremities of the Pacific--New Zealand and Hawaii--we find the process nearer completion.

4

In the journeys to and fro across the vast spaces of the South Pacific one rarely meets a white man who takes his native wife with him. One such I did meet when slipping down from Hawaii to the Fiji Islands. There were two couples on board who always kept more or less to themselves, two rough-looking white men, a white woman, and one who for all I could tell was a middle-class Southern European woman. She wore simple clothes,--a blouse hanging over her skirt and comfortable shoes. She was in no sense shy, laughed heartily, moved about with a self-conscious air of importance, but with ease, and made no effort to hide the curving blue lines of tattooing that decorated her chin. She was a Maori princess, and all the vigor of her race disported itself in the supple lines of her figure.

Her husband, Mr. Webb, however, was not a British prince. Blunt in his manners, he was ultra-radical in his opinions,--a proud member of New Zealand's working class. Domineering in his temperament he was, but she was a match for him. It was obvious that she had missed in her native training any lessons in subservience to a mere husband. She spoke a clear, broad, fluent English without the slightest accent, and when her extremely argumentative husband made a strong point, she gave her assent in no mistaken terms.

At table she was more mannerly than her spouse, though laboring under no difficulties whatever in the acquisition of food. I have never seen a person more self-possessed. Her royal lineage was writ large in her every expression. Though out on deck they both seemed somewhat out of place among the white folk and preferred a corner apart, in the dining-room they were kin to all men.

I found them both extremely interesting, and when the usual invitations were passed round for a continuance of the acquaintanceship after landing, I accepted theirs more readily than any other. Blunt and without finesse as they were, there was an obvious cordiality and virility in their manner, and no man alert to adventure turns so promising an offer aside.

Months afterward I was in Auckland, New Zealand, and made myself known to them. Most cordial was the reception they gave me when I stepped upon the well-built pier that jutted out into the inlet from the little launch that brought me there. Back upon the knoll stood Madame, her heavy head of curly hair loose about her shoulders. Her very being greeted me with welcome, firmness of foot and arm and calmness of poise proclaiming her nativity. When I approached, her strong hand grasped mine, her face beamed, and she led the way over the grass-grown path to the porch with even more self-confidence than when she had gone to her seat in the saloon, on shipboard.

Yet it was no saloon they led me into, but a simple hollow-tile structure with slate roofing and plain plastered walls. Just an ordinary four-roomed house, the haven of the rising pioneer. There were no decorations on the walls, no modern equipment of any kind, not even a stove. The table was machine-turned, the chairs ordinary, and on the mantelpiece stood some bleached photographs. My hosts went about in their bare feet, and otherwise as loosely clad as the early November spring permitted. They prepared their meals on the open fire, and the menu was as simple as anything ever offered me; and for the first time in my life I ate boiled eels, the great Maori staple and delicacy. Had it not been for the emanation of her genial personality and his vigorous, breezy, almost hard pleasure in my presence, I should have felt chilled in that habitation. But in place of things was sincere welcome. I had proof of that that night, for I was placed in the guest-room, upon a soft, comfortable bed, while my hosts themselves spread a mattress on the floor in the living-room. Lest I misunderstand, they explained that it was their custom, Maori fashion, to sleep on the floor, as they preferred the hard support to that of the yielding spring.

I woke next morning just as the sun peeped over the hill directly into my window. It was a sober dawn,--just a healthy flush of life, with crisp, invigorating air. One branch of a young kauri pine-tree stretched across the rising orb like nature rousing itself from sleep. And in the other room I could hear my hosts moving quietly about, preparing breakfast.

Without word of warning or any apparent welcome, the wife's brother and his young bride arrived. It was obvious that the visit was no unusual occurrence. They made themselves as much a part of the place as possible, and were ignored by the white man and his Maori wife as though they were servants. Yet they were both, to me at least, delightful. He was broad-shouldered, erect, rounded of limb but muscular,--as handsome a boy of twenty as I have ever seen, and it gave one joy to see him mated to so fine a girl. Their beings vibrated to each other with the joy of their union.

