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Title: The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Release date: October 9, 2008 [eBook #26854]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by the
        University of Michigan library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF: LITTLE STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by the
University of Michigan library.)










THE TREMBLING
OF A LEAF

_Little Stories of the South Sea Islands_

BY
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

AUTHOR OF "THE MOON AND SIXPENCE,"
"OF HUMAN BONDAGE," ETC.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1921,

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

*       *       *       *       *

TO
BERTRAM ALANSON

*       *       *       *       *

_L'extrême félicité à peine séparée par
une feuille tremblante de l'extrême
désespoir, n'est-ce pas la vie?_

SAINTE-BEUVE.

*       *       *       *       *



CONTENTS


I THE PACIFIC

II MACKINTOSH

III THE FALL OF EDWARD BARNARD

IV RED

V THE POOL

VI HONOLULU

VII RAIN

VIII ENVOI




THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF




I

_The Pacific_


The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes
it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell,
and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It
is not so often that it is calm and blue. Then, indeed, the blue is
arrogant. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind
gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the
unknown. The billows, magnificently rolling, stretch widely on all sides
of you, and you forget your vanished youth, with its memories, cruel and
sweet, in a restless, intolerable desire for life. On such a sea as this
Ulysses sailed when he sought the Happy Isles. But there are days also
when the Pacific is like a lake. The sea is flat and shining. The flying
fish, a gleam of shadow on the brightness of a mirror, make little
fountains of sparkling drops when they dip. There are fleecy clouds on
the horizon, and at sunset they take strange shapes so that it is
impossible not to believe that you see a range of lofty mountains. They
are the mountains of the country of your dreams. You sail through an
unimaginable silence upon a magic sea. Now and then a few gulls suggest
that land is not far off, a forgotten island hidden in a wilderness of
waters; but the gulls, the melancholy gulls, are the only sign you have
of it. You see never a tramp, with its friendly smoke, no stately bark
or trim schooner, not a fishing boat even: it is an empty desert; and
presently the emptiness fills you with a vague foreboding.




II

_Mackintosh_


He splashed about for a few minutes in the sea; it was too shallow to
swim in and for fear of sharks he could not go out of his depth; then he
got out and went into the bath-house for a shower. The coldness of the
fresh water was grateful after the heavy stickiness of the salt Pacific,
so warm, though it was only just after seven, that to bathe in it did
not brace you but rather increased your languor; and when he had dried
himself, slipping into a bath-gown, he called out to the Chinese cook
that he would be ready for breakfast in five minutes. He walked barefoot
across the patch of coarse grass which Walker, the administrator,
proudly thought was a lawn, to his own quarters and dressed. This did
not take long, for he put on nothing but a shirt and a pair of duck
trousers and then went over to his chief's house on the other side of
the compound. The two men had their meals together, but the Chinese cook
told him that Walker had set out on horseback at five and would not be
back for another hour.

Mackintosh had slept badly and he looked with distaste at the paw-paw
and the eggs and bacon which were set before him. The mosquitoes had
been maddening that night; they flew about the net under which he slept
in such numbers that their humming, pitiless and menacing, had the
effect of a note, infinitely drawn out, played on a distant organ, and
whenever he dozed off he awoke with a start in the belief that one had
found its way inside his curtains. It was so hot that he lay naked. He
turned from side to side. And gradually the dull roar of the breakers on
the reef, so unceasing and so regular that generally you did not hear
it, grew distinct on his consciousness, its rhythm hammered on his tired
nerves and he held himself with clenched hands in the effort to bear it.
The thought that nothing could stop that sound, for it would continue to
all eternity, was almost impossible to bear, and, as though his strength
were a match for the ruthless forces of nature, he had an insane impulse
to do some violent thing. He felt he must cling to his self-control or
he would go mad. And now, looking out of the window at the lagoon and
the strip of foam which marked the reef, he shuddered with hatred of the
brilliant scene. The cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl that hemmed
it in. He lit his pipe and turned over the pile of Auckland papers that
had come over from Apia a few days before. The newest of them was three
weeks old. They gave an impression of incredible dullness.

Then he went into the office. It was a large, bare room with two desks
in it and a bench along one side. A number of natives were seated on
this, and a couple of women. They gossiped while they waited for the
administrator, and when Mackintosh came in they greeted him.

"_Talofa li._"

He returned their greeting and sat down at his desk. He began to write,
working on a report which the governor of Samoa had been clamouring for
and which Walker, with his usual dilatoriness, had neglected to prepare.
Mackintosh as he made his notes reflected vindictively that Walker was
late with his report because he was so illiterate that he had an
invincible distaste for anything to do with pens and paper; and now when
it was at last ready, concise and neatly official, he would accept his
subordinate's work without a word of appreciation, with a sneer rather
or a gibe, and send it on to his own superior as though it were his own
composition. He could not have written a word of it. Mackintosh thought
with rage that if his chief pencilled in some insertion it would be
childish in expression and faulty in language. If he remonstrated or
sought to put his meaning into an intelligible phrase, Walker would fly
into a passion and cry:

"What the hell do I care about grammar? That's what I want to say and
that's how I want to say it."

At last Walker came in. The natives surrounded him as he entered, trying
to get his immediate attention, but he turned on them roughly and told
them to sit down and hold their tongues. He threatened that if they were
not quiet he would have them all turned out and see none of them that
day. He nodded to Mackintosh.

"Hulloa, Mac; up at last? I don't know how you can waste the best part
of the day in bed. You ought to have been up before dawn like me. Lazy
beggar."

He threw himself heavily into his chair and wiped his face with a large
bandana.

"By heaven, I've got a thirst."

He turned to the policeman who stood at the door, a picturesque figure
in his white jacket and _lava-lava_, the loin cloth of the Samoan, and
told him to bring _kava_. The _kava_ bowl stood on the floor in the
corner of the room, and the policeman filled a half coconut shell and
brought it to Walker. He poured a few drops on the ground, murmured the
customary words to the company, and drank with relish. Then he told the
policeman to serve the waiting natives, and the shell was handed to each
one in order of birth or importance and emptied with the same
ceremonies.

Then he set about the day's work. He was a little man, considerably less
than of middle height, and enormously stout; he had a large, fleshy
face, clean-shaven, with the cheeks hanging on each side in great
dew-laps, and three vast chins; his small features were all dissolved in
fat; and, but for a crescent of white hair at the back of his head, he
was completely bald. He reminded you of Mr Pickwick. He was grotesque, a
figure of fun, and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity. His blue
eyes, behind large gold-rimmed spectacles, were shrewd and vivacious,
and there was a great deal of determination in his face. He was sixty,
but his native vitality triumphed over advancing years. Notwithstanding
his corpulence his movements were quick, and he walked with a heavy,
resolute tread as though he sought to impress his weight upon the earth.
He spoke in a loud, gruff voice.

It was two years now since Mackintosh had been appointed Walker's
assistant. Walker, who had been for a quarter of a century administrator
of Talua, one of the larger islands in the Samoan group, was a man known
in person or by report through the length and breadth of the South Seas;
and it was with lively curiosity that Mackintosh looked forward to his
first meeting with him. For one reason or another he stayed a couple of
weeks at Apia before he took up his post and both at Chaplin's hotel and
at the English club he heard innumerable stories about the
administrator. He thought now with irony of his interest in them. Since
then he had heard them a hundred times from Walker himself. Walker knew
that he was a character, and, proud of his reputation, deliberately
acted up to it. He was jealous of his "legend" and anxious that you
should know the exact details of any of the celebrated stories that were
told of him. He was ludicrously angry with anyone who had told them to
the stranger incorrectly.

There was a rough cordiality about Walker which Mackintosh at first
found not unattractive, and Walker, glad to have a listener to whom all
he said was fresh, gave of his best. He was good-humoured, hearty, and
considerate. To Mackintosh, who had lived the sheltered life of a
government official in London till at the age of thirty-four an attack
of pneumonia, leaving him with the threat of tuberculosis, had forced
him to seek a post in the Pacific, Walker's existence seemed
extraordinarily romantic. The adventure with which he started on his
conquest of circumstance was typical of the man. He ran away to sea when
he was fifteen and for over a year was employed in shovelling coal on a
collier. He was an undersized boy and both men and mates were kind to
him, but the captain for some reason conceived a savage dislike of him.
He used the lad cruelly so that, beaten and kicked, he often could not
sleep for the pain that racked his limbs. He loathed the captain with
all his soul. Then he was given a tip for some race and managed to
borrow twenty-five pounds from a friend he had picked up in Belfast. He
put it on the horse, an outsider, at long odds. He had no means of
repaying the money if he lost, but it never occurred to him that he
could lose. He felt himself in luck. The horse won and he found himself
with something over a thousand pounds in hard cash. Now his chance had
come. He found out who was the best solicitor in the town--the collier
lay then somewhere on the Irish coast--went to him, and, telling him
that he heard the ship was for sale, asked him to arrange the purchase
for him. The solicitor was amused at his small client, he was only
sixteen and did not look so old, and, moved perhaps by sympathy,
promised not only to arrange the matter for him but to see that he made
a good bargain. After a little while Walker found himself the owner of
the ship. He went back to her and had what he described as the most
glorious moment of his life when he gave the skipper notice and told him
that he must get off _his_ ship in half an hour. He made the mate
captain and sailed on the collier for another nine months, at the end of
which he sold her at a profit.

He came out to the islands at the age of twenty-six as a planter. He was
one of the few white men settled in Talua at the time of the German
occupation and had then already some influence with the natives. The
Germans made him administrator, a position which he occupied for twenty
years, and when the island was seized by the British he was confirmed in
his post. He ruled the island despotically, but with complete success.
The prestige of this success was another reason for the interest that
Mackintosh took in him.

But the two men were not made to get on. Mackintosh was an ugly man,
with ungainly gestures, a tall thin fellow, with a narrow chest and
bowed shoulders. He had sallow, sunken cheeks, and his eyes were large
and sombre. He was a great reader, and when his books arrived and were
unpacked Walker came over to his quarters and looked at them. Then he
turned to Mackintosh with a coarse laugh.

"What in Hell have you brought all this muck for?" he asked.

Mackintosh flushed darkly.

"I'm sorry you think it muck. I brought my books because I want to read
them."

"When you said you'd got a lot of books coming I thought there'd be
something for me to read. Haven't you got any detective stories?"

"Detective stories don't interest me."

"You're a damned fool then."

"I'm content that you should think so."

Every mail brought Walker a mass of periodical literature, papers from
New Zealand and magazines from America, and it exasperated him that
Mackintosh showed his contempt for these ephemeral publications. He had
no patience with the books that absorbed Mackintosh's leisure and
thought it only a pose that he read Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ or
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. And since he had never learned to put
any restraint on his tongue, he expressed his opinion of his assistant
freely. Mackintosh began to see the real man, and under the boisterous
good-humour he discerned a vulgar cunning which was hateful; he was vain
and domineering, and it was strange that he had notwithstanding a
shyness which made him dislike people who were not quite of his kidney.
He judged others, naïvely, by their language, and if it was free from
the oaths and the obscenity which made up the greater part of his own
conversation, he looked upon them with suspicion. In the evening the two
men played piquet. He played badly but vaingloriously, crowing over his
opponent when he won and losing his temper when he lost. On rare
occasions a couple of planters or traders would drive over to play
bridge, and then Walker showed himself in what Mackintosh considered a
characteristic light. He played regardless of his partner, calling up
in his desire to play the hand, and argued interminably, beating down
opposition by the loudness of his voice. He constantly revoked, and when
he did so said with an ingratiating whine: "Oh, you wouldn't count it
against an old man who can hardly see." Did he know that his opponents
thought it as well to keep on the right side of him and hesitated to
insist on the rigour of the game? Mackintosh watched him with an icy
contempt. When the game was over, while they smoked their pipes and
drank whisky, they would begin telling stories. Walker told with gusto
the story of his marriage. He had got so drunk at the wedding feast that
the bride had fled and he had never seen her since. He had had
numberless adventures, commonplace and sordid, with the women of the
island and he described them with a pride in his own prowess which was
an offence to Mackintosh's fastidious ears. He was a gross, sensual old
man. He thought Mackintosh a poor fellow because he would not share his
promiscuous amours and remained sober when the company was drunk.

He despised him also for the orderliness with which he did his official
work. Mackintosh liked to do everything just so. His desk was always
tidy, his papers were always neatly docketed, he could put his hand on
any document that was needed, and he had at his fingers' ends all the
regulations that were required for the business of their administration.

"Fudge, fudge," said Walker. "I've run this island for twenty years
without red tape, and I don't want it now."

"Does it make it any easier for you that when you want a letter you have
to hunt half an hour for it?" answered Mackintosh.

"You're nothing but a damned official. But you're not a bad fellow; when
you've been out here a year or two you'll be all right. What's wrong
about you is that you won't drink. You wouldn't be a bad sort if you got
soused once a week."

The curious thing was that Walker remained perfectly unconscious of the
dislike for him which every month increased in the breast of his
subordinate. Although he laughed at him, as he grew accustomed to him,
he began almost to like him. He had a certain tolerance for the
peculiarities of others, and he accepted Mackintosh as a queer fish.
Perhaps he liked him, unconsciously, because he could chaff him. His
humour consisted of coarse banter and he wanted a butt. Mackintosh's
exactness, his morality, his sobriety, were all fruitful subjects; his
Scot's name gave an opportunity for the usual jokes about Scotland; he
enjoyed himself thoroughly when two or three men were there and he could
make them all laugh at the expense of Mackintosh. He would say
ridiculous things about him to the natives, and Mackintosh, his
knowledge of Samoan still imperfect, would see their unrestrained mirth
when Walker had made an obscene reference to him. He smiled
good-humouredly.

"I'll say this for you, Mac," Walker would say in his gruff loud voice,
"you can take a joke."

"Was it a joke?" smiled Mackintosh. "I didn't know."

"Scots wha hae!" shouted Walker, with a bellow of laughter. "There's
only one way to make a Scotchman see a joke and that's by a surgical
operation."

Walker little knew that there was nothing Mackintosh could stand less
than chaff. He would wake in the night, the breathless night of the
rainy season, and brood sullenly over the gibe that Walker had uttered
carelessly days before. It rankled. His heart swelled with rage, and he
pictured to himself ways in which he might get even with the bully. He
had tried answering him, but Walker had a gift of repartee, coarse and
obvious, which gave him an advantage. The dullness of his intellect made
him impervious to a delicate shaft. His self-satisfaction made it
impossible to wound him. His loud voice, his bellow of laughter, were
weapons against which Mackintosh had nothing to counter, and he learned
that the wisest thing was never to betray his irritation. He learned to
control himself. But his hatred grew till it was a monomania. He watched
Walker with an insane vigilance. He fed his own self-esteem by every
instance of meanness on Walker's part, by every exhibition of childish
vanity, of cunning and of vulgarity. Walker ate greedily, noisily,
filthily, and Mackintosh watched him with satisfaction. He took note of
the foolish things he said and of his mistakes in grammar. He knew that
Walker held him in small esteem, and he found a bitter satisfaction in
his chief's opinion of him; it increased his own contempt for the
narrow, complacent old man. And it gave him a singular pleasure to know
that Walker was entirely unconscious of the hatred he felt for him. He
was a fool who liked popularity, and he blandly fancied that everyone
admired him. Once Mackintosh had overheard Walker speaking of him.

"He'll be all right when I've licked him into shape," he said. "He's a
good dog and he loves his master."

Mackintosh silently, without a movement of his long, sallow face,
laughed long and heartily.

But his hatred was not blind; on the contrary, it was peculiarly
clear-sighted, and he judged Walker's capabilities with precision. He
ruled his small kingdom with efficiency. He was just and honest. With
opportunities to make money he was a poorer man than when he was first
appointed to his post, and his only support for his old age was the
pension which he expected when at last he retired from official life.
His pride was that with an assistant and a half-caste clerk he was able
to administer the island more competently than Upolu, the island of
which Apia is the chief town, was administered with its army of
functionaries. He had a few native policemen to sustain his authority,
but he made no use of them. He governed by bluff and his Irish humour.

"They insisted on building a jail for me," he said. "What the devil do I
want a jail for? I'm not going to put the natives in prison. If they do
wrong I know how to deal with them."

One of his quarrels with the higher authorities at Apia was that he
claimed entire jurisdiction over the natives of his island. Whatever
their crimes he would not give them up to courts competent to deal with
them, and several times an angry correspondence had passed between him
and the Governor at Upolu. For he looked upon the natives as his
children. And that was the amazing thing about this coarse, vulgar,
selfish man; he loved the island on which he had lived so long with
passion, and he had for the natives a strange rough tenderness which was
quite wonderful.

He loved to ride about the island on his old grey mare and he was never
tired of its beauty. Sauntering along the grassy roads among the coconut
trees he would stop every now and then to admire the loveliness of the
scene. Now and then he would come upon a native village and stop while
the head man brought him a bowl of _kava_. He would look at the little
group of bell-shaped huts with their high thatched roofs, like beehives,
and a smile would spread over his fat face. His eyes rested happily on
the spreading green of the bread-fruit trees.

"By George, it's like the garden of Eden."

Sometimes his rides took him along the coast and through the trees he
had a glimpse of the wide sea, empty, with never a sail to disturb the
loneliness; sometimes he climbed a hill so that a great stretch of
country, with little villages nestling among the tall trees, was spread
out before him like the kingdom of the world, and he would sit there
for an hour in an ecstasy of delight. But he had no words to express
his feelings and to relieve them would utter an obscene jest; it was as
though his emotion was so violent that he needed vulgarity to break the
tension.

Mackintosh observed this sentiment with an icy disdain. Walker had
always been a heavy drinker, he was proud of his capacity to see men
half his age under the table when he spent a night in Apia, and he had
the sentimentality of the toper. He could cry over the stories he read
in his magazines and yet would refuse a loan to some trader in
difficulties whom he had known for twenty years. He was close with his
money. Once Mackintosh said to him:

"No one could accuse you of giving money away."

He took it as a compliment. His enthusiasm for nature was but the
drivelling sensibility of the drunkard. Nor had Mackintosh any sympathy
for his chief's feelings towards the natives. He loved them because they
were in his power, as a selfish man loves his dog, and his mentality was
on a level with theirs. Their humour was obscene and he was never at a
loss for the lewd remark. He understood them and they understood him. He
was proud of his influence over them. He looked upon them as his
children and he mixed himself in all their affairs. But he was very
jealous of his authority; if he ruled them with a rod of iron, brooking
no contradiction, he would not suffer any of the white men on the island
to take advantage of them. He watched the missionaries suspiciously
and, if they did anything of which he disapproved, was able to make life
so unendurable to them that if he could not get them removed they were
glad to go of their own accord. His power over the natives was so great
that on his word they would refuse labour and food to their pastor. On
the other hand he showed the traders no favour. He took care that they
should not cheat the natives; he saw that they got a fair reward for
their work and their copra and that the traders made no extravagant
profit on the wares they sold them. He was merciless to a bargain that
he thought unfair. Sometimes the traders would complain at Apia that
they did not get fair opportunities. They suffered for it. Walker then
hesitated at no calumny, at no outrageous lie, to get even with them,
and they found that if they wanted not only to live at peace, but to
exist at all, they had to accept the situation on his own terms. More
than once the store of a trader obnoxious to him had been burned down,
and there was only the appositeness of the event to show that the
administrator had instigated it. Once a Swedish half-caste, ruined by
the burning, had gone to him and roundly accused him of arson. Walker
laughed in his face.

"You dirty dog. Your mother was a native and you try to cheat the
natives. If your rotten old store is burned down it's a judgment of
Providence; that's what it is, a judgment of Providence. Get out."

And as the man was hustled out by two native policemen the administrator
laughed fatly.

"A judgment of Providence."

And now Mackintosh watched him enter upon the day's work. He began with
the sick, for Walker added doctoring to his other activities, and he had
a small room behind the office full of drugs. An elderly man came
forward, a man with a crop of curly grey hair, in a blue _lava-lava_,
elaborately tatooed, with the skin of his body wrinkled like a
wine-skin.

"What have you come for?" Walker asked him abruptly.

In a whining voice the man said that he could not eat without vomiting
and that he had pains here and pains there.

"Go to the missionaries," said Walker. "You know that I only cure
children."

"I have been to the missionaries and they do me no good."

"Then go home and prepare yourself to die. Have you lived so long and
still want to go on living? You're a fool."

The man broke into querulous expostulation, but Walker, pointing to a
woman with a sick child in her arms, told her to bring it to his desk.
He asked her questions and looked at the child.

"I will give you medicine," he said. He turned to the half-caste clerk.
"Go into the dispensary and bring me some calomel pills."

He made the child swallow one there and then and gave another to the
mother.

"Take the child away and keep it warm. To-morrow it will be dead or
better."

He leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe.

"Wonderful stuff, calomel. I've saved more lives with it than all the
hospital doctors at Apia put together."

Walker was very proud of his skill, and with the dogmatism of ignorance
had no patience with the members of the medical profession.

"The sort of case I like," he said, "is the one that all the doctors
have given up as hopeless. When the doctors have said they can't cure
you, I say to them, 'come to me.' Did I ever tell you about the fellow
who had a cancer?"

"Frequently," said Mackintosh.

"I got him right in three months."

"You've never told me about the people you haven't cured."

He finished this part of the work and went on to the rest. It was a
queer medley. There was a woman who could not get on with her husband
and a man who complained that his wife had run away from him.

"Lucky dog," said Walker. "Most men wish their wives would too."

There was a long complicated quarrel about the ownership of a few yards
of land. There was a dispute about the sharing out of a catch of fish.
There was a complaint against a white trader because he had given short
measure. Walker listened attentively to every case, made up his mind
quickly, and gave his decision. Then he would listen to nothing more; if
the complainant went on he was hustled out of the office by a
policeman. Mackintosh listened to it all with sullen irritation. On the
whole, perhaps, it might be admitted that rough justice was done, but it
exasperated the assistant that his chief trusted his instinct rather
than the evidence. He would not listen to reason. He browbeat the
witnesses and when they did not see what he wished them to called them
thieves and liars.

He left to the last a group of men who were sitting in the corner of the
room. He had deliberately ignored them. The party consisted of an old
chief, a tall, dignified man with short, white hair, in a new
_lava-lava_, bearing a huge fly wisp as a badge of office, his son, and
half a dozen of the important men of the village. Walker had had a feud
with them and had beaten them. As was characteristic of him he meant now
to rub in his victory, and because he had them down to profit by their
helplessness. The facts were peculiar. Walker had a passion for building
roads. When he had come to Talua there were but a few tracks here and
there, but in course of time he had cut roads through the country,
joining the villages together, and it was to this that a great part of
the island's prosperity was due. Whereas in the old days it had been
impossible to get the produce of the land, copra chiefly, down to the
coast where it could be put on schooners or motor launches and so taken
to Apia, now transport was easy and simple. His ambition was to make a
road right round the island and a great part of it was already built.

"In two years I shall have done it, and then I can die or they can fire
me, I don't care."

His roads were the joy of his heart and he made excursions constantly to
see that they were kept in order. They were simple enough, wide tracks,
grass covered, cut through the scrub or through the plantations; but
trees had to be rooted out, rocks dug up or blasted, and here and there
levelling had been necessary. He was proud that he had surmounted by his
own skill such difficulties as they presented. He rejoiced in his
disposition of them so that they were not only convenient, but showed
off the beauties of the island which his soul loved. When he spoke of
his roads he was almost a poet. They meandered through those lovely
scenes, and Walker had taken care that here and there they should run in
a straight line, giving you a green vista through the tall trees, and
here and there should turn and curve so that the heart was rested by the
diversity. It was amazing that this coarse and sensual man should
exercise so subtle an ingenuity to get the effects which his fancy
suggested to him. He had used in making his roads all the fantastic
skill of a Japanese gardener. He received a grant from headquarters for
the work but took a curious pride in using but a small part of it, and
the year before had spent only a hundred pounds of the thousand assigned
to him.

"What do they want money for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all
kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, that is
to say."

For no particular reason, except perhaps pride in the economy of his
administration and the desire to contrast his efficiency with the
wasteful methods of the authorities at Apia, he got the natives to do
the work he wanted for wages that were almost nominal. It was owing to
this that he had lately had difficulty with the village whose chief men
now were come to see him. The chief's son had been in Upolu for a year
and on coming back had told his people of the large sums that were paid
at Apia for the public works. In long, idle talks he had inflamed their
hearts with the desire for gain. He held out to them visions of vast
wealth and they thought of the whisky they could buy--it was dear, since
there was a law that it must not be sold to natives, and so it cost them
double what the white man had to pay for it--they thought of the great
sandal-wood boxes in which they kept their treasures, and the scented
soap and potted salmon, the luxuries for which the Kanaka will sell his
soul; so that when the administrator sent for them and told them he
wanted a road made from their village to a certain point along the coast
and offered them twenty pounds, they asked him a hundred. The chief's
son was called Manuma. He was a tall, handsome fellow, copper-coloured,
with his fuzzy hair dyed red with lime, a wreath of red berries round
his neck, and behind his ear a flower like a scarlet flame against his
brown face. The upper part of his body was naked, but to show that he
was no longer a savage, since he had lived in Apia, he wore a pair of
dungarees instead of a _lava-lava_. He told them that if they held
together the administrator would be obliged to accept their terms. His
heart was set on building the road and when he found they would not work
for less he would give them what they asked. But they must not move;
whatever he said they must not abate their claim; they had asked a
hundred and that they must keep to. When they mentioned the figure,
Walker burst into a shout of his long, deep-voiced laughter. He told
them not to make fools of themselves, but to set about the work at once.
Because he was in a good humour that day he promised to give them a
feast when the road was finished. But when he found that no attempt was
made to start work, he went to the village and asked the men what silly
game they were playing. Manuma had coached them well. They were quite
calm, they did not attempt to argue--and argument is a passion with the
Kanaka--they merely shrugged their shoulders: they would do it for a
hundred pounds, and if he would not give them that they would do no
work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into
a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his
red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives
with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was
terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it
had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and
their dread of his ridicule, they would have yielded. It was Manuma who
answered Walker.

"Pay us a hundred pounds and we will work."

Walker, shaking his fist at him, called him every name he could think
of. He riddled him with scorn. Manuma sat still and smiled. There may
have been more bravado than confidence in his smile, but he had to make
a good show before the others. He repeated his words.

"Pay us a hundred pounds and we will work."

They thought that Walker would spring on him. It would not have been the
first time that he had thrashed a native with his own hands; they knew
his strength, and though Walker was three times the age of the young man
and six inches shorter they did not doubt that he was more than a match
for Manuma. No one had ever thought of resisting the savage onslaught of
the administrator. But Walker said nothing. He chuckled.

"I am not going to waste my time with a pack of fools," he said. "Talk
it over again. You know what I have offered. If you do not start in a
week, take care."

He turned round and walked out of the chief's hut. He untied his old
mare and it was typical of the relations between him and the natives
that one of the elder men hung on to the off stirrup while Walker from a
convenient boulder hoisted himself heavily into the saddle.

That same night when Walker according to his habit was strolling along
the road that ran past his house, he heard something whizz past him and
with a thud strike a tree. Something had been thrown at him. He ducked
instinctively. With a shout, "Who's that"? he ran towards the place from
which the missile had come and he heard the sound of a man escaping
through the bush. He knew it was hopeless to pursue in the darkness, and
besides he was soon out of breath, so he stopped and made his way back
to the road. He looked about for what had been thrown, but could find
nothing. It was quite dark. He went quickly back to the house and called
Mackintosh and the Chinese boy.

"One of those devils has thrown something at me. Come along and let's
find out what it was."

He told the boy to bring a lantern and the three of them made their way
back to the place. They hunted about the ground, but could not find what
they sought. Suddenly the boy gave a guttural cry. They turned to look.
He held up the lantern, and there, sinister in the light that cut the
surrounding darkness, was a long knife sticking into the trunk of a
coconut tree. It had been thrown with such force that it required quite
an effort to pull it out.

"By George, if he hadn't missed me I'd have been in a nice state."

Walker handled the knife. It was one of those knives, made in imitation
of the sailor knives brought to the islands a hundred years before by
the first white men, used to divide the coconuts in two so that the
copra might be dried. It was a murderous weapon, and the blade, twelve
inches long, was very sharp. Walker chuckled softly.

"The devil, the impudent devil."

He had no doubt it was Manuma who had flung the knife. He had escaped
death by three inches. He was not angry. On the contrary, he was in high
spirits; the adventure exhilarated him, and when they got back to the
house, calling for drinks, he rubbed his hands gleefully.

"I'll make them pay for this!"

His little eyes twinkled. He blew himself out like a turkey-cock, and
for the second time within half an hour insisted on telling Mackintosh
every detail of the affair. Then he asked him to play piquet, and while
they played he boasted of his intentions. Mackintosh listened with
tightened lips.

"But why should you grind them down like this?" he asked. "Twenty pounds
is precious little for the work you want them to do."

"They ought to be precious thankful I give them anything."

"Hang it all, it's not your own money. The government allots you a
reasonable sum. They won't complain if you spend it."

"They're a bunch of fools at Apia."

Mackintosh saw that Walker's motive was merely vanity. He shrugged his
shoulders.

"It won't do you much good to score off the fellows at Apia at the cost
of your life."

"Bless you, they wouldn't hurt me, these people. They couldn't do
without me. They worship me. Manuma is a fool. He only threw that knife
to frighten me."

The next day Walker rode over again to the village. It was called
Matautu. He did not get off his horse. When he reached the chief's
house he saw that the men were sitting round the floor in a circle,
talking, and he guessed they were discussing again the question of the
road. The Samoan huts are formed in this way: Trunks of slender trees
are placed in a circle at intervals of perhaps five or six feet; a tall
tree is set in the middle and from this downwards slopes the thatched
roof. Venetian blinds of coconut leaves can be pulled down at night or
when it is raining. Ordinarily the hut is open all round so that the
breeze can blow through freely. Walker rode to the edge of the hut and
called out to the chief.

"Oh, there, Tangatu, your son left his knife in a tree last night. I
have brought it back to you."

He flung it down on the ground in the midst of the circle, and with a
low burst of laughter ambled off.

On Monday he went out to see if they had started work. There was no sign
of it. He rode through the village. The inhabitants were about their
ordinary avocations. Some were weaving mats of the pandanus leaf, one
old man was busy with a _kava_ bowl, the children were playing, the
women went about their household chores. Walker, a smile on his lips,
came to the chief's house.

"_Talofa-li_," said the chief.

"_Talofa_," answered Walker.

Manuma was making a net. He sat with a cigarette between his lips and
looked up at Walker with a smile of triumph.

"You have decided that you will not make the road?"

The chief answered.

"Not unless you pay us one hundred pounds."

"You will regret it." He turned to Manuma. "And you, my lad, I shouldn't
wonder if your back was very sore before you're much older."

He rode away chuckling. He left the natives vaguely uneasy. They feared
the fat sinful old man, and neither the missionaries' abuse of him nor
the scorn which Manuma had learnt in Apia made them forget that he had a
devilish cunning and that no man had ever braved him without in the long
run suffering for it. They found out within twenty-four hours what
scheme he had devised. It was characteristic. For next morning a great
band of men, women, and children came into the village and the chief men
said that they had made a bargain with Walker to build the road. He had
offered them twenty pounds and they had accepted. Now the cunning lay in
this, that the Polynesians have rules of hospitality which have all the
force of laws; an etiquette of absolute rigidity made it necessary for
the people of the village not only to give lodging to the strangers, but
to provide them with food and drink as long as they wished to stay. The
inhabitants of Matautu were outwitted. Every morning the workers went
out in a joyous band, cut down trees, blasted rocks, levelled here and
there and then in the evening tramped back again, and ate and drank, ate
heartily, danced, sang hymns, and enjoyed life. For them it was a
picnic. But soon their hosts began to wear long faces; the strangers
had enormous appetites, and the plantains and the bread-fruit vanished
before their rapacity; the alligator-pear trees, whose fruit sent to
Apia might sell for good money, were stripped bare. Ruin stared them in
the face. And then they found that the strangers were working very
slowly. Had they received a hint from Walker that they might take their
time? At this rate by the time the road was finished there would not be
a scrap of food in the village. And worse than this, they were a
laughing-stock; when one or other of them went to some distant hamlet on
an errand he found that the story had got there before him, and he was
met with derisive laughter. There is nothing the Kanaka can endure less
than ridicule. It was not long before much angry talk passed among the
sufferers. Manuma was no longer a hero; he had to put up with a good
deal of plain speaking, and one day what Walker had suggested came to
pass: a heated argument turned into a quarrel and half a dozen of the
young men set upon the chief's son and gave him such a beating that for
a week he lay bruised and sore on the pandanus mats. He turned from side
to side and could find no ease. Every day or two the administrator rode
over on his old mare and watched the progress of the road. He was not a
man to resist the temptation of taunting the fallen foe, and he missed
no opportunity to rub into the shamed inhabitants of Matautu the
bitterness of their humiliation. He broke their spirit. And one morning,
putting their pride in their pockets, a figure of speech, since pockets
they had not, they all set out with the strangers and started working on
the road. It was urgent to get it done quickly if they wanted to save
any food at all, and the whole village joined in. But they worked
silently, with rage and mortification in their hearts, and even the
children toiled in silence. The women wept as they carried away bundles
of brushwood. When Walker saw them he laughed so much that he almost
rolled out of his saddle. The news spread quickly and tickled the people
of the island to death. This was the greatest joke of all, the crowning
triumph of that cunning old white man whom no Kanaka had ever been able
to circumvent; and they came from distant villages, with their wives and
children, to look at the foolish folk who had refused twenty pounds to
make the road and now were forced to work for nothing. But the harder
they worked the more easily went the guests. Why should they hurry, when
they were getting good food for nothing and the longer they took about
the job the better the joke became? At last the wretched villagers could
stand it no longer, and they were come this morning to beg the
administrator to send the strangers back to their own homes. If he would
do this they promised to finish the road themselves for nothing. For him
it was a victory complete and unqualified. They were humbled. A look of
arrogant complacence spread over his large, naked face, and he seemed to
swell in his chair like a great bullfrog. There was something sinister
in his appearance, so that Mackintosh shivered with disgust. Then in
his booming tones he began to speak.

"Is it for my good that I make the road? What benefit do you think I get
out of it? It is for you, so that you can walk in comfort and carry your
copra in comfort. I offered to pay you for your work, though it was for
your own sake the work was done. I offered to pay you generously. Now
_you_ must pay. I will send the people of Manua back to their homes if
you will finish the road and pay the twenty pounds that I have to pay
them."

There was an outcry. They sought to reason with him. They told him they
had not the money. But to everything they said he replied with brutal
gibes. Then the clock struck.

"Dinner time," he said. "Turn them all out."

He raised himself heavily from his chair and walked out of the room.
When Mackintosh followed him he found him already seated at table, a
napkin tied round his neck, holding his knife and fork in readiness for
the meal the Chinese cook was about to bring. He was in high spirits.

"I did 'em down fine," he said, as Mackintosh sat down. "I shan't have
much trouble with the roads after this."

"I suppose you were joking," said Mackintosh icily.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're not really going to make them pay twenty pounds?"

"You bet your life I am."

"I'm not sure you've got any right to."

"Ain't you? I guess I've got the right to do any damned thing I like on
this island."

"I think you've bullied them quite enough."

Walker laughed fatly. He did not care what Mackintosh thought.

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it." Mackintosh grew very white.
He knew by bitter experience that he could do nothing but keep silence,
and the violent effort at self-control made him sick and faint. He could
not eat the food that was before him and with disgust he watched Walker
shovel meat into his vast mouth. He was a dirty feeder, and to sit at
table with him needed a strong stomach. Mackintosh shuddered. A
tremendous desire seized him to humiliate that gross and cruel man; he
would give anything in the world to see him in the dust, suffering as
much as he had made others suffer. He had never loathed the bully with
such loathing as now.

The day wore on. Mackintosh tried to sleep after dinner, but the passion
in his heart prevented him; he tried to read, but the letters swam
before his eyes. The sun beat down pitilessly, and he longed for rain;
but he knew that rain would bring no coolness; it would only make it
hotter and more steamy. He was a native of Aberdeen and his heart
yearned suddenly for the icy winds that whistled through the granite
streets of that city. Here he was a prisoner, imprisoned not only by
that placid sea, but by his hatred for that horrible old man. He pressed
his hands to his aching head. He would like to kill him. But he pulled
himself together. He must do something to distract his mind, and since
he could not read he thought he would set his private papers in order.
It was a job which he had long meant to do and which he had constantly
put off. He unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a handful of
letters. He caught sight of his revolver. An impulse, no sooner realised
than set aside, to put a bullet through his head and so escape from the
intolerable bondage of life flashed through his mind. He noticed that in
the damp air the revolver was slightly rusted, and he got an oil rag and
began to clean it. It was while he was thus occupied that he grew aware
of someone slinking round the door. He looked up and called:

"Who is there?"

