Chapter 8

You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined never to go near him again.

One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady, our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal, demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous, crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather, and the war, and what an ass the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round to the matter in hand.

Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past master in the art of graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that he had to make _ifonga_ for the death of O and be carried on the morrow by the _taulelea_ to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This _ifonga_, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to--for it involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed and hawed and finally said no.

Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.

"If thou makest peace with his _ainga_," said Sasa, "lo, what is there left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs, that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the former to complain?"

"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout the Tuamasanga!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath, and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the earth?"

"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness asks of me is impossible!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine; the plantation _i uta_ is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another; then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"

"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.

"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.

To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and blustered somewhat about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow finally gave way all round. Then _'ava_ was brought in, the arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said _tofa_ on the threshold, well pleased with our night's work.

* * * * *

I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore about the whole business--especially the hush--and not a funeral note being heard; we marching with measured tread, the municipal police bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.

Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something, for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too stupefied to let out a word.

I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along, and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group, and an aged _faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up, To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.

"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"

"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile, "dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a murderess for my pride!"

"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.

"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.

I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the _Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.

I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the _Daisy Walker_, and my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God ever made such a silly ass of a baker?

One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where, sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses, who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the whole business!

At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of the Wesleyan church in white _lavalavas_ and hymn-books; a picnic party that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea; blue-jackets from the _Sperber_; blue-jackets from the _Walleroo_; three survivors of the British bark _Windsor Castle_, burned at sea; a German scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net; six whole boatloads of an _aumoenga_ party from Manu'a; a lot of political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!

It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and marched up to him.

"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what brought us here to-day!"

"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this Godforsaken land"--he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said this--"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my fader-in-law's aunt's son!"

"He didn't murder him," I said.

Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute he couldn't say a word.

"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.

"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.

"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"

"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own secrecy."

"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe. Four dollars!"

"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for eleven dollars and a music box."

I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.

"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."

"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad dog.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said.

"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and bushed aside."

"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's aunt's son!" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"

"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make _tongafiti_. You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you right somebody cut your head off!"

"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up some fresh objection!"

"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.

"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."

"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said Silver Tongue.

"Traitor--nothing!" I said.

"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.

"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.

"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham--not a great, coarse, fat, stinking lump of dog meat----"

"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the _Alameda_ for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner of his cabin."

"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa vindictively.

"Whose head?" I asked.

"Silver Tongue's," she returned.

* * * * *

Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the _Nukanono_, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out, the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection, and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an old sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do what I was told.

I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the _Nukanono_, board her by the fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!

It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the _Nukanono_ across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black glass, the outer reefs were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant with _moso'oi_, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of harmony with the night itself.

However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa. I came up softly under the bow of the _Nukanono_, dismissed Joe in a whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say softly in my ear, "_Malie_," which in Samoan means good or well done. Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce, violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping, smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably feminine wail.

"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.

"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.

"Just a little _tongafiti_ to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa. "They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in the dark, with five hours to make it up!"

I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.

"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.

"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."

"But, Sasa--" I protested.

"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your old head about nothings!"

"But, my dear girl--" I protested.

"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights--true lovers don't want no lights!"

"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."

"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"

Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful wrecking of the whole ship's interior--the smashing of crockery and lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow, reverberatory boom of German profan---- No, I won't be unjust, and one really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel--and large firecrackers, too.

Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him, for heeling over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a haunting sense of a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.