Part 8

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.