There was a moment's pause, then Manuma showed himself.

"What do you want?"

The chief's son stood for a moment, sullen and silent, and when he spoke
it was with a strangled voice.

"We can't pay twenty pounds. We haven't the money."

"What am I to do?" said Mackintosh. "You heard what Mr Walker said."

Manuma began to plead, half in Samoan and half in English. It was a
sing-song whine, with the quavering intonations of a beggar, and it
filled Mackintosh with disgust. It outraged him that the man should let
himself be so crushed. He was a pitiful object.

"I can do nothing," said Mackintosh irritably. "You know that Mr Walker
is master here."

Manuma was silent again. He still stood in the doorway.

"I am sick," he said at last. "Give me some medicine."

"What is the matter with you?"

"I do not know. I am sick. I have pains in my body."

"Don't stand there," said Mackintosh sharply. "Come in and let me look
at you."

Manuma entered the little room and stood before the desk.

"I have pains here and here."

He put his hands to his loins and his face assumed an expression of
pain. Suddenly Mackintosh grew conscious that the boy's eyes were
resting on the revolver which he had laid on the desk when Manuma
appeared in the doorway. There was a silence between the two which to
Mackintosh was endless. He seemed to read the thoughts which were in the
Kanaka's mind. His heart beat violently. And then he felt as though
something possessed him so that he acted under the compulsion of a
foreign will. Himself did not make the movements of his body, but a
power that was strange to him. His throat was suddenly dry, and he put
his hand to it mechanically in order to help his speech. He was impelled
to avoid Manuma's eyes.

"Just wait here," he said, his voice sounded as though someone had
seized him by the windpipe, "and I'll fetch you something from the
dispensary."

He got up. Was it his fancy that he staggered a little? Manuma stood
silently, and though he kept his eyes averted, Mackintosh knew that he
was looking dully out of the door. It was this other person that
possessed him that drove him out of the room, but it was himself that
took a handful of muddled papers and threw them on the revolver in order
to hide it from view. He went to the dispensary. He got a pill and
poured out some blue draught into a small bottle, and then came out into
the compound. He did not want to go back into his own bungalow, so he
called to Manuma.

"Come here."

He gave him the drugs and instructions how to take them. He did not know
what it was that made it impossible for him to look at the Kanaka. While
he was speaking to him he kept his eyes on his shoulder. Manuma took the
medicine and slunk out of the gate.

Mackintosh went into the dining-room and turned over once more the old
newspapers. But he could not read them. The house was very still. Walker
was upstairs in his room asleep, the Chinese cook was busy in the
kitchen, the two policemen were out fishing. The silence that seemed to
brood over the house was unearthly, and there hammered in Mackintosh's
head the question whether the revolver still lay where he had placed it.
He could not bring himself to look. The uncertainty was horrible, but
the certainty would be more horrible still. He sweated. At last he could
stand the silence no longer, and he made up his mind to go down the
road to the trader's, a man named Jervis, who had a store about a mile
away. He was a half-caste, but even that amount of white blood made him
possible to talk to. He wanted to get away from his bungalow, with the
desk littered with untidy papers, and underneath them something, or
nothing. He walked along the road. As he passed the fine hut of a chief
a greeting was called out to him. Then he came to the store. Behind the
counter sat the trader's daughter, a swarthy broad-featured girl in a
pink blouse and a white drill skirt. Jervis hoped he would marry her. He
had money, and he had told Mackintosh that his daughter's husband would
be well-to-do. She flushed a little when she saw Mackintosh.

"Father's just unpacking some cases that have come in this morning. I'll
tell him you're here."

He sat down and the girl went out behind the shop. In a moment her
mother waddled in, a huge old woman, a chiefess, who owned much land in
her own right; and gave him her hand. Her monstrous obesity was an
offence, but she managed to convey an impression of dignity. She was
cordial without obsequiousness; affable, but conscious of her station.

"You're quite a stranger, Mr Mackintosh. Teresa was saying only this
morning: 'Why, we never see Mr Mackintosh now.'"

He shuddered a little as he thought of himself as that old native's
son-in-law. It was notorious that she ruled her husband, notwithstanding
his white blood, with a firm hand. Hers was the authority and hers the
business head. She might be no more than Mrs Jervis to the white people,
but her father had been a chief of the blood royal, and his father and
his father's father had ruled as kings. The trader came in, small beside
his imposing wife, a dark man with a black beard going grey, in ducks,
with handsome eyes and flashing teeth. He was very British, and his
conversation was slangy, but you felt he spoke English as a foreign
tongue; with his family he used the language of his native mother. He
was a servile man, cringing and obsequious.

"Ah, Mr Mackintosh, this is a joyful surprise. Get the whisky, Teresa;
Mr Mackintosh will have a gargle with us."

He gave all the latest news of Apia, watching his guest's eyes the
while, so that he might know the welcome thing to say.

"And how is Walker? We've not seen him just lately. Mrs Jervis is going
to send him a sucking-pig one day this week."

"I saw him riding home this morning," said Teresa.

"Here's how," said Jervis, holding up his whisky.

Mackintosh drank. The two women sat and looked at him, Mrs Jervis in her
black Mother Hubbard, placid and haughty, and Teresa, anxious to smile
whenever she caught his eye, while the trader gossiped insufferably.

"They were saying in Apia it was about time Walker retired. He ain't so
young as he was. Things have changed since he first come to the islands
and he ain't changed with them."

"He'll go too far," said the old chiefess. "The natives aren't
satisfied."

"That was a good joke about the road," laughed the trader. "When I told
them about it in Apia they fair split their sides with laughing. Good
old Walker."

Mackintosh looked at him savagely. What did he mean by talking of him in
that fashion? To a half-caste trader he was Mr Walker. It was on his
tongue to utter a harsh rebuke for the impertinence. He did not know
what held him back.

"When he goes I hope you'll take his place, Mr Mackintosh," said Jervis.
"We all like you on the island. You understand the natives. They're
educated now, they must be treated differently to the old days. It wants
an educated man to be administrator now. Walker was only a trader same
as I am."

Teresa's eyes glistened.

"When the time comes if there's anything anyone can do here, you bet
your bottom dollar we'll do it. I'd get all the chiefs to go over to
Apia and make a petition."

Mackintosh felt horribly sick. It had not struck him that if anything
happened to Walker it might be he who would succeed him. It was true
that no one in his official position knew the island so well. He got up
suddenly and scarcely taking his leave walked back to the compound. And
now he went straight to his room. He took a quick look at his desk. He
rummaged among the papers.

The revolver was not there.

His heart thumped violently against his ribs. He looked for the revolver
everywhere. He hunted in the chairs and in the drawers. He looked
desperately, and all the time he knew he would not find it. Suddenly he
heard Walker's gruff, hearty voice.

"What the devil are you up to, Mac?"

He started. Walker was standing in the doorway and instinctively he
turned round to hide what lay upon his desk.

"Tidying up?" quizzed Walker. "I've told 'em to put the grey in the
trap. I'm going down to Tafoni to bathe. You'd better come along."

"All right," said Mackintosh.

So long as he was with Walker nothing could happen. The place they were
bound for was about three miles away, and there was a fresh-water pool,
separated by a thin barrier of rock from the sea, which the
administrator had blasted out for the natives to bathe in. He had done
this at spots round the island, wherever there was a spring; and the
fresh water, compared with the sticky warmth of the sea, was cool and
invigorating. They drove along the silent grassy road, splashing now and
then through fords, where the sea had forced its way in, past a couple
of native villages, the bell-shaped huts spaced out roomily and the
white chapel in the middle, and at the third village they got out of the
trap, tied up the horse, and walked down to the pool. They were
accompanied by four or five girls and a dozen children. Soon they were
all splashing about, shouting and laughing, while Walker, in a
_lava-lava_, swam to and fro like an unwieldy porpoise. He made lewd
jokes with the girls, and they amused themselves by diving under him and
wriggling away when he tried to catch them. When he was tired he lay
down on a rock, while the girls and children surrounded him; it was a
happy family; and the old man, huge, with his crescent of white hair and
his shining bald crown, looked like some old sea god. Once Mackintosh
caught a queer soft look in his eyes.

"They're dear children," he said. "They look upon me as their father."

And then without a pause he turned to one of the girls and made an
obscene remark which sent them all into fits of laughter. Mackintosh
started to dress. With his thin legs and thin arms he made a grotesque
figure, a sinister Don Quixote, and Walker began to make coarse jokes
about him. They were acknowledged with little smothered laughs.
Mackintosh struggled with his shirt. He knew he looked absurd, but he
hated being laughed at. He stood silent and glowering.

"If you want to get back in time for dinner you ought to come soon."

"You're not a bad fellow, Mac. Only you're a fool. When you're doing one
thing you always want to do another. That's not the way to live."

But all the same he raised himself slowly to his feet and began to put
on his clothes. They sauntered back to the village, drank a bowl of
_kava_ with the chief, and then, after a joyful farewell from all the
lazy villagers, drove home.

After dinner, according to his habit, Walker, lighting his cigar,
prepared to go for a stroll. Mackintosh was suddenly seized with fear.

"Don't you think it's rather unwise to go out at night by yourself just
now?"

Walker stared at him with his round blue eyes.

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Remember the knife the other night. You've got those fellows' backs
up."

"Pooh! They wouldn't dare."

"Someone dared before."

"That was only a bluff. They wouldn't hurt me. They look upon me as a
father. They know that whatever I do is for their own good."

Mackintosh watched him with contempt in his heart. The man's
self-complacency outraged him, and yet something, he knew not what, made
him insist.

"Remember what happened this morning. It wouldn't hurt you to stay at
home just to-night. I'll play piquet with you."

"I'll play piquet with you when I come back. The Kanaka isn't born yet
who can make me alter my plans."

"You'd better let me come with you."

"You stay where you are."

Mackintosh shrugged his shoulders. He had given the man full warning. If
he did not heed it that was his own lookout. Walker put on his hat and
went out. Mackintosh began to read; but then he thought of something;
perhaps it would be as well to have his own whereabouts quite clear. He
crossed over to the kitchen and, inventing some pretext, talked for a
few minutes with the cook. Then he got out the gramophone and put a
record on it, but while it ground out its melancholy tune, some comic
song of a London music-hall, his ear was strained for a sound away there
in the night. At his elbow the record reeled out its loudness, the words
were raucous, but notwithstanding he seemed to be surrounded by an
unearthly silence. He heard the dull roar of the breakers against the
reef. He heard the breeze sigh, far up, in the leaves of the coconut
trees. How long would it be? It was awful.

He heard a hoarse laugh.

"Wonders will never cease. It's not often you play yourself a tune,
Mac."

Walker stood at the window, red-faced, bluff and jovial.

"Well, you see I'm alive and kicking. What were you playing for?"

Walker came in.

"Nerves a bit dicky, eh? Playing a tune to keep your pecker up?"

"I was playing your requiem."

"What the devil's that?"

"'Alf o' bitter an' a pint of stout."

"A rattling good song too. I don't mind how often I hear it. Now I'm
ready to take your money off you at piquet."

They played and Walker bullied his way to victory, bluffing his
opponent, chaffing him, jeering at his mistakes, up to every dodge,
browbeating him, exulting. Presently Mackintosh recovered his coolness,
and standing outside himself, as it were, he was able to take a detached
pleasure in watching the overbearing old man and in his own cold
reserve. Somewhere Manuma sat quietly and awaited his opportunity.

Walker won game after game and pocketed his winnings at the end of the
evening in high good humour.

"You'll have to grow a little bit older before you stand much chance
against me, Mac. The fact is I have a natural gift for cards."

"I don't know that there's much gift about it when I happen to deal you
fourteen aces."

"Good cards come to good players," retorted Walker. "I'd have won if I'd
had your hands."

He went on to tell long stories of the various occasions on which he had
played cards with notorious sharpers and to their consternation had
taken all their money from them. He boasted. He praised himself. And
Mackintosh listened with absorption. He wanted now to feed his hatred;
and everything Walker said, every gesture, made him more detestable. At
last Walker got up.

"Well, I'm going to turn in," he said with a loud yawn. "I've got a long
day to-morrow."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm driving over to the other side of the island. I'll start at five,
but I don't expect I shall get back to dinner till late."

They generally dined at seven.

"We'd better make it half past seven then."

"I guess it would be as well."

Mackintosh watched him knock the ashes out of his pipe. His vitality was
rude and exuberant. It was strange to think that death hung over him. A
faint smile flickered in Mackintosh's cold, gloomy eyes.

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"What in God's name should I want that for? I'm using the mare and
she'll have enough to do to carry me; she don't want to drag you over
thirty miles of road."

"Perhaps you don't quite realise what the feeling is at Matautu. I think
it would be safer if I came with you."

Walker burst into contemptuous laughter.

"You'd be a fine lot of use in a scrap. I'm not a great hand at getting
the wind up."

Now the smile passed from Mackintosh's eyes to his lips. It distorted
them painfully.

"_Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat._"

"What the hell is that?" said Walker.

"Latin," answered Mackintosh as he went out.

And now he chuckled. His mood had changed. He had done all he could and
the matter was in the hands of fate. He slept more soundly than he had
done for weeks. When he awoke next morning he went out. After a good
night he found a pleasant exhilaration in the freshness of the early
air. The sea was a more vivid blue, the sky more brilliant, than on most
days, the trade wind was fresh, and there was a ripple on the lagoon as
the breeze brushed over it like velvet brushed the wrong way. He felt
himself stronger and younger. He entered upon the day's work with zest.
After luncheon he slept again, and as evening drew on he had the bay
saddled and sauntered through the bush. He seemed to see it all with new
eyes. He felt more normal. The extraordinary thing was that he was able
to put Walker out of his mind altogether. So far as he was concerned he
might never have existed.

He returned late, hot after his ride, and bathed again. Then he sat on
the verandah, smoking his pipe, and looked at the day declining over the
lagoon. In the sunset the lagoon, rosy and purple and green, was very
beautiful. He felt at peace with the world and with himself. When the
cook came out to say that dinner was ready and to ask whether he should
wait, Mackintosh smiled at him with friendly eyes. He looked at his
watch.

"It's half-past seven. Better not wait. One can't tell when the boss'll
be back."

The boy nodded, and in a moment Mackintosh saw him carry across the yard
a bowl of steaming soup. He got up lazily, went into the dining-room,
and ate his dinner. Had it happened? The uncertainty was amusing and
Mackintosh chuckled in the silence. The food did not seem so monotonous
as usual, and even though there was Hamburger steak, the cook's
invariable dish when his poor invention failed him, it tasted by some
miracle succulent and spiced. After dinner he strolled over lazily to
his bungalow to get a book. He liked the intense stillness, and now
that the night had fallen the stars were blazing in the sky. He shouted
for a lamp and in a moment the Chink pattered over on his bare feet,
piercing the darkness with a ray of light. He put the lamp on the desk
and noiselessly slipped out of the room. Mackintosh stood rooted to the
floor, for there, half hidden by untidy papers, was his revolver. His
heart throbbed painfully, and he broke into a sweat. It was done then.

He took up the revolver with a shaking hand. Four of the chambers were
empty. He paused a moment and looked suspiciously out into the night,
but there was no one there. He quickly slipped four cartridges into the
empty chambers and locked the revolver in his drawer.

He sat down to wait.

An hour passed, a second hour passed. There was nothing. He sat at his
desk as though he were writing, but he neither wrote nor read. He merely
listened. He strained his ears for a sound travelling from a far
distance. At last he heard hesitating footsteps and knew it was the
Chinese cook.

"Ah-Sung," he called.

The boy came to the door.

"Boss velly late," he said. "Dinner no good."

Mackintosh stared at him, wondering whether he knew what had happened,
and whether, when he knew, he would realise on what terms he and Walker
had been. He went about his work, sleek, silent, and smiling, and who
could tell his thoughts?

"I expect he's had dinner on the way, but you must keep the soup hot at
all events."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the silence was suddenly
broken into by a confusion, cries, and a rapid patter of naked feet. A
number of natives ran into the compound, men and women and children;
they crowded round Mackintosh and they all talked at once. They were
unintelligible. They were excited and frightened and some of them were
crying. Mackintosh pushed his way through them and went to the gateway.
Though he had scarcely understood what they said he knew quite well what
had happened. And as he reached the gate the dog-cart arrived. The old
mare was being led by a tall Kanaka, and in the dog-cart crouched two
men, trying to hold Walker up. A little crowd of natives surrounded it.

The mare was led into the yard and the natives surged in after it.
Mackintosh shouted to them to stand back and the two policemen, sprang
suddenly from God knows where, pushed them violently aside. By now he
had managed to understand that some lads who had been fishing, on their
way back to their village had come across the cart on the home side of
the ford. The mare was nuzzling about the herbage and in the darkness
they could just see the great white bulk of the old man sunk between the
seat and the dashboard. At first they thought he was drunk and they
peered in, grinning, but then they heard him groan, and guessed that
something was amiss. They ran to the village and called for help. It was
when they returned, accompanied by half a hundred people, that they
discovered Walker had been shot.

With a sudden thrill of horror Mackintosh asked himself whether he was
already dead. The first thing at all events was to get him out of the
cart, and that, owing to Walker's corpulence, was a difficult job. It
took four strong men to lift him. They jolted him and he uttered a dull
groan. He was still alive. At last they carried him into the house, up
the stairs, and placed him on his bed. Then Mackintosh was able to see
him, for in the yard, lit only by half a dozen hurricane lamps,
everything had been obscured. Walker's white ducks were stained with
blood, and the men who had carried him wiped their hands, red and
sticky, on their _lava-lavas_. Mackintosh held up the lamp. He had not
expected the old man to be so pale. His eyes were closed. He was
breathing still, his pulse could be just felt, but it was obvious that
he was dying. Mackintosh had not bargained for the shock of horror that
convulsed him. He saw that the native clerk was there, and in a voice
hoarse with fear told him to go into the dispensary and get what was
necessary for a hypodermic injection. One of the policemen had brought
up the whisky, and Mackintosh forced a little into the old man's mouth.
The room was crowded with natives. They sat about the floor, speechless
now and terrified, and every now and then one wailed aloud. It was very
hot, but Mackintosh felt cold, his hands and his feet were like ice, and
he had to make a violent effort not to tremble in all his limbs. He did
not know what to do. He did not know if Walker was bleeding still, and
if he was, how he could stop the bleeding.

The clerk brought the hypodermic needle.

"You give it to him," said Mackintosh. "You're more used to that sort of
thing than I am."

His head ached horribly. It felt as though all sorts of little savage
things were beating inside it, trying to get out. They watched for the
effect of the injection. Presently Walker opened his eyes slowly. He did
not seem to know where he was.

"Keep quiet," said Mackintosh. "You're at home. You're quite safe."

Walker's lips outlined a shadowy smile.

"They've got me," he whispered.

"I'll get Jervis to send his motor-boat to Apia at once. We'll get a
doctor out by to-morrow afternoon."

There was a long pause before the old man answered,

"I shall be dead by then."

A ghastly expression passed over Mackintosh's pale face. He forced
himself to laugh.

"What rot! You keep quiet and you'll be as right as rain."

"Give me a drink," said Walker. "A stiff one."

With shaking hand Mackintosh poured out whisky and water, half and half,
and held the glass while Walker drank greedily. It seemed to restore
him. He gave a long sigh and a little colour came into his great fleshy
face. Mackintosh felt extraordinarily helpless. He stood and stared at
the old man.

"If you'll tell me what to do I'll do it," he said.

"There's nothing to do. Just leave me alone. I'm done for."

He looked dreadfully pitiful as he lay on the great bed, a huge,
bloated, old man; but so wan, so weak, it was heart-rending. As he
rested, his mind seemed to grow clearer.

"You were right, Mac," he said presently. "You warned me."

"I wish to God I'd come with you."

"You're a good chap, Mac, only you don't drink."

There was another long silence, and it was clear that Walker was
sinking. There was an internal hæmorrhage and even Mackintosh in his
ignorance could not fail to see that his chief had but an hour or two to
live. He stood by the side of the bed stock still. For half an hour
perhaps Walker lay with his eyes closed, then he opened them.

"They'll give you my job," he said, slowly. "Last time I was in Apia I
told them you were all right. Finish my road. I want to think that'll be
done. All round the island."

"I don't want your job. You'll get all right."

Walker shook his head wearily.

"I've had my day. Treat them fairly, that's the great thing. They're
children. You must always remember that. You must be firm with them, but
you must be kind. And you must be just. I've never made a bob out of
them. I haven't saved a hundred pounds in twenty years. The road's the
great thing. Get the road finished."

Something very like a sob was wrung from Mackintosh.

"You're a good fellow, Mac. I always liked you."

He closed his eyes, and Mackintosh thought that he would never open them
again. His mouth was so dry that he had to get himself something to
drink. The Chinese cook silently put a chair for him. He sat down by the
side of the bed and waited. He did not know how long a time passed. The
night was endless. Suddenly one of the men sitting there broke into
uncontrollable sobbing, loudly, like a child, and Mackintosh grew aware
that the room was crowded by this time with natives. They sat all over
the floor on their haunches, men and women, staring at the bed.

"What are all these people doing here?" said Mackintosh. "They've got no
right. Turn them out, turn them out, all of them."

His words seemed to rouse Walker, for he opened his eyes once more, and
now they were all misty. He wanted to speak, but he was so weak that
Mackintosh had to strain his ears to catch what he said.

"Let them stay. They're my children. They ought to be here."

Mackintosh turned to the natives.

"Stay where you are. He wants you. But be silent."

A faint smile came over the old man's white face.

"Come nearer," he said.

Mackintosh bent over him. His eyes were closed and the words he said
were like a wind sighing through the fronds of the coconut trees.

"Give me another drink. I've got something to say."

This time Mackintosh gave him his whisky neat. Walker collected his
strength in a final effort of will.

"Don't make a fuss about this. In 'ninety-five when there were troubles
white men were killed, and the fleet came and shelled the villages. A
lot of people were killed who'd had nothing to do with it. They're
damned fools at Apia. If they make a fuss they'll only punish the wrong
people. I don't want anyone punished."

He paused for a while to rest.

"You must say it was an accident. No one's to blame. Promise me that."

"I'll do anything you like," whispered Mackintosh.

"Good chap. One of the best. They're children. I'm their father. A
father don't let his children get into trouble if he can help it."

A ghost of a chuckle came out of his throat. It was astonishingly weird
and ghastly.

"You're a religious chap, Mac. What's that about forgiving them? You
know."

For a while Mackintosh did not answer. His lips trembled.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do?"

"That's right. Forgive them. I've loved them, you know, always loved
them."

He sighed. His lips faintly moved, and now Mackintosh had to put his
ears quite close to them in order to hear.

"Hold my hand," he said.

Mackintosh gave a gasp. His heart seemed wrenched. He took the old man's
hand, so cold and weak, a coarse, rough hand, and held it in his own.
And thus he sat until he nearly started out of his seat, for the silence
was suddenly broken by a long rattle. It was terrible and unearthly.
Walker was dead. Then the natives broke out with loud cries. The tears
ran down their faces, and they beat their breasts.

Mackintosh disengaged his hand from the dead man's, and staggering like
one drunk with sleep he went out of the room. He went to the locked
drawer in his writing-desk and took out the revolver. He walked down to
the sea and walked into the lagoon; he waded out cautiously, so that he
should not trip against a coral rock, till the water came to his
arm-pits. Then he put a bullet through his head.

An hour later half a dozen slim brown sharks were splashing and
struggling at the spot where he fell.




III

_The Fall of Edward Barnard_


Bateman Hunter slept badly. For a fortnight on the boat that brought him
from Tahiti to San Francisco he had been thinking of the story he had to
tell, and for three days on the train he had repeated to himself the
words in which he meant to tell it. But in a few hours now he would be
in Chicago, and doubts assailed him. His conscience, always very
sensitive, was not at ease. He was uncertain that he had done all that
was possible, it was on his honour to do much more than the possible,
and the thought was disturbing that, in a matter which so nearly touched
his own interest, he had allowed his interest to prevail over his
quixotry. Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the
inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion. He was like
the philanthropist who with altruistic motives builds model dwellings
for the poor and finds that he has made a lucrative investment. He
cannot prevent the satisfaction he feels in the ten per cent which
rewards the bread he had cast upon the waters, but he has an awkward
feeling that it detracts somewhat from the savour of his virtue. Bateman
Hunter knew that his heart was pure, but he was not quite sure how
steadfastly, when he told her his story, he would endure the scrutiny
of Isabel Longstaffe's cool grey eyes. They were far-seeing and wise.
She measured the standards of others by her own meticulous uprightness
and there could be no greater censure than the cold silence with which
she expressed her disapproval of a conduct that did not satisfy her
exacting code. There was no appeal from her judgment, for, having made
up her mind, she never changed it. But Bateman would not have had her
different. He loved not only the beauty of her person, slim and
straight, with the proud carriage of her head, but still more the beauty
of her soul. With her truthfulness, her rigid sense of honour, her
fearless outlook, she seemed to him to collect in herself all that was
most admirable in his countrywomen. But he saw in her something more
than the perfect type of the American girl, he felt that her
exquisiteness was peculiar in a way to her environment, and he was
assured that no city in the world could have produced her but Chicago. A
pang seized him when he remembered that he must deal so bitter a blow to
her pride, and anger flamed up in his heart when he thought of Edward
Barnard.

But at last the train steamed in to Chicago and he exulted when he saw
the long streets of grey houses. He could hardly bear his impatience at
the thought of State and Wabash with their crowded pavements, their
hustling traffic, and their noise. He was at home. And he was glad that
he had been born in the most important city in the United States. San
Francisco was provincial, New York was effete; the future of America
lay in the development of its economic possibilities, and Chicago, by
its position and by the energy of its citizens, was destined to become
the real capital of the country.

"I guess I shall live long enough to see it the biggest city in the
world," Bateman said to himself as he stepped down to the platform.

His father had come to meet him, and after a hearty handshake, the pair
of them, tall, slender, and well-made, with the same fine, ascetic
features and thin lips, walked out of the station. Mr Hunter's
automobile was waiting for them and they got in. Mr Hunter caught his
son's proud and happy glance as he looked at the street.

"Glad to be back, son?" he asked.

"I should just think I was," said Bateman.

His eyes devoured the restless scene.

"I guess there's a bit more traffic here than in your South Sea island,"
laughed Mr Hunter. "Did you like it there?"

"Give me Chicago, dad," answered Bateman.

"You haven't brought Edward Barnard back with you."

"No."

"How was he?"

Bateman was silent for a moment, and his handsome, sensitive face
darkened.

"I'd sooner not speak about him, dad," he said at last.

"That's all right, my son. I guess your mother will be a happy woman
to-day."

They passed out of the crowded streets in the Loop and drove along the
lake till they came to the imposing house, an exact copy of a château on
the Loire, which Mr Hunter had built himself some years before. As soon
as Bateman was alone in his room he asked for a number on the telephone.
His heart leaped when he heard the voice that answered him.

"Good-morning, Isabel," he said gaily.

"Good-morning, Bateman."

"How did you recognise my voice?"

"It is not so long since I heard it last. Besides, I was expecting you."

"When may I see you?"

"Unless you have anything better to do perhaps you'll dine with us
to-night."

"You know very well that I couldn't possibly have anything better to
do."

"I suppose that you're full of news?"

He thought he detected in her voice a note of apprehension.

"Yes," he answered.

"Well, you must tell me to-night. Good-bye."

She rang off. It was characteristic of her that she should be able to
wait so many unnecessary hours to know what so immensely concerned her.
To Bateman there was an admirable fortitude in her restraint.

At dinner, at which beside himself and Isabel no one was present but her
father and mother, he watched her guide the conversation into the
channels of an urbane small-talk, and it occurred to him that in just
such a manner would a marquise under the shadow of the guillotine toy
with the affairs of a day that would know no morrow. Her delicate
features, the aristocratic shortness of her upper lip, and her wealth of
fair hair suggested the marquise again, and it must have been obvious,
even if it were not notorious, that in her veins flowed the best blood
in Chicago. The dining-room was a fitting frame to her fragile beauty,
for Isabel had caused the house, a replica of a palace on the Grand
Canal at Venice, to be furnished by an English expert in the style of
Louis XV; and the graceful decoration linked with the name of that
amorous monarch enhanced her loveliness and at the same time acquired
from it a more profound significance. For Isabel's mind was richly
stored, and her conversation, however light, was never flippant. She
spoke now of the _Musicale_ to which she and her mother had been in the
afternoon, of the lectures which an English poet was giving at the
Auditorium, of the political situation, and of the Old Master which her
father had recently bought for fifty thousand dollars in New York. It
comforted Bateman to hear her. He felt that he was once more in the
civilised world, at the centre of culture and distinction; and certain
voices, troubling and yet against his will refusing to still their
clamour, were at last silent in his heart.

"Gee, but it's good to be back in Chicago," he said.

At last dinner was over, and when they went out of the dining-room
Isabel said to her mother:

"I'm going to take Bateman along to my den. We have various things to
talk about."

"Very well, my dear," said Mrs Longstaffe. "You'll find your father and
me in the Madame du Barry room when you're through."

Isabel led the young man upstairs and showed him into the room of which
he had so many charming memories. Though he knew it so well he could not
repress the exclamation of delight which it always wrung from him. She
looked round with a smile.

"I think it's a success," she said. "The main thing is that it's right.
There's not even an ashtray that isn't of the period."

"I suppose that's what makes it so wonderful. Like all you do it's so
superlatively right."

They sat down in front of a log fire and Isabel looked at him with calm
grave eyes.

"Now what have you to say to me?" she asked.

"I hardly know how to begin."

"Is Edward Barnard coming back?"

"No."

There was a long silence before Bateman spoke again, and with each of
them it was filled with many thoughts. It was a difficult story he had
to tell, for there were things in it which were so offensive to her
sensitive ears that he could not bear to tell them, and yet in justice
to her, no less than in justice to himself, he must tell her the whole
truth.

It had all begun long ago when he and Edward Barnard, still at college,
had met Isabel Longstaffe at the tea-party given to introduce her to
society. They had both known her when she was a child and they
long-legged boys, but for two years she had been in Europe to finish her
education and it was with a surprised delight that they renewed
acquaintance with the lovely girl who returned. Both of them fell
desperately in love with her, but Bateman saw quickly that she had eyes
only for Edward, and, devoted to his friend, he resigned himself to the
role of confidant. He passed bitter moments, but he could not deny that
Edward was worthy of his good fortune, and, anxious that nothing should
impair the friendship he so greatly valued, he took care never by a hint
to disclose his own feelings. In six months the young couple were
engaged. But they were very young and Isabel's father decided that they
should not marry at least till Edward graduated. They had to wait a
year. Bateman remembered the winter at the end of which Isabel and
Edward were to be married, a winter of dances and theatre-parties and of
informal gaieties at which he, the constant third, was always present.
He loved her no less because she would shortly be his friend's wife; her
smile, a gay word she flung him, the confidence of her affection, never
ceased to delight him; and he congratulated himself, somewhat
complacently, because he did not envy them their happiness. Then an
accident happened. A great bank failed, there was a panic on the
exchange, and Edward Barnard's father found himself a ruined man. He
came home one night, told his wife that he was penniless, and after
dinner, going into his study, shot himself.

A week later, Edward Barnard, with a tired, white face, went to Isabel
and asked her to release him. Her only answer was to throw her arms
round his neck and burst into tears.

"Don't make it harder for me, sweet," he said.

"Do you think I can let you go now? I love you."

"How can I ask you to marry me? The whole thing's hopeless. Your father
would never let you. I haven't a cent."

"What do I care? I love you."

He told her his plans. He had to earn money at once, and George
Braunschmidt, an old friend of his family, had offered to take him into
his own business. He was a South Sea merchant, and he had agencies in
many of the islands of the Pacific. He had suggested that Edward should
go to Tahiti for a year or two, where under the best of his managers he
could learn the details of that varied trade, and at the end of that
time he promised the young man a position in Chicago. It was a wonderful
opportunity, and when he had finished his explanations Isabel was once
more all smiles.

"You foolish boy, why have you been trying to make me miserable?"

His face lit up at her words and his eyes flashed.

"Isabel, you don't mean to say you'll wait for me?"

"Don't you think you're worth it?" she smiled.

"Ah, don't laugh at me now. I beseech you to be serious. It may be for
two years."

"Have no fear. I love you, Edward. When you come back I will marry
you."

Edward's employer was a man who did not like delay and he had told him
that if he took the post he offered he must sail that day week from San
Francisco. Edward spent his last evening with Isabel. It was after
dinner that Mr Longstaffe, saying he wanted a word with Edward, took him
into the smoking-room. Mr Longstaffe had accepted good-naturedly the
arrangement which his daughter had told him of and Edward could not
imagine what mysterious communication he had now to make. He was not a
little perplexed to see that his host was embarrassed. He faltered. He
talked of trivial things. At last he blurted it out.

"I guess you've heard of Arnold Jackson," he said, looking at Edward
with a frown.

Edward hesitated. His natural truthfulness obliged him to admit a
knowledge he would gladly have been able to deny.

"Yes, I have. But it's a long time ago. I guess I didn't pay very much
attention."

"There are not many people in Chicago who haven't heard of Arnold
Jackson," said Mr Longstaffe bitterly, "and if there are they'll have no
difficulty in finding someone who'll be glad to tell them. Did you know
he was Mrs Longstaffe's brother?"

"Yes, I knew that."

"Of course we've had no communication with him for many years. He left
the country as soon as he was able to, and I guess the country wasn't
sorry to see the last of him. We understand he lives in Tahiti. My
advice to you is to give him a wide berth, but if you do hear anything
about him Mrs Longstaffe and I would be very glad if you'd let us know."

"Sure."

"That was all I wanted to say to you. Now I daresay you'd like to join
the ladies."

There are few families that have not among their members one whom, if
their neighbours permitted, they would willingly forget, and they are
fortunate when the lapse of a generation or two has invested his
vagaries with a romantic glamour. But when he is actually alive, if his
peculiarities are not of the kind that can be condoned by the phrase,
"he is nobody's enemy but his own," a safe one when the culprit has no
worse to answer for than alcoholism or wandering affections, the only
possible course is silence. And it was this which the Longstaffes had
adopted towards Arnold Jackson. They never talked of him. They would not
even pass through the street in which he had lived. Too kind to make his
wife and children suffer for his misdeeds, they had supported them for
years, but on the understanding that they should live in Europe. They
did everything they could to blot out all recollection of Arnold Jackson
and yet were conscious that the story was as fresh in the public mind as
when first the scandal burst upon a gaping world. Arnold Jackson was as
black a sheep as any family could suffer from. A wealthy banker,
prominent in his church, a philanthropist, a man respected by all, not
only for his connections (in his veins ran the blue blood of Chicago),
but also for his upright character, he was arrested one day on a charge
of fraud; and the dishonesty which the trial brought to light was not of
the sort which could be explained by a sudden temptation; it was
deliberate and systematic. Arnold Jackson was a rogue. When he was sent
to the penitentiary for seven years there were few who did not think he
had escaped lightly.

When at the end of this last evening the lovers separated it was with
many protestations of devotion. Isabel, all tears, was consoled a little
by her certainty of Edward's passionate love. It was a strange feeling
that she had. It made her wretched to part from him and yet she was
happy because he adored her.

This was more than two years ago.

He had written to her by every mail since then, twenty-four letters in
all, for the mail went but once a month, and his letters had been all
that a lover's letters should be. They were intimate and charming,
humorous sometimes, especially of late, and tender. At first they
suggested that he was homesick, they were full of his desire to get back
to Chicago and Isabel; and, a little anxiously, she wrote begging him to
persevere. She was afraid that he might throw up his opportunity and
come racing back. She did not want her lover to lack endurance and she
quoted to him the lines:

   _"I could not love thee, dear, so much,_
    _Loved I not honour more."_

But presently he seemed to settle down and it made Isabel very happy to
observe his growing enthusiasm to introduce American methods into that
forgotten corner of the world. But she knew him, and at the end of the
year, which was the shortest time he could possibly stay in Tahiti, she
expected to have to use all her influence to dissuade him from coming
home. It was much better that he should learn the business thoroughly,
and if they had been able to wait a year there seemed no reason why they
should not wait another. She talked it over with Bateman Hunter, always
the most generous of friends (during those first few days after Edward
went she did not know what she would have done without him), and they
decided that Edward's future must stand before everything. It was with
relief that she found as the time passed that he made no suggestion of
returning.

