his thirtieth birthday! his first youth was behind him, with all its heartburnings, its failures, its manifold humiliations. what had he done these years past but drift, forlorn, penniless, and unattached, over those shallows where others had stuck and prospered—a gentle decline all the way from college in hope and fulfilment? the army and civil service had alike refused him. in the colonies he had toiled unremittingly in half a hundred characters,—groom, cook, boundary rider, steamer roustabout,—always sinking, always failing. then those last four years in the islands, and his tumble-down store in vaiala! had life nothing more for him than an endless succession of hot, empty days on the farthest beach of upolu, with scarcely more to eat than the commonest kanaka, and no other outlet for his energies than the bartering of salt beef for coprah and an occasional night’s fishing on the reef? on the other hand, he was well in body, and had times of even thinking himself happy in this fag-end of the world. the old store, rotten and leaky though it was, gave him a dryer bed than he had often found in his wandering life, and the food, if monotonous and poor, was better than the empty belly with which he had often begun an arduous day in australia. and the place was extraordinarily[110] beautiful. yes, he had always admitted that, even in his blackest days of depression, though the beauty of it seemed almost to oppress him at times. but beautiful or not, this was a strange place for his father’s son, a strange thirtieth birthday for one who had begun the world with every prospect of faring well and rising high in its esteem, and the sense of his failure again seized him by the throat.
the noise of an incoming boat drew him to the door, and he looked out to see the pastor’s old whaler heading through the reef. they had made a night trip to avoid the heat, and all looked tired and weary with their long pull from apia, and the song with which they timed their paddles sounded mournfully across the lagoon. a half-grown girl leaped into the water and hastened up to the store with something fastened in a banana-leaf.
it was a letter, which she shyly handed the trader. walter kinross looked at it with surprise, for it was the first he had received in four years, and the sight of its english stamp and familiar handwriting filled him with something like awe.
“the white man said you would give us a tin of salmon and six masi,” said the little girl, in native.
kinross unlocked the dingy trade-room, still in a maze of wonder and impatience, and gave the little girl a box of matches in excess of postage. then he opened the letter.
my dear nephew [it ran]: your letter asking me to send you a book or two or any old papers i might happen to have about me has just come to hand, and finds me at long’s[111] hotel, pretty miserable and ill. yours was a strange note, after a silence of eight years, telling me nothing on earth about yourself save that you are trading in some islands, and seldom see a white face from one year’s end to another. when a man is seventy years of age and is ill, and his nigh-spent life unrolls before him like the pages of a musty old book, and when he wonders a little how it will feel to be dead and done with altogether, i tell you, my boy, he begins to see the spectres of all sorts of old misdeeds rising before him. past unkindnesses, past neglects, a cold word here, a ten-pound note saved there and an old friend turned empty away—well, well! without actually going the length of saying that i was either unkind or negligent in your case, i feel sometimes i was rather hard on you as to that mess of yours in london, and that affair at lowestoft the same year. i was disappointed, and i showed it.
i know you’re pretty old to come back and start life afresh here, but if you have not had the unmitigated folly to get married out there and tied by the leg for ever, i’ll help you to make a new start. you sha’n’t starve if three hundred pounds a year will keep you, and if you will try and turn over a new leaf and make a man of yourself in good earnest, i am prepared to mark you down substantially in my will. but mind—no promises—payment strictly by results. you’re no longer a boy, and this is probably the last chance you’ll ever get of entering civilised life again and meeting respectable folk. i inclose you a draft at sight on sydney, new south wales, for two hundred and fifty pounds, for you will doubtless need clothes, etc., as well as your passage money, and if you decide not to return you can accept it as a present from your old uncle. i have told jones (you would scarcely know the old fellow, walter, he’s so changed) to send you a bundle of books and illustrated papers, which i hope will amuse you more than they seem to do me.
affectionately yours,
alfred bannock.