And she was as fine a mate for him. Though she accentuated every feature of her sex, it was with the joy of fitness for him, not with any effort to be alluring. She wore a very close fitting middy-blouse, which made more firm the rounded breasts of her young maidenhood. She was supple and plump and moved with litheness and grace, full of animal spirits. With an affected air she swung about to the step of an American rag, and every once in a while she would throw herself into her lover's arms, and take a turn about out of sheer happiness. It had never occurred to me how extremely civilized and not primitive our rag-time music is until I saw these young "savages" affect it. But however ill-fitting the tune to their emotions, there was something absolutely natural in their adoration and their rushing into each other's arms which no amount of civilization could tarnish.

In the afternoon they went digging for eels in the mud of the inlet. While they were gone, my host and his wife cleared the yard of overgrown weeds and rubbish.

"That's the way they are," said he. "All day long they dance and fool away their time. They think they've done a lot if they dig for eels all afternoon. When we went away to Hawaii we left them to look after our house without charging them any rent. This is what we found when we returned. The whole place was overgrown with weeds, the fences were broken down, the gates were off, and the place was strewn with rubbish. They don't know what it is to be careful." And he struck a match to the heap of weeds he and his wife had gathered.

Presently the two lovers returned with a basket full of eels. The young "housewife" hung her catch by the tails on the clothes-line to dry, and in a pail of clear water washed the mud-suckers they had gathered as by-product. Then they felt they were entitled to rest.

All afternoon until late evening they lay upon the spring of an unused matressless bedstead, which stood upon the veranda. Their heads were at the opposite ends of the bed. He kicked his feet in the air, but every time a move of hers showed more of her legs than he thought proper, he pulled down her tight skirt. He held an accordion over him upon which he played a medley of airs, while she whirled a soft hat with her fingers. From their throats issued a fountain of song, harmonious only in the spirit of joy which inspired it.

So far they might just as well have been guests at a hotel for all the attention their elders paid to them. We had had our meals by ourselves. They were simply tolerated. But after nightfall, they joined their relatives in a game of cards. Every move provoked a burst of laughter, whether successful or unsuccessful to the hilarious one, and never a suggestion of strife or thought of gain was manifest.

The Maories are more sober than their kinsmen of the upper South Seas. Life was never to them less than a serious struggle. I daresay they are happier to-day than they were in their own time, with peace and prosperity guaranteed them. But that is problematical. Laughter and play are to-day urgent necessities. The dances and games that were native to them--when not stimulated by some social event--do not come to them with the same old spontaneity. It took considerable begging on my part and nudging from Mr. Webb to persuade the women to show me a native dance. Donning her skirt of rushes, Mrs. Webb stepped into the center of the room, giggling all the while, and insisting that her sister-in-law dance with her. The latter took a stick in her hand and they began. But after two or three movements they doubled over with laughter, and faltered. I kept urging them on. At last they caught the spirit of it, and for a few minutes they were as though possessed. Their movements, mainly of the hands and hips, were not unlike those of the geisha dances of Japan. They kept them up for fifteen minutes. Suddenly they stopped, as though struck self-conscious, almost as a modest girl who had wakened from a somnambulant journey in her nightgown. They slipped into chairs, and were silent. Then for about half an hour they sat "yarning" soberly before the hearth fire. And something sad seemed to creep away up the chimney.

The two young lovers decided they would take a bath, and went into another chamber to heat the water. My bed was spread for me; the hosts unrolled the mattress which had been lying in the corner on the floor all day. We retired. Then from the other room came sounds of hilarious laughter, the splashing of water in the tub, and the slapping of naked wet flesh. It kept up for hours, long after midnight. When silence finally reigned over the household, an adorably cool moon peeped in at our windows, and I knew that the two lovers in the room next mine were at last overcome by the conspiracy of moonlight and fatigue.