"He's splendid, isn't he?" she exclaimed to Bateman.

"He's white, through and through."

"Reading between the lines of his letter I know he hates it over there,
but he's sticking it out because...."

She blushed a little and Bateman, with the grave smile which was so
attractive in him, finished the sentence for her.

"Because he loves you."

"It makes me feel so humble," she said.

"You're wonderful, Isabel, you're perfectly wonderful."

But the second year passed and every month Isabel continued to receive a
letter from Edward, and presently it began to seem a little strange
that he did not speak of coming back. He wrote as though he were
settled definitely in Tahiti, and what was more, comfortably settled.
She was surprised. Then she read his letters again, all of them, several
times; and now, reading between the lines indeed, she was puzzled to
notice a change which had escaped her. The later letters were as tender
and as delightful as the first, but the tone was different. She was
vaguely suspicious of their humour, she had the instinctive mistrust of
her sex for that unaccountable quality, and she discerned in them now a
flippancy which perplexed her. She was not quite certain that the Edward
who wrote to her now was the same Edward that she had known. One
afternoon, the day after a mail had arrived from Tahiti, when she was
driving with Bateman he said to her:

"Did Edward tell you when he was sailing?"

"No, he didn't mention it. I thought he might have said something to you
about it."

"Not a word."

"You know what Edward is," she laughed in reply, "he has no sense of
time. If it occurs to you next time you write you might ask him when
he's thinking of coming."

Her manner was so unconcerned that only Bateman's acute sensitiveness
could have discerned in her request a very urgent desire. He laughed
lightly.

"Yes. I'll ask him. I can't imagine what he's thinking about."

A few days later, meeting him again, she noticed that something troubled
him. They had been much together since Edward left Chicago; they were
both devoted to him and each in his desire to talk of the absent one
found a willing listener; the consequence was that Isabel knew every
expression of Bateman's face, and his denials now were useless against
her keen instinct. Something told her that his harassed look had to do
with Edward and she did not rest till she had made him confess.

"The fact is," he said at last, "I heard in a round-about way that
Edward was no longer working for Braunschmidt and Co., and yesterday I
took the opportunity to ask Mr Braunschmidt himself."

"Well?"

"Edward left his employment with them nearly a year ago."

"How strange he should have said nothing about it!"

Bateman hesitated, but he had gone so far now that he was obliged to
tell the rest. It made him feel dreadfully embarrassed.

"He was fired."

"In heaven's name what for?"

"It appears they warned him once or twice, and at last they told him to
get out. They say he was lazy and incompetent."

"Edward?"

They were silent for a while, and then he saw that Isabel was crying.
Instinctively he seized her hand.

"Oh, my dear, don't, don't," he said. "I can't bear to see it."

She was so unstrung that she let her hand rest in his. He tried to
console her.

"It's incomprehensible, isn't it? It's so unlike Edward. I can't help
feeling there must be some mistake."

She did not say anything for a while, and when she spoke it was
hesitatingly.

"Has it struck you that there was anything queer in his letters lately?"
she asked, looking away, her eyes all bright with tears.

He did not quite know how to answer.

"I have noticed a change in them," he admitted. "He seems to have lost
that high seriousness which I admired so much in him. One would almost
think that the things that matter--well, don't matter."

Isabel did not reply. She was vaguely uneasy.

"Perhaps in his answer to your letter he'll say when he's coming home.
All we can do is to wait for that."

Another letter came from Edward for each of them, and still he made no
mention of his return; but when he wrote he could not have received
Bateman's enquiry. The next mail would bring them an answer to that. The
next mail came, and Bateman brought Isabel the letter he had just
received; but the first glance of his face was enough to tell her that
he was disconcerted. She read it through carefully and then, with
slightly tightened lips, read it again.

"It's a very strange letter," she said. "I don't quite understand it."

"One might almost think that he was joshing me," said Bateman, flushing.

"It reads like that, but it must be unintentional. That's so unlike
Edward."

"He says nothing about coming back."

"If I weren't so confident of his love I should think.... I hardly know
what I should think."

It was then that Bateman had broached the scheme which during the
afternoon had formed itself in his brain. The firm, founded by his
father, in which he was now a partner, a firm which manufactured all
manner of motor vehicles, was about to establish agencies in Honolulu,
Sidney, and Wellington; and Bateman proposed that himself should go
instead of the manager who had been suggested. He could return by
Tahiti; in fact, travelling from Wellington, it was inevitable to do so;
and he could see Edward.

"There's some mystery and I'm going to clear it up. That's the only way
to do it."

"Oh, Bateman, how can you be so good and kind?" she exclaimed.

"You know there's nothing in the world I want more than your happiness,
Isabel."

She looked at him and she gave him her hands.

"You're wonderful, Bateman. I didn't know there was anyone in the world
like you. How can I ever thank you?"

"I don't want your thanks. I only want to be allowed to help you."

She dropped her eyes and flushed a little. She was so used to him that
she had forgotten how handsome he was. He was as tall as Edward
and as well made, but he was dark and pale of face, while Edward was
ruddy. Of course she knew he loved her. It touched her. She felt very
tenderly towards him.

It was from this journey that Bateman Hunter was now returned.

The business part of it took him somewhat longer than he expected and he
had much time to think of his two friends. He had come to the conclusion
that it could be nothing serious that prevented Edward from coming home,
a pride, perhaps, which made him determined to make good before he
claimed the bride he adored; but it was a pride that must be reasoned
with. Isabel was unhappy. Edward must come back to Chicago with him and
marry her at once. A position could be found for him in the works of the
Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company. Bateman, with a bleeding
heart, exulted at the prospect of giving happiness to the two persons he
loved best in the world at the cost of his own. He would never marry. He
would be godfather to the children of Edward and Isabel, and many years
later when they were both dead he would tell Isabel's daughter how long,
long ago he had loved her mother. Bateman's eyes were veiled with tears
when he pictured this scene to himself.

Meaning to take Edward by surprise he had not cabled to announce his
arrival, and when at last he landed at Tahiti he allowed a youth, who
said he was the son of the house, to lead him to the Hotel de la Fleur.
He chuckled when he thought of his friend's amazement on seeing him,
the most unexpected of visitors, walk into his office.

"By the way," he asked, as they went along, "can you tell me where I
shall find Mr. Edward Barnard?"

"Barnard?" said the youth. "I seem to know the name."

"He's an American. A tall fellow with light brown hair and blue eyes.
He's been here over two years."

"Of course. Now I know who you mean. You mean Mr Jackson's nephew."

"Whose nephew?"

"Mr Arnold Jackson."

"I don't think we're speaking of the same person," answered Bateman,
frigidly.

He was startled. It was queer that Arnold Jackson, known apparently to
all and sundry, should live here under the disgraceful name in which he
had been convicted. But Bateman could not imagine whom it was that he
passed off as his nephew. Mrs Longstaffe was his only sister and he had
never had a brother. The young man by his side talked volubly in an
English that had something in it of the intonation of a foreign tongue,
and Bateman, with a sidelong glance, saw, what he had not noticed
before, that there was in him a good deal of native blood. A touch of
hauteur involuntarily entered into his manner. They reached the hotel.
When he had arranged about his room Bateman asked to be directed to the
premises of Braunschmidt & Co. They were on the front, facing the
lagoon, and, glad to feel the solid earth under his feet after eight
days at sea, he sauntered down the sunny road to the water's edge.
Having found the place he sought, Bateman sent in his card to the
manager and was led through a lofty barn-like room, half store and half
warehouse, to an office in which sat a stout, spectacled, bald-headed
man.

"Can you tell me where I shall find Mr Edward Barnard? I understand he
was in this office for some time."

"That is so. I don't know just where he is."

"But I thought he came here with a particular recommendation from Mr
Braunschmidt. I know Mr Braunschmidt very well."

The fat man looked at Bateman with shrewd, suspicious eyes. He called to
one of the boys in the warehouse.

"Say, Henry, where's Barnard now, d'you know?"

"He's working at Cameron's, I think," came the answer from someone who
did not trouble to move.

The fat man nodded.

"If you turn to your left when you get out of here you'll come to
Cameron's in about three minutes."

Bateman hesitated.

"I think I should tell you that Edward Barnard is my greatest friend. I
was very much surprised when I heard he'd left Braunschmidt & Co."

The fat man's eyes contracted till they seemed like pin-points, and
their scrutiny made Bateman so uncomfortable that he felt himself
blushing.

"I guess Braunschmidt & Co. and Edward Barnard didn't see eye to eye on
certain matters," he replied.

Bateman did not quite like the fellow's manner, so he got up, not
without dignity, and with an apology for troubling him bade him
good-day. He left the place with a singular feeling that the man he had
just interviewed had much to tell him, but no intention of telling it.
He walked in the direction indicated and soon found himself at
Cameron's. It was a trader's store, such as he had passed half a dozen
of on his way, and when he entered the first person he saw, in his shirt
sleeves, measuring out a length of trade cotton, was Edward. It gave him
a start to see him engaged in so humble an occupation. But he had
scarcely appeared when Edward, looking up, caught sight of him, and gave
a joyful cry of surprise.

"Bateman! Who ever thought of seeing you here?"

He stretched his arm across the counter and wrung Bateman's hand. There
was no self-consciousness in his manner and the embarrassment was all on
Bateman's side.

"Just wait till I've wrapped this package."

With perfect assurance he ran his scissors across the stuff, folded it,
made it into a parcel, and handed it to the dark-skinned customer.

"Pay at the desk, please."

Then, smiling, with bright eyes, he turned to Bateman.

"How did you show up here? Gee, I am delighted to see you. Sit down,
old man. Make yourself at home."

"We can't talk here. Come along to my hotel. I suppose you can get
away?"

This he added with some apprehension.

"Of course I can get away. We're not so businesslike as all that in
Tahiti." He called out to a Chinese who was standing behind the opposite
counter. "Ah-Ling, when the boss comes tell him a friend of mine's just
arrived from America and I've gone out to have a drain with him."

"All-light," said the Chinese, with a grin.

Edward slipped on a coat and, putting on his hat, accompanied Bateman
out of the store. Bateman attempted to put the matter facetiously.

"I didn't expect to find you selling three and a half yards of rotten
cotton to a greasy nigger," he laughed.

"Braunschmidt fired me, you know, and I thought that would do as well as
anything else."

Edward's candour seemed to Bateman very surprising, but he thought it
indiscreet to pursue the subject.

"I guess you won't make a fortune where you are," he answered, somewhat
dryly.

"I guess not. But I earn enough to keep body and soul together, and I'm
quite satisfied with that."

"You wouldn't have been two years ago."

"We grow wiser as we grow older," retorted Edward, gaily.

Bateman took a glance at him. Edward was dressed in a suit of shabby
white ducks, none too clean, and a large straw hat of native make. He
was thinner than he had been, deeply burned by the sun, and he was
certainly better looking than ever. But there was something in his
appearance that disconcerted Bateman. He walked with a new jauntiness;
there was a carelessness in his demeanour, a gaiety about nothing in
particular, which Bateman could not precisely blame, but which
exceedingly puzzled him.

"I'm blest if I can see what he's got to be so darned cheerful about,"
he said to himself.

They arrived at the hotel and sat on the terrace. A Chinese boy brought
them cocktails. Edward was most anxious to hear all the news of Chicago
and bombarded his friend with eager questions. His interest was natural
and sincere. But the odd thing was that it seemed equally divided among
a multitude of subjects. He was as eager to know how Bateman's father
was as what Isabel was doing. He talked of her without a shade of
embarrassment, but she might just as well have been his sister as his
promised wife; and before Bateman had done analysing the exact meaning
of Edward's remarks he found that the conversation had drifted to his
own work and the buildings his father had lately erected. He was
determined to bring the conversation back to Isabel and was looking for
the occasion when he saw Edward wave his hand cordially. A man was
advancing towards them on the terrace, but Bateman's back was turned to
him and he could not see him.

"Come and sit down," said Edward gaily.

The new-comer approached. He was a very tall, thin man, in white ducks,
with a fine head of curly white hair. His face was thin too, long, with
a large, hooked nose and a beautiful, expressive mouth.

"This is my old friend Bateman Hunter. I've told you about him," said
Edward, his constant smile breaking on his lips.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr Hunter. I used to know your father."

The stranger held out his hand and took the young man's in a strong,
friendly grasp. It was not till then that Edward mentioned the other's
name.

"Mr Arnold Jackson."

Bateman turned white and he felt his hands grow cold. This was the
forger, the convict, this was Isabel's uncle. He did not know what to
say. He tried to conceal his confusion. Arnold Jackson looked at him
with twinkling eyes.

"I daresay my name is familiar to you."

Bateman did not know whether to say yes or no, and what made it more
awkward was that both Jackson and Edward seemed to be amused. It was bad
enough to have forced on him the acquaintance of the one man on the
island he would rather have avoided, but worse to discern that he was
being made a fool of. Perhaps, however, he had reached this conclusion
too quickly, for Jackson, without a pause, added:

"I understand you're very friendly with the Longstaffes. Mary Longstaffe
is my sister."

Now Bateman asked himself if Arnold Jackson could think him ignorant of
the most terrible scandal that Chicago had ever known. But Jackson put
his hand on Edward's shoulder.

"I can't sit down, Teddie," he said. "I'm busy. But you two boys had
better come up and dine to-night."

"That'll be fine," said Edward.

"It's very kind of you, Mr Jackson," said Bateman, frigidly, "but I'm
here for so short a time; my boat sails to-morrow, you know; I think if
you'll forgive me, I won't come."

"Oh, nonsense. I'll give you a native dinner. My wife's a wonderful
cook. Teddie will show you the way. Come early so as to see the sunset.
I can give you both a shake-down if you like."

"Of course we'll come," said Edward. "There's always the devil of a row
in the hotel on the night a boat arrives and we can have a good yarn up
at the bungalow."

"I can't let you off, Mr Hunter," Jackson continued with the utmost
cordiality. "I want to hear all about Chicago and Mary."

He nodded and walked away before Bateman could say another word.

"We don't take refusals in Tahiti," laughed Edward. "Besides, you'll get
the best dinner on the island."

"What did he mean by saying his wife was a good cook? I happen to know
his wife's in Geneva."

"That's a long way off for a wife, isn't it?" said Edward. "And it's a
long time since he saw her. I guess it's another wife he's talking
about."

For some time Bateman was silent. His face was set in grave lines. But
looking up he caught the amused look in Edward's eyes, and he flushed
darkly.

"Arnold Jackson is a despicable rogue," he said.

"I greatly fear he is," answered Edward, smiling.

"I don't see how any decent man can have anything to do with him."

"Perhaps I'm not a decent man."

"Do you see much of him, Edward?"

"Yes, quite a lot. He's adopted me as his nephew."

Bateman leaned forward and fixed Edward with his searching eyes.

"Do you like him?"

"Very much."

"But don't you know, doesn't everyone here know, that he's a forger and
that he's been a convict? He ought to be hounded out of civilised
society."

Edward watched a ring of smoke that floated from his cigar into the
still, scented air.

"I suppose he is a pretty unmitigated rascal," he said at last. "And I
can't flatter myself that any repentance for his misdeeds offers one an
excuse for condoning them. He was a swindler and a hypocrite. You can't
get away from it. I never met a more agreeable companion. He's taught me
everything I know."

"What has he taught you?" cried Bateman in amazement.

"How to live."

Bateman broke into ironical laughter.

"A fine master. Is it owing to his lessons that you lost the chance of
making a fortune and earn your living now by serving behind a counter in
a ten cent store?"

"He has a wonderful personality," said Edward, smiling good-naturedly.
"Perhaps you'll see what I mean to-night."

"I'm not going to dine with him if that's what you mean. Nothing would
induce me to set foot within that man's house."

"Come to oblige me, Bateman. We've been friends for so many years, you
won't refuse me a favour when I ask it."

Edward's tone had in it a quality new to Bateman. Its gentleness was
singularly persuasive.

"If you put it like that, Edward, I'm bound to come," he smiled.

Bateman reflected, moreover, that it would be as well to learn what he
could about Arnold Jackson. It was plain that he had a great ascendency
over Edward, and if it was to be combated it was necessary to discover
in what exactly it consisted. The more he talked with Edward the more
conscious he became that a change had taken place in him. He had an
instinct that it behooved him to walk warily, and he made up his mind
not to broach the real purport of his visit till he saw his way more
clearly. He began to talk of one thing and another, of his journey and
what he had achieved by it, of politics in Chicago, of this common
friend and that, of their days together at college.

At last Edward said he must get back to his work and proposed that he
should fetch Bateman at five so that they could drive out together to
Arnold Jackson's house.

"By the way, I rather thought you'd be living at this hotel," said
Bateman, as he strolled out of the garden with Edward. "I understand
it's the only decent one here."

"Not I," laughed Edward. "It's a deal too grand for me. I rent a room
just outside the town. It's cheap and clean."

"If I remember right those weren't the points that seemed most important
to you when you lived in Chicago."

"Chicago!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, Edward. It's the greatest city in
the world."

"I know," said Edward.

Bateman glanced at him quickly, but his face was inscrutable.

"When are you coming back to it?"

"I often wonder," smiled Edward.

This answer, and the manner of it, staggered Bateman, but before he
could ask for an explanation Edward waved to a half-caste who was
driving a passing motor.

"Give us a ride down, Charlie," he said.

He nodded to Bateman, and ran after the machine that had pulled up a few
yards in front. Bateman was left to piece together a mass of perplexing
impressions.

Edward called for him in a rickety trap drawn by an old mare, and they
drove along a road that ran by the sea. On each side of it were
plantations, coconut and vanilla; and now and then they saw a great
mango, its fruit yellow and red and purple among the massy green of the
leaves; now and then they had a glimpse of the lagoon, smooth and blue,
with here and there a tiny islet graceful with tall palms. Arnold
Jackson's house stood on a little hill and only a path led to it, so
they unharnessed the mare and tied her to a tree, leaving the trap by
the side of the road. To Bateman it seemed a happy-go-lucky way of doing
things. But when they went up to the house they were met by a tall,
handsome native woman, no longer young, with whom Edward cordially shook
hands. He introduced Bateman to her.

"This is my friend Mr Hunter. We're going to dine with you, Lavina."

"All right," she said, with a quick smile. "Arnold ain't back yet."

"We'll go down and bathe. Let us have a couple of _pareos_."

The woman nodded and went into the house.

"Who is that?" asked Bateman.

"Oh, that's Lavina. She's Arnold's wife."

Bateman tightened his lips, but said nothing. In a moment the woman
returned with a bundle, which she gave to Edward; and the two men,
scrambling down a steep path, made their way to a grove of coconut trees
on the beach. They undressed and Edward showed his friend how to make
the strip of red trade cotton which is called a _pareo_ into a very neat
pair of bathing-drawers. Soon they were splashing in the warm, shallow
water. Edward was in great spirits. He laughed and shouted and sang. He
might have been fifteen. Bateman had never seen him so gay, and
afterwards when they lay on the beach, smoking cigarettes, in the limpid
air, there was such an irresistible light-heartedness in him that
Bateman was taken aback.

"You seem to find life mighty pleasant," said he.

"I do."

They heard a soft movement and looking round saw that Arnold Jackson was
coming towards them.

"I thought I'd come down and fetch you two boys back," he said. "Did you
enjoy your bath, Mr Hunter?"

"Very much," said Bateman.

Arnold Jackson, no longer in spruce ducks, wore nothing but a _pareo_
round his loins and walked barefoot. His body was deeply browned by the
sun. With his long, curling white hair and his ascetic face he made a
fantastic figure in the native dress, but he bore himself without a
trace of self-consciousness.

"If you're ready we'll go right up," said Jackson.

"I'll just put on my clothes," said Bateman.

"Why, Teddie, didn't you bring a _pareo_ for your friend?"

"I guess he'd rather wear clothes," smiled Edward.

"I certainly would," answered Bateman, grimly, as he saw Edward gird
himself in the loincloth and stand ready to start before he himself had
got his shirt on.

"Won't you find it rough walking without your shoes?" he asked Edward.
"It struck me the path was a trifle rocky."

"Oh, I'm used to it."

"It's a comfort to get into a _pareo_ when one gets back from town,"
said Jackson. "If you were going to stay here I should strongly
recommend you to adopt it. It's one of the most sensible costumes I have
ever come across. It's cool, convenient, and inexpensive."

They walked up to the house, and Jackson took them into a large room
with white-washed walls and an open ceiling in which a table was laid
for dinner. Bateman noticed that it was set for five.

"Eva, come and show yourself to Teddie's friend, and then shake us a
cocktail," called Jackson.

Then he led Bateman to a long low window.

"Look at that," he said, with a dramatic gesture. "Look well."

Below them coconut trees tumbled down steeply to the lagoon, and the
lagoon in the evening light had the colour, tender and varied, of a
dove's breast. On a creek, at a little distance, were the clustered huts
of a native village, and towards the reef was a canoe, sharply
silhouetted, in which were a couple of natives fishing. Then, beyond,
you saw the vast calmness of the Pacific and twenty miles away, airy and
unsubstantial like the fabric of a poet's fancy, the unimaginable beauty
of the island which is called Murea. It was all so lovely that Bateman
stood abashed.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said at last.

Arnold Jackson stood staring in front of him, and in his eyes was a
dreamy softness. His thin, thoughtful face was very grave. Bateman,
glancing at it, was once more conscious of its intense spirituality.

"Beauty," murmured Arnold Jackson. "You seldom see beauty face to face.
Look at it well, Mr Hunter, for what you see now you will never see
again, since the moment is transitory, but it will be an imperishable
memory in your heart. You touch eternity."

His voice was deep and resonant. He seemed to breathe forth the purest
idealism, and Bateman had to urge himself to remember that the man who
spoke was a criminal and a cruel cheat. But Edward, as though he heard a
sound, turned round quickly.

"Here is my daughter, Mr Hunter."

Bateman shook hands with her. She had dark, splendid eyes and a red
mouth tremulous with laughter; but her skin was brown, and her curling
hair, rippling down her-shoulders, was coal black. She wore but one
garment, a Mother Hubbard of pink cotton, her feet were bare, and she
was crowned with a wreath of white scented flowers. She was a lovely
creature. She was like a goddess of the Polynesian spring.

She was a little shy, but not more shy than Bateman, to whom the whole
situation was highly embarrassing, and it did not put him at his ease to
see this sylph-like thing take a shaker and with a practised hand mix
three cocktails.

"Let us have a kick in them, child," said Jackson.

She poured them out and smiling delightfully handed one to each of the
men. Bateman flattered himself on his skill in the subtle art of shaking
cocktails and he was not a little astonished, on tasting this one, to
find that it was excellent. Jackson laughed proudly when he saw his
guest's involuntary look of appreciation.

"Not bad, is it? I taught the child myself, and in the old days in
Chicago I considered that there wasn't a bar-tender in the city that
could hold a candle to me. When I had nothing better to do in the
penitentiary I used to amuse myself by thinking out new cocktails, but
when you come down to brass-tacks there's nothing to beat a dry
Martini."

Bateman felt as though someone had given him a violent blow on the
funny-bone and he was conscious that he turned red and then white. But
before he could think of anything to say a native boy brought in a great
bowl of soup and the whole party sat down to dinner. Arnold Jackson's
remark seemed to have aroused in him a train of recollections, for he
began to talk of his prison days. He talked quite naturally, without
malice, as though he were relating his experiences at a foreign
university. He addressed himself to Bateman and Bateman was confused and
then confounded. He saw Edward's eyes fixed on him and there was in them
a flicker of amusement. He blushed scarlet, for it struck him that
Jackson was making a fool of him, and then because he felt absurd--and
knew there was no reason why he should--he grew angry. Arnold Jackson
was impudent--there was no other word for it--and his callousness,
whether assumed or not, was outrageous. The dinner proceeded. Bateman
was asked to eat sundry messes, raw fish and he knew not what, which
only his civility induced him to swallow, but which he was amazed to
find very good eating. Then an incident happened which to Bateman was
the most mortifying experience of the evening. There was a little
circlet of flowers in front of him, and for the sake of conversation he
hazarded a remark about it.

"It's a wreath that Eva made for you," said Jackson, "but I guess she
was too shy to give it you."

Bateman took it up in his hand and made a polite little speech of thanks
to the girl.

"You must put it on," she said, with a smile and a blush.

"I? I don't think I'll do that."

"It's the charming custom of the country," said Arnold Jackson.

There was one in front of him and he placed it on his hair. Edward did
the same.

"I guess I'm not dressed for the part," said Bateman, uneasily.

"Would you like a _pareo_?" said Eva quickly. "I'll get you one in a
minute."

"No, thank you. I'm quite comfortable as I am."

"Show him how to put it on, Eva," said Edward.

At that moment Bateman hated his greatest friend. Eva got up from the
table and with much laughter placed the wreath on his black hair.

"It suits you very well," said Mrs Jackson. "Don't it suit him, Arnold?"

"Of course it does."

Bateman sweated at every pore.

"Isn't it a pity it's dark?" said Eva. "We could photograph you all
three together."

Bateman thanked his stars it was. He felt that he must look prodigiously
foolish in his blue serge suit and high collar--very neat and
gentlemanly--with that ridiculous wreath of flowers on his head. He was
seething with indignation, and he had never in his life exercised more
self-control than now when he presented an affable exterior. He was
furious with that old man, sitting at the head of the table, half-naked,
with his saintly face and the flowers on his handsome white locks. The
whole position was monstrous.

Then dinner came to an end, and Eva and her mother remained to clear
away while the three men sat on the verandah. It was very warm and the
air was scented with the white flowers of the night. The full moon,
sailing across an unclouded sky, made a pathway on the broad sea that
led to the boundless realms of Forever. Arnold Jackson began to talk.
His voice was rich and musical. He talked now of the natives and of the
old legends of the country. He told strange stories of the past, stories
of hazardous expeditions into the unknown, of love and death, of hatred
and revenge. He told of the adventurers who had discovered those distant
islands, of the sailors who, settling in them, had married the daughters
of great chieftains, and of the beach-combers who had led their varied
lives on those silvery shores. Bateman, mortified and exasperated, at
first listened sullenly, but presently some magic in the words possessed
him and he sat entranced. The mirage of romance obscured the light of
common day. Had he forgotten that Arnold Jackson had a tongue of silver,
a tongue by which he had charmed vast sums out of the credulous public,
a tongue which very nearly enabled him to escape the penalty of his
crimes? No one had a sweeter eloquence, and no one had a more acute
sense of climax. Suddenly he rose.

"Well, you two boys haven't seen one another for a long time. I shall
leave you to have a yarn. Teddie will show you your quarters when you
want to go to bed."

"Oh, but I wasn't thinking of spending the night, Mr Jackson," said
Bateman.

"You'll find it more comfortable. We'll see that you're called in good
time."

Then with a courteous shake of the hand, stately as though he were a
bishop in canonicals, Arnold Jackson took leave of his guest.

"Of course I'll drive you back to Papeete if you like," said Edward,
"but I advise you to stay. It's bully driving in the early morning."

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Bateman wondered how he should
begin on the conversation which all the events of the day made him
think more urgent.

"When are you coming back to Chicago?" he asked, suddenly.

For a moment Edward did not answer. Then he turned rather lazily to look
at his friend and smiled.

"I don't know. Perhaps never."

"What in heaven's name do you mean?" cried Bateman.

"I'm very happy here. Wouldn't it be folly to make a change?"

"Man alive, you can't live here all your life. This is no life for a
man. It's a living death. Oh, Edward, come away at once, before it's too
late. I've felt that something was wrong. You're infatuated with the
place, you've succumbed to evil influences, but it only requires a
wrench, and when you're free from these surroundings you'll thank all
the gods there be. You'll be like a dope-fiend when he's broken from his
drug. You'll see then that for two years you've been breathing poisoned
air. You can't imagine what a relief it will be when you fill your lungs
once more with the fresh, pure air of your native country."

He spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another in his excitement,
and there was in his voice sincere and affectionate emotion. Edward was
touched.

"It is good of you to care so much, old friend."

"Come with me to-morrow, Edward. It was a mistake that you ever came to
this place. This is no life for you."

"You talk of this sort of life and that. How do you think a man gets the
best out of life?"

"Why, I should have thought there could be no two answers to that. By
doing his duty, by hard work, by meeting all the obligations of his
state and station."

"And what is his reward?"

"His reward is the consciousness of having achieved what he set out to
do."

"It all sounds a little portentous to me," said Edward, and in the
lightness of the night Bateman could see that he was smiling. "I'm
afraid you'll think I've degenerated sadly. There are several things I
think now which I daresay would have seemed outrageous to me three years
ago."

"Have you learnt them from Arnold Jackson?" asked Bateman, scornfully.

"You don't like him? Perhaps you couldn't be expected to. I didn't when
I first came. I had just the same prejudice as you. He's a very
extraordinary man. You saw for yourself that he makes no secret of the
fact that he was in a penitentiary. I do not know that he regrets it or
the crimes that led him there. The only complaint he ever made in my
hearing was that when he came out his health was impaired. I think he
does not know what remorse is. He is completely unmoral. He accepts
everything and he accepts himself as well. He's generous and kind."

"He always was," interrupted Bateman, "on other people's money."

"I've found him a very good friend. Is it unnatural that I should take
a man as I find him?"

"The result is that you lose the distinction between right and wrong."

"No, they remain just as clearly divided in my mind as before, but what
has become a little confused in me is the distinction between the bad
man and the good one. Is Arnold Jackson a bad man who does good things
or a good man who does bad things? It's a difficult question to answer.
Perhaps we make too much of the difference between one man and another.
Perhaps even the best of us are sinners and the worst of us are saints.
Who knows?"

"You will never persuade me that white is black and that black is
white," said Bateman.

"I'm sure I shan't, Bateman."

Bateman could not understand why the flicker of a smile crossed Edward's
lips when he thus agreed with him. Edward was silent for a minute.

"When I saw you this morning, Bateman," he said then, "I seemed to see
myself as I was two years ago. The same collar, and the same shoes, the
same blue suit, the same energy. The same determination. By God, I was
energetic. The sleepy methods of this place made my blood tingle. I went
about and everywhere I saw possibilities for development and enterprise.
There were fortunes to be made here. It seemed to me absurd that the
copra should be taken away from here in sacks and the oil extracted in
America. It would be far more economical to do all that on the spot,
with cheap labour, and save freight, and I saw already the vast
factories springing up on the island. Then the way they extracted it
from the coconut seemed to me hopelessly inadequate, and I invented a
machine which divided the nut and scooped out the meat at the rate of
two hundred and forty an hour. The harbour was not large enough. I made
plans to enlarge it, then to form a syndicate to buy land, put up two or
three large hotels, and bungalows for occasional residents; I had a
scheme for improving the steamer service in order to attract visitors
from California. In twenty years, instead of this half French, lazy
little town of Papeete I saw a great American city with ten-story
buildings and street-cars, a theatre and an opera house, a stock
exchange and a mayor."

"But go ahead, Edward," cried Bateman, springing up from the chair in
excitement. "You've got the ideas and the capacity. Why, you'll become
the richest man between Australia and the States."

Edward chuckled softly.

"But I don't want to," he said.

"Do you mean to say you don't want money, big money, money running into
millions? Do you know what you can do with it? Do you know the power it
brings? And if you don't care about it for yourself think what you can
do, opening new channels for human enterprise, giving occupation to
thousands. My brain reels at the visions your words have conjured up."

"Sit down, then, my dear Bateman," laughed Edward. "My machine for
cutting the coconuts will always remain unused, and so far as I'm
concerned street-cars shall never run in the idle streets of Papeete."

Bateman sank heavily into his chair.

"I don't understand you," he said.

"It came upon me little by little. I came to like the life here, with
its ease and its leisure, and the people, with their good-nature and
their happy smiling faces. I began to think. I'd never had time to do
that before. I began to read."

"You always read."

"I read for examinations. I read in order to be able to hold my own in
conversation. I read for instruction. Here I learned to read for
pleasure. I learned to talk. Do you know that conversation is one of the
greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure. I'd always been too
busy before. And gradually all the life that had seemed so important to
me began to seem rather trivial and vulgar. What is the use of all this
hustle and this constant striving? I think of Chicago now and I see a
dark, grey city, all stone--it is like a prison--and a ceaseless
turmoil. And what does all that activity amount to? Does one get there
the best out of life? Is that what we come into the world for, to hurry
to an office, and work hour after hour till night, then hurry home and
dine and go to a theatre? Is that how I must spend my youth? Youth lasts
so short a time, Bateman. And when I am old, what have I to look forward
to? To hurry from my home in the morning to my office and work hour
after hour till night, and then hurry home again, and dine and go to a
theatre? That may be worth while if you make a fortune; I don't know, it
depends on your nature; but if you don't, is it worth while then? I want
to make more out of my life than that, Bateman."

"What do you value in life then?"

"I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Beauty, truth, and goodness."

"Don't you think you can have those in Chicago?"

"Some men can, perhaps, but not I." Edward sprang up now. "I tell you
when I think of the life I led in the old days I am filled with horror,"
he cried violently. "I tremble with fear when I think of the danger I
have escaped. I never knew I had a soul till I found it here. If I had
remained a rich man I might have lost it for good and all."

"I don't know how you can say that," cried Bateman indignantly. "We
often used to have discussions about it."

"Yes, I know. They were about as effectual as the discussions of deaf
mutes about harmony. I shall never come back to Chicago, Bateman."

"And what about Isabel?"

Edward walked to the edge of the verandah and leaning over looked
intently at the blue magic of the night. There was a slight smile on his
face when he turned back to Bateman.

"Isabel is infinitely too good for me. I admire her more than any woman
I have ever known. She has a wonderful brain and she's as good as she's
beautiful. I respect her energy and her ambition. She was born to make a
success of life. I am entirely unworthy of her."

"She doesn't think so."

"But you must tell her so, Bateman."

"I?" cried Bateman. "I'm the last person who could ever do that."

Edward had his back to the vivid light of the moon and his face could
not be seen. Is it possible that he smiled again?

"It's no good your trying to conceal anything from her, Bateman. With
her quick intelligence she'll turn you inside out in five minutes. You'd
better make a clean breast of it right away."

"I don't know what you mean. Of course I shall tell her I've seen you."
Bateman spoke in some agitation. "Honestly I don't know what to say to
her."

"Tell her that I haven't made good. Tell her that I'm not only poor, but
that I'm content to be poor. Tell her I was fired from my job because I
was idle and inattentive. Tell her all you've seen to-night and all I've
told you."

The idea which on a sudden flashed through Bateman's brain brought him
to his feet and in uncontrollable perturbation he faced Edward.

"Man alive, don't you want to marry her?"

Edward looked at him gravely.

"I can never ask her to release me. If she wishes to hold me to my word
I will do my best to make her a good and loving husband."

"Do you wish me to give her that message, Edward? Oh, I can't. It's
terrible. It's never dawned on her for a moment that you don't want to
marry her. She loves you. How can I inflict such a mortification on
her?"

Edward smiled again.

"Why don't you marry her yourself, Bateman? You've been in love with her
for ages. You're perfectly suited to one another. You'll make her very
happy."

"Don't talk to me like that. I can't bear it."

"I resign in your favour, Bateman. You are the better man."

There was something in Edward's tone that made Bateman look up quickly,
but Edward's eyes were grave and unsmiling. Bateman did not know what to
say. He was disconcerted. He wondered whether Edward could possibly
suspect that he had come to Tahiti on a special errand. And though he
knew it was horrible he could not prevent the exultation in his heart.

"What will you do if Isabel writes and puts an end to her engagement
with you?" he said, slowly.

"Survive," said Edward.

Bateman was so agitated that he did not hear the answer.

"I wish you had ordinary clothes on," he said, somewhat irritably. "It's
such a tremendously serious decision you're taking. That fantastic
costume of yours makes it seem terribly casual."

"I assure you, I can be just as solemn in a _pareo_ and a wreath of
roses, as in a high hat and a cut-away coat."

Then another thought struck Bateman.

"Edward, it's not for my sake you're doing this? I don't know, but
perhaps this is going to make a tremendous difference to my future.
You're not sacrificing yourself for me? I couldn't stand for that, you
know."