[112]the trader read the letter with extraordinary attention, though the drift of it was at first almost beyond him—read it and re-read it, dazed and overcome, scarcely realising his good fortune. he spread out the bill on his knee and smoothed it as he might have patted the head of a dog. it spelled freedom, friends, the life he had been trained and fitted to lead, a future worth having and worth dividing. the elation of it all tingled in his veins, and he felt like singing. london, the far distant, the inaccessible, now hummed in his ears. he saw the eddying, crowded streets, the emptying play-houses, the grey river sparkling with lights. the smoke of a native oven thrilled him with memories of the underground, and he had but to close his eyes and the surf thundered with the noise of arriving trains.
the house could not contain him and his eager thoughts; he must needs feel the sky overhead and the trades against his cheek, and take all nature into his puny confidence. besides, vaiala had now a new charm for him, one he had never counted on to find. soon, now, it would begin to melt into the irrevocable past; its mist-swept mountains, its forests and roaring waterfalls would fade into nothingness and become no more than an impalpable phantom of his mind, the stuff that dreams are made of. he wandered along the path from one settlement to another, round the great half-moon of the bay, absorbing every impression with a new and tender interest.
there were a dozen little villages to be passed before he could attain the rocky promontory that barred[113] the western shore, pretty hamlets in groves of cocoanuts and breadfruit, in each perhaps a dozen beehive houses and as many sheds and boat-shelters. between village and village the path led him under rustling palms and beside the shallow waters of the lagoon and across a river where he surprised some laughing girls at their bath. in the deep shade old men were mending nets, and children were playing tag and cricket with boisterous shouts, or marbles in sandy places. from one house he heard the clapping hands that announced the ’ava; in another the song and stamp of practising dancers. hard and lonely though his life had been, this samoan bay was endeared to him by a thousand pleasant memories and even by the recollection of his past unhappiness. here he had found peace and love, freedom from taskmasters, scenes more beautiful than any picture, and, not least, a sufficiency to eat. a little money and his life might have been tolerable, even happy—enough money for a good-sized boat, a cow or two, and those six acres of the pascoe estate he had so often longed to buy. only the month before, the american consul had offered them for two hundred dollars chile money, and here he was with two hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket, seventeen hundred and fifty dollars currency! cruel fate, that had made him in one turn of her wrist far too rich to care. he would buy them for leata, he supposed; he must leave the girl some land to live on. but where now were all the day-dreams of the laying out of his little estate?—the damming of the noisy stream, the fencing,[114] terracing, and path-making he had had in mind; the mangoes, oranges, and avocados he had meant to plant in that teeming soil, with coffee enough for a modest reserve? what a snug, cosy garden a man could make of it! what a satisfaction it might have been! how often had he talked of it with leata, who had been no less eager than himself to harness their quarter-acre to the six and make of them all a little paradise.
poor leata! whom he had taken so lightly from her father’s house and paid for in gunpowder and kegs of beef—his smiling, soft-eyed leata, who would have died for him! what was to become of her in this new arrangement of things? the six acres would provide for her, of course; in breadfruit, cocoanuts, and bananas she would not be badly off: but where was the solace for the ache in her heart, for her desolation and abandonment? he sighed as he thought of her, the truest friend he had found in all his wanderings. he would get her some jewellery from apia, and a chest of new dresses, and a big musical box, if she fancied it. what would it matter if he did go home in the steerage? it would be no hardship to a man like him. she would soon forget him, no doubt, and take up with somebody else, and live happily ever afterwards in the six acres. ah, well! he mustn’t think too much about her, or it would take the edge off his high spirits and spoil the happiest day of his life.
by this time he had worked quite round the bay, and almost without knowing it he found himself in front of paul engelbert’s store. engelbert was the other[115] trader in vaiala—a passionate, middle-aged prussian, who had been a good friend of his before those seven breadfruit-trees had come between them. in his new-found affluence and consequent good humour the bitterness of that old feud suddenly passed away. he recalled engelbert’s rough, jovial kindness—remembered how paul had cared for him through the fever, and helped him afterwards with money and trade. how could he have been so petty as to make a quarrel of those breadfruit-trees? he recollected, with indescribable wonder at himself, that he had once drawn a pistol on the old fellow, and all this over six feet of boundary and seven gnawed breadfruits! by jove! he could afford to be generous and hold out the right hand of friendship. poor old paul! it was a shame they had not spoken these two years.
on the verandah, barefoot and in striped pyjamas, was engelbert, pretending not to see him. kinross thought he looked old and sick and not a little changed.