"Did you hear those mad Maories?" said Mr. Webb to me the first thing in the morning. "Such mad things! To keep the whole house awake till long after midnight!" Then he, too, seemed to become self-conscious. Wasn't he passing reflections on the tribe of his wife? We strolled out into the fields. He seemed to feel the necessity of an explanation. Among his people, the white folk, though he was not ostracized for having taken a native wife (for it is common enough), still it did lower one in the social scale. I steered the conversation round till he himself spoke of it. He referred to his wife, somewhat soberly. "I like her and am satisfied with her. She's a good woman." And during the whole of my visit I saw nothing to indicate that their marriage was not a success. She was tidy, thrifty, and companionable. He always treated her with respect and affection, though once or twice with undue firmness. But she always stood her ground with dignity and good-nature. When he poked kindly fun at some photographs of her, she smiled and winked at me. Then she said of a picture taken of him on the beach: "I wouldn't lose it for all the world, just for his sake."

By way of apology for the absence of more furnishings, they explained that they had sold out; they were tired of labor conditions in New Zealand, of the too great closeness to the "tribe" and in consequence had paid a visit to Hawaii, where they bought a plantation. Thither they went shortly afterward, the Briton and his Maori wife, he to mix with his European cousins, she with her Polynesian kinsfolk, and a more general reunion, after centuries of separation, consummated.

Not the least lovable among the fifty-seven blends of humanity that make up the inhabitants of the South Seas and the Pacific are these Maories and their half-brothers and sisters.

5

From a Member of Parliament I had received several letters of introduction, one of which was to the famous Dr. Pomare, the native M. P. who represented native interests in the Dominion's parliament. When I arrived at Wellington, the capital, I presented myself at his office and was received by a most genial, well-spoken, widely read individual whose tongue would have entertained the most sophisticated of European gatherings. There was hardly a subject we touched in which he was not well versed, and his native qualities rang out in intermittent bursts of laughter such as only a healthy-minded and healthy-bodied individual could indulge in. When we began to discuss the question of the virtues and vices of his native race, the Maories, he assured me:

"Oh, we're just like any people. There are good and bad amongst us. Some of our people will sell their lands, if they can, and buy an automobile which they run madly about and then leave in an open plot in ruin. On the other hand, one of our women has been very clever with her property, has sold it off, and invested her money in stocks so that to-day she owns the greatest number of shares in the Wellington tram lines. So you see we are just like other people."

And so it is. But there is a slight exception, for I have heard from every one that the tendency to revert to type is very great, and that one of the wealthiest native woman in the Dominion will frequently leave her mansion, her jewels, her limousine, her fine clothes, and spend a time in a Maori _pah_, eating eels in the good old native way.

But such reversions cannot last long. Despite that drift, there are indications of a racial recrudescence through the half-castes, a tendency noticed by students of the primitive peoples throughout the Pacific. Hope for the Maories is in the younger elements who have that happy mixture in them, called Pakeha-Maori. Visiting a class of young women in a commercial school in Dunedin I noticed among them one whose dark face and black eyes were full of a certain wicked fascination. She was as bright and alert as any member of the class. And when I spoke of her to the head of the school, he said, "Oh, that little half-caste girl." I should not have known it.

One does not like to be too enthusiastic, but if these savage Polynesians can in the course of three generations, and with the aid of a slight mixture, change from fierce cannibalism to something as sweet and lovable as this, there is indeed great hope for them. What though the prejudiced assure you that, however far the mixture may have gone, it reveals itself in a tendency to squat when least expected? There is in the most civilized of us still enough of the savage strain to make us wary of carrying our aversions too far.

Doubtless the Britons of New Zealand would enter any debate with the Americans of Hawaii as to which is the superior people, the Maories or the Hawaiians. For our own peace of mind let us accept their Polynesian kinship at the outset. Both are worth saving as separate races or in mixture with others.

The Maori M.P., the rebellious priest, Rua, later released from prison, the Hawaiian clerk in the throne-room, the Fijian chief turned governor, the Samoan chief in pajamas who, with the customs officials, boarded the steamer anchored beyond the reefs, and Mrs. Webb, the princess,--all these are natives playing the new part allotted to them in this strange new world.

Thus slowly, into the life and fabric of the South Seas, is coming this consciousness of rebirth. It is a new class, a new race. Not the Eurasians, scorned by the white and the superior Asiatics,--but the reverse. Half-caste, but the proud possessors of the virtues of the natives, with the strength and superiority of the white; half-caste in blood but not always so in spirit.