"No, Bateman, I have learnt not to be silly and sentimental here. I
should like you and Isabel to be happy, but I have not the least wish to
be unhappy myself."

The answer somewhat chilled Bateman. It seemed to him a little cynical.
He would not have been sorry to act a noble part.

"Do you mean to say you're content to waste your life here? It's nothing
less than suicide. When I think of the great hopes you had when we left
college it seems terrible that you should be content to be no more than
a salesman in a cheap-John store."

"Oh, I'm only doing that for the present, and I'm gaining a great deal
of valuable experience. I have another plan in my head. Arnold Jackson
has a small island in the Paumotas, about a thousand miles from here, a
ring of land round a lagoon. He's planted coconut there. He's offered to
give it me."

"Why should he do that?" asked Bateman.

"Because if Isabel releases me I shall marry his daughter."

"You?" Bateman was thunderstruck. "You can't marry a half-caste. You
wouldn't be so crazy as that."

"She's a good girl, and she has a sweet and gentle nature. I think she
would make me very happy."

"Are you in love with her?"

"I don't know," answered Edward reflectively. "I'm not in love with her
as I was in love with Isabel. I worshipped Isabel. I thought she was the
most wonderful creature I had ever seen. I was not half good enough for
her. I don't feel like that with Eva. She's like a beautiful exotic
flower that must be sheltered from bitter winds. I want to protect her.
No one ever thought of protecting Isabel. I think she loves me for
myself and not for what I may become. Whatever happens to me I shall
never disappoint her. She suits me."

Bateman was silent.

"We must turn out early in the morning," said Edward at last. "It's
really about time we went to bed."

Then Bateman spoke and his voice had in it a genuine distress.

"I'm so bewildered, I don't know what to say. I came here because I
thought something was wrong. I thought you hadn't succeeded in what you
set out to do and were ashamed to come back when you'd failed. I never
guessed I should be faced with this. I'm so desperately sorry, Edward.
I'm so disappointed. I hoped you would do great things. It's almost more
than I can bear to think of you wasting your talents and your youth and
your chance in this lamentable way."

"Don't be grieved, old friend," said Edward. "I haven't failed. I've
succeeded. You can't think with what zest I look forward to life, how
full it seems to me and how significant. Sometimes, when you are married
to Isabel, you will think of me. I shall build myself a house on my
coral island and I shall live there, looking after my trees--getting the
fruit out of the nuts in the same old way that they have done for
unnumbered years--I shall grow all sorts of things in my garden, and I
shall fish. There will be enough work to keep me busy and not enough to
make me dull. I shall have my books and Eva, children, I hope, and above
all, the infinite variety of the sea and the sky, the freshness of the
dawn and the beauty of the sunset, and the rich magnificence of the
night. I shall make a garden out of what so short a while ago was a
wilderness. I shall have created something. The years will pass
insensibly, and when I am an old man I hope that I shall be able to look
back on a happy, simple, peaceful life. In my small way I too shall have
lived in beauty. Do you think it is so little to have enjoyed
contentment? We know that it will profit a man little if he gain the
whole world and lose his soul. I think I have won mine."

Edward led him to a room in which there were two beds and he threw
himself on one of them. In ten minutes Bateman knew by his regular
breathing, peaceful as a child's, that Edward was asleep. But for his
part he had no rest, he was disturbed in mind, and it was not till the
dawn crept into the room, ghostlike and silent, that he fell asleep.

Bateman finished telling Isabel his long story. He had hidden nothing
from her except what he thought would wound her or what made himself
ridiculous. He did not tell her that he had been forced to sit at dinner
with a wreath of flowers round his head and he did not tell her that
Edward was prepared to marry her uncle's half-caste daughter the moment
she set him free. But perhaps Isabel had keener intuitions than he knew,
for as he went on with his tale her eyes grew colder and her lips closed
upon one another more tightly. Now and then she looked at him closely,
and if he had been less intent on his narrative he might have wondered
at her expression.

"What was this girl like?" she asked when he finished. "Uncle Arnold's
daughter. Would you say there was any resemblance between her and me?"

Bateman was surprised at the question.

"It never struck me. You know I've never had eyes for anyone but you and
I could never think that anyone was like you. Who could resemble you?"

"Was she pretty?" said Isabel, smiling slightly at his words.

"I suppose so. I daresay some men would say she was very beautiful."

"Well, it's of no consequence. I don't think we need give her any more
of our attention."

"What are you going to do, Isabel?" he asked then.

Isabel looked down at the hand which still bore the ring Edward had
given her on their betrothal.

"I wouldn't let Edward break our engagement because I thought it would
be an incentive to him. I wanted to be an inspiration to him. I thought
if anything could enable him to achieve success it was the thought that
I loved him. I have done all I could. It's hopeless. It would only be
weakness on my part not to recognise the facts. Poor Edward, he's
nobody's enemy but his own. He was a dear, nice fellow, but there was
something lacking in him, I suppose it was backbone. I hope he'll be
happy."

She slipped the ring off her finger and placed it on the table. Bateman
watched her with a heart beating so rapidly that he could hardly
breathe.

"You're wonderful, Isabel, you're simply wonderful."

She smiled, and, standing up, held out her hand to him.

"How can I ever thank you for what you've done for me?" she said.
"You've done me a great service. I knew I could trust you."

He took her hand and held it. She had never looked more beautiful.

"Oh, Isabel, I would do so much more for you than that. You know that I
only ask to be allowed to love and serve you."

"You're so strong, Bateman," she sighed. "It gives me such a delicious
feeling of confidence."

"Isabel, I adore you."

He hardly knew how the inspiration had come to him, but suddenly he
clasped her in his arms, and she, all unresisting, smiled into his eyes.

"Isabel, you know I wanted to marry you the very first day I saw you,"
he cried passionately.

"Then why on earth didn't you ask me?" she replied.

She loved him. He could hardly believe it was true. She gave him her
lovely lips to kiss. And as he held her in his arms he had a vision of
the works of the Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company growing in
size and importance till they covered a hundred acres, and of the
millions of motors they would turn out, and of the great collection of
pictures he would form which should beat anything they had in New York.
He would wear horn spectacles. And she, with the delicious pressure of
his arms about her, sighed with happiness, for she thought of the
exquisite house she would have, full of antique furniture, and of the
concerts she would give, and of the _thés dansants_, and the dinners to
which only the most cultured people would come. Bateman should wear horn
spectacles.

"Poor Edward," she sighed.




IV

_Red_


The skipper thrust his hand into one of his trouser pockets and with
difficulty, for they were not at the sides but in front and he was a
portly man, pulled out a large silver watch. He looked at it and then
looked again at the declining sun. The Kanaka at the wheel gave him a
glance, but did not speak. The skipper's eyes rested on the island they
were approaching. A white line of foam marked the reef. He knew there
was an opening large enough to get his ship through, and when they came
a little nearer he counted on seeing it. They had nearly an hour of
daylight still before them. In the lagoon the water was deep and they
could anchor comfortably. The chief of the village which he could
already see among the coconut trees was a friend of the mate's, and it
would be pleasant to go ashore for the night. The mate came forward at
that minute and the skipper turned to him.

"We'll take a bottle of booze along with us and get some girls in to
dance," he said.

"I don't see the opening," said the mate.

He was a Kanaka, a handsome, swarthy fellow, with somewhat the look of a
later Roman emperor, inclined to stoutness; but his face was fine and
clean-cut.

"I'm dead sure there's one right here," said the captain, looking
through his glasses. "I can't understand why I can't pick it up. Send
one of the boys up the mast to have a look."

The mate called one of the crew and gave him the order. The captain
watched the Kanaka climb and waited for him to speak. But the Kanaka
shouted down that he could see nothing but the unbroken line of foam.
The captain spoke Samoan like a native, and he cursed him freely.

"Shall he stay up there?" asked the mate.

"What the hell good does that do?" answered the captain. "The blame fool
can't see worth a cent. You bet your sweet life I'd find the opening if
I was up there."

He looked at the slender mast with anger. It was all very well for a
native who had been used to climbing up coconut trees all his life. He
was fat and heavy.

"Come down," he shouted. "You're no more use than a dead dog. We'll just
have to go along the reef till we find the opening."

It was a seventy-ton schooner with paraffin auxiliary, and it ran, when
there was no head wind, between four and five knots an hour. It was a
bedraggled object; it had been painted white a very long time ago, but
it was now dirty, dingy, and mottled. It smelt strongly of paraffin and
of the copra which was its usual cargo. They were within a hundred feet
of the reef now and the captain told the steersman to run along it till
they came to the opening. But when they had gone a couple of miles he
realised that they had missed it. He went about and slowly worked back
again. The white foam of the reef continued without interruption and now
the sun was setting. With a curse at the stupidity of the crew the
skipper resigned himself to waiting till next morning.

"Put her about," he said. "I can't anchor here."

They went out to sea a little and presently it was quite dark. They
anchored. When the sail was furled the ship began to roll a good deal.
They said in Apia that one day she would roll right over; and the owner,
a German-American who managed one of the largest stores, said that no
money was big enough to induce him to go out in her. The cook, a Chinese
in white trousers, very dirty and ragged, and a thin white tunic, came
to say that supper was ready, and when the skipper went into the cabin
he found the engineer already seated at table. The engineer was a long,
lean man with a scraggy neck. He was dressed in blue overalls and a
sleeveless jersey which showed his thin arms tatooed from elbow to
wrist.

"Hell, having to spend the night outside," said the skipper.

The engineer did not answer, and they ate their supper in silence. The
cabin was lit by a dim oil lamp. When they had eaten the canned apricots
with which the meal finished the Chink brought them a cup of tea. The
skipper lit a cigar and went on the upper deck. The island now was only
a darker mass against the night. The stars were very bright. The only
sound was the ceaseless breaking of the surf. The skipper sank into a
deck-chair and smoked idly. Presently three or four members of the crew
came up and sat down. One of them had a banjo and another a concertina.
They began to play, and one of them sang. The native song sounded
strange on these instruments. Then to the singing a couple began to
dance. It was a barbaric dance, savage and primeval, rapid, with quick
movements of the hands and feet and contortions of the body; it was
sensual, sexual even, but sexual without passion. It was very animal,
direct, weird without mystery, natural in short, and one might almost
say childlike. At last they grew tired. They stretched themselves on the
deck and slept, and all was silent. The skipper lifted himself heavily
out of his chair and clambered down the companion. He went into his
cabin and got out of his clothes. He climbed into his bunk and lay
there. He panted a little in the heat of the night.

But next morning, when the dawn crept over the tranquil sea, the opening
in the reef which had eluded them the night before was seen a little to
the east of where they lay. The schooner entered the lagoon. There was
not a ripple on the surface of the water. Deep down among the coral
rocks you saw little coloured fish swim. When he had anchored his ship
the skipper ate his breakfast and went on deck. The sun shone from an
unclouded sky, but in the early morning the air was grateful and cool.
It was Sunday, and there was a feeling of quietness, a silence as
though nature were at rest, which gave him a peculiar sense of comfort.
He sat, looking at the wooded coast, and felt lazy and well at ease.
Presently a slow smile moved his lips and he threw the stump of his
cigar into the water.

"I guess I'll go ashore," he said. "Get the boat out."

He climbed stiffly down the ladder and was rowed to a little cove. The
coconut trees came down to the water's edge, not in rows, but spaced out
with an ordered formality. They were like a ballet of spinsters, elderly
but flippant, standing in affected attitudes with the simpering graces
of a bygone age. He sauntered idly through them, along a path that could
be just seen winding its tortuous way, and it led him presently to a
broad creek. There was a bridge across it, but a bridge constructed of
single trunks of coconut trees, a dozen of them, placed end to end and
supported where they met by a forked branch driven into the bed of the
creek. You walked on a smooth, round surface, narrow and slippery, and
there was no support for the hand. To cross such a bridge required sure
feet and a stout heart. The skipper hesitated. But he saw on the other
side, nestling among the trees, a white man's house; he made up his mind
and, rather gingerly, began to walk. He watched his feet carefully, and
where one trunk joined on to the next and there was a difference of
level, he tottered a little. It was with a gasp of relief that he
reached the last tree and finally set his feet on the firm ground of
the other side. He had been so intent on the difficult crossing that he
never noticed anyone was watching him, and it was with surprise that he
heard himself spoken to.

"It takes a bit of nerve to cross these bridges when you're not used to
them."

He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him. He had evidently
come out of the house which he had seen.

"I saw you hesitate," the man continued, with a smile on his lips, "and
I was watching to see you fall in."

"Not on your life," said the captain, who had now recovered his
confidence.

"I've fallen in myself before now. I remember, one evening I came back
from shooting, and I fell in, gun and all. Now I get a boy to carry my
gun for me."

He was a man no longer young, with a small beard, now somewhat grey, and
a thin face. He was dressed in a singlet, without arms, and a pair of
duck trousers. He wore neither shoes nor socks. He spoke English with a
slight accent.

"Are you Neilson?" asked the skipper.

"I am."

"I've heard about you. I thought you lived somewheres round here."

The skipper followed his host into the little bungalow and sat down
heavily in the chair which the other motioned him to take. While Neilson
went out to fetch whisky and glasses he took a look round the room. It
filled him with amazement. He had never seen so many books. The shelves
reached from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and they were closely
packed. There was a grand piano littered with music, and a large table
on which books and magazines lay in disorder. The room made him feel
embarrassed. He remembered that Neilson was a queer fellow. No one knew
very much about him, although he had been in the islands for so many
years, but those who knew him agreed that he was queer. He was a Swede.

"You've got one big heap of books here," he said, when Neilson returned.

"They do no harm," answered Neilson with a smile.

"Have you read them all?" asked the skipper.

"Most of them."

"I'm a bit of a reader myself. I have the _Saturday Evening Post_ sent
me regler."

Neilson poured his visitor a good stiff glass of whisky and gave him a
cigar. The skipper volunteered a little information.

"I got in last night, but I couldn't find the opening, so I had to
anchor outside. I never been this run before, but my people had some
stuff they wanted to bring over here. Gray, d'you know him?"

"Yes, he's got a store a little way along."

"Well, there was a lot of canned stuff that he wanted over, an' he's got
some copra. They thought I might just as well come over as lie idle at
Apia. I run between Apia and Pago-Pago mostly, but they've got smallpox
there just now, and there's nothing stirring."

He took a drink of his whisky and lit a cigar. He was a taciturn man,
but there was something in Neilson that made him nervous, and his
nervousness made him talk. The Swede was looking at him with large dark
eyes in which there was an expression of faint amusement.

"This is a tidy little place you've got here."

"I've done my best with it."

"You must do pretty well with your trees. They look fine. With copra at
the price it is now. I had a bit of a plantation myself once, in Upolu
it was, but I had to sell it."

He looked round the room again, where all those books gave him a feeling
of something incomprehensible and hostile.

"I guess you must find it a bit lonesome here though," he said.

"I've got used to it. I've been here for twenty-five years."

Now the captain could think of nothing more to say, and he smoked in
silence. Neilson had apparently no wish to break it. He looked at his
guest with a meditative eye. He was a tall man, more than six feet high,
and very stout. His face was red and blotchy, with a network of little
purple veins on the cheeks, and his features were sunk into its fatness.
His eyes were bloodshot. His neck was buried in rolls of fat. But for a
fringe of long curly hair, nearly white, at the back of his head, he was
quite bald; and that immense, shiny surface of forehead, which might
have given him a false look of intelligence, on the contrary gave him
one of peculiar imbecility. He wore a blue flannel shirt, open at the
neck and showing his fat chest covered with a mat of reddish hair, and a
very old pair of blue serge trousers. He sat in his chair in a heavy
ungainly attitude, his great belly thrust forward and his fat legs
uncrossed. All elasticity had gone from his limbs. Neilson wondered idly
what sort of man he had been in his youth. It was almost impossible to
imagine that this creature of vast bulk had ever been a boy who ran
about. The skipper finished his whisky, and Neilson pushed the bottle
towards him.

"Help yourself."

The skipper leaned forward and with his great hand seized it.

"And how come you in these parts anyways?" he said.

"Oh, I came out to the islands for my health. My lungs were bad and they
said I hadn't a year to live. You see they were wrong."

"I meant, how come you to settle down right here?"

"I am a sentimentalist."

"Oh!"

Neilson knew that the skipper had not an idea what he meant, and he
looked at him with an ironical twinkle in his dark eyes. Perhaps just
because the skipper was so gross and dull a man the whim seized him to
talk further.

"You were too busy keeping your balance to notice, when you crossed the
bridge, but this spot is generally considered rather pretty."

"It's a cute little house you've got here."

"Ah, that wasn't here when I first came. There was a native hut, with
its beehive roof and its pillars, overshadowed by a great tree with red
flowers; and the croton bushes, their leaves yellow and red and golden,
made a pied fence around it. And then all about were the coconut trees,
as fanciful as women, and as vain. They stood at the water's edge and
spent all day looking at their reflections. I was a young man then--Good
Heavens, it's a quarter of a century ago--and I wanted to enjoy all the
loveliness of the world in the short time allotted to me before I passed
into the darkness. I thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever
seen. The first time I saw it I had a catch at my heart, and I was
afraid I was going to cry. I wasn't more than twenty-five, and though I
put the best face I could on it, I didn't want to die. And somehow it
seemed to me that the very beauty of this place made it easier for me to
accept my fate. I felt when I came here that all my past life had fallen
away, Stockholm and its University, and then Bonn: it all seemed the
life of somebody else, as though now at last I had achieved the reality
which our doctors of philosophy--I am one myself, you know--had
discussed so much. 'A year,' I cried to myself. 'I have a year. I will
spend it here and then I am content to die.'"

"We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if
we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty."

"Now drink, my friend. Don't let the nonsense I talk interfere with
you."

He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what
remained in his glass.

"You ain't drinking nothin," he said, reaching for the whisky.

"I am of a sober habit," smiled the Swede. "I intoxicate myself in ways
which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow,
the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious."

"They say there's a deal of cocaine taken in the States now," said the
captain.

Neilson chuckled.

"But I do not see a white man often," he continued, "and for once I
don't think a drop of whisky can do me any harm."

He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.

"And presently I found out why the spot had such an unearthly
loveliness. Here love had tarried for a moment like a migrant bird that
happens on a ship in mid-ocean and for a little while folds its tired
wings. The fragrance of a beautiful passion hovered over it like the
fragrance of hawthorn in May in the meadows of my home. It seems to me
that the places where men have loved or suffered keep about them always
some faint aroma of something that has not wholly died. It is as though
they had acquired a spiritual significance which mysteriously affects
those who pass. I wish I could make myself clear." He smiled a little.
"Though I cannot imagine that if I did you would understand."

He paused.

"I think this place was beautiful because here I had been loved
beautifully." And now he shrugged his shoulders. "But perhaps it is only
that my æsthetic sense is gratified by the happy conjunction of young
love and a suitable setting."

Even a man less thick-witted than the skipper might have been forgiven
if he were bewildered by Neilson's words. For he seemed faintly to laugh
at what he said. It was as though he spoke from emotion which his
intellect found ridiculous. He had said himself that he was a
sentimentalist, and when sentimentality is joined with scepticism there
is often the devil to pay.

He was silent for an instant and looked at the captain with eyes in
which there was a sudden perplexity.

"You know, I can't help thinking that I've seen you before somewhere or
other," he said.

"I couldn't say as I remember you," returned the skipper.

"I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. It's
been puzzling me for some time. But I can't situate my recollection in
any place or at any time."

The skipper massively shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"It's thirty years since I first come to the islands. A man can't figure
on remembering all the folk he meets in a while like that."

The Swede shook his head.

"You know how one sometimes has the feeling that a place one has never
been to before is strangely familiar. That's how I seem to see you." He
gave a whimsical smile. "Perhaps I knew you in some past existence.
Perhaps, perhaps you were the master of a galley in ancient Rome and I
was a slave at the oar. Thirty years have you been here?"

"Every bit of thirty years."

"I wonder if you knew a man called Red?"

"Red?"

"That is the only name I've ever known him by. I never knew him
personally. I never even set eyes on him. And yet I seem to see him more
clearly than many men, my brothers, for instance, with whom I passed my
daily life for many years. He lives in my imagination with the
distinctness of a Paolo Malatesta or a Romeo. But I daresay you have
never read Dante or Shakespeare?"

"I can't say as I have," said the captain.

Neilson, smoking a cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked vacantly
at the ring of smoke which floated in the still air. A smile played on
his lips, but his eyes were grave. Then he looked at the captain. There
was in his gross obesity something extraordinarily repellent. He had the
plethoric self-satisfaction of the very fat. It was an outrage. It set
Neilson's nerves on edge. But the contrast between the man before him
and the man he had in mind was pleasant.

"It appears that Red was the most comely thing you ever saw. I've talked
to quite a number of people who knew him in those days, white men, and
they all agree that the first time you saw him his beauty just took your
breath away. They called him Red on account of his flaming hair. It had
a natural wave and he wore it long. It must have been of that wonderful
colour that the pre-Raphaelites raved over. I don't think he was vain of
it, he was much too ingenuous for that, but no one could have blamed him
if he had been. He was tall, six feet and an inch or two--in the native
house that used to stand here was the mark of his height cut with a
knife on the central trunk that supported the roof--and he was made like
a Greek god, broad in the shoulders and thin in the flanks; he was like
Apollo, with just that soft roundness which Praxiteles gave him, and
that suave, feminine grace which has in it something troubling and
mysterious. His skin was dazzling white, milky, like satin; his skin was
like a woman's."

"I had kind of a white skin myself when I was a kiddie," said the
skipper, with a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes.

But Neilson paid no attention to him. He was telling his story now and
interruption made him impatient.

"And his face was just as beautiful as his body. He had large blue eyes,
very dark, so that some say they were black, and unlike most red-haired
people he had dark eyebrows and long dark lashes. His features were
perfectly regular and his mouth was like a scarlet wound. He was
twenty."

On these words the Swede stopped with a certain sense of the dramatic.
He took a sip of whisky.

"He was unique. There never was anyone more beautiful. There was no more
reason for him than for a wonderful blossom to flower on a wild plant.
He was a happy accident of nature."

"One day he landed at that cove into which you must have put this
morning. He was an American sailor, and he had deserted from a
man-of-war in Apia. He had induced some good-humoured native to give him
a passage on a cutter that happened to be sailing from Apia to Safoto,
and he had been put ashore here in a dugout. I do not know why he
deserted. Perhaps life on a man-of-war with its restrictions irked him,
perhaps he was in trouble, and perhaps it was the South Seas and these
romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a
man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider's web. It may
be that there was a softness of fibre in him, and these green hills with
their soft airs, this blue sea, took the northern strength from him as
Delilah took the Nazarite's. Anyhow, he wanted to hide himself, and he
thought he would be safe in this secluded nook till his ship had sailed
from Samoa."

"There was a native hut at the cove and as he stood there, wondering
where exactly he should turn his steps, a young girl came out and
invited him to enter. He knew scarcely two words of the native tongue
and she as little English. But he understood well enough what her smiles
meant, and her pretty gestures, and he followed her. He sat down on a
mat and she gave him slices of pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red
only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met
her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how
exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the
rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of
her race, and large eyes like pools of still water under the palm trees;
her hair, black and curling, fell down her back, and she wore a wreath
of scented flowers. Her hands were lovely. They were so small, so
exquisitely formed, they gave your heart-strings a wrench. And in those
days she laughed easily. Her smile was so delightful that it made your
knees shake. Her skin was like a field of ripe corn on a summer day.
Good Heavens, how can I describe her? She was too beautiful to be real."

"And these two young things, she was sixteen and he was twenty, fell in
love with one another at first sight. That is the real love, not the
love that comes from sympathy, common interests, or intellectual
community, but love pure and simple. That is the love that Adam felt for
Eve when he awoke and found her in the garden gazing at him with dewy
eyes. That is the love that draws the beasts to one another, and the
Gods. That is the love that makes the world a miracle. That is the love
which gives life its pregnant meaning. You have never heard of the wise,
cynical French duke who said that with two lovers there is always one
who loves and one who lets himself be loved; it is a bitter truth to
which most of us have to resign ourselves; but now and then there are
two who love and two who let themselves be loved. Then one might fancy
that the sun stands still as it stood when Joshua prayed to the God of
Israel."

"And even now after all these years, when I think of these two, so
young, so fair, so simple, and of their love, I feel a pang. It tears my
heart just as my heart is torn when on certain nights I watch the full
moon shining on the lagoon from an unclouded sky. There is always pain
in the contemplation of perfect beauty."

"They were children. She was good and sweet and kind. I know nothing of
him, and I like to think that then at all events he was ingenuous and
frank. I like to think that his soul was as comely as his body. But I
daresay he had no more soul than the creatures of the woods and forests
who made pipes from reeds and bathed in the mountain streams when the
world was young, and you might catch sight of little fawns galloping
through the glade on the back of a bearded centaur. A soul is a
troublesome possession and when man developed it he lost the Garden of
Eden."

"Well, when Red came to the island it had recently been visited by one
of those epidemics which the white man has brought to the South Seas,
and one third of the inhabitants had died. It seems that the girl had
lost all her near kin and she lived now in the house of distant cousins.
The household consisted of two ancient crones, bowed and wrinkled, two
younger women, and a man and a boy. For a few days he stayed there. But
perhaps he felt himself too near the shore, with the possibility that
he might fall in with white men who would reveal his hiding-place;
perhaps the lovers could not bear that the company of others should rob
them for an instant of the delight of being together. One morning they
set out, the pair of them, with the few things that belonged to the
girl, and walked along a grassy path under the coconuts, till they came
to the creek you see. They had to cross the bridge you crossed, and the
girl laughed gleefully because he was afraid. She held his hand till
they came to the end of the first tree, and then his courage failed him
and he had to go back. He was obliged to take off all his clothes before
he could risk it, and she carried them over for him on her head. They
settled down in the empty hut that stood here. Whether she had any
rights over it (land tenure is a complicated business in the islands),
or whether the owner had died during the epidemic, I do not know, but
anyhow no one questioned them, and they took possession. Their furniture
consisted of a couple of grass-mats on which they slept, a fragment of
looking-glass, and a bowl or two. In this pleasant land that is enough
to start housekeeping on."

"They say that happy people have no history, and certainly a happy love
has none. They did nothing all day long and yet the days seemed all too
short. The girl had a native name, but Red called her Sally. He picked
up the easy language very quickly, and he used to lie on the mat for
hours while she chattered gaily to him. He was a silent fellow, and
perhaps his mind was lethargic. He smoked incessantly the cigarettes
which she made him out of the native tobacco and pandanus leaf, and he
watched her while with deft fingers she made grass mats. Often natives
would come in and tell long stories of the old days when the island was
disturbed by tribal wars. Sometimes he would go fishing on the reef, and
bring home a basket full of coloured fish. Sometimes at night he would
go out with a lantern to catch lobster. There were plantains round the
hut and Sally would roast them for their frugal meal. She knew how to
make delicious messes from coconuts, and the bread-fruit tree by the
side of the creek gave them its fruit. On feast-days they killed a
little pig and cooked it on hot stones. They bathed together in the
creek; and in the evening they went down to the lagoon and paddled about
in a dugout, with its great outrigger. The sea was deep blue,
wine-coloured at sundown, like the sea of Homeric Greece; but in the
lagoon the colour had an infinite variety, aquamarine and amethyst and
emerald; and the setting sun turned it for a short moment to liquid
gold. Then there was the colour of the coral, brown, white, pink, red,
purple; and the shapes it took were marvellous. It was like a magic
garden, and the hurrying fish were like butterflies. It strangely lacked
reality. Among the coral were pools with a floor of white sand and here,
where the water was dazzling clear, it was very good to bathe. Then,
cool and happy, they wandered back in the gloaming over the soft grass
road to the creek, walking hand in hand, and now the mynah birds filled
the coconut trees with their clamour. And then the night, with that
great, sky shining with gold, that seemed to stretch more widely than
the skies of Europe, and the soft airs that blew gently through the open
hut, the long night again was all too short. She was sixteen and he was
barely twenty. The dawn crept in among the wooden pillars of the hut and
looked at those lovely children sleeping in one another's arms. The sun
hid behind the great tattered leaves of the plantains so that it might
not disturb them, and then, with playful malice, shot a golden ray, like
the outstretched paw of a Persian cat, on their faces. They opened their
sleepy eyes and they smiled to welcome another day. The weeks lengthened
into months, and a year passed. They seemed to love one another as--I
hesitate to say passionately, for passion has in it always a shade of
sadness, a touch of bitterness or anguish, but as whole heartedly, as
simply and naturally as on that first day on which, meeting, they had
recognised that a god was in them."

"If you had asked them I have no doubt that they would have thought it
impossible to suppose their love could ever cease. Do we not know that
the essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity? And yet
perhaps in Red there was already a very little seed, unknown to himself
and unsuspected by the girl, which would in time have grown to
weariness. For one day one of the natives from the cove told them that
some way down the coast at the anchorage was a British whaling-ship."

"'Gee,' he said, 'I wonder if I could make a trade of some nuts and
plantains for a pound or two of tobacco.'"

"The pandanus cigarettes that Sally made him with untiring hands were
strong and pleasant enough to smoke, but they left him unsatisfied; and
he yearned on a sudden for real tobacco, hard, rank, and pungent. He had
not smoked a pipe for many, months. His mouth watered at the thought of
it. One would have thought some premonition of harm would have made
Sally seek to dissuade him, but love possessed her so completely that it
never occurred to her any power on earth could take him from her. They
went up into the hills together and gathered a great basket of wild
oranges, green, but sweet and juicy; and they picked plantains from
around the hut, and coconuts from their trees, and breadfruit and
mangoes; and they carried them down to the cove. They loaded the
unstable canoe with them, and Red and the native boy who had brought
them the news of the ship paddled along outside the reef."

"It was the last time she ever saw him."

"Next day the boy came back alone. He was all in tears. This is the
story he told. When after their long paddle they reached the ship and
Red hailed it, a white man looked over the side and told them to come on
board. They took the fruit they had brought with them and Red piled it
up on the deck. The white man and he began to talk, and they seemed to
come to some agreement. One of them went below and brought up tobacco.
Red took some at once and lit a pipe. The boy imitated the zest with
which he blew a great cloud of smoke from his mouth. Then they said
something to him and he went into the cabin. Through the open door the
boy, watching curiously, saw a bottle brought out and glasses. Red drank
and smoked. They seemed to ask him something, for he shook his head and
laughed. The man, the first man who had spoken to them, laughed too, and
he filled Red's glass once more. They went on talking and drinking, and
presently, growing tired of watching a sight that meant nothing to him,
the boy curled himself up on the deck and slept. He was awakened by a
kick; and, jumping to his feet, he saw that the ship was slowly sailing
out of the lagoon. He caught sight of Red seated at the table, with his
head resting heavily on his arms, fast asleep. He made a movement
towards him, intending to wake him, but a rough hand seized his arm, and
a man, with a scowl and words which he did not understand, pointed to
the side. He shouted to Red, but in a moment he was seized and flung
overboard. Helpless, he swam round to his canoe which was drifting a
little way off, and pushed it on to the reef. He climbed in and, sobbing
all the way, paddled back to shore."

"What had happened was obvious enough. The whaler, by desertion or
sickness, was short of hands, and the captain when Red came aboard had
asked him to sign on; on his refusal he had made him drunk and kidnapped
him."

"Sally was beside herself with grief. For three days she screamed and
cried. The natives did what they could to comfort her, but she would not
be comforted. She would not eat. And then, exhausted, she sank into a
sullen apathy. She spent long days at the cove, watching the lagoon, in
the vain hope that Red somehow or other would manage to escape. She sat
on the white sand, hour after hour, with the tears running down her
cheeks, and at night dragged herself wearily back across the creek to
the little hut where she had been happy. The people with whom she had
lived before Red came to the island wished her to return to them, but
she would not; she was convinced that Red would come back, and she
wanted him to find her where he had left her. Four months later she was
delivered of a still-born child, and the old woman who had come to help
her through her confinement remained with her in the hut. All joy was
taken from her life. If her anguish with time became less intolerable it
was replaced by a settled melancholy. You would not have thought that
among these people, whose emotions, though so violent, are very
transient, a woman could be found capable of so enduring a passion. She
never lost the profound conviction that sooner or later Red would come
back. She watched for him, and every time someone crossed this slender
little bridge of coconut trees she looked. It might at last be he."

Neilson stopped talking and gave a faint sigh.

"And what happened to her in the end?" asked the skipper.

Neilson smiled bitterly.

"Oh, three years afterwards she took up with another white man."

The skipper gave a fat, cynical chuckle.

"That's generally what happens to them," he said.

The Swede shot him a look of hatred. He did not know why that gross,
obese man excited in him so violent a repulsion. But his thoughts
wandered and he found his mind filled with memories of the past. He went
back five and twenty years. It was when he first came to the island,
weary of Apia, with its heavy drinking, its gambling and coarse
sensuality, a sick man, trying to resign himself to the loss of the
career which had fired his imagination with ambitious thoughts. He set
behind him resolutely all his hopes of making a great name for himself
and strove to content himself with the few poor months of careful life
which was all that he could count on. He was boarding with a half-caste
trader who had a store a couple of miles along the coast at the edge of
a native village; and one day, wandering aimlessly along the grassy
paths of the coconut groves, he had come upon the hut in which Sally
lived. The beauty of the spot had filled him with a rapture so great
that it was almost painful, and then he had seen Sally. She was the
loveliest creature he had ever seen, and the sadness in those dark,
magnificent eyes of hers affected him strangely. The Kanakas were a
handsome race, and beauty was not rare among them, but it was the beauty
of shapely animals. It was empty. But those tragic eyes were dark with
mystery, and you felt in them the bitter complexity of the groping,
human soul. The trader told him the story and it moved him.

"Do you think he'll ever come back?" asked Neilson.

"No fear. Why, it'll be a couple of years before the ship is paid off,
and by then he'll have forgotten all about her. I bet he was pretty mad
when he woke up and found he'd been shanghaied, and I shouldn't wonder
but he wanted to fight somebody. But he'd got to grin and bear it, and I
guess in a month he was thinking it the best thing that had ever
happened to him that he got away from the island."

But Neilson could not get the story out of his head. Perhaps because he
was sick and weakly, the radiant health of Red appealed to his
imagination. Himself an ugly man, insignificant of appearance, he prized
very highly comeliness in others. He had never been passionately in
love, and certainly he had never been passionately loved. The mutual
attraction of those two young things gave him a singular delight. It had
the ineffable beauty of the Absolute. He went again to the little hut by
the creek. He had a gift for languages and an energetic mind, accustomed
to work, and he had already given much time to the study of the local
tongue. Old habit was strong in him and he was gathering together
material for a paper on the Samoan speech. The old crone who shared the
hut with Sally invited him to come in and sit down. She gave him _kava_
to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat
with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the
Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same dear purity
of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal
aspect.

It was not till he had seen her two or three times that he induced her
to speak. Then it was only to ask him if he had seen in Apia a man
called Red. Two years had passed since his disappearance, but it was
plain that she still thought of him incessantly.

It did not take Neilson long to discover that he was in love with her.
It was only by an effort of will now that he prevented himself from
going every day to the creek, and when he was not with Sally his
thoughts were. At first, looking upon himself as a dying man, he asked
only to look at her, and occasionally hear her speak, and his love gave
him a wonderful happiness. He exulted in its purity. He wanted nothing
from her but the opportunity to weave around her graceful person a web
of beautiful fancies. But the open air, the equable temperature, the
rest, the simple fare, began to have an unexpected effect on his health.
His temperature did not soar at night to such alarming heights, he
coughed less and began to put on weight; six months passed without his
having a hæmorrhage; and on a sudden he saw the possibility that he
might live. He had studied his disease carefully, and the hope dawned
upon him that with great care he might arrest its course. It exhilarated
him to look forward once more to the future. He made plans. It was
evident that any active life was out of the question, but he could live
on the islands, and the small income he had, insufficient elsewhere,
would be ample to keep him. He could grow coconuts; that would give him
an occupation; and he would send for his books and a piano; but his
quick mind saw that in all this he was merely trying to conceal from
himself the desire which obsessed him.

He wanted Sally. He loved not only her beauty, but that dim soul which
he divined behind her suffering eyes. He would intoxicate her with his
passion. In the end he would make her forget. And in an ecstasy of
surrender he fancied himself giving her too the happiness which he had
thought never to know again, but had now so miraculously achieved.