“how do you do, engelbert?” he said.
the german looked at him with smouldering eyes. “gan’t you see i’m busy?” he said.
“you might offer a man a chair,” said kinross, seating himself on the tool-chest.
“dere iss no jare for dem dat issn’t welgome,” said the german.
“i used to be welcome here,” said kinross. “there was a time when you were a precious good friend of mine, paul engelbert.”
“dat wass long ago,” said the trader.
[116]“i’ve been thinking,” said kinross, “that i’ve acted like a damned fool about those trees.”
“dat wass what i wass dinking, too, dese two dree years,” responded the other.
“take them; they are yours,” said kinross. “you can build your fence there to-morrow.”
“so!” said engelbert, with dawning intelligence. “the yerman gonsul has at last to my gomplaint listened.”
“hang the german consul! no!” cried kinross. “i do it myself, because i was wrong—because you were good to me that time i was sick, and lent me the hundred dollars and the trade.”
“and you want noding?” asked engelbert, still incredulous.
“i want to shake your hand and be friends again, old man,” said kinross, “same as we used to be when we played dominoes every night, and you’d tell me about the austrian war, and how the prince divided his cigars with you when you were wounded.”
the german looked away. “oh, kinross,” he said, with a shining look in his eyes, “you make me much ashamed.” he turned suddenly round and wrung the englishman’s hand in an iron grasp. “i, too, was dam fool.”
“a friend is worth more than seven breadfruits,” said kinross.
“it wass not breadfruid: it wass brincible,” said the german. “poof! de drees dey are noding; here it wass i wass hurted,” and he laid a heavy paw against his breast. “ho, malia, de beer!”
[117]his strapping native wife appeared with bottles and mugs; at the sight of their guest she could scarcely conceal her surprise.
“prosit!” said engelbert, touching glasses.
“you know dem six agers of de pasgoe estate,” he said, looking very hard at his companion. “very nice leetle place, very sheap, yoost behind your store?”
kinross nodded, but his face fell in spite of himself.
“i from the american gonsul bought him,” went on the german, “very sheap: two hundred dollars chile money.”
kinross looked black. engelbert patted his hand and smiled ambiguously.
“dey are yours,” he said. “pay me back when you have de money. i buy dem only to spite you. my friend, take dem.”
“paul, paul,” cried kinross, “i don’t know what to say—how to thank you. only this morning i got money from home, and the first thing i meant to do was to buy them.”
“all de better,” said engelbert; “and, my boy, you blant goffee. cobrah, poof! gotton, poof! it’s de goffee dat bays, and i will get you blenty leetle drees from my friend, de gaptain in utumabu blantation. you must go? so? yoost one glass beer. nein? i will be round lader.”
kinross tore himself away with difficulty and started homeward, his heart swelling with kindness for the old prussian. he exulted in the six acres he had so nearly lost, and they now seemed to him more precious than ever. it was no empty promise, that of the[118] coffee-trees from utumapu; these would save him all manner of preparatory labor and put his little plantation six months ahead. then he remembered he was leaving vaiala, and again he heard the hum of london in his ears. well, he would explain about the trees to leata, and would beg old engelbert to help and advise her a bit. poor leata! she had lots of good sense and was very quick to learn. he could trust leata.
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,[119] 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[120] 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.
[121]“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[122] 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[123] 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.[124] 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!”