He asked her to live with him. She refused. He had expected that and did
not let it depress him, for he was sure that sooner or later she would
yield. His love was irresistible. He told the old woman of his wishes,
and found somewhat to his surprise that she and the neighbours, long
aware of them, were strongly urging Sally to accept his offer. After
all, every native was glad to keep house for a white man, and Neilson
according to the standards of the island was a rich one. The trader with
whom he boarded went to her and told her not to be a fool; such an
opportunity would not come again, and after so long she could not still
believe that Red would ever return. The girl's resistance only increased
Neilson's desire, and what had been a very pure love now became an
agonising passion. He was determined that nothing should stand in his
way. He gave Sally no peace. At last, worn out by his persistence and
the persuasions, by turns pleading and angry, of everyone around her,
she consented. But the day after when, exultant, he went to see her he
found that in the night she had burnt down the hut in which she and Red
had lived together. The old crone ran towards him full of angry abuse of
Sally, but he waved her aside; it did not matter; they would build a
bungalow on the place where the hut had stood. A European house would
really be more convenient if he wanted to bring out a piano and a vast
number of books.

And so the little wooden house was built in which he had now lived for
many years, and Sally became his wife. But after the first few weeks of
rapture, during which he was satisfied with what she gave him he had
known little happiness. She had yielded to him, through weariness, but
she had only yielded what she set no store on. The soul which he had
dimly glimpsed escaped him. He knew that she cared nothing for him. She
still loved Red, and all the time she was waiting for his return. At a
sign from him, Neilson knew that, notwithstanding his love, his
tenderness, his sympathy, his generosity, she would leave him without a
moment's hesitation. She would never give a thought to his distress.
Anguish seized him and he battered at that impenetrable self of hers
which sullenly resisted him. His love became bitter. He tried to melt
her heart with kindness, but it remained as hard as before; he feigned
indifference, but she did not notice it. Sometimes he lost his temper
and abused her, and then she wept silently. Sometimes he thought she was
nothing but a fraud, and that soul simply an invention of his own, and
that he could not get into the sanctuary of her heart because there was
no sanctuary there. His love became a prison from which he longed to
escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door--that was
all it needed--and walk out into the open air. It was torture and at
last he became numb and hopeless. In the end the fire burnt itself out
and, when he saw her eyes rest for an instant on the slender bridge, it
was no longer rage that filled his heart but impatience. For many years
now they had lived together bound by the ties of habit and convenience,
and it was with a smile that he looked back on his old passion. She was
an old woman, for the women on the islands age quickly, and if he had no
love for her any more he had tolerance. She left him alone. He was
contented with his piano and his books.

His thoughts led him to a desire for words.

"When I look back now and reflect on that brief passionate love of Red
and Sally, I think that perhaps they should thank the ruthless fate that
separated them when their love seemed still to be at its height. They
suffered, but they suffered in beauty. They were spared the real tragedy
of love."

"I don't know exactly as I get you," said the skipper.

"The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think
it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is
dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your
heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of
your sight, and realise that you would not mind if you never saw her
again. The tragedy of love is indifference."

But while he was speaking a very extraordinary thing happened. Though he
had been addressing the skipper he had not been talking to him, he had
been putting his thoughts into words for himself, and with his eyes
fixed on the man in front of him he had not seen him. But now an image
presented itself to them, an image not of the man he saw, but of another
man. It was as though he were looking into one of those distorting
mirrors that make you extraordinarily squat or outrageously elongate,
but here exactly the opposite took place, and in the obese, ugly old man
he caught the shadowy glimpse of a stripling. He gave him now a quick,
searching scrutiny. Why had a haphazard stroll brought him just to this
place? A sudden tremor of his heart made him slightly breathless. An
absurd suspicion seized him. What had occurred to him was impossible,
and yet it might be a fact.

"What is your name?" he asked abruptly.

The skipper's face puckered and he gave a cunning chuckle. He looked
then malicious and horribly vulgar.

"It's such a damned long time since I heard it that I almost forget it
myself. But for thirty years now in the islands they've always called me
Red."

His huge form shook as he gave a low, almost silent laugh. It was
obscene. Neilson shuddered. Red was hugely amused, and from his
bloodshot eyes tears ran down his cheeks.

Neilson gave a gasp, for at that moment a woman came in. She was a
native, a woman of somewhat commanding presence, stout without being
corpulent, dark, for the natives grow darker with age, with very grey
hair. She wore a black Mother Hubbard, and its thinness showed her heavy
breasts. The moment had come.

She made an observation to Neilson about some household matter and he
answered. He wondered if his voice sounded as unnatural to her as it did
to himself. She gave the man who was sitting in the chair by the window
an indifferent glance, and went out of the room. The moment had come and
gone.

Neilson for a moment could not speak. He was strangely shaken. Then he
said:

"I'd be very glad if you'd stay and have a bit of dinner with me. Pot
luck."

"I don't think I will," said Red. "I must go after this fellow Gray.
I'll give him his stuff and then I'll get away. I want to be back in
Apia to-morrow."

"I'll send a boy along with you to show you the way."

"That'll be fine."

Red heaved himself out of his chair, while the Swede called one of the
boys who worked on the plantation. He told him where the skipper wanted
to go, and the boy stepped along the bridge. Red prepared to follow him.

"Don't fall in," said Neilson.

"Not on your life."

Neilson watched him make his way across and when he had disappeared
among the coconuts he looked still. Then he sank heavily in his chair.
Was that the man who had prevented him from being happy? Was that the
man whom Sally had loved all these years and for whom she had waited so
desperately? It was grotesque. A sudden fury seized him so that he had
an instinct to spring up and smash everything around him. He had been
cheated. They had seen each other at last and had not known it. He began
to laugh, mirthlessly, and his laughter grew till it became hysterical.
The Gods had played him a cruel trick. And he was old now.

At last Sally came in to tell him dinner was ready. He sat down in front
of her and tried to eat. He wondered what she would say if he told her
now that the fat old man sitting in the chair was the lover whom she
remembered still with the passionate abandonment of her youth. Years
ago, when he hated her because she made him so unhappy, he would have
been glad to tell her. He wanted to hurt her then as she hurt him,
because his hatred was only love. But now he did not care. He shrugged
his shoulders listlessly.

"What did that man want?" she asked presently.

He did not answer at once. She was old too, a fat old native woman. He
wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all
the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste,
what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His
patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.

"He's the captain of a schooner. He's come from Apia."

"Yes."

"He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must
go back."

"Will you be gone long?"

He shrugged his shoulders.




V

_The Pool_


When I was introduced to Lawson by Chaplin, the owner of the Hotel
Metropole at Apia, I paid no particular attention to him. We were
sitting in the lounge over an early cocktail and I was listening with
amusement to the gossip of the island.

Chaplin entertained me. He was by profession a mining engineer and
perhaps it was characteristic of him that he had settled in a place
where his professional attainments were of no possible value. It was,
however, generally reported that he was an extremely clever mining
engineer. He was a small man, neither fat nor thin, with black hair,
scanty on the crown, turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his
face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was
but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame
building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt
Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined
air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her,
and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her
fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been
known after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours
to his own room, and then he could be seen, afraid to leave his prison,
talking somewhat pathetically from his verandah to people in the street
below.

He was a character, and his reminiscences of a varied life, whether true
or not, made him worth listening to, so that when Lawson strolled in I
was inclined to resent the interruption. Although not midday, it was
clear that he had had enough to drink, and it was without enthusiasm
that I yielded to his persistence and accepted his offer of another
cocktail. I knew already that Chaplin's head was weak. The next round
which in common politeness I should be forced to order would be enough
to make him lively, and then Mrs Chaplin would give me black looks.

Nor was there anything attractive in Lawson's appearance. He was a
little thin man, with a long, sallow face and a narrow, weak chin, a
prominent nose, large and bony, and great shaggy black eyebrows. They
gave him a peculiar look. His eyes, very large and very dark, were
magnificent. He was jolly, but his jollity did not seem to me sincere;
it was on the surface, a mask which he wore to deceive the world, and I
suspected that it concealed a mean nature. He was plainly anxious to be
thought a "good sport" and he was hail-fellow-well-met; but, I do not
know why, I felt that he was cunning and shifty. He talked a great deal
in a raucous voice, and he and Chaplin capped one another's stories of
beanos which had become legendary, stories of "wet" nights at the
English Club, of shooting expeditions where an incredible amount of
whisky had been consumed, and of jaunts to Sydney of which their pride
was that they could remember nothing from the time they landed till the
time they sailed. A pair of drunken swine. But even in their
intoxication, for by now after four cocktails each, neither was sober,
there was a great difference between Chaplin, rough and vulgar, and
Lawson: Lawson might be drunk, but he was certainly a gentleman.

At last he got out of his chair, a little unsteadily.

"Well, I'll be getting along home," he said. "See you before dinner."

"Missus all right?" said Chaplin.

"Yes."

He went out. There was a peculiar note in the monosyllable of his answer
which made me look up.

"Good chap," said Chaplin flatly, as Lawson went out of the door into
the sunshine. "One of the best. Pity he drinks."

This from Chaplin was an observation not without humour.

"And when he's drunk he wants to fight people."

"Is he often drunk?"

"Dead drunk, three or four days a week. It's the island done it, and
Ethel."

"Who's Ethel?"

"Ethel's his wife. Married a half-caste. Old Brevald's daughter. Took
her away from here. Only thing to do. But she couldn't stand it, and now
they're back again. He'll hang himself one of these days, if he don't
drink himself to death before. Good chap. Nasty when he's drunk."

Chaplin belched loudly.

"I'll go and put my head under the shower. I oughtn't to have had that
last cocktail. It's always the last one that does you in."

He looked uncertainly at the staircase as he made up his mind to go to
the cubby hole in which was the shower, and then with unnatural
seriousness got up.

"Pay you to cultivate Lawson," he said. "A well read chap. You'd be
surprised when he's sober. Clever too. Worth talking to."

Chaplin had told me the whole story in these few speeches.

When I came in towards evening from a ride along the seashore Lawson was
again in the hotel. He was heavily sunk in one of the cane chairs in the
lounge and he looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he had
been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his face
was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment, but I
could see that he did not recognise me. Two or three other men were
sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His
condition was evidently too usual to attract attention. I sat down and
began to play.

"You're a damned sociable lot," said Lawson suddenly.

He got out of his chair and waddled with bent knees towards the door. I
do not know whether the spectacle was more ridiculous than revolting.
When he had gone one of the men sniggered.

"Lawson's fairly soused to-day," he said.

"If I couldn't carry my liquor better than that," said another, "I'd
climb on the waggon and stay there."

Who would have thought that this wretched object was in his way a
romantic figure or that his life had in it those elements of pity and
terror which the theorist tells us are necessary to achieve the effect
of tragedy?

I did not see him again for two or three days.

I was sitting one evening on the first floor of the hotel on a verandah
that overlooked the street when Lawson came up and sank into a chair
beside me. He was quite sober. He made a casual remark and then, when I
had replied somewhat indifferently, added with a laugh which had in it
an apologetic tone:

"I was devilish soused the other day."

I did not answer. There was really nothing to say. I pulled away at my
pipe in the vain hope of keeping the mosquitoes away, and looked at the
natives going home from their work. They walked with long steps, slowly,
with care and dignity, and the soft patter of their naked feet was
strange to hear. Their dark hair, curling or straight, was often white
with lime, and then they had a look of extraordinary distinction. They
were tall and finely built. Then a gang of Solomon Islanders, indentured
labourers, passed by, singing; they were shorter and slighter than the
Samoans, coal black with great heads of fuzzy hair dyed red. Now and
then a white man drove past in his buggy or rode into the hotel yard. In
the lagoon two or three schooners reflected their grace in the tranquil
water.

"I don't know what there is to do in a place like this except to get
soused," said Lawson at last.

"Don't you like Samoa?" I asked casually, for something to say.

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

The word he chose seemed so inadequate to describe the unimaginable
beauty of the island, that I smiled, and smiling I turned to look at
him. I was startled by the expression in those fine sombre eyes of his,
an expression of intolerable anguish; they betrayed a tragic depth of
emotion of which I should never have thought him capable. But the
expression passed away and he smiled. His smile was simple and a little
naïve. It changed his face so that I wavered in my first feeling of
aversion from him.

"I was all over the place when I first came out," he said.

He was silent for a moment.

"I went away for good about three years ago, but I came back." He
hesitated. "My wife wanted to come back. She was born here, you know."

"Oh, yes."

He was silent again, and then hazarded a remark about Robert Louis
Stevenson. He asked me if I had been up to Vailima. For some reason he
was making an effort to be agreeable to me. He began to talk of
Stevenson's books, and presently the conversation drifted to London.

"I suppose Covent Garden's still going strong," he said. "I think I miss
the opera as much as anything here. Have you seen _Tristan and Isolde_?"

He asked me the question as though the answer were really important to
him, and when I said, a little casually I daresay, that I had, he seemed
pleased. He began to speak of Wagner, not as a musician, but as the
plain man who received from him an emotional satisfaction that he could
not analyse.

"I suppose Bayreuth was the place to go really," he said. "I never had
the money, worse luck. But of course one might do worse than Covent
Garden, all the lights and the women dressed up to the nines, and the
music. The first act of the _Walküre's_ all right, isn't it? And the end
of _Tristan_. Golly!"

His eyes were flashing now and his face was lit up so that he hardly
seemed the same man. There was a flush on his sallow, thin cheeks, and I
forgot that his voice was harsh and unpleasant. There was even a certain
charm about him.

"By George, I'd like to be in London to-night. Do you know the Pall Mall
restaurant? I used to go there a lot. Piccadilly Circus with the shops
all lit up, and the crowd. I think it's stunning to stand there and
watch the buses and taxis streaming along as though they'd never stop.
And I like the Strand too. What are those lines about God and Charing
Cross?"

I was taken aback.

"Thompson's, d'you mean?" I asked.

I quoted them.

   _"And when so sad, thou canst not sadder,_
    _Cry, and upon thy so sore loss_
    _Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder_
    _Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."_

He gave a faint sigh.

"I've read _The Hound of Heaven_. It's a bit of all right."

"It's generally thought so," I murmured.

"You don't meet anybody here who's read anything. They think it's
swank."

There was a wistful look on his face, and I thought I divined the
feeling that made him come to me. I was a link with the world he
regretted and a life that he would know no more. Because not so very
long before I had been in the London which he loved, he looked upon me
with awe and envy. He had not spoken for five minutes perhaps when he
broke out with words that startled me by their intensity.

"I'm fed up," he said. "I'm fed up."

"Then why don't you clear out?" I asked.

His face grew sullen.

"My lungs are a bit dicky. I couldn't stand an English winter now."

At that moment another man joined us on the verandah and Lawson sank
into a moody silence.

"It's about time for a drain," said the new-comer. "Who'll have a drop
of Scotch with me? Lawson?"

Lawson seemed to arise from a distant world. He got up.

"Let's go down to the bar," he said.

When he left me I remained with a more kindly feeling towards him than I
should have expected. He puzzled and interested me. And a few days later
I met his wife. I knew they had been married for five or six years, and
I was surprised to see that she was still extremely young. When he
married her she could not have been more than sixteen. She was adorably
pretty. She was no darker than a Spaniard, small and very beautifully
made, with tiny hands and feet, and a slight, lithe figure. Her features
were lovely; but I think what struck me most was the delicacy of her
appearance; the half-caste as a rule have a certain coarseness, they
seem a little roughly formed, but she had an exquisite daintiness which
took your breath away. There was something extremely civilised about
her, so that it surprised you to see her in those surroundings, and you
thought of those famous beauties who had set all the world talking at
the Court of the Emperor Napoleon III. Though she wore but a muslin
frock and a straw hat she wore them with an elegance that suggested the
woman of fashion. She must have been ravishing when Lawson first saw
her.

He had but lately come out from England to manage the local branch of an
English bank, and, reaching Samoa at the beginning of the dry season, he
had taken a room at the hotel. He quickly made the acquaintance of all
and sundry. The life of the island is pleasant and easy. He enjoyed the
long idle talks in the lounge of the hotel and the gay evenings at the
English Club when a group of fellows would play pool. He liked Apia
straggling along the edge of the lagoon, with its stores and bungalows,
and its native village. Then there were week-ends when he would ride
over to the house of one planter or another and spend a couple of nights
on the hills. He had never before known freedom or leisure. And he was
intoxicated by the sunshine. When he rode through the bush his head
reeled a little at the beauty that surrounded him. The country was
indescribably fertile. In parts the forest was still virgin, a tangle of
strange trees, luxuriant undergrowth, and vine; it gave an impression
that was mysterious and troubling.

But the spot that entranced him was a pool a mile or two away from Apia
to which in the evenings he often went to bathe. There was a little
river that bubbled over the rocks in a swift stream, and then, after
forming the deep pool, ran on, shallow and crystalline, past a ford made
by great stones where the natives came sometimes to bathe or to wash
their clothes. The coconut trees, with their frivolous elegance, grew
thickly on the banks, all clad with trailing plants, and they were
reflected in the green water. It was just such a scene as you might see
in Devonshire among the hills, and yet with a difference, for it had a
tropical richness, a passion, a scented languor which seemed to melt the
heart. The water was fresh, but not cold; and it was delicious after the
heat of the day. To bathe there refreshed not only the body but the
soul.

At the hour when Lawson went, there was not a soul and he lingered for a
long time, now floating idly in the water, now drying himself in the
evening sun, enjoying the solitude and the friendly silence. He did not
regret London then, nor the life that he had abandoned, for life as it
was seemed complete and exquisite.

It was here that he first saw Ethel.

Occupied till late by letters which had to be finished for the monthly
sailing of the boat next day, he rode down one evening to the pool when
the light was almost failing. He tied up his horse and sauntered to the
bank. A girl was sitting there. She glanced round as he came and
noiselessly slid into the water. She vanished like a naiad startled by
the approach of a mortal. He was surprised and amused. He wondered where
she had hidden herself. He swam downstream and presently saw her sitting
on a rock. She looked at him with uncurious eyes. He called out a
greeting in Samoan.

"_Talofa._"

She answered him, suddenly smiling, and then let herself into the water
again. She swam easily and her hair spread out behind her. He watched
her cross the pool and climb out on the bank. Like all the natives she
bathed in a Mother Hubbard, and the water had made it cling to her
slight body. She wrung out her hair, and as she stood there,
unconcerned, she looked more than ever like a wild creature of the water
or the woods. He saw now that she was half-caste. He swam towards her
and, getting out, addressed her in English.

"You're having a late swim."

She shook back her hair and then let it spread over her shoulders in
luxuriant curls.

"I like it when I'm alone," she said.

"So do I."

She laughed with the childlike frankness of the native. She slipped a
dry Mother Hubbard over her head and, letting down the wet one, stepped
out of it. She wrung it out and was ready to go. She paused a moment
irresolutely and then sauntered off. The night fell suddenly.

Lawson went back to the hotel and, describing her to the men who were in
the lounge shaking dice for drinks, soon discovered who she was. Her
father was a Norwegian called Brevald who was often to be seen in the
bar of the Hotel Metropole drinking rum and water. He was a little old
man, knotted and gnarled like an ancient tree, who had come out to the
islands forty years before as mate of a sailing vessel. He had been a
blacksmith, a trader, a planter, and at one time fairly well-to-do; but,
ruined by the great hurricane of the nineties, he had now nothing to
live on but a small plantation of coconut trees. He had had four native
wives and, as he told you with a cracked chuckle, more children than he
could count. But some had died and some had gone out into the world, so
that now the only one left at home was Ethel.

"She's a peach," said Nelson, the supercargo of the _Moana_. "I've given
her the glad eye once or twice, but I guess there's nothing doing."

"Old Brevald's not that sort of a fool, sonny," put in another, a man
called Miller. "He wants a son-in-law who's prepared to keep him in
comfort for the rest of his life."

It was distasteful to Lawson that they should speak of the girl in that
fashion. He made a remark about the departing mail and so distracted
their attention. But next evening he went again to the pool. Ethel was
there; and the mystery of the sunset, the deep silence of the water, the
lithe grace of the coconut trees, added to her beauty, giving it a
profundity, a magic, which stirred the heart to unknown emotions. For
some reason that time he had the whim not to speak to her. She took no
notice of him. She did not even glance in his direction. She swam about
the green pool. She dived, she rested on the bank, as though she were
quite alone: he had a queer feeling that he was invisible. Scraps of
poetry, half forgotten, floated across his memory, and vague
recollections of the Greece he had negligently studied in his school
days. When she had changed her wet clothes for dry ones and sauntered
away he found a scarlet hibiscus where she had been. It was a flower
that she had worn in her hair when she came to bathe and, having taken
it out on getting into the water, had forgotten or not cared to put in
again. He took it in his hands and looked at it with a singular emotion.
He had an instinct to keep it, but his sentimentality irritated him, and
he flung it away. It gave him quite a little pang to see it float down
the stream.

He wondered what strangeness it was in her nature that urged her to go
down to this hidden pool when there was no likelihood that anyone
should be there. The natives of the islands are devoted to the water.
They bathe, somewhere or other, every day, once always, and often twice;
but they bathe in bands, laughing and joyous, a whole family together;
and you often saw a group of girls, dappled by the sun shining through
the trees, with the half-castes among them, splashing about the shallows
of the stream. It looked as though there were in this pool some secret
which attracted Ethel against her will.

Now the night had fallen, mysterious and silent, and he let himself down
in the water softly, in order to make no sound, and swam lazily in the
warm darkness. The water seemed fragrant still from her slender body. He
rode back to the town under the starry sky. He felt at peace with the
world.

Now he went every evening to the pool and every evening he saw Ethel.
Presently he overcame her timidity. She became playful and friendly.
They sat together on the rocks above the pool, where the water ran fast,
and they lay side by side on the ledge that overlooked it, watching the
gathering dusk envelop it with mystery. It was inevitable that their
meetings should become known--in the South Seas everyone seems to know
everyone's business--and he was subjected to much rude chaff by the men
at the hotel. He smiled and let them talk. It was not even worth while
to deny their coarse suggestions. His feelings were absolutely pure. He
loved Ethel as a poet might love the moon. He thought of her not as a
woman but as something not of this earth. She was the spirit of the
pool.

One day at the hotel, passing through the bar, he saw that old Brevald,
as ever in his shabby blue overalls, was standing there. Because he was
Ethel's father he had a desire to speak to him, so he went in, nodded
and, ordering his own drink, casually turned and invited the old man to
have one with him. They chatted for a few minutes of local affairs, and
Lawson was uneasily conscious that the Norwegian was scrutinising him
with sly blue eyes. His manner was not agreeable. It was sycophantic,
and yet behind the cringing air of an old man who had been worsted in
his struggle with fate was a shadow of old truculence. Lawson remembered
that he had once been captain of a schooner engaged in the slave trade,
a blackbirder they call it in the Pacific, and he had a large hernia in
the chest which was the result of a wound received in a scrap with
Solomon Islanders. The bell rang for luncheon.

"Well, I must be off," said Lawson.

"Why don't you come along to my place one time?" said Brevald, in his
wheezy voice. "It's not very grand, but you'll be welcome. You know
Ethel."

"I'll come with pleasure."

"Sunday afternoon's the best time."

Brevald's bungalow, shabby and bedraggled, stood among the coconut trees
of the plantation, a little away from the main road that ran up to
Vailima. Immediately around it grew huge plantains. With their tattered
leaves they had the tragic beauty of a lovely woman in rags. Everything
was slovenly and neglected. Little black pigs, thin and high-backed,
rooted about, and chickens clucked noisily as they picked at the refuse
scattered here and there. Three or four natives were lounging about the
verandah. When Lawson asked for Brevald the old man's cracked voice
called out to him, and he found him in the sitting-room smoking an old
briar pipe.

"Sit down and make yerself at home," he said. "Ethel's just titivating."

She came in. She wore a blouse and skirt and her hair was done in the
European fashion. Although she had not the wild, timid grace of the girl
who came down every evening to the pool, she seemed now more usual and
consequently more approachable. She shook hands with Lawson. It was the
first time he had touched her hand.

"I hope you'll have a cup of tea with us," she said.

He knew she had been at a mission school, and he was amused, and at the
same time touched, by the company manners she was putting on for his
benefit. Tea was already set out on the table and in a minute old
Brevald's fourth wife brought in the tea-pot. She was a handsome native,
no longer very young, and she spoke but a few words of English. She
smiled and smiled. Tea was rather a solemn meal, with a great deal of
bread and butter and a variety of very sweet cakes, and the conversation
was formal. Then a wrinkled old woman came in softly.

"That's Ethel's granny," said old Brevald, noisily spitting on the
floor.

She sat on the edge of a chair, uncomfortably, so that you saw it was
unusual for her and she would have been more at ease on the ground, and
remained silently staring at Lawson with fixed, shining eyes. In the
kitchen behind the bungalow someone began to play the concertina and two
or three voices were raised in a hymn. But they sang for the pleasure of
the sounds rather than from piety.

When Lawson walked back to the hotel he was strangely happy. He was
touched by the higgledy-piggledy way in which those people lived; and in
the smiling good-nature of Mrs Brevald, in the little Norwegian's
fantastic career, and in the shining mysterious eyes of the old
grandmother, he found something unusual and fascinating. It was a more
natural life than any he had known, it was nearer to the friendly,
fertile earth; civilisation repelled him at that moment, and by mere
contact with these creatures of a more primitive nature he felt a
greater freedom.

He saw himself rid of the hotel which already was beginning to irk him,
settled in a little bungalow of his own, trim and white, in front of the
sea so that he had before his eyes always the multicoloured variety of
the lagoon. He loved the beautiful island. London and England meant
nothing to him any more, he was content to spend the rest of his days in
that forgotten spot, rich in the best of the world's goods, love and
happiness. He made up his mind that whatever the obstacles nothing
should prevent him from marrying Ethel.

But there were no obstacles. He was always welcome at the Brevalds'
house. The old man was ingratiating and Mrs Brevald smiled without
ceasing. He had brief glimpses of natives who seemed somehow to belong
to the establishment, and once he found a tall youth in a _lava-lava_,
his body tattooed, his hair white with lime, sitting with Brevald, and
was told he was Mrs Brevald's brother's son; but for the most part they
kept out of his way. Ethel was delightful with him. The light in her
eyes when she saw him filled him with ecstasy. She was charming and
naïve. He listened enraptured when she told him of the mission school at
which she was educated, and of the sisters. He went with her to the
cinema which was given once a fortnight and danced with her at the dance
which followed it. They came from all parts of the island for this,
since gaieties are few in Upolu; and you saw there all the society of
the place, the white ladies keeping a good deal to themselves, the
half-castes very elegant in American clothes, the natives, strings of
dark girls in white Mother Hubbards and young men in unaccustomed ducks
and white shoes. It was all very smart and gay. Ethel was pleased to
show her friends the white admirer who did not leave her side. The
rumour was soon spread that he meant to marry her and her friends looked
at her with envy. It was a great thing for a half-caste to get a white
man to marry her, even the less regular relation was better than
nothing, but one could never tell what it would lead to; and Lawson's
position as manager of the bank made him one of the catches of the
island. If he had not been so absorbed in Ethel he would have noticed
that many eyes were fixed on him curiously, and he would have seen the
glances of the white ladies and noticed how they put their heads
together and gossiped.

Afterwards, when the men who lived at the hotel were having a whisky
before turning in, Nelson burst out with:

"Say, they say Lawson's going to marry that girl."

"He's a damned fool then," said Miller.

Miller was a German-American who had changed his name from Müller, a big
man, fat and bald-headed, with a round, clean-shaven face. He wore large
gold-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a benign look, and his ducks were
always clean and white. He was a heavy drinker, invariably ready to stay
up all night with the "boys," but he never got drunk; he was jolly and
affable, but very shrewd. Nothing interfered with his business; he
represented a firm in San Francisco, jobbers of the goods sold in the
islands, calico, machinery and what not; and his good-fellowship was
part of his stock-in-trade.

"He don't know what he's up against," said Nelson. "Someone ought to put
him wise."

"If you'll take my advice you won't interfere in what don't concern
you," said Miller. "When a man's made up his mind to make a fool of
himself, there's nothing like letting him."

"I'm all for having a good time with the girls out here, but when it
comes to marrying them--this child ain't taking any, I'll tell the
world."

Chaplin was there, and now he had his say.

"I've seen a lot of fellows do it, and it's no good."

"You ought to have a talk with him, Chaplin," said Nelson. "You know him
better than anyone else does."

"My advice to Chaplin is to leave it alone," said Miller.

Even in those days Lawson was not popular and really no one took enough
interest in him to bother. Mrs Chaplin talked it over with two or three
of the white ladies, but they contented themselves with saying that it
was a pity; and when he told her definitely that he was going to be
married it seemed too late to do anything.

For a year Lawson was happy. He took a bungalow at the point of the bay
round which Apia is built, on the borders of a native village. It
nestled charmingly among the coconut trees and faced the passionate blue
of the Pacific. Ethel was lovely as she went about the little house,
lithe and graceful like some young animal of the woods, and she was gay.
They laughed a great deal. They talked nonsense. Sometimes one or two of
the men at the hotel would come over and spend the evening, and often on
a Sunday they would go for a day to some planter who had married a
native; now and then one or other of the half-caste traders who had a
store in Apia would give a party and they went to it. The half-castes
treated Lawson quite differently now. His marriage had made him one of
themselves and they called him Bertie. They put their arms through his
and smacked him on the back. He liked to see Ethel at these gatherings.
Her eyes shone and she laughed. It did him good to see her radiant
happiness. Sometimes Ethel's relations would come to the bungalow, old
Brevald of course, and her mother, but cousins too, vague native women
in Mother Hubbards and men and boys in _lava-lavas_, with their hair
dyed red and their bodies elaborately tattooed. He would find them
sitting there when he got back from the bank. He laughed indulgently.

"Don't let them eat us out of hearth and home," he said.

"They're my own family. I can't help doing something for them when they
ask me."

He knew that when a white man marries a native or a half-caste he must
expect her relations to look upon him as a gold mine. He took Ethel's
face in his hands and kissed her red lips. Perhaps he could not expect
her to understand that the salary which had amply sufficed for a
bachelor must be managed with some care when it had to support a wife
and a house. Then Ethel was delivered of a son.

It was when Lawson first held the child in his arms that a sudden pang
shot through his heart. He had not expected it to be so dark. After all
it had but a fourth part of native blood, and there was no reason really
why it should not look just like an English baby; but, huddled together
in his arms, sallow, its head covered already with black hair, with huge
black eyes, it might have been a native child. Since his marriage he had
been ignored by the white ladies of the colony. When he came across men
in whose houses he had been accustomed to dine as a bachelor, they were
a little self-conscious with him; and they sought to cover their
embarrassment by an exaggerated cordiality.

"Mrs Lawson well?" they would say. "You're a lucky fellow. Damned pretty
girl."

But if they were with their wives and met him and Ethel they would feel
it awkward when their wives gave Ethel a patronising nod. Lawson had
laughed.

"They're as dull as ditchwater, the whole gang of them," he said. "It's
not going to disturb my night's rest if they don't ask me to their dirty
parties."

But now it irked him a little.

The little dark baby screwed up its face. That was his son. He thought
of the half-caste children in Apia. They had an unhealthy look, sallow
and pale, and they were odiously precocious. He had seen them on the
boat going to school in New Zealand, and a school had to be chosen which
took children with native blood in them; they were huddled together,
brazen and yet timid, with traits which set them apart strangely from
white people. They spoke the native language among themselves. And when
they grew up the men accepted smaller salaries because of their native
blood; girls might marry a white man, but boys had no chance; they must
marry a half-caste like themselves or a native. Lawson made up his mind
passionately that he would take his son away from the humiliation of
such a life. At whatever cost he must get back to Europe. And when he
went in to see Ethel, frail and lovely in her bed, surrounded by native
women, his determination was strengthened. If he took her away among his
own people she would belong more completely to him. He loved her so
passionately, he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he
was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the
native life, she would always keep something from him.

He went to work quietly, urged by an obscure instinct of secrecy, and
wrote to a cousin who was partner in a shipping firm in Aberdeen, saying
that his health (on account of which like so many more he had come out
to the islands) was so much better, there seemed no reason why he should
not return to Europe. He asked him to use what influence he could to get
him a job, no matter how poorly paid, on Deeside, where the climate was
particularly suitable to such as suffered from diseases of the lungs. It
takes five or six weeks for letters to get from Aberdeen to Samoa, and
several had to be exchanged. He had plenty of time to prepare Ethel. She
was as delighted as a child. He was amused to see how she boasted to her
friends that she was going to England; it was a step up for her; she
would be quite English there; and she was excited at the interest the
approaching departure gave her. When at length a cable came offering him
a post in a bank in Kincardineshire she was beside herself with joy.

When, their long journey over, they were settled in the little Scots
town with its granite houses Lawson realised how much it meant to him to
live once more among his own people. He looked back on the three years
he had spent in Apia as exile, and returned to the life that seemed the
only normal one with a sigh of relief. It was good to play golf once
more, and to fish--to fish properly, that was poor fun in the Pacific
when you just threw in your line and pulled out one big sluggish fish
after another from the crowded sea--and it was good to see a paper every
day with that day's news, and to meet men and women of your own sort,
people you could talk to; and it was good to eat meat that was not
frozen and to drink milk that was not canned. They were thrown upon
their own resources much more than in the Pacific, and he was glad to
have Ethel exclusively to himself. After two years of marriage he loved
her more devotedly than ever, he could hardly bear her out of his sight,
and the need in him grew urgent for a more intimate communion between
them. But it was strange that after the first excitement of arrival she
seemed to take less interest in the new life than he had expected. She
did not accustom herself to her surroundings. She was a little
lethargic. As the fine autumn darkened into winter she complained of the
cold. She lay half the morning in bed and the rest of the day on a sofa,
reading novels sometimes, but more often doing nothing. She looked
pinched.

"Never mind, darling," he said. "You'll get used to it very soon. And
wait till the summer comes. It can be almost as hot as in Apia."

He felt better and stronger than he had done for years.

The carelessness with which she managed her house had not mattered in
Samoa, but here it was out of place. When anyone came he did not want
the place to look untidy; and, laughing, chaffing Ethel a little, he set
about putting things in order. Ethel watched him indolently. She spent
long hours playing with her son. She talked to him in the baby language
of her own country. To distract her, Lawson bestirred himself to make
friends among the neighbours, and now and then they went to little
parties where the ladies sang drawing-room ballads and the men beamed in
silent good nature. Ethel was shy. She seemed to sit apart. Sometimes
Lawson, seized with a sudden anxiety, would ask her if she was happy.

"Yes, I'm quite happy," she answered.

But her eyes were veiled by some thought he could not guess. She seemed
to withdraw into herself so that he was conscious that he knew no more
of her than when he had first seen her bathing in the pool. He had an
uneasy feeling that she was concealing something from him, and because
he adored her it tortured him.

"You don't regret Apia, do you?" he asked her once.

"Oh, no--I think it's very nice here."

An obscure misgiving drove him to make disparaging remarks about the
island and the people there. She smiled and did not answer. Very rarely
she received a bundle of letters from Samoa and then she went about for
a day or two with a set, pale face.

"Nothing would induce me ever to go back there," he said once. "It's no
place for a white man."

But he grew conscious that sometimes, when he was away, Ethel cried. In
Apia she had been talkative, chatting volubly about all the little
details of their common life, the gossip of the place; but now she
gradually became silent, and, though he increased his efforts to amuse
her, she remained listless. It seemed to him that her recollections of
the old life were drawing her away from him, and he was madly jealous of
the island and of the sea, of Brevald, and all the dark-skinned people
whom he remembered now with horror. When she spoke of Samoa he was
bitter and satirical. One evening late in the spring when the birch
trees were bursting into leaf, coming home from a round of golf, he
found her not as usual lying on the sofa, but at the window, standing.
She had evidently been waiting for his return. She addressed him the
moment he came into the room. To his amazement she spoke in Samoan.

"I can't stand it. I can't live here any more. I hate it. I hate it."

"For God's sake speak in a civilised language," he said irritably.

She went up to him and clasped her arms around his body awkwardly, with
a gesture that had in it something barbaric.

"Let's go away from here. Let's go back to Samoa. If you make me stay
here I shall die. I want to go home."

Her passion broke suddenly and she burst into tears. His anger vanished
and he drew her down on his knees. He explained to her that it was
impossible for him to throw up his job, which after all meant his bread
and butter. His place in Apia was long since filled. He had nothing to
go back to there. He tried to put it to her reasonably, the
inconveniences of life there, the humiliation to which they must be
exposed, and the bitterness it must cause their son.

"Scotland's wonderful for education and that sort of thing. Schools are
good and cheap, and he can go to the University at Aberdeen. I'll make a
real Scot of him."

They had called him Andrew. Lawson wanted him to become a doctor. He
would marry a white woman.

"I'm not ashamed of being half native," Ethel said sullenly.

"Of course not, darling. There's nothing to be ashamed of."

With her soft cheek against his he felt incredibly weak.

"You don't know how much I love you," he said. "I'd give anything in the
world to be able to tell you what I've got in my heart."

He sought her lips.

The summer came. The highland valley was green and fragrant, and the
hills were gay with the heather. One sunny day followed another in that
sheltered spot, and the shade of the birch trees was grateful after the
glare of the high road. Ethel spoke no more of Samoa and Lawson grew
less nervous. He thought that she was resigned to her surroundings, and
he felt that his love for her was so passionate that it could leave no
room in her heart for any longing. One day the local doctor stopped him
in the street.

"I say, Lawson, your missus ought to be careful how she bathes in our
highland streams. It's not like the Pacific, you know."

Lawson was surprised, and had not the presence of mind to conceal the
fact.

"I didn't know she was bathing."

The doctor laughed.

"A good many people have seen her. It makes them talk a bit, you know,
because it seems a rum place to choose, the pool up above the bridge,
and bathing isn't allowed there, but there's no harm in that. I don't
know how she can stand the water."

Lawson knew the pool the doctor spoke of, and suddenly it occurred to
him that in a way it was just like that pool at Upolu where Ethel had
been in the habit of bathing every evening. A clear highland stream ran
down a sinuous course, rocky, splashing gaily, and then formed a deep,
smooth pool, with a little sandy beach. Trees overshadowed it thickly,
not coconut trees, but beeches, and the sun played fitfully through the
leaves on the sparkling water. It gave him a shock. With his imagination
he saw Ethel go there every day and undress on the bank and slip into
the water, cold, colder than that of the pool she loved at home, and for
a moment regain the feeling of the past. He saw her once more as the
strange, wild spirit of the stream, and it seemed to him fantastically
that the running water called her. That afternoon he went along to the
river. He made his way cautiously among the trees and the grassy path
deadened the sound of his steps. Presently he came to a spot from which
he could see the pool. Ethel was sitting on the bank, looking down at
the water. She sat quite still. It seemed as though the water drew her
irresistibly. He wondered what strange thoughts wandered through her
head. At last she got up, and for a minute or two she was hidden from
his gaze; then he saw her again, wearing a Mother Hubbard, and with her
little bare feet she stepped delicately over the mossy bank. She came to
the water's edge, and softly, without a splash, let herself down. She
swam about quietly, and there was something not quite of a human being
in the way she swam. He did not know why it affected him so queerly. He
waited till she clambered out. She stood for a moment with the wet folds
of her dress clinging to her body, so that its shape was outlined, and
then, passing her hands slowly over her breasts, gave a little sigh of
delight. Then she disappeared. Lawson turned away and walked back to the
village. He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was
still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain
unsatisfied.

He did not make any mention of what he had seen. He ignored the incident
completely, but he looked at her curiously, trying to divine what was in
her mind. He redoubled the tenderness with which he used her. He sought
to make her forget the deep longing of her soul by the passion of his
love.

Then one day, when he came home, he was astonished to find her not in
the house.

"Where's Mrs Lawson?" he asked the maid.

"She went into Aberdeen, Sir, with the baby," the maid answered, a
little surprised at the question. "She said she would not be back till
the last train."

"Oh, all right."

He was vexed that Ethel had said nothing to him about the excursion, but
he was not disturbed, since of late she had been in now and again to
Aberdeen, and he was glad that she should look at the shops and perhaps
visit a cinema. He went to meet the last train, but when she did not
come he grew suddenly frightened. He went up to the bedroom and saw at
once that her toilet things were no longer in their place. He opened the
wardrobe and the drawers. They were half empty. She had bolted.

He was seized with a passion of anger. It was too late that night to
telephone to Aberdeen and make enquiries, but he knew already all that
his enquiries might have taught him. With fiendish cunning she had
chosen a time when they were making up their periodical accounts at the
bank and there was no chance that he could follow her. He was imprisoned
by his work. He took up a paper and saw that there was a boat sailing
for Australia next morning. She must be now well on the way to London.
He could not prevent the sobs that were wrung painfully from him.

"I've done everything in the world for her," he cried, "and she had the
heart to treat me like this. How cruel, how monstrously cruel!"

After two days of misery he received a letter from her. It was written
in her school-girl hand. She had always written with difficulty:

_Dear Bertie:_
  _I couldn't stand it any more._
  _I'm going back home. Good-bye._

            _Ethel._

She did not say a single word of regret. She did not even ask him to
come too. Lawson was prostrated. He found out where the ship made its
first stop and, though he knew very well she would not come, sent a
cable beseeching her to return. He waited with pitiful anxiety. He
wanted her to send him just one word of love; she did not even answer.
He passed through one violent phase after another. At one moment he told
himself that he was well rid of her, and at the next that he would force
her to return by withholding money. He was lonely and wretched. He
wanted his boy and he wanted her. He knew that, whatever he pretended to
himself, there was only one thing to do and that was to follow her. He
could never live without her now. All his plans for the future were like
a house of cards and he scattered them with angry impatience. He did not
care whether he threw away his chances for the future, for nothing in
the world mattered but that he should get Ethel back again. As soon as
he could he went into Aberdeen and told the manager of his bank that he
meant to leave at once. The manager remonstrated. The short notice was
inconvenient. Lawson would not listen to reason. He was determined to be
free before the next boat sailed; and it was not until he was on board
of her, having sold everything he possessed, that in some measure he
regained his calm. Till then to those who had come in contact with him
he seemed hardly sane. His last action in England was to cable to Ethel
at Apia that he was joining her.

He sent another cable from Sydney, and when at last with the dawn his
boat crossed the bar at Apia and he saw once more the white houses
straggling along the bay he felt an immense relief. The doctor came on
board and the agent. They were both old acquaintances and he felt kindly
towards their familiar faces. He had a drink or two with them for old
times' sake, and also because he was desperately nervous. He was not
sure if Ethel would be glad to see him. When he got into the launch and
approached the wharf he scanned anxiously the little crowd that waited.
She was not there and his heart sank, but then he saw Brevald, in his
old blue clothes, and his heart warmed towards him.

"Where's Ethel?" he said, as he jumped on shore.

"She's down at the bungalow. She's living with us."

Lawson was dismayed, but he put on a jovial air.

"Well, have you got room for me? I daresay it'll take a week or two to
fix ourselves up."

"Oh, yes, I guess we can make room for you."

After passing through the custom-house they went to the hotel and there
Lawson was greeted by several of his old friends. There were a good many
rounds of drinks before it seemed possible to get away and when they did
go out at last to Brevald's house they were both rather gay. He clasped
Ethel in his arms. He had forgotten all his bitter thoughts in the joy
of beholding her once more. His mother-in-law was pleased to see him,
and so was the old, wrinkled beldame, her mother; natives and
half-castes came in, and they all sat round, beaming on him. Brevald had
a bottle of whisky and everyone who came was given a nip. Lawson sat
with his little dark-skinned boy on his knees, they had taken his
English clothes off him and he was stark, with Ethel by his side in a
Mother Hubbard. He felt like a returning prodigal. In the afternoon he
went down to the hotel again and when he got back he was more than gay,
he was drunk. Ethel and her mother knew that white men got drunk now and
then, it was what you expected of them, and they laughed good-naturedly
as they helped him to bed.

But in a day or two he set about looking for a job. He knew that he
could not hope for such a position as that which he had thrown away to
go to England; but with his training he could not fail to be useful to
one of the trading firms, and perhaps in the end he would not lose by
the change.

"After all, you can't make money in a bank," he said. "Trade's the
thing."

He had hopes that he would soon make himself so indispensable that he
would get someone to take him into partnership, and there was no reason
why in a few years he should not be a rich man.

"As soon as I'm fixed up we'll find ourselves a shack," he told Ethel.
"We can't go on living here."

Brevald's bungalow was so small that they were all piled on one another,
and there was no chance of ever being alone. There was neither peace nor
privacy.

"Well, there's no hurry. We shall be all right here till we find just
what we want."

It took him a week to get settled and then he entered the firm of a man
called Bain. But when he talked to Ethel about moving she said she
wanted to stay where she was till her baby was born, for she was
expecting another child. Lawson tried to argue with her.

"If you don't like it," she said, "go and live at the hotel."

He grew suddenly pale.

"Ethel, how can you suggest that!"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"What's the good of having a house of our own when we can live here."

He yielded.

When Lawson, after his work, went back to the bungalow he found it
crowded with natives. They lay about smoking, sleeping, drinking _kava_;
and they talked incessantly. The place was grubby and untidy. His child
crawled about, playing with native children, and it heard nothing spoken
but Samoan. He fell into the habit of dropping into the hotel on his
way home to have a few cocktails, for he could only face the evening and
the crowd of friendly natives when he was fortified with liquor. And all
the time, though he loved her more passionately than ever, he felt that
Ethel was slipping away from him. When the baby was born he suggested
that they should get into a house of their own, but Ethel refused. Her
stay in Scotland seemed to have thrown her back on her own people, now
that she was once more among them, with a passionate zest, and she
turned to her native ways with abandon. Lawson began to drink more.
Every Saturday night he went to the English Club and got blind drunk.

He had the peculiarity that as he grew drunk he grew quarrelsome and
once he had a violent dispute with Bain, his employer. Bain dismissed
him, and he had to look out for another job. He was idle for two or
three weeks and during these, sooner than sit in the bungalow, he
lounged about in the hotel or at the English Club, and drank. It was
more out of pity than anything else that Miller, the German-American,
took him into his office; but he was a business man, and though Lawson's
financial skill made him valuable, the circumstances were such that he
could hardly refuse a smaller salary than he had had before, and Miller
did not hesitate to offer it to him. Ethel and Brevald blamed him for
taking it, since Pedersen, the half-caste, offered him more. But he
resented bitterly the thought of being under the orders of a half-caste.
When Ethel nagged him he burst out furiously:

"I'll see myself dead before I work for a nigger."

"You may have to," she said.

And in six months he found himself forced to this final humiliation. The
passion for liquor had been gaining on him, he was often heavy with
drink, and he did his work badly. Miller warned him once or twice and
Lawson was not the man to accept remonstrance easily. One day in the
midst of an altercation he put on his hat and walked out. But by now his
reputation was well known and he could find no one to engage him. For a
while he idled, and then he had an attack of _delirium tremens_. When he
recovered, shameful and weak, he could no longer resist the constant
pressure and he went to Pedersen and asked him for a job. Pedersen was
glad to have a white man in his store and Lawson's skill at figures made
him useful.

From that time his degeneration was rapid. The white people gave him the
cold shoulder. They were only prevented from cutting him completely by
disdainful pity and by a certain dread of his angry violence when he was
drunk. He became extremely susceptible and was always on the lookout for
affront.

He lived entirely among the natives and half-castes, but he had no
longer the prestige of the white man. They felt his loathing for them
and they resented his attitude of superiority. He was one of themselves
now and they did not see why he should put on airs. Brevald, who had
been ingratiating and obsequious, now treated him with contempt. Ethel
had made a bad bargain. There were disgraceful scenes and once or twice
the two men came to blows. When there was a quarrel Ethel took the part
of her family. They found he was better drunk than sober, for when he
was drunk he would lie on the bed or on the floor, sleeping heavily.

Then he became aware that something was being hidden from him.

When he got back to the bungalow for the wretched, half native supper
which was his evening meal, often Ethel was not in. If he asked where
she was Brevald told him she had gone to spend the evening with one or
other of her friends. Once he followed her to the house Brevald had
mentioned and found she was not there. On her return he asked her where
she had been and she told him her father had made a mistake; she had
been to so-and-so's. But he knew that she was lying. She was in her best
clothes; her eyes were shining, and she looked lovely.

"Don't try any monkey tricks on me, my girl," he said, "or I'll break
every bone in your body."

"You drunken beast," she said, scornfully.

He fancied that Mrs Brevald and the old grandmother looked at him
maliciously and he ascribed Brevald's good-humour with him, so unusual
those days, to his satisfaction at having something up his sleeve
against his son-in-law. And then, his suspicions aroused, he imagined
that the white men gave him curious glances. When he came into the
lounge of the hotel the sudden silence which fell upon the company
convinced him that he had been the subject of the conversation.
Something was going on and everyone knew it but himself. He was seized
with furious jealousy. He believed that Ethel was carrying on with one
of the white men, and he looked at one after the other with scrutinising
eyes; but there was nothing to give him even a hint. He was helpless.
Because he could find no one on whom definitely to fix his suspicions,
he went about like a raving maniac, looking for someone on whom to vent
his wrath. Chance caused him in the end to hit upon the man who of all
others least deserved to suffer from his violence. One afternoon, when
he was sitting in the hotel by himself, moodily, Chaplin came in and sat
down beside him. Perhaps Chaplin was the only man on the island who had
any sympathy for him. They ordered drinks and chatted a few minutes
about the races that were shortly to be run. Then Chaplain said:

"I guess we shall all have to fork out money for new dresses."

Lawson sniggered. Since Mrs Chaplin held the purse-strings if she wanted
a new frock for the occasion she would certainly not ask her husband for
the money.

"How is your missus?" asked Chaplin, desiring to be friendly.

"What the hell's that got to do with you?" said Lawson, knitting his
dark brows.

"I was only asking a civil question."

"Well, keep your civil questions to yourself."

Chaplin was not a patient man; his long residence in the tropics, the
whisky bottle, and his domestic affairs had given him a temper hardly
more under control than Lawson's.

"Look here, my boy, when you're in my hotel you behave like a gentleman
or you'll find yourself in the street before you can say knife."

Lawson's lowering face grew dark and red.

"Let me just tell you once for all and you can pass it on to the
others," he said, panting with rage. "If any of you fellows come messing
round with my wife he'd better look out."

"Who do you think wants to mess around with your wife?"

"I'm not such a fool as you think. I can see a stone wall in front of me
as well as most men, and I warn you straight, that's all. I'm not going
to put up with any hanky-panky, not on your life."

"Look here, you'd better clear out of here, and come back when you're
sober."

"I shall clear out when I choose and not a minute before," said Lawson.

It was an unfortunate boast, for Chaplin in the course of his experience
as a hotel-keeper had acquired a peculiar skill in dealing with
gentlemen whose room he preferred to their company, and the words were
hardly out of Lawson's mouth before he found himself caught by the
collar and arm and hustled not without force into the street. He
stumbled down the steps into the blinding glare of the sun.

It was in consequence of this that he had his first violent scene with
Ethel. Smarting with humiliation and unwilling to go back to the hotel,
he went home that afternoon earlier than usual. He found Ethel dressing
to go out. As a rule she lay about in a Mother Hubbard, barefoot, with
a flower in her dark hair; but now, in white silk stockings and
high-heeled shoes, she was doing up a pink muslin dress which was the
newest she had.

"You're making yourself very smart," he said. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the Crossleys."

"I'll come with you."

"Why?" she asked coolly.

"I don't want you to gad about by yourself all the time."

"You're not asked."

"I don't care a damn about that. You're not going without me."

"You'd better lie down till I'm ready."

She thought he was drunk and if he once settled himself on the bed would
quickly drop off to sleep. He sat down on a chair and began to smoke a
cigarette. She watched him with increasing irritation: When she was
ready he got up. It happened by an unusual chance that there was no one
in the bungalow. Brevald was working on the plantation and his wife had
gone into Apia. Ethel faced him.

"I'm not going with you. You're drunk."

"That's a lie. You're not going without me."

She shrugged her shoulders and tried to pass him, but he caught her by
the arm and held her.

"Let me go, you devil," she said, breaking into Samoan.

"Why do you want to go without me? Haven't I told you I'm not going to
put up with any monkey tricks?"

She clenched her fist and hit him in the face. He lost all control of
himself. All his love, all his hatred, welled up in him and he was
beside himself.

"I'll teach you," he shouted. "I'll teach you."

He seized a riding-whip which happened to be under his hand, and struck
her with it. She screamed, and the scream maddened him so that he went
on striking her, again and again. Her shrieks rang through the bungalow
and he cursed her as he hit. Then he flung her on the bed. She lay there
sobbing with pain and terror. He threw the whip away from him and rushed
out of the room. Ethel heard him go and she stopped crying. She looked
round cautiously, then she raised herself. She was sore, but she had not
been badly hurt, and she looked at her dress to see if it was damaged.
The native women are not unused to blows. What he had done did not
outrage her. When she looked at herself in the glass and arranged her
hair, her eyes were shining. There was a strange look in them. Perhaps
then she was nearer loving him than she had ever been before.

But Lawson, driven forth blindly, stumbled through the plantation and
suddenly exhausted, weak as a child, flung himself on the ground at the
foot of a tree. He was miserable and ashamed. He thought of Ethel, and
in the yielding tenderness of his love all his bones seemed to grow soft
within him. He thought of the past, and of his hopes, and he was aghast
at what he had done. He wanted her more than ever. He wanted to take her
in his arms. He must go to her at once. He got up. He was so weak that
he staggered as he walked. He went into the house and she was sitting in
their cramped bedroom in front of her looking-glass.

"Oh, Ethel, forgive me. I'm so awfully ashamed of myself. I didn't know
what I was doing."

He fell on his knees before her and timidly stroked the skirt of her
dress.

"I can't bear to think of what I did. It's awful. I think I was mad.
There's no one in the world I love as I love you. I'd do anything to
save you from pain and I've hurt you. I can never forgive myself, but
for God's sake say you forgive me."

He heard her shrieks still. It was unendurable. She looked at him
silently. He tried to take her hands and the tears streamed from his
eyes. In his humiliation he hid his face in her lap and his frail body
shook with sobs. An expression of utter contempt came over her face. She
had the native woman's disdain of a man who abased himself before a
woman. A weak creature! And for a moment she had been on the point of
thinking there was something in him. He grovelled at her feet like a
cur. She gave him a little scornful kick.

"Get out," she said. "I hate you."

He tried to hold her, but she pushed him aside. She stood up. She began
to take off her dress. She kicked off her shoes and slid the stockings
off her feet, then she slipped on her old Mother Hubbard.

"Where are you going?"

"What's that got to do with you? I'm going down to the pool."

"Let me come too," he said.

He asked as though he were a child.

"Can't you even leave me that?"

He hid his face in his hands, crying miserably, while she, her eyes hard
and cold, stepped past him and went out.

From that time she entirely despised him; and though, herded together in
the small bungalow, Lawson and Ethel with her two children, Brevald, his
wife and her mother, and the vague relations and hangers-on who were
always in and about, they had to live cheek by jowl, Lawson, ceasing to
be of any account, was hardly noticed. He left in the morning after
breakfast, and came back only to have supper. He gave up the struggle,
and when for want of money he could not go to the English Club he spent
the evening playing hearts with old Brevald and the natives. Except when
he was drunk he was cowed and listless. Ethel treated him like a dog.
She submitted at times to his fits of wild passion, and she was
frightened by the gusts of hatred with which they were followed; but
when, afterwards, he was cringing and lachrymose she had such a contempt
for him that she could have spat in his face. Sometimes he was violent,
but now she was prepared for him, and when he hit her she kicked and
scratched and bit. They had horrible battles in which he had not always
the best of it. Very soon it was known all over Apia that they got on
badly. There was little sympathy for Lawson, and at the hotel the
general surprise was that old Brevald did not kick him out of the
place.

"Brevald's a pretty ugly customer," said one of the men. "I shouldn't be
surprised if he put a bullet into Lawson's carcass one of these days."

Ethel still went in the evenings to bathe in the silent pool. It seemed
to have an attraction for her that was not quite human, just that
attraction you might imagine that a mermaid who had won a soul would
have for the cool salt waves of the sea; and sometimes Lawson went also.
I do not know what urged him to go, for Ethel was obviously irritated by
his presence; perhaps it was because in that spot he hoped to regain the
clean rapture which had filled his heart when first he saw her; perhaps
only, with the madness of those who love them that love them not, from
the feeling that his obstinacy could force love. One day he strolled
down there with a feeling that was rare with him now. He felt suddenly
at peace with the world. The evening was drawing in and the dusk seemed
to cling to the leaves of the coconut trees like a little thin cloud. A
faint breeze stirred them noiselessly. A crescent moon hung just over
their tops. He made his way to the bank. He saw Ethel in the water
floating on her back. Her hair streamed out all round her, and she was
holding in her hand a large hibiscus. He stopped a moment to admire her;
she was like Ophelia.

"Hulloa, Ethel," he cried joyfully.

She made a sudden movement and dropped the red flower. It floated idly
away. She swam a stroke or two till she knew there was ground within her
depth and then stood up.

"Go away," she said. "Go away."

He laughed.

"Don't be selfish. There's plenty of room for both of us."

"Why can't you leave me alone? I want to be by myself."

"Hang it all, I want to bathe," he answered, good-humouredly.

"Go down to the bridge. I don't want you here."

"I'm sorry for that," he said, smiling still.

He was not in the least angry, and he hardly noticed that she was in a
passion. He began to take off his coat.

"Go away," she shrieked. "I won't have you here. Can't you even leave me
this? Go away."

"Don't be silly, darling."

She bent down and picked up a sharp stone and flung it quickly at him.
He had no time to duck. It hit him on the temple. With a cry he put his
hand to his head and when he took it away it was wet with blood. Ethel
stood still, panting with rage. He turned very pale, and without a word,
taking up his coat, went away. Ethel let herself fall back into the
water and the stream carried her slowly down to the ford.

The stone had made a jagged wound and for some days Lawson went about
with a bandaged head. He had invented a likely story to account for the
accident when the fellows at the club asked him about it, but he had no
occasion to use it. No one referred to the matter. He saw them cast
surreptitious glances at his head, but not a word was said. The silence
could only mean that they knew how he came by his wound. He was certain
now that Ethel had a lover, and they all knew who it was. But there was
not the smallest indication to guide him. He never saw Ethel with
anyone; no one showed a wish to be with her, or treated him in a manner
that seemed strange. Wild rage seized him, and having no one to vent it
on he drank more and more heavily. A little while before I came to the
island he had had another attack of _delirium tremens_.

I met Ethel at the house of a man called Caster, who lived two or three
miles from Apia with a native wife. I had been playing tennis with him
and when we were tired he suggested a cup of tea. We went into the house
and in the untidy living-room found Ethel chatting with Mrs Caster.

"Hulloa, Ethel," he said, "I didn't know you were here."

I could not help looking at her with curiosity. I tried to see what
there was in her to have excited in Lawson such a devastating passion.
But who can explain these things? It was true that she was lovely; she
reminded one of the red hibiscus, the common flower of the hedgerow in
Samoa, with its grace and its languor and its passion; but what
surprised me most, taking into consideration the story I knew even then
a good deal of, was her freshness and simplicity. She was quiet and a
little shy. There was nothing coarse or loud about her; she had not the
exuberance common to the half-caste; and it was almost impossible to
believe that she could be the virago that the horrible scenes between
husband and wife, which were now common knowledge, indicated. In her
pretty pink frock and high-heeled shoes she looked quite European. You
could hardly have guessed at that dark background of native life in
which she felt herself so much more at home. I did not imagine that she
was at all intelligent, and I should not have been surprised if a man,
after living with her for some time, had found the passion which had
drawn him to her sink into boredom. It suggested itself to me that in
her elusiveness, like a thought that presents itself to consciousness
and vanishes before it can be captured by words, lay her peculiar charm;
but perhaps that was merely fancy, and if I had known nothing about her
I should have seen in her only a pretty little half-caste like another.

She talked to me of the various things which they talk of to the
stranger in Samoa, of the journey, and whether I had slid down the water
rock at Papaseea, and if I meant to stay in a native village. She talked
to me of Scotland, and perhaps I noticed in her a tendency to enlarge on
the sumptuousness of her establishment there. She asked me naïvely if I
knew Mrs This and Mrs That, with whom she had been acquainted when she
lived in the north.

Then Miller, the fat German-American, came in. He shook hands all round
very cordially and sat down, asking in his loud, cheerful voice for a
whisky and soda. He was very fat and he sweated profusely. He took off
his gold-rimmed spectacles and wiped them; you saw then that his little
eyes, benevolent behind the large round glasses, were shrewd and
cunning; the party had been somewhat dull till he came, but he was a
good story-teller and a jovial fellow. Soon he had the two women, Ethel
and my friend's wife, laughing delightedly at his sallies. He had a
reputation on the island of a lady's man, and you could see how this
fat, gross fellow, old and ugly, had yet the possibility of fascination.
His humour was on a level with the understanding of his company, an
affair of vitality and assurance, and his Western accent gave a peculiar
point to what he said. At last he turned to me:

"Well, if we want to get back for dinner we'd better be getting. I'll
take you along in my machine if you like."

I thanked him and got up. He shook hands with the others, went out of
the room, massive and strong in his walk, and climbed into his car.

"Pretty little thing, Lawson's wife," I said, as we drove along.

"Too bad the way he treats her. Knocks her about. Gets my dander up when
I hear of a man hitting a woman."

We went on a little. Then he said:

"He was a darned fool to marry her. I said so at the time. If he hadn't,
he'd have had the whip hand over her. He's yaller, that's what he is,
yaller."

The year was drawing to its end and the time approached when I was to
leave Samoa. My boat was scheduled to sail for Sydney on the fourth of
January. Christmas Day had been celebrated at the hotel with suitable
ceremonies, but it was looked upon as no more than a rehearsal for New
Year, and the men who were accustomed to foregather in the lounge
determined on New Year's Eve to make a night of it. There was an
uproarious dinner, after which the party sauntered down to the English
Club, a simple little frame house, to play pool. There was a great deal
of talking, laughing, and betting, but some very poor play, except on
the part of Miller, who had drunk as much as any of them, all far
younger than he, but had kept unimpaired the keenness of his eye and the
sureness of his hand. He pocketed the young men's money with humour and
urbanity. After an hour of this I grew tired and went out. I crossed the
road and came on to the beach. Three coconut trees grew there, like
three moon maidens waiting for their lovers to ride out of the sea, and
I sat at the foot of one of them, watching the lagoon and the nightly
assemblage of the stars.

I do not know where Lawson had been during the evening, but between ten
and eleven he came along to the club. He shambled down the dusty, empty
road, feeling dull and bored, and when he reached the club, before going
into the billiard-room, went into the bar to have a drink by himself. He
had a shyness now about joining the company of white men when there were
a lot of them together and needed a stiff dose of whisky to give him
confidence. He was standing with the glass in his hand when Miller came
in to him. He was in his shirt sleeves and still held his cue. He gave
the bar-tender a glance.

"Get out, Jack," he said.

The bar-tender, a native in a white jacket and a red _lava-lava_,
without a word slid out of the small room.

"Look here, I've been wanting to have a few words with you, Lawson,"
said the big American.

"Well, that's one of the few things you can have free, gratis, and for
nothing on this damned island."

Miller fixed his gold spectacles more firmly on his nose and held Lawson
with his cold determined eyes.

"See here, young fellow, I understand you've been knocking Mrs Lawson
about again. I'm not going to stand for that. If you don't stop it right
now I'll break every bone of your dirty little body."

Then Lawson knew what he had been trying to find out so long. It was
Miller. The appearance of the man, fat, bald-headed, with his round bare
face and double chin and the gold spectacles, his age, his benign,
shrewd look, like that of a renegade priest, and the thought of Ethel,
so slim and virginal, filled him with a sudden horror. Whatever his
faults Lawson was no coward, and without a word he hit out violently at
Miller. Miller quickly warded the blow with the hand that held the cue,
and then with a great swing of his right arm brought his fist down on
Lawson's ear. Lawson was four inches shorter than the American and he
was slightly built, frail and weakened not only by illness and the
enervating tropics, but by drink. He fell like a log and lay half dazed
at the foot of the bar. Miller took off his spectacles and wiped them
with his handkerchief.

"I guess you know what to expect now. You've had your warning and you'd
better take it."

He took up his cue and went back into the billiard-room. There was so
much noise there that no one knew what had happened. Lawson picked
himself up. He put his hand to his ear, which was singing still. Then he
slunk out of the club.

I saw a man cross the road, a patch of white against the darkness of the
night, but did not know who it was. He came down to the beach, passed me
sitting at the foot of the tree, and looked down. I saw then that it was
Lawson, but since he was doubtless drunk, did not speak. He went on,
walked irresolutely two or three steps, and turned back. He came up to
me and bending down stared in my face.

"I thought it was you," he said.

He sat down and took out his pipe.

"It was hot and noisy in the club," I volunteered.

"Why are you sitting here?"

"I was waiting about for the midnight mass at the Cathedral."

"If you like I'll come with you."

Lawson was quite sober. We sat for a while smoking in silence. Now and
then in the lagoon was the splash of some big fish, and a little way out
towards the opening in the reef was the light of a schooner.

"You're sailing next week, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes."

"It would be jolly to go home once more. But I could never stand it now.
The cold, you know."

"It's odd to think that in England now they're shivering round the
fire," I said.

There was not even a breath of wind. The balminess of the night was like
a spell. I wore nothing but a thin shirt and a suit of ducks. I enjoyed
the exquisite languor of the night, and stretched my limbs voluptuously.

"This isn't the sort of New Year's Eve that persuades one to make good
resolutions for the future," I smiled.

He made no answer, but I do not know what train of thought my casual
remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke
in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated,
and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar
intonations which for some time had wounded my ears.

"I've made an awful hash of things. That's obvious, isn't it? I'm right
down at the bottom of the pit and there's no getting out for me. '_Black
as the pit from pole to pole._'" I felt him smile as he made the
quotation. "And the strange thing is that I don't see how I went wrong."

I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than
when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul. Then you see that
no one is so trivial or debased but that in him is a spark of something
to excite compassion.

"It wouldn't be so rotten if I could see that it was all my own fault.
It's true I drink, but I shouldn't have taken to that if things had gone
differently. I wasn't really fond of liquor. I suppose I ought not to
have married Ethel. If I'd kept her it would be all right. But I did
love her so."

His voice faltered.

"She's not a bad lot, you know, not really. It's just rotten luck. We
might have been as happy as lords. When she bolted I suppose I ought to
have let her go, but I couldn't do that--I was dead stuck on her then;
and there was the kid."

"Are you fond of the kid?" I asked.

"I was. There are two, you know. But they don't mean so much to me now.
You'd take them for natives anywhere. I have to talk to them in Samoan."

"Is it too late for you to start fresh? Couldn't you make a dash for it
and leave the place?"

"I haven't the strength. I'm done for."

"Are you still in love with your wife?"

"Not now. Not now." He repeated the two words with a kind of horror in
his voice. "I haven't even got that now. I'm down and out."

The bells of the Cathedral were ringing.

"If you really want to come to the midnight mass we'd better go along,"
I said.

"Come on."

We got up and walked along the road. The Cathedral, all white, stood
facing the sea not without impressiveness, and beside it the Protestant
chapels had the look of meeting-houses. In the road were two or three
cars, and a great number of traps, and traps were put up against the
walls at the side. People had come from all parts of the island for the
service, and through the great open doors we saw that the place was
crowded. The high altar was all ablaze with light. There were a few
whites and a good many half-castes, but the great majority were natives.
All the men wore trousers, for the Church has decided that the
_lava-lava_ is indecent. We found chairs at the back, near the open
door, and sat down. Presently, following Lawson's eyes, I saw Ethel come
in with a party of half-castes. They were all very much dressed up, the
men in high, stiff collars and shiny boots, the women in large, gay
hats. Ethel nodded and smiled to her friends as she passed up the aisle.
The service began.

When it was over Lawson and I stood on one side for a while to watch the
crowd stream out, then he held out his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "I hope you'll have a pleasant journey home."

"Oh, but I shall see you before I go."

He sniggered.

"The question is if you'll see me drunk or sober."

He turned and left me. I had a recollection of those very large black
eyes, shining wildly under the shaggy brows. I paused irresolutely. I
did not feel sleepy and I thought I would at all events go along to the
club for an hour before turning in. When I got there I found the
billiard-room empty, but half-a-dozen men were sitting round a table in
the lounge, playing poker. Miller looked up as I came in.

"Sit down and take a hand," he said.

"All right."

I bought some chips and began to play. Of course it is the most
fascinating game in the world and my hour lengthened out to two, and
then to three. The native bar-tender, cheery and wide-awake
notwithstanding the time, was at our elbow to supply us with drinks and
from somewhere or other he produced a ham and a loaf of bread. We played
on. Most of the party had drunk more than was good for them and the play
was high and reckless. I played modestly, neither wishing to win nor
anxious to lose, but I watched Miller with a fascinated interest. He
drank glass for glass with the rest of the company, but remained cool
and level-headed. His pile of chips increased in size and he had a neat
little paper in front of him on which he had marked various sums lent to
players in distress. He beamed amiably at the young men whose money he
was taking. He kept up interminably his stream of jest and anecdote, but
he never missed a draw, he never let an expression of the face pass him.
At last the dawn crept into the windows, gently, with a sort of
deprecating shyness, as though it had no business there, and then it was
day.

"Well," said Miller, "I reckon we've seen the old year out in style. Now
let's have a round of jackpots and me for my mosquito net. I'm fifty,
remember, I can't keep these late hours."

The morning was beautiful and fresh when we stood on the verandah, and
the lagoon was like a sheet of multicoloured glass. Someone suggested a
dip before going to bed, but none cared to bathe in the lagoon, sticky
and treacherous to the feet. Miller had his car at the door and he
offered to take us down to the pool. We jumped in and drove along the
deserted road. When we reached the pool it seemed as though the day had
hardly risen there yet. Under the trees the water was all in shadow and
the night had the effect of lurking still. We were in great spirits. We
had no towels or any costume and in my prudence I wondered how we were
going to dry ourselves. None of us had much on and it did not take us
long to snatch off our clothes. Nelson, the little supercargo, was
stripped first.

"I'm going down to the bottom," he said.

He dived and in a moment another man dived too, but shallow, and was out
of the water before him. Then Nelson came up and scrambled to the side.

"I say, get me out," he said.

"What's up?"

Something was evidently the matter. His face was terrified. Two fellows
gave him their hands and he slithered up.

"I say, there's a man down there."

"Don't be a fool. You're drunk."

"Well, if there isn't I'm in for D. T's. But I tell you there's a man
down there. It just scared me out of my wits."

Miller looked at him for a moment. The little man was all white. He was
actually trembling.

"Come on, Caster," said Miller to the big Australian, "we'd better go
down and see."

"He was standing up," said Nelson, "all dressed. I saw him. He tried to
catch hold of me."

"Hold your row," said Miller. "Are you ready?"

They dived in. We waited on the bank, silent. It really seemed as though
they were under water longer than any men could breathe. Then Caster
came up, and immediately after him, red in the face as though he were
going to have a fit, Miller. They were pulling something behind them.
Another man jumped in to help them, and the three together dragged their
burden to the side. They shoved it up. Then we saw that it was Lawson,
with a great stone tied up in his coat and bound to his feet.

"He was set on making a good job of it," said Miller, as he wiped the
water from his shortsighted eyes.




VI

_Honolulu_


The wise traveller travels only in imagination. An old Frenchman (he was
really a Savoyard) once wrote a book called _Voyage autour de ma
Chambre_. I have not read it and do not even know what it is about, but
the title stimulates my fancy. In such a journey I could circumnavigate
the globe. An eikon by the chimneypiece can take me to Russia with its
great forests of birch and its white, domed churches. The Volga is wide,
and at the end of a straggling village, in the wine-shop, bearded men in
rough sheepskin coats sit drinking. I stand on the little hill from
which Napoleon first saw Moscow and I look upon the vastness of the
city. I will go down and see the people whom I know more intimately than
so many of my friends, Alyosha, and Vronsky, and a dozen more. But my
eyes fall on a piece of porcelain and I smell the acrid odours of China.
I am borne in a chair along a narrow causeway between the padi fields,
or else I skirt a tree-clad mountain. My bearers chat gaily as they
trudge along in the bright morning and every now and then, distant and
mysterious, I hear the deep sound of a monastery bell. In the streets of
Peking there is a motley crowd and it scatters to allow passage to a
string of camels, stepping delicately, that bring skins and strange
drugs from the stony deserts of Mongolia. In England, in London, there
are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and
the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out
of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of
a coral island. The sand is silvery and when you walk along in the
sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it.
Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to-do, and the surf beats
ceaselessly against the reef. Those are the best journeys, the journeys
that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your
illusions.

But there are people who take salt in their coffee. They say it gives it
a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way
there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the
inevitable disillusionment which you must experience on seeing them
gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and
you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that
beauty can give you. It is like the weakness in the character of a great
man which may make him less admirable but certainly makes him more
interesting.

Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu. It is so far away from Europe, it
is reached after so long a journey from San Francisco, so strange and so
charming associations are attached to the name, that at first I could
hardly believe my eyes. I do not know that I had formed in my mind any
very exact picture of what I expected, but what I found caused me a
great surprise. It is a typical western city. Shacks are cheek by jowl
with stone mansions; dilapidated frame houses stand next door to smart
stores with plate glass windows; electric cars rumble noisily along the
streets; and motors, Fords, Buicks, Packards, line the pavement. The
shops are filled with all the necessities of American civilisation.
Every third house is a bank and every fifth the agency of a steamship
company.

Along the streets crowd an unimaginable assortment of people. The
Americans, ignoring the climate, wear black coats and high, starched
collars, straw hats, soft hats, and bowlers. The Kanakas, pale brown,
with crisp hair, have nothing on but a shirt and a pair of trousers; but
the half-breeds are very smart with flaring ties and patent-leather
boots. The Japanese, with their obsequious smile, are neat and trim in
white duck, while their women walk a step or two behind them, in native
dress, with a baby on their backs. The Japanese children, in bright
coloured frocks, their little heads shaven, look like quaint dolls. Then
there are the Chinese. The men, fat and prosperous, wear their American
clothes oddly, but the women are enchanting with their tightly-dressed
black hair, so neat that you feel it can never be disarranged, and they
are very clean in their tunics and trousers, white, or powder blue, or
black. Lastly there are the Filipinos, the men in huge straw hats, the
women in bright yellow muslin with great puffed sleeves.

It is the meeting-place of East and West. The very new rubs shoulders
with the immeasurably old. And if you have not found the romance you
expected you have come upon something singularly intriguing. All these
strange people live close to each other, with different languages and
different thoughts; they believe in different gods and they have
different values; two passions alone they share, love and hunger. And
somehow as you watch them you have an impression of extraordinary
vitality. Though the air is so soft and the sky so blue, you have, I
know not why, a feeling of something hotly passionate that beats like a
throbbing pulse through the crowd. Though the native policeman at the
corner, standing on a platform, with a white club to direct the traffic,
gives the scene an air of respectability, you cannot but feel that it is
a respectability only of the surface; a little below there is darkness
and mystery. It gives you just that thrill, with a little catch at the
heart, that you have when at night in the forest the silence trembles on
a sudden with the low, insistent beating of a drum. You are all
expectant of I know not what.

If I have dwelt on the incongruity of Honolulu, it is because just this,
to my mind, gives its point to the story I want to tell. It is a story
of primitive superstition, and it startles me that anything of the sort
should survive in a civilisation which, if not very distinguished, is
certainly very elaborate. I cannot get over the fact that such
incredible things should happen, or at least be thought to happen, right
in the middle, so to speak, of telephones, tram-cars, and daily papers.
And the friend who showed me Honolulu had the same incongruity which I
felt from the beginning was its most striking characteristic.

He was an American named Winter and I had brought a letter of
introduction to him from an acquaintance in New York. He was a man
between forty and fifty, with scanty black hair, grey at the temples,
and a sharp-featured, thin face. His eyes had a twinkle in them and his
large horn spectacles gave him a demureness which was not a little
diverting. He was tall rather than otherwise and very spare. He was born
in Honolulu and his father had a large store which sold hosiery and all
such goods, from tennis racquets to tarpaulins, as a man of fashion
could require. It was a prosperous business and I could well understand
the indignation of Winter _père_ when his son, refusing to go into it,
had announced his determination to be an actor. My friend spent twenty
years on the stage, sometimes in New York, but more often on the road,
for his gifts were small; but at last, being no fool, he came to the
conclusion that it was better to sell sock-suspenders in Honolulu than
to play small parts in Cleveland, Ohio. He left the stage and went into
the business. I think after the hazardous existence he had lived so
long, he thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of driving a large car and living
in a beautiful house near the golf-course, and I am quite sure, since he
was a man of parts, he managed the business competently. But he could
not bring himself entirely to break his connection with the arts and
since he might no longer act he began to paint. He took me to his studio
and showed me his work. It was not at all bad, but not what I should
have expected from him. He painted nothing but still life, very small
pictures, perhaps eight by ten; and he painted very delicately, with the
utmost finish. He had evidently a passion for detail. His fruit pieces
reminded you of the fruit in a picture by Ghirlandajo. While you
marvelled a little at his patience, you could not help being impressed
by his dexterity. I imagine that he failed as an actor because his
effects, carefully studied, were neither bold nor broad enough to get
across the footlights.

I was entertained by the proprietary, yet ironical air with which he
showed me the city. He thought in his heart that there was none in the
United States to equal it, but he saw quite clearly that his attitude
was comic. He drove me round to the various buildings and swelled with
satisfaction when I expressed a proper admiration for their
architecture. He showed me the houses of rich men.

"That's the Stubbs' house," he said. "It cost a hundred thousand dollars
to build. The Stubbs are one of our best families. Old man Stubbs came
here as a missionary more than seventy years ago."

He hesitated a little and looked at me with twinkling eyes through his
big round spectacles.

"All our best families are missionary families," he said. "You're not
very much in Honolulu unless your father or your grandfather converted
the heathen."

"Is that so?"

"Do you know your Bible?"

"Fairly," I answered.

"There is a text which says: The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the
children's teeth are set on edge. I guess it runs differently in
Honolulu. The fathers brought Christianity to the Kanaka and the
children jumped his land."

"Heaven helps those who help themselves," I murmured.

"It surely does. By the time the natives of this island had embraced
Christianity they had nothing else they could afford to embrace. The
kings gave the missionaries land as a mark of esteem, and the
missionaries bought land by way of laying up treasure in heaven. It
surely was a good investment. One missionary left the business--I think
one may call it a business without offence--and became a land agent, but
that is an exception. Mostly it was their sons who looked after the
commercial side of the concern. Oh, it's a fine thing to have a father
who came here fifty years ago to spread the faith."

But he looked at his watch.

"Gee, it's stopped. That means it's time to have a cocktail."

We sped along an excellent road, bordered with red hibiscus, and came
back into the town.

"Have you been to the Union Saloon?"

"Not yet."

"We'll go there."

I knew it was the most famous spot in Honolulu and I entered it with a
lively curiosity. You get to it by a narrow passage from King Street,
and in the passage are offices, so that thirsty souls may be supposed
bound for one of these just as well as for the saloon. It is a large
square room, with three entrances, and opposite the bar, which runs the
length of it, two corners have been partitioned off into little
cubicles. Legend states that they were built so that King Kalakaua might
drink there without being seen by his subjects, and it is pleasant to
think that in one or other of these he may have sat over his bottle, a
coal-black potentate, with Robert Louis Stevenson. There is a portrait
of him, in oils, in a rich gold frame; but there are also two prints of
Queen Victoria. On the walls, besides, are old line engravings of the
eighteenth century, one of which, and heaven knows how it got there, is
after a theatrical picture by De Wilde; and there are oleographs from
the Christmas supplements of the _Graphic_ and the _Illustrated London
News_ of twenty years ago. Then there are advertisements of whisky, gin,
champagne, and beer; and photographs of baseball teams and of native
orchestras.

The place seemed to belong not to the modern, hustling world that I had
left in the bright street outside, but to one that was dying. It had the
savour of the day before yesterday. Dingy and dimly lit, it had a
vaguely mysterious air and you could imagine that it would be a fit
scene for shady transactions. It suggested a more lurid time, when
ruthless men carried their lives in their hands, and violent deeds
diapered the monotony of life.

When I went in the saloon was fairly full. A group of business men stood
together at the bar, discussing affairs, and in a corner two Kanakas
were drinking. Two or three men who might have been store-keepers were
shaking dice. The rest of the company plainly followed the sea; they
were captains of tramps, first mates, and engineers. Behind the bar,
busily making the Honolulu cocktail for which the place was famous,
served two large half-castes, in white, fat, clean-shaven and dark
skinned, with thick, curly hair and large bright eyes.

Winter seemed to know more than half the company, and when we made our
way to the bar a little fat man in spectacles, who was standing by
himself, offered him a drink.

"No, you have one with me, Captain," said Winter.

He turned to me.

"I want you to know Captain Butler."

The little man shook hands with me. We began to talk, but, my attention
distracted by my surroundings, I took small notice of him, and after we
had each ordered a cocktail we separated. When we had got into the motor
again and were driving away, Winter said to me:

"I'm glad we ran up against Butler. I wanted you to meet him. What did
you think of him?"

"I don't know that I thought very much of him at all," I answered.

"Do you believe in the supernatural?"

"I don't exactly know that I do," I smiled.

"A very queer thing happened to him a year or two ago. You ought to have
him tell you about it."

"What sort of thing?"

Winter did not answer my question.

"I have no explanation of it myself," he said. "But there's no doubt
about the facts. Are you interested in things like that?"

"Things like what?"

"Spells and magic and all that."

"I've never met anyone who wasn't."

Winter paused for a moment.

"I guess I won't tell you myself. You ought to hear it from his own lips
so that you can judge. How are you fixed up for to-night?"

"I've got nothing on at all."

"Well, I'll get hold of him between now and then and see if we can't go
down to his ship."

Winter told me something about him. Captain Butler had spent all his
life on the Pacific. He had been in much better circumstances than he
was now, for he had been first officer and then captain of a
passenger-boat plying along the coast of California, but he had lost his
ship and a number of passengers had been drowned.

"Drink, I guess," said Winter.

Of course there had been an enquiry, which had cost him his certificate,
and then he drifted further afield. For some years he had knocked about
the South Seas, but he was now in command of a small schooner which
sailed between Honolulu and the various islands of the group. It
belonged to a Chinese to whom the fact that his skipper had no
certificate meant only that he could be had for lower wages, and to have
a white man in charge was always an advantage.

And now that I had heard this about him I took the trouble to remember
more exactly what he was like. I recalled his round spectacles and the
round blue eyes behind them, and so gradually reconstructed him before
my mind. He was a little man, without angles, plump, with a round face
like the full moon and a little fat round nose. He had fair short hair,
and he was red-faced and clean shaven. He had plump hands, dimpled on
the knuckles, and short fat legs. He was a jolly soul, and the tragic
experience he had gone through seemed to have left him unscarred. Though
he must have been thirty-four or thirty-five he looked much younger. But
after all I had given him but a superficial attention, and now that I
knew of this catastrophe, which had obviously ruined his life, I
promised myself that when I saw him again I would take more careful note
of him. It is very curious to observe the differences of emotional
response that you find in different people. Some can go through terrific
battles, the fear of imminent death and unimaginable horrors, and
preserve their soul unscathed, while with others the trembling of the
moon on a solitary sea or the song of a bird in a thicket will cause a
convulsion great enough to transform their entire being. Is it due to
strength or weakness, want of imagination or instability of character? I
do not know. When I called up in my fancy that scene of shipwreck, with
the shrieks of the drowning and the terror, and then later, the ordeal
of the enquiry, the bitter grief of those who sorrowed for the lost, and
the harsh things he must have read of himself in the papers, the shame
and the disgrace, it came to me with a shock to remember that Captain
Butler had talked with the frank obscenity of a schoolboy of the
Hawaiian girls and of Ewelei, the Red Light district, and of his
successful adventures. He laughed readily, and one would have thought he
could never laugh again. I remembered his shining, white teeth; they
were his best feature. He began to interest me, and thinking of him and
of his gay insouciance I forgot the particular story, to hear which I
was to see him again. I wanted to see him rather to find out if I could
a little more what sort of man he was.

Winter made the necessary arrangements and after dinner we went down to
the water front. The ship's boat was waiting for us and we rowed out.
The schooner was anchored some way across the harbour, not far from the
breakwater. We came alongside, and I heard the sound of a ukalele. We
clambered up the ladder.

"I guess he's in the cabin," said Winter, leading the way.

It was a small cabin, bedraggled and dirty, with a table against one
side and a broad bench all round upon which slept, I supposed, such
passengers as were ill-advised enough to travel in such a ship. A
petroleum lamp gave a dim light. The ukalele was being played by a
native girl and Butler was lolling on the seat, half lying, with his
head on her shoulder and an arm round her waist.

"Don't let us disturb you, Captain," said Winter, facetiously.

"Come right in," said Butler, getting up and shaking hands with us.
"What'll you have?"

It was a warm night, and through the open door you saw countless stars
in a heaven that was still almost blue. Captain Butler wore a sleeveless
under-shirt, showing his fat white arms, and a pair of incredibly dirty
trousers. His feet were bare, but on his curly head he wore a very old,
a very shapeless felt hat.

"Let me introduce you to my girl. Ain't she a peach?"

We shook hands with a very pretty person. She was a good deal taller
than the captain, and even the Mother Hubbard, which the missionaries of
a past generation had, in the interests of decency, forced on the
unwilling natives, could not conceal the beauty of her form. One could
not but suspect that age would burden her with a certain corpulence, but
now she was graceful and alert. Her brown skin had an exquisite
translucency and her eyes were magnificent. Her black hair, very thick
and rich, was coiled round her head in a massive plait. When she smiled
in a greeting that was charmingly natural, she showed teeth that were
small, even, and white. She was certainly a most attractive creature. It
was easy to see that the captain was madly in love with her. He could
not take his eyes off her; he wanted to touch her all the time. That was
very easy to understand; but what seemed to me stranger was that the
girl was apparently in love with him. There was a light in her eyes that
was unmistakable, and her lips were slightly parted as though in a sigh
of desire. It was thrilling. It was even a little moving, and I could
not help feeling somewhat in the way. What had a stranger to do with
this love-sick pair? I wished that Winter had not brought me. And it
seemed to me that the dingy cabin was transfigured and now it seemed a
fit and proper scene for such an extremity of passion. I thought I
should never forget that schooner in the harbour of Honolulu, crowded
with shipping, and yet, under the immensity of the starry sky, remote
from all the world. I liked to think of those lovers sailing off
together in the night over the empty spaces of the Pacific from one
green, hilly island to another. A faint breeze of romance softly fanned
my cheek.

And yet Butler was the last man in the world with whom you would have
associated romance, and it was hard to see what there was in him to
arouse love. In the clothes he wore now he looked podgier than ever, and
his round spectacles gave his round face the look of a prim cherub. He
suggested rather a curate who had gone to the dogs. His conversation was
peppered with the quaintest Americanisms, and it is because I despair of
reproducing these that, at whatever loss of vividness, I mean to narrate
the story he told me a little later in my own words. Moreover he was
unable to frame a sentence without an oath, though a good-natured one,
and his speech, albeit offensive only to prudish ears, in print would
seem coarse. He was a mirth-loving man, and perhaps that accounted not a
little for his successful amours; since women, for the most part
frivolous creatures, are excessively bored by the seriousness with
which men treat them, and they can seldom resist the buffoon who makes
them laugh. Their sense of humour is crude. Diana of Ephesus is always
prepared to fling prudence to the winds for the red-nosed comedian who
sits on his hat. I realised that Captain Butler had charm. If I had not
known the tragic story of the shipwreck I should have thought he had
never had a care in his life.

Our host had rung the bell on our entrance and now a Chinese cook came
in with more glasses and several bottles of soda. The whisky and the
captain's empty glass stood already on the table. But when I saw the
Chinese I positively started, for he was certainly the ugliest man I had
ever seen. He was very short, but thick-set, and he had a bad limp. He
wore a singlet and a pair of trousers that had been white, but were now
filthy, and, perched on a shock of bristly, grey hair, an old tweed
deer-stalker. It would have been grotesque on any Chinese, but on him it
was outrageous. His broad, square face was very flat as though it had
been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox;
but the most revolting thing in him was a very pronounced harelip which
had never been operated on, so that his upper lip, cleft, went up in an
angle to his nose, and in the opening was a huge yellow fang. It was
horrible. He came in with the end of a cigarette at the corner of his
mouth, and this, I do not know why, gave him a devilish expression.

He poured out the whisky and opened a bottle of soda.

"Don't drown it, John," said the captain.

He said nothing, but handed a glass to each of us. Then he went out.

"I saw you lookin' at my Chink," said Butler, with a grin on his fat,
shining face.

"I should hate to meet him on a dark night," I said.

"He sure is homely," said the captain, and for some reason he seemed to
say it with a peculiar satisfaction. "But he's fine for one thing, I'll
tell the world; you just have to have a drink every time you look at
him."

But my eyes fell on a calabash that hung against the wall over the
table, and I got up to look at it. I had been hunting for an old one and
this was better than any I had seen outside the museum.

"It was given me by a chief over on one of the islands," said the
captain, watching me. "I done him a good turn and he wanted to give me
something good."

"He certainly did," I answered.

I was wondering whether I could discreetly make Captain Butler an offer
for it, I could not imagine that he set any store on such an article,
when, as though he read my thoughts, he said:

"I wouldn't sell that for ten thousand dollars."

"I guess not," said Winter. "It would be a crime to sell it."

"Why?" I asked.

"That comes into the story," returned Winter. "Doesn't it, Captain?"

"It surely does."

"Let's hear it then."

"The night's young yet," he answered.

The night distinctly lost its youth before he satisfied my curiosity,
and meanwhile we drank a great deal too much whisky while Captain Butler
narrated his experiences of San Francisco in the old days and of the
South Seas. At last the girl fell asleep. She lay curled up on the seat,
with her face on her brown arm, and her bosom rose and fell gently with
her breathing. In sleep she looked sullen, but darkly beautiful.

He had found her on one of the islands in the group among which,
whenever there was cargo to be got, he wandered with his crazy old
schooner. The Kanakas have little love for work, and the laborious
Chinese, the cunning Japs, have taken the trade out of their hands. Her
father had a strip of land on which he grew taro and bananas and he had
a boat in which he went fishing. He was vaguely related to the mate of
the schooner, and it was he who took Captain Butler up to the shabby
little frame house to spend an idle evening. They took a bottle of
whisky with them and the ukalele. The captain was not a shy man and when
he saw a pretty girl he made love to her. He could speak the native
language fluently and it was not long before he had overcome the girl's
timidity. They spent the evening singing and dancing, and by the end of
it she was sitting by his side and he had his arm round her waist. It
happened that they were delayed on the island for several days and the
captain, at no time a man to hurry, made no effort to shorten his stay.
He was very comfortable in the snug little harbour and life was long. He
had a swim round his ship in the morning and another in the evening.
There was a chandler's shop on the water front where sailormen could get
a drink of whisky, and he spent the best part of the day there, playing
cribbage with the half-caste who owned it. At night the mate and he went
up to the house where the pretty girl lived and they sang a song or two
and told stories. It was the girl's father who suggested that he should
take her away with him. They discussed the matter in a friendly fashion,
while the girl, nestling against the captain, urged him by the pressure
of her hands and her soft, smiling glances. He had taken a fancy to her
and he was a domestic man. He was a little dull sometimes at sea and it
would be very pleasant to have a pretty little creature like that about
the old ship. He was of a practical turn too, and he recognised that it
would be useful to have someone around to darn his socks and look after
his linen. He was tired of having his things washed by a Chink who tore
everything to pieces; the natives washed much better, and now and then
when the captain went ashore at Honolulu he liked to cut a dash in a
smart duck suit. It was only a matter of arranging a price. The father
wanted two hundred and fifty dollars, and the captain, never a thrifty
man, could not put his hand on such a sum. But he was a generous one,
and with the girl's soft face against his, he was not inclined to
haggle. He offered to give a hundred and fifty dollars there and then
and another hundred in three months. There was a good deal of argument
and the parties could not come to any agreement that night, but the idea
had fired the captain, and he could not sleep as well as usual. He kept
dreaming of the lovely girl and each time he awoke it was with the
pressure of her soft, sensual lips on his. He cursed himself in the
morning because a bad night at poker the last time he was at Honolulu
had left him so short of ready money. And if the night before he had
been in love with the girl, this morning he was crazy about her.

"See here, Bananas," he said to the mate, "I've got to have that girl.
You go and tell the old man I'll bring the dough up to-night and she can
get fixed up. I figure we'll be ready to sail at dawn."

I have no idea why the mate was known by that eccentric name. He was
called Wheeler, but though he had that English surname there was not a
drop of white blood in him. He was a tall man, and well-made though
inclined to stoutness, but much darker than is usual in Hawaii. He was
no longer young, and his crisply curling, thick hair was grey. His upper
front teeth were cased in gold. He was very proud of them. He had a
marked squint and this gave him a saturnine expression. The captain, who
was fond of a joke, found in it a constant source of humour and
hesitated the less to rally him on the defect because he realised that
the mate was sensitive about it. Bananas, unlike most of the natives,
was a taciturn fellow and Captain Butler would have disliked him if it
had been possible for a man of his good nature to dislike anyone. He
liked to be at sea with someone he could talk to, he was a chatty,
sociable creature, and it was enough to drive a missionary to drink to
live there day after day with a chap who never opened his mouth. He did
his best to wake the mate up, that is to say, he chaffed him without
mercy, but it was poor fun to laugh by oneself, and he came to the
conclusion that, drunk or sober, Bananas was no fit companion for a
white man. But he was a good seaman and the captain was shrewd enough to
know the value of a mate he could trust. It was not rare for him to come
aboard, when they were sailing, fit for nothing but to fall into his
bunk, and it was worth something to know that he could stay there till
he had slept his liquor off, since Bananas could be relied on. But he
was an unsociable devil, and it would be a treat to have someone he
could talk to. That girl would be fine. Besides, he wouldn't be so
likely to get drunk when he went ashore if he knew there was a little
girl waiting for him when he came on board again.

He went to his friend the chandler and over a peg of gin asked him for a
loan. There were one or two useful things a ship's captain could do for
a ship's chandler, and after a quarter of an hour's conversation in low
tones (there is no object in letting all and sundry know your business),
the captain crammed a wad of notes in his hip-pocket, and that night,
when he went back to his ship, the girl went with him.

What Captain Butler, seeking for reasons to do what he had already made
up his mind to, had anticipated, actually came to pass. He did not give
up drinking, but he ceased to drink to excess. An evening with the
boys, when he had been away from town two or three weeks, was pleasant
enough, but it was pleasant too to get back to his little girl; he
thought of her, sleeping so softly, and how, when he got into his cabin
and leaned over her, she would open her eyes lazily and stretch out her
arms for him: it was as good as a full hand. He found he was saving
money, and since he was a generous man he did the right thing by the
little girl: he gave her some silver-backed brushes for her long hair,
and a gold chain, and a reconstructed ruby for her finger. Gee, but it
was good to be alive.

A year went by, a whole year, and he was not tired of her yet. He was
not a man who analysed his feelings, but this was so surprising that it
forced itself upon his attention. There must be something very wonderful
about that girl. He couldn't help seeing that he was more wrapped up in
her than ever, and sometimes the thought entered his mind that it might
not be a bad thing if he married her.

Then, one day the mate did not come in to dinner or to tea. Butler did
not bother himself about his absence at the first meal, but at the
second he asked the Chinese cook:

"Where's the mate? He no come tea?"

"No wantchee," said the Chink.

"He ain't sick?"

"No savvy."

Next day Bananas turned up again, but he was more sullen than ever, and
after dinner the captain asked the girl what was the matter with him.
She smiled and shrugged her pretty shoulders. She told the captain that
Bananas had taken a fancy to her and he was sore because she had told
him off. The captain was a good-humoured man and he was not of a jealous
nature; it struck him as exceeding funny that Bananas should be in love.
A man who had a squint like that had a precious poor chance. When tea
came round he chaffed him gaily. He pretended to speak in the air, so
that the mate should not be certain that he knew anything, but he dealt
him some pretty shrewd blows. The girl did not think him as funny as he
thought himself, and afterwards she begged him to say nothing more. He
was surprised at her seriousness. She told him he did not know her
people. When their passion was aroused they were capable of anything.
She was a little frightened. This was so absurd to him that he laughed
heartily.

"If he comes bothering round you, you just threaten to tell me. That'll
fix him."

"Better fire him, I think."

"Not on your sweet life. I know a good sailor when I see one. But if he
don't leave you alone I'll give him the worst licking he's ever had."

Perhaps the girl had a wisdom unusual in her sex. She knew that it was
useless to argue with a man when his mind was made up, for it only
increased his stubbornness, and she held her peace. And now on the
shabby schooner, threading her way across the silent sea, among those
lovely islands, was enacted a dark, tense drama of which the fat little
captain remained entirely ignorant. The girl's resistance fired Bananas
so that he ceased to be a man, but was simply blind desire. He did not
make love to her gently or gaily, but with a black and savage ferocity.
Her contempt now was changed to hatred and when he besought her she
answered him with bitter, angry taunts. But the struggle went on
silently, and when the captain asked her after a little while whether
Bananas was bothering her, she lied.

But one night, when they were in Honolulu, he came on board only just in
time. They were sailing at dawn. Bananas had been ashore, drinking some
native spirit, and he was drunk. The captain, rowing up, heard sounds
that surprised him. He scrambled up the ladder. He saw Bananas, beside
himself, trying to wrench open the cabin door. He was shouting at the
girl. He swore he would kill her if she did not let him in.

"What in hell are you up to?" cried Butler.

The mate let go the handle, gave the captain a look of savage hate, and
without a word turned away.

"Stop here. What are you doing with that door?"

The mate still did not answer. He looked at him with sullen, bootless
rage.

"I'll teach you not to pull any of your queer stuff with me, you dirty,
cross-eyed nigger," said the captain.

He was a good foot shorter than the mate and no match for him, but he
was used to dealing with native crews, and he had his knuckle-duster
handy. Perhaps it was not an instrument that a gentleman would use, but
then Captain Butler was not a gentleman. Nor was he in the habit of
dealing with gentlemen. Before Bananas knew what the captain was at, his
right arm had shot out and his fist, with its ring of steel, caught him
fair and square on the jaw. He fell like a bull under the pole-axe.

"That'll learn him," said the captain.

Bananas did not stir. The girl unlocked the cabin door and came out.

"Is he dead?"

"He ain't."

He called a couple of men and told them to carry the mate to his bunk.
He rubbed his hands with satisfaction and his round blue eyes gleamed
behind his spectacles. But the girl was strangely silent. She put her
arms round him as though to protect him from invisible harm.

It was two or three days before Bananas was on his feet again, and when
he came out of his cabin his face was torn and swollen. Through the
darkness of his skin you saw the livid bruise. Butler saw him slinking
along the deck and called him. The mate went to him without a word.

"See here, Bananas," he said to him, fixing his spectacles on his
slippery nose, for it was very hot. "I ain't going to fire you for this,
but you know now that when I hit, I hit hard. Don't forget it and don't
let me have any more funny business."

Then he held out his hand and gave the mate that good-humoured, flashing
smile of his which was his greatest charm. The mate took the
outstretched hand and twitched his swollen lips into a devilish grin.
The incident in the captain's mind was so completely finished that when
the three of them sat at dinner he chaffed Bananas on his appearance. He
was eating with difficulty and, his swollen face still more distorted by
pain, he looked truly a repulsive object.

That evening, when he was sitting on the upper deck, smoking his pipe, a
shiver passed through the captain.

"I don't know what I should be shiverin' for on a night like this," he
grumbled. "Maybe I've gotten a dose of fever. I've been feelin' a bit
queer all day."

When he went to bed he took some quinine, and next morning he felt
better, but a little washed out, as though he were recovering from a
debauch.

"I guess my liver's out of order," he said, and he took a pill.

He had not much appetite that day and towards evening he began to feel
very unwell. He tried the next remedy he knew, which was to drink two or
three hot whiskies, but that did not seem to help him much, and when in
the morning he surveyed himself in the glass he thought he was not
looking quite the thing.

"If I ain't right by the time we get back to Honolulu I'll just give Dr
Denby a call. He'll sure fix me up."

He could not eat. He felt a great lassitude in all his limbs. He slept
soundly enough, but he awoke with no sense of refreshment; on the
contrary he felt a peculiar exhaustion. And the energetic little man,
who could not bear the thought of lying in bed, had to make an effort to
force himself out of his bunk. After a few days he found it impossible
to resist the languor that oppressed him, and he made up his mind not to
get up.

"Bananas can look after the ship," he said. "He has before now."

He laughed a little to himself as he thought how often he had lain
speechless in his bunk after a night with the boys. That was before he
had his girl. He smiled at her and pressed her hand. She was puzzled and
anxious. He saw that she was concerned about him and tried to reassure
her. He had never had a day's illness in his life and in a week at the
outside he would be as right as rain.

"I wish you'd fired Bananas," she said. "I've got a feeling that he's at
the bottom of this."

"Damned good thing I didn't, or there'd be no one to sail the ship. I
know a good sailor when I see one." His blue eyes, rather pale now, with
the whites all yellow, twinkled. "You don't think he's trying to poison
me, little girl?"

She did not answer, but she had one or two talks with the Chinese cook,
and she took great care with the captain's food. But he ate little
enough now, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she
persuaded him to drink a cup of soup two or three times a day. It was
clear that he was very ill, he was losing weight quickly, and his chubby
face was pale and drawn. He suffered no pain, but merely grew every day
weaker and more languid. He was wasting away. The round trip on this
occasion lasted about four weeks and by the time they came to Honolulu
the captain was a little anxious about himself. He had not been out of
his bed for more than a fortnight and really he felt too weak to get up
and go to the doctor. He sent a message asking him to come on board. The
doctor examined him, but could find nothing to account for his
condition. His temperature was normal.

"See here, Captain," he said, "I'll be perfectly frank with you. I don't
know what's the matter with you, and just seeing you like this don't
give me a chance. You come into the hospital so that we can keep you
under observation. There's nothing organically wrong with you, I know
that, and my impression is that a few weeks in hospital ought to put you
to rights."

"I ain't going to leave my ship."

Chinese owners were queer customers, he said; if he left his ship
because he was sick, his owner might fire him, and he couldn't afford to
lose his job. So long as he stayed where he was his contract
safe-guarded him, and he had a first-rate mate. Besides, he couldn't
leave his girl. No man could want a better nurse; if anyone could pull
him through she would. Every man had to die once and he only wished to
be left in peace. He would not listen to the doctor's expostulations,
and finally the doctor gave in.

"I'll write you a prescription," he said doubtfully, "and see if it does
you any good. You'd better stay in bed for a while."

"There ain't much fear of my getting up, doc," answered the captain. "I
feel as weak as a cat."

But he believed in the doctor's prescription as little as did the doctor
himself, and when he was alone amused himself by lighting his cigar with
it. He had to get amusement out of something, for his cigar tasted like
nothing on earth, and he smoked only to persuade himself that he was not
too ill to. That evening a couple of friends of his, masters of tramp
steamers, hearing he was sick came to see him. They discussed his case
over a bottle of whisky and a box of Philippine cigars. One of them
remembered how a mate of his had been taken queer just like that and not
a doctor in the United States had been able to cure him. He had seen in
the paper an advertisement of a patent medicine, and thought there'd be
no harm in trying it. That man was as strong as ever he'd been in his
life after two bottles. But his illness had given Captain Butler a
lucidity which was new and strange, and while they talked he seemed to
read their minds. They thought he was dying. And when they left him he
was afraid.

The girl saw his weakness. This was her opportunity. She had been urging
him to let a native doctor see him, and he had stoutly refused; but now
she entreated him. He listened with harassed eyes. He wavered. It was
very funny that the American doctor could not tell what was the matter
with him. But he did not want her to think that he was scared. If he let
a damned nigger come along and look at him, it was to comfort _her_. He
told her to do what she liked.

The native doctor came the next night. The captain was lying alone,
half awake, and the cabin was dimly lit by an oil lamp. The door was
softly opened and the girl came in on tip-toe. She held the door open
and some one slipped in silently behind her. The captain smiled at this
mystery, but he was so weak now, the smile was no more than a glimmer in
his eyes. The doctor was a little, old man, very thin and very wrinkled,
with a completely bald head, and the face of a monkey. He was bowed and
gnarled like an old tree. He looked hardly human, but his eyes were very
bright, and in the half darkness, they seemed to glow with a reddish
light. He was dressed filthily in a pair of ragged dungarees, and the
upper part of his body was naked. He sat down on his haunches and for
ten minutes looked at the captain. Then he felt the palms of his hands
and the soles of his feet. The girl watched him with frightened eyes. No
word was spoken. Then he asked for something that the captain had worn.
The girl gave him the old felt hat which the captain used constantly and
taking it he sat down again on the floor, clasping it firmly with both
hands; and rocking backwards and forwards slowly he muttered some
gibberish in a very low tone.

At last he gave a little sigh and dropped the hat. He took an old pipe
out of his trouser pocket and lit it. The girl went over to him and sat
by his side. He whispered something to her, and she started violently.
For a few minutes they talked in hurried undertones, and then they stood
up. She gave him money and opened the door for him. He slid out as
silently as he had come in. Then she went over to the captain and leaned
over him so that she could speak into his ear.

"It's an enemy praying you to death."

"Don't talk fool stuff, girlie," he said impatiently.

"It's truth. It's God's truth. That's why the American doctor couldn't
do anything. Our people can do that. I've seen it done. I thought you
were safe because you were a white man."

"I haven't an enemy."

"Bananas."

"What's he want to pray me to death for?"

"You ought to have fired him before he had a chance."

"I guess if I ain't got nothing more the matter with me than Bananas'
hoodoo I shall be sitting up and taking nourishment in a very few days."

She was silent for a while and she looked at him intently.

"Don't you know you're dying?" she said to him at last.

That was what the two skippers had thought, but they hadn't said it. A
shiver passed across the captain's wan face.

"The doctor says there ain't nothing really the matter with me. I've
only to lie quiet for a bit and I shall be all right."

She put her lips to his ear as if she were afraid that the air itself
might hear.

"You're dying, dying, dying. You'll pass out with the old moon."

"That's something to know."

"You'll pass out with the old moon unless Bananas dies before."

He was not a timid man and he had recovered already from the shock her
words, and still more her vehement, silent manner, had given him. Once
more a smile flickered in his eyes.

"I guess I'll take my chance, girlie."

"There's twelve days before the new moon."

There was something in her tone that gave him an idea.

"See here, my girl, this is all bunk. I don't believe a word of it. But
I don't want you to try any of your monkey tricks with Bananas. He ain't
a beauty, but he's a first-rate mate."

He would have said a good deal more, but he was tired out. He suddenly
felt very weak and faint. It was always at that hour that he felt worse.
He closed his eyes. The girl watched him for a minute and then slipped
out of the cabin. The moon, nearly full, made a silver pathway over the
dark sea. It shone from an unclouded sky. She looked at it with terror,
for she knew that with its death the man she loved would die. His life
was in her hands. She could save him, she alone could save him, but the
enemy was cunning, and she must be cunning too. She felt that someone
was looking at her, and without turning, by the sudden fear that seized
her, knew that from the shadow the burning eyes of the mate were fixed
upon her. She did not know what he could do; if he could read her
thoughts she was defeated already, and with a desperate effort she
emptied her mind of all content. His death alone could save her lover,
and she could bring his death about. She knew that if he could be
brought to look into a calabash in which was water so that a reflection
of him was made, and the reflection were broken by hurtling the water,
he would die as though he had been struck by lightning; for the
reflection was his soul. But none knew better than he the danger, and he
could be made to look only by a guile which had lulled his least
suspicion. He must never think that he had an enemy who was on the watch
to cause his destruction. She knew what she had to do. But the time was
short, the time was terribly short. Presently she realised that the mate
had gone. She breathed more freely.

Two days later they sailed, and there were ten now before the new moon.
Captain Butler was terrible to see. He was nothing but skin and bone,
and he could not move without help. He could hardly speak. But she dared
do nothing yet. She knew that she must be patient. The mate was cunning,
cunning. They went to one of the smaller islands of the group and
discharged cargo, and now there were only seven days more. The moment
had come to start. She brought some things out of the cabin she shared
with the captain and made them into a bundle. She put the bundle in the
deck cabin where she and Bananas ate their meals, and at dinner time,
when she went in, he turned quickly and she saw that he had been looking
at it. Neither of them spoke, but she knew what he suspected. She was
making her preparations to leave the ship. He looked at her mockingly.
Gradually, as though to prevent the captain from knowing what she was
about, she brought everything she owned into the cabin, and some of the
captain's clothes, and made them all into bundles. At last Bananas could
keep silence no longer. He pointed to a suit of ducks.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm going back to my island."

He gave a laugh that distorted his grim face. The captain was dying and
she meant to get away with all she could lay hands on.

"What'll you do if I say you can't take those things? They're the
captain's."

"They're no use to you," she said.

There was a calabash hanging on the wall. It was the very calabash I had
seen when I came into the cabin and which we had talked about. She took
it down. It was all dusty, so she poured water into it from the
water-bottle, and rinsed it with her fingers.

"What are you doing with that?"

"I can sell it for fifty dollars," she said.

"If you want to take it you'll have to pay me."

"What d'you want?"

"You know what I want."

She allowed a fleeting smile to play on her lips. She flashed a quick
look at him and quickly turned away. He gave a gasp of desire. She
raised her shoulders in a little shrug. With a savage bound he sprang
upon her and seized her in his arms. Then she laughed. She put her arms,
her soft, round arms, about his neck, and surrendered herself to him
voluptuously.

When the morning came she roused him out of a deep sleep. The early rays
of the sun slanted into the cabin. He pressed her to his heart. Then he
told her that the captain could not last more than a day or two, and the
owner wouldn't so easily find another white man to command the ship. If
Bananas offered to take less money he would get the job and the girl
could stay with him. He looked at her with love-sick eyes. She nestled
up against him. She kissed his lips, in the foreign way, in the way the
captain had taught her to kiss. And she promised to stay. Bananas was
drunk with happiness.

It was now or never.

She got up and went to the table to arrange her hair. There was no
mirror and she looked into the calabash, seeking for her reflection. She
tidied her beautiful hair. Then she beckoned to Bananas to come to her.
She pointed to the calabash.

"There's something in the bottom of it," she said.

Instinctively, without suspecting anything, Bananas looked full into the
water. His face was reflected in it. In a flash she beat upon it
violently, with both her hands, so that they pounded on the bottom and
the water splashed up. The reflection was broken in pieces. Bananas
started back with a sudden hoarse cry and he looked at the girl. She was
standing there with a look of triumphant hatred on her face. A horror
came into his eyes. His heavy features were twisted in agony, and with
a thud, as though he had taken a violent poison, he crumpled up on to
the ground. A great shudder passed through his body and he was still.
She leaned over him callously. She put her hand on his heart and then
she pulled down his lower eye-lid. He was quite dead.

She went into the cabin in which lay Captain Butler. There was a faint
colour in his cheeks and he looked at her in a startled way.

"What's happened?" he whispered.

They were the first words he had spoken for forty-eight hours.

"Nothing's happened," she said.

"I feel all funny."

Then his eyes closed and he fell asleep. He slept for a day and a night,
and when he awoke he asked for food. In a fortnight he was well.

It was past midnight when Winter and I rowed back to shore and we had
drunk innumerable whiskies and sodas.

"What do you think of it all?" asked Winter.

"What a question! If you mean, have I any explanation to suggest, I
haven't."

"The captain believes every word of it."

"That's obvious; but you know that's not the part that interests me
most, whether it's true or not, and what it all means; the part that
interests me is that such things should happen to such people. I wonder
what there is in that commonplace little man to arouse such a passion in
that lovely creature. As I watched her, asleep there, while he was
telling the story I had some fantastic idea about the power of love
being able to work miracles."

"But that's not the girl," said Winter.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Didn't you notice the cook?"

"Of course I did. He's the ugliest man I ever saw."

"That's why Butler took him. The girl ran away with the Chinese cook
last year. This is a new one. He's only had her there about two months."

"Well, I'm hanged."

"He thinks this cook is safe. But I wouldn't be too sure in his place.
There's something about a Chink, when he lays himself out to please a
woman she can't resist him."




VII

_Rain_


It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in
sight. Dr Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the
heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound
that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down
quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better
for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next
day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his
ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the
deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair
talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat
down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red
hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which
accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face,
precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very
low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there
had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather
than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval
they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the
smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs Macphail was not
a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only
people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and
even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the
compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in
their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

"Mrs Davidson was saying she didn't know how they'd have got through the
journey if it hadn't been for us," said Mrs Macphail, as she neatly
brushed out her transformation. "She said we were really the only people
on the ship they cared to know."

"I shouldn't have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could
afford to put on frills."

"It's not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn't have
been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot
in the smoking-room."

"The founder of their religion wasn't so exclusive," said Dr Macphail
with a chuckle.

"I've asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,"
answered his wife. "I shouldn't like to have a nature like yours, Alec.
You never look for the best in people."

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not
reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more
conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was
undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled
down to read himself to sleep.

When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at
it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising
quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The
coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water's edge, and
among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoans; and here and there,
gleaming white, a little church. Mrs Davidson came and stood beside him.
She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain, from
which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull
hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind
invisible _pince-nez_. Her face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave
no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the
quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her
voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a
hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the
pneumatic drill.

"This must seem like home to you," said Dr Macphail, with his thin,
difficult smile.

"Ours are low islands, you know, not like these. Coral. These are
volcanic. We've got another ten days' journey to reach them."

"In these parts that's almost like being in the next street at home,"
said Dr Macphail facetiously.

"Well, that's rather an exaggerated way of putting it, but one does
look at distances differently in the South Seas. So far you're right."

Dr Macphail sighed faintly.

"I'm glad we're not stationed here," she went on. "They say this is a
terribly difficult place to work in. The steamers' touching makes the
people unsettled; and then there's the naval station; that's bad for the
natives. In our district we don't have difficulties like that to contend
with. There are one or two traders, of course, but we take care to make
them behave, and if they don't we make the place so hot for them they're
glad to go."

Fixing the glasses on her nose she looked at the green island with a
ruthless stare.

"It's almost a hopeless task for the missionaries here. I can never be
sufficiently thankful to God that we are at least spared that."

Davidson's district consisted of a group of islands to the North of
Samoa; they were widely separated and he had frequently to go long
distances by canoe. At these times his wife remained at their
headquarters and managed the mission. Dr Macphail felt his heart sink
when he considered the efficiency with which she certainly managed it.
She spoke of the depravity of the natives in a voice which nothing could
hush, but with a vehemently unctuous horror. Her sense of delicacy was
singular. Early in their acquaintance she had said to him:

"You know, their marriage customs when we first settled in the islands
were so shocking that I couldn't possibly describe them to you. But I'll
tell Mrs Macphail and she'll tell you."

Then he had seen his wife and Mrs Davidson, their deck-chairs close
together, in earnest conversation for about two hours. As he walked past
them backwards and forwards for the sake of exercise, he had heard Mrs
Davidson's agitated whisper, like the distant flow of a mountain
torrent, and he saw by his wife's open mouth and pale face that she was
enjoying an alarming experience. At night in their cabin she repeated to
him with bated breath all she had heard.

"Well, what did I say to you?" cried Mrs Davidson, exultant, next
morning. "Did you ever hear anything more dreadful? You don't wonder
that I couldn't tell you myself, do you? Even though you are a doctor."

Mrs Davidson scanned his face. She had a dramatic eagerness to see that
she had achieved the desired effect.

"Can you wonder that when we first went there our hearts sank? You'll
hardly believe me when I tell you it was impossible to find a single
good girl in any of the villages."

She used the word _good_ in a severely technical manner.

"Mr Davidson and I talked it over, and we made up our minds the first
thing to do was to put down the dancing. The natives were crazy about
dancing."

"I was not averse to it myself when I was a young man," said Dr
Macphail.

"I guessed as much when I heard you ask Mrs Macphail to have a turn with
you last night. I don't think there's any real harm if a man dances
with his wife, but I was relieved that she wouldn't. Under the
circumstances I thought it better that we should keep ourselves to
ourselves."

"Under what circumstances?"

Mrs Davidson gave him a quick look through her _pince-nez_, but did not
answer his question.

"But among white people it's not quite the same," she went on, "though I
must say I agree with Mr Davidson, who says he can't understand how a
husband can stand by and see his wife in another man's arms, and as far
as I'm concerned I've never danced a step since I married. But the
native dancing is quite another matter. It's not only immoral in itself,
but it distinctly leads to immorality. However, I'm thankful to God that
we stamped it out, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying that no one has
danced in our district for eight years."

But now they came to the mouth of the harbour and Mrs Macphail joined
them. The ship turned sharply and steamed slowly in. It was a great
land-locked harbour big enough to hold a fleet of battleships; and all
around it rose, high and steep, the green hills. Near the entrance,
getting such breeze as blew from the sea, stood the governor's house in
a garden. The Stars and Stripes dangled languidly from a flagstaff. They
passed two or three trim bungalows, and a tennis court, and then they
came to the quay with its warehouses. Mrs Davidson pointed out the
schooner, moored two or three hundred yards from the side, which was to
take them to Apia. There was a crowd of eager, noisy, and good-humoured
natives come from all parts of the island, some from curiosity, others
to barter with the travellers on their way to Sydney; and they brought
pineapples and huge bunches of bananas, _tapa_ cloths, necklaces of
shells or sharks' teeth, _kava_-bowls, and models of war canoes.
American sailors, neat and trim, clean-shaven and frank of face,
sauntered among them, and there was a little group of officials. While
their luggage was being landed the Macphails and Mrs Davidson watched
the crowd. Dr Macphail looked at the yaws from which most of the
children and the young boys seemed to suffer, disfiguring sores like
torpid ulcers, and his professional eyes glistened when he saw for the
first time in his experience cases of elephantiasis, men going about
with a huge, heavy arm or dragging along a grossly disfigured leg. Men
and women wore the _lava-lava_.

"It's a very indecent costume," said Mrs Davidson. "Mr Davidson thinks
it should be prohibited by law. How can you expect people to be moral
when they wear nothing but a strip of red cotton round their loins?"

"It's suitable enough to the climate," said the doctor, wiping the sweat
off his head.

Now that they were on land the heat, though it was so early in the
morning, was already oppressive. Closed in by its hills, not a breath of
air came in to Pago-Pago.

"In our islands," Mrs Davidson went on in her high-pitched tones, "we've
practically eradicated the _lava-lava_. A few old men still continue to
wear it, but that's all. The women have all taken to the Mother
Hubbard, and the men wear trousers and singlets. At the very beginning
of our stay Mr Davidson said in one of his reports: the inhabitants of
these islands will never be thoroughly Christianised till every boy of
more than ten years is made to wear a pair of trousers."

But Mrs Davidson had given two or three of her birdlike glances at heavy
grey clouds that came floating over the mouth of the harbour. A few
drops began to fall.

"We'd better take shelter," she said.

They made their way with all the crowd to a great shed of corrugated
iron, and the rain began to fall in torrents. They stood there for some
time and then were joined by Mr Davidson. He had been polite enough to
the Macphails during the journey, but he had not his wife's sociability,
and had spent much of his time reading. He was a silent, rather sullen
man, and you felt that his affability was a duty that he imposed upon
himself Christianly; he was by nature reserved and even morose. His
appearance was singular. He was very tall and thin, with long limbs
loosely jointed; hollow cheeks and curiously high cheek-bones; he had so
cadaverous an air that it surprised you to notice how full and sensual
were his lips. He wore his hair very long. His dark eyes, set deep in
their sockets, were large and tragic; and his hands with their big, long
fingers, were finely shaped; they gave him a look of great strength. But
the most striking thing about him was the feeling he gave you of
suppressed fire. It was impressive and vaguely troubling. He was not a
man with whom any intimacy was possible.

He brought now unwelcome news. There was an epidemic of measles, a
serious and often fatal disease among the Kanakas, on the island, and a
case had developed among the crew of the schooner which was to take them
on their journey. The sick man had been brought ashore and put in
hospital on the quarantine station, but telegraphic instructions had
been sent from Apia to say that the schooner would not be allowed to
enter the harbour till it was certain no other member of the crew was
affected.

"It means we shall have to stay here for ten days at least."

"But I'm urgently needed at Apia," said Dr Macphail.

"That can't be helped. If no more cases develop on board, the schooner
will be allowed to sail with white passengers, but all native traffic is
prohibited for three months."

"Is there a hotel here?" asked Mrs Macphail.

Davidson gave a low chuckle.

"There's not."

"What shall we do then?"

"I've been talking to the governor. There's a trader along the front who
has rooms that he rents, and my proposition is that as soon as the rain
lets up we should go along there and see what we can do. Don't expect
comfort. You've just got to be thankful if we get a bed to sleep on and
a roof over our heads."

But the rain showed no sign of stopping, and at length with umbrellas
and waterproofs they set out. There was no town, but merely a group of
official buildings, a store or two, and at the back, among the coconut
trees and plantains, a few native dwellings. The house they sought was
about five minutes' walk from the wharf. It was a frame house of two
storeys, with broad verandahs on both floors and a roof of corrugated
iron. The owner was a half-caste named Horn, with a native wife
surrounded by little brown children, and on the ground-floor he had a
store where he sold canned goods and cottons. The rooms he showed them
were almost bare of furniture. In the Macphails' there was nothing but a
poor, worn bed with a ragged mosquito net, a rickety chair, and a
washstand. They looked round with dismay. The rain poured down without
ceasing.

"I'm not going to unpack more than we actually need," said Mrs Macphail.

Mrs Davidson came into the room as she was unlocking a portmanteau. She
was very brisk and alert. The cheerless surroundings had no effect on
her.

"If you'll take my advice you'll get a needle and cotton and start right
in to mend the mosquito net," she said, "or you'll not be able to get a
wink of sleep to-night."

"Will they be very bad?" asked Dr Macphail.

"This is the season for them. When you're asked to a party at
Government House at Apia you'll notice that all the ladies are given a
pillow-slip to put their--their lower extremities in."

"I wish the rain would stop for a moment," said Mrs Macphail. "I could
try to make the place comfortable with more heart if the sun were
shining."

"Oh, if you wait for that, you'll wait a long time. Pago-Pago is about
the rainiest place in the Pacific. You see, the hills, and that bay,
they attract the water, and one expects rain at this time of year
anyway."

She looked from Macphail to his wife, standing helplessly in different
parts of the room, like lost souls, and she pursed her lips. She saw
that she must take them in hand. Feckless people like that made her
impatient, but her hands itched to put everything in the order which
came so naturally to her.

"Here, you give me a needle and cotton and I'll mend that net of yours,
while you go on with your unpacking. Dinner's at one. Dr Macphail, you'd
better go down to the wharf and see that your heavy luggage has been put
in a dry place. You know what these natives are, they're quite capable
of storing it where the rain will beat in on it all the time."

The doctor put on his waterproof again and went downstairs. At the door
Mr Horn was standing in conversation with the quartermaster of the ship
they had just arrived in and a second-class passenger whom Dr Macphail
had seen several times on board. The quartermaster, a little, shrivelled
man, extremely dirty, nodded to him as he passed.

"This is a bad job about the measles, doc," he said. "I see you've fixed
yourself up already."

Dr Macphail thought he was rather familiar, but he was a timid man and
he did not take offence easily.

"Yes, we've got a room upstairs."

"Miss Thompson was sailing with you to Apia, so I've brought her along
here."

The quartermaster pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his
side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion
pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in
white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots in glacé
kid. She gave Macphail an ingratiating smile.

"The feller's tryin' to soak me a dollar and a half a day for the
meanest sized room," she said in a hoarse voice.

"I tell you she's a friend of mine, Jo," said the quartermaster. "She
can't pay more than a dollar, and you've sure got to take her for that."

The trader was fat and smooth and quietly smiling.

"Well, if you put it like that, Mr Swan, I'll see what I can do about
it. I'll talk to Mrs Horn and if we think we can make a reduction we
will."

"Don't try to pull that stuff with me," said Miss Thompson. "We'll
settle this right now. You get a dollar a day for the room and not one
bean more."

Dr Macphail smiled. He admired the effrontery with which she bargained.
He was the sort of man who always paid what he was asked. He preferred
to be over-charged than to haggle. The trader sighed.

"Well, to oblige Mr Swan I'll take it."

"That's the goods," said Miss Thompson. "Come right in and have a shot
of hooch. I've got some real good rye in that grip if you'll bring it
along, Mr Swan. You come along too, doctor."

"Oh, I don't think I will, thank you," he answered. "I'm just going down
to see that our luggage is all right."

He stepped out into the rain. It swept in from the opening of the
harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred. He passed two
or three natives clad in nothing but the _lava-lava_, with huge
umbrellas over them. They walked finely, with leisurely movements, very
upright; and they smiled and greeted him in a strange tongue as they
went by.

It was nearly dinner-time when he got back, and their meal was laid in
the trader's parlour. It was a room designed not to live in but for
purposes of prestige, and it had a musty, melancholy air. A suite of
stamped plush was arranged neatly round the walls, and from the middle
of the ceiling, protected from the flies by yellow tissue paper, hung a
gilt chandelier. Davidson did not come.

"I know he went to call on the governor," said Mrs Davidson, "and I
guess he's kept him to dinner."

A little native girl brought them a dish of Hamburger steak, and after
a while the trader came up to see that they had everything they wanted.

"I see we have a fellow lodger, Mr Horn," said Dr Macphail.

"She's taken a room, that's all," answered the trader. "She's getting
her own board."

He looked at the two ladies with an obsequious air.

"I put her downstairs so she shouldn't be in the way. She won't be any
trouble to you."

"Is it someone who was on the boat?" asked Mrs Macphail.

"Yes, ma'am, she was in the second cabin. She was going to Apia. She has
a position as cashier waiting for her."

"Oh!"

When the trader was gone Macphail said:

"I shouldn't think she'd find it exactly cheerful having her meals in
her room."

"If she was in the second cabin I guess she'd rather," answered Mrs
Davidson. "I don't exactly know who it can be."

"I happened to be there when the quartermaster brought her along. Her
name's Thompson."

"It's not the woman who was dancing with the quartermaster last night?"
asked Mrs Davidson.

"That's who it must be," said Mrs Macphail. "I wondered at the time what
she was. She looked rather fast to me."

"Not good style at all," said Mrs Davidson.

They began to talk of other things, and after dinner, tired with their
early rise, they separated and slept. When they awoke, though the sky
was still grey and the clouds hung low, it was not raining and they went
for a walk on the high road which the Americans had built along the bay.

On their return they found that Davidson had just come in.

"We may be here for a fortnight," he said irritably. "I've argued it out
with the governor, but he says there is nothing to be done."

"Mr Davidson's just longing to get back to his work," said his wife,
with an anxious glance at him.

"We've been away for a year," he said, walking up and down the verandah.
"The mission has been in charge of native missionaries and I'm terribly
nervous that they've let things slide. They're good men, I'm not saying
a word against them, God-fearing, devout, and truly Christian men--their
Christianity would put many so-called Christians at home to the
blush--but they're pitifully lacking in energy. They can make a stand
once, they can make a stand twice, but they can't make a stand all the
time. If you leave a mission in charge of a native missionary, no matter
how trustworthy he seems, in course of time you'll find he's let abuses
creep in."

Mr Davidson stood still. With his tall, spare form, and his great eyes
flashing out of his pale face, he was an impressive figure. His
sincerity was obvious in the fire of his gestures and in his deep,
ringing voice.

"I expect to have my work cut out for me. I shall act and I shall act
promptly. If the tree is rotten it shall be cut down and cast into the
flames."

And in the evening after the high tea which was their last meal, while
they sat in the stiff parlour, the ladies working and Dr Macphail
smoking his pipe, the missionary told them of his work in the islands.

"When we went there they had no sense of sin at all," he said. "They
broke the commandments one after the other and never knew they were
doing wrong. And I think that was the most difficult part of my work, to
instil into the natives the sense of sin."

The Macphails knew already that Davidson had worked in the Solomons for
five years before he met his wife. She had been a missionary in China,
and they had become acquainted in Boston, where they were both spending
part of their leave to attend a missionary congress. On their marriage
they had been appointed to the islands in which they had laboured ever
since.

In the course of all the conversations they had had with Mr Davidson one
thing had shone out clearly and that was the man's unflinching courage.
He was a medical missionary, and he was liable to be called at any time
to one or other of the islands in the group. Even the whaleboat is not
so very safe a conveyance in the stormy Pacific of the wet season, but
often he would be sent for in a canoe, and then the danger was great. In
cases of illness or accident he never hesitated. A dozen times he had
spent the whole night baling for his life, and more than once Mrs
Davidson had given him up for lost.

"I'd beg him not to go sometimes," she said, "or at least to wait till
the weather was more settled, but he'd never listen. He's obstinate, and
when he's once made up his mind, nothing can move him."

"How can I ask the natives to put their trust in the Lord if I am afraid
to do so myself?" cried Davidson. "And I'm not, I'm not. They know that
if they send for me in their trouble I'll come if it's humanly possible.
And do you think the Lord is going to abandon me when I am on his
business? The wind blows at his bidding and the waves toss and rage at
his word."

Dr Macphail was a timid man. He had never been able to get used to the
hurtling of the shells over the trenches, and when he was operating in
an advanced dressing-station the sweat poured from his brow and dimmed
his spectacles in the effort he made to control his unsteady hand. He
shuddered' a little as he looked at the missionary.

"I wish I could say that I've never been afraid," he said.

"I wish you could say that you believed in God," retorted the other.

But for some reason, that evening the missionary's thoughts travelled
back to the early days he and his wife had spent on the islands.

"Sometimes Mrs Davidson and I would look at one another and the tears
would stream down our cheeks. We worked without ceasing, day and night,
and we seemed to make no progress. I don't know what I should have done
without her then. When I felt my heart sink, when I was very near
despair, she gave me courage and hope."

Mrs Davidson looked down at her work, and a slight colour rose to her
thin cheeks. Her hands trembled a little. She did not trust herself to
speak.

"We had no one to help us. We were alone, thousands of miles from any of
our own people, surrounded by darkness. When I was broken and weary she
would put her work aside and take the Bible and read to me till peace
came and settled upon me like sleep upon the eyelids of a child, and
when at last she closed the book she'd say: 'We'll save them in spite of
themselves.' And I felt strong again in the Lord, and I answered: 'Yes,
with God's help I'll save them. I must save them.'"

He came over to the table and stood in front of it as though it were a
lectern.

"You see, they were so naturally depraved that they couldn't be brought
to see their wickedness. We had to make sins out of what they thought
were natural actions. We had to make it a sin, not only to commit
adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance
and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom
and a sin for a man not to wear trousers."

"How?" asked Dr Macphail, not without surprise.

"I instituted fines. Obviously the only way to make people realise that
an action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. I fined them if
they didn't come to church, and I fined them if they danced. I fined
them if they were improperly dressed. I had a tariff, and every sin had
to be paid for either in money or work. And at last I made them
understand."

"But did they never refuse to pay?"

"How could they?" asked the missionary.

"It would be a brave man who tried to stand up against Mr Davidson,"
said his wife, tightening her lips.

Dr Macphail looked at Davidson with troubled eyes. What he heard
shocked him, but he hesitated to express his disapproval.

"You must remember that in the last resort I could expel them from their
church membership."

"Did they mind that?"

Davidson smiled a little and gently rubbed his hands.

"They couldn't sell their copra. When the men fished they got no share
of the catch. It meant something very like starvation. Yes, they minded
quite a lot."

"Tell him about Fred Ohlson," said Mrs Davidson.

The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr Macphail.

"Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many
years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn't very pleased
when we came. You see, he'd had things very much his own way. He paid
the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and
whiskey. He had a native wife, but he was flagrantly unfaithful to her.
He was a drunkard. I gave him a chance to mend his ways, but he
wouldn't take it. He laughed at me."

Davidson's voice fell to a deep bass as he said the last words, and he
was silent for a minute or two. The silence was heavy with menace.

"In two years he was a ruined man. He'd lost everything he'd saved in a
quarter of a century. I broke him, and at last he was forced to come to
me like a beggar and beseech me to give him a passage back to Sydney."

"I wish you could have seen him when he came to see Mr Davidson," said
the missionary's wife. "He had been a fine, powerful man, with a lot of
fat on him, and he had a great big voice, but now he was half the size,
and he was shaking all over. He'd suddenly become an old man."

With abstracted gaze Davidson looked out into the night. The rain was
falling again.

Suddenly from below came a sound, and Davidson turned and looked
questioningly at his wife. It was the sound of a gramophone, harsh and
loud, wheezing out a syncopated tune.

"What's that?" he asked.

Mrs Davidson fixed her _pince-nez_ more firmly on her nose.

"One of the second-class passengers has a room in the house. I guess it
comes from there."

They listened in silence, and presently they heard the sound of dancing.
Then the music stopped, and they heard the popping of corks and voices
raised in animated conversation.

"I daresay she's giving a farewell party to her friends on board," said
Dr Macphail. "The ship sails at twelve, doesn't it?"

Davidson made no remark, but he looked at his watch.

"Are you ready?" he asked his wife.

She got up and folded her work.

"Yes, I guess I am," she answered.

"It's early to go to bed yet, isn't it?" said the doctor.

"We have a good deal of reading to do," explained Mrs Davidson.
"Wherever we are, we read a chapter of the Bible before retiring for the
night and we study it with the commentaries, you know, and discuss it
thoroughly. It's a wonderful training for the mind."

The two couples bade one another good night. Dr and Mrs Macphail were
left alone. For two or three minutes they did not speak.

"I think I'll go and fetch the cards," the doctor said at last.

Mrs Macphail looked at him doubtfully. Her conversation with the
Davidsons had left her a little uneasy, but she did not like to say that
she thought they had better not play cards when the Davidsons might come
in at any moment. Dr Macphail brought them and she watched him, though
with a vague sense of guilt, while he laid out his patience. Below the
sound of revelry continued.

It was fine enough next day, and the Macphails, condemned to spend a
fortnight of idleness at Pago-Pago, set about making the best of things.
They went down to the quay and got out of their boxes a number of
books. The doctor called on the chief surgeon of the naval hospital and
went round the beds with him. They left cards on the governor. They
passed Miss Thompson on the road. The doctor took off his hat, and she
gave him a "Good morning, doc.," in a loud, cheerful voice. She was
dressed as on the day before, in a white frock, and her shiny white
boots with their high heels, her fat legs bulging over the tops of them,
were strange things on that exotic scene.

"I don't think she's very suitably dressed, I must say," said Mrs
Macphail. "She looks extremely common to me."

When they got back to their house, she was on the verandah playing with
one of the trader's dark children.

"Say a word to her," Dr Macphail whispered to his wife. "She's all alone
here, and it seems rather unkind to ignore her."

Mrs Macphail was shy, but she was in the habit of doing what her husband
bade her.

"I think we're fellow lodgers here," she said, rather foolishly.

"Terrible, ain't it, bein' cooped up in a one-horse burg like this?"
answered Miss Thompson. "And they tell me I'm lucky to have gotten a
room. I don't see myself livin' in a native house, and that's what some
have to do. I don't know why they don't have a hotel."

They exchanged a few more words. Miss Thompson, loud-voiced and
garrulous, was evidently quite willing to gossip, but Mrs Macphail had
a poor stock of small talk and presently she said:

"Well, I think we must go upstairs."

In the evening when they sat down to their high-tea Davidson on coming
in said:

"I see that woman downstairs has a couple of sailors sitting there. I
wonder how she's gotten acquainted with them."

"She can't be very particular," said Mrs Davidson.

They were all rather tired after the idle, aimless day.

"If there's going to be a fortnight of this I don't know what we shall
feel like at the end of it," said Dr Macphail.

"The only thing to do is to portion out the day to different
activities," answered the missionary. "I shall set aside a certain
number of hours to study and a certain number to exercise, rain or
fine--in the wet season you can't afford to pay any attention to the
rain--and a certain number to recreation."

Dr Macphail looked at his companion with misgiving. Davidson's programme
oppressed him. They were eating Hamburger steak again. It seemed the
only dish the cook knew how to make. Then below the gramophone began.
Davidson started nervously when he heard it, but said nothing. Men's
voices floated up. Miss Thompson's guests were joining in a well-known
song and presently they heard her voice too, hoarse and loud. There was
a good deal of shouting and laughing. The four people upstairs, trying
to make conversation, listened despite themselves to the clink of
glasses and the scrape of chairs. More people had evidently come. Miss
Thompson was giving a party.

"I wonder how she gets them all in," said Mrs Macphail, suddenly
breaking into a medical conversation between the missionary and her
husband.

It showed whither her thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson's
face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was
busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some
experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang
to his feet with a cry.

"What's the matter, Alfred?" asked Mrs Davidson.

"Of course! It never occurred to me. She's out of Iwelei."

"She can't be."

"She came on board at Honolulu. It's obvious. And she's carrying on her
trade here. Here."

He uttered the last word with a passion of indignation.

"What's Iwelei?" asked Mrs Macphail.

He turned his gloomy eyes on her and his voice trembled with horror.

"The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on
our civilisation."

Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the
harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a
deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into
the light. There was parking room for motors on each side of the road,
and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its
mechanical piano, and there were barbers' shops and tobacconists. There
was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a
narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided
Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There
were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the
pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a
garden-city. In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it
gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love
have been so systematised and ordered. The pathways were lit by a rare
lamp, but they would have been dark except for the lights that came from
the open windows of the bungalows. Men wandered about, looking at the
women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part
taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all
nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port,
enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the
regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were
Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes,
and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it were
oppressed. Desire is sad.

"It was the most crying scandal of the Pacific," exclaimed Davidson
vehemently. "The missionaries had been agitating against it for years,
and at last the local press took it up. The police refused to stir. You
know their argument. They say that vice is inevitable and consequently
the best thing is to localise and control it. The truth is, they were
paid. Paid. They were paid by the saloon-keepers, paid by the bullies,
paid by the women themselves. At last they were forced to move."

"I read about it in the papers that came on board in Honolulu," said Dr
Macphail.

"Iwelei, with its sin and shame, ceased to exist on the very day we
arrived. The whole population was brought before the justices. I don't
know why I didn't understand at once what that woman was."

"Now you come to speak of it," said Mrs Macphail, "I remember seeing her
come on board only a few minutes before the boat sailed. I remember
thinking at the time she was cutting it rather fine."

"How dare she come here!" cried Davidson indignantly. "I'm not going to
allow it."

He strode towards the door.

"What are you going to do?" asked Macphail.

"What do you expect me to do? I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to
have this house turned into--into...."

He sought for a word that should not offend the ladies' ears. His eyes
were flashing and his pale face was paler still in his emotion.

"It sounds as though there were three or four men down there," said the
doctor. "Don't you think it's rather rash to go in just now?"

The missionary gave him a contemptuous look and without a word flung out
of the room.

"You know Mr Davidson very little if you think the fear of personal
danger can stop him in the performance of his duty," said his wife.

She sat with her hands nervously clasped, a spot of colour on her high
cheek bones, listening to what was about to happen below. They all
listened. They heard him clatter down the wooden stairs and throw open
the door. The singing stopped suddenly, but the gramophone continued to
bray out its vulgar tune. They heard Davidson's voice and then the noise
of something heavy falling. The music stopped. He had hurled the
gramophone on the floor. Then again they heard Davidson's voice, they
could not make out the words, then Miss Thompson's, loud and shrill,
then a confused clamour as though several people were shouting together
at the top of their lungs. Mrs Davidson gave a little gasp, and she
clenched her hands more tightly. Dr Macphail looked uncertainly from her
to his wife. He did not want to go down, but he wondered if they
expected him to. Then there was something that sounded like a scuffle.
The noise now was more distinct. It might be that Davidson was being
thrown out of the room. The door was slammed. There was a moment's
silence and they heard Davidson come up the stairs again. He went to his
room.

"I think I'll go to him," said Mrs Davidson.

She got up and went out.

"If you want me, just call," said Mrs Macphail, and then when the other
was gone: "I hope he isn't hurt."

"Why couldn't he mind his own business?" said Dr Macphail.

They sat in silence for a minute or two and then they both started, for
the gramophone began to play once more, defiantly, and mocking voices
shouted hoarsely the words of an obscene song.

Next day Mrs Davidson was pale and tired. She complained of headache,
and she looked old and wizened. She told Mrs Macphail that the
missionary had not slept at all; he had passed the night in a state of
frightful agitation and at five had got up and gone out. A glass of beer
had been thrown over him and his clothes were stained and stinking. But
a sombre fire glowed in Mrs Davidson's eyes when she spoke of Miss
Thompson.

"She'll bitterly rue the day when she flouted Mr Davidson," she said.
"Mr Davidson has a wonderful heart and no one who is in trouble has ever
gone to him without being comforted, but he has no mercy for sin, and
when his righteous wrath is excited he's terrible."

"Why, what will he do?" asked Mrs Macphail.

"I don't know, but I wouldn't stand in that creature's shoes for
anything in the world."

Mrs Macphail shuddered. There was something positively alarming in the
triumphant assurance of the little woman's manner. They were going out
together that morning, and they went down the stairs side by side. Miss
Thompson's door was open, and they saw her in a bedraggled
dressing-gown, cooking something in a chafing-dish.

"Good morning," she called. "Is Mr Davidson better this morning?"

They passed her in silence, with their noses in the air, as if she did
not exist. They flushed, however, when she burst into a shout of
derisive laughter. Mrs Davidson turned on her suddenly.

"Don't you dare to speak to me," she screamed. "If you insult me I shall
have you turned out of here."

"Say, did I ask Mr Davidson to visit with me?"

"Don't answer her," whispered Mrs Macphail hurriedly.

They walked on till they were out of earshot.

"She's brazen, brazen," burst from Mrs Davidson.

Her anger almost suffocated her.

And on their way home they met her strolling towards the quay. She had
all her finery on. Her great white hat with its vulgar, showy flowers
was an affront. She called out cheerily to them as she went by, and a
couple of American sailors who were standing there grinned as the ladies
set their faces to an icy stare. They got in just before the rain began
to fall again.

"I guess she'll get her fine clothes spoilt," said Mrs Davidson with a
bitter sneer.

Davidson did not come in till they were half way through dinner. He was
wet through, but he would not change. He sat, morose and silent,
refusing to eat more than a mouthful, and he stared at the slanting
rain. When Mrs Davidson told him of their two encounters with Miss
Thompson he did not answer. His deepening frown alone showed that he had
heard.

"Don't you think we ought to make Mr Horn turn her out of here?" asked
Mrs Davidson. "We can't allow her to insult us."

"There doesn't seem to be any other place for her to go," said Macphail.

"She can live with one of the natives."

"In weather like this a native hut must be a rather uncomfortable place
to live in."

"I lived in one for years," said the missionary.

When the little native girl brought in the fried bananas which formed
the sweet they had every day, Davidson turned to her.

"Ask Miss Thompson when it would be convenient for me to see her," he
said.

The girl nodded shyly and went out.

"What do you want to see her for, Alfred?" asked his wife.

"It's my duty to see her. I won't act till I've given her every chance."

"You don't know what she is. She'll insult you."

"Let her insult me. Let her spit on me. She has an immortal soul, and I
must do all that is in my power to save it."

Mrs Davidson's ears rang still with the harlot's mocking laughter.

"She's gone too far."

"Too far for the mercy of God?" His eyes lit up suddenly and his voice
grew mellow and soft. "Never. The sinner may be deeper in sin than the
depth of hell itself, but the love of the Lord Jesus can reach him
still."

The girl came back with the message.

"Miss Thompson's compliments and as long as Rev. Davidson don't come in
business hours she'll be glad to see him any time."

The party received it in stony silence, and Dr Macphail quickly effaced
from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would
be vexed with him if he found Miss Thompson's effrontery amusing.

They finished the meal in silence. When it was over the two ladies got
up and took their work, Mrs Macphail was making another of the
innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of
the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair
and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and
without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they
heard Miss Thompson's defiant "Come in" when he knocked at the door. He
remained with her for an hour. And Dr Macphail watched the rain. It was
beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like our soft English rain
that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible;
you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did
not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on
the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was
maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt
that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt
powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were
miserable and hopeless.

Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women
looked up.

"I've given her every chance. I have exhorted her to repent. She is an
evil woman."

He paused, and Dr Macphail saw his eyes darken and his pale face grow
hard and stern.

"Now I shall take the whips with which the Lord Jesus drove the usurers
and the money changers out of the Temple of the Most High."

He walked up and down the room. His mouth was close set, and his black
brows were frowning.

"If she fled to the uttermost parts of the earth I should pursue her."

With a sudden movement he turned round and strode out of the room. They
heard him go downstairs again.

"What is he going to do?" asked Mrs Macphail.

"I don't know." Mrs Davidson took off her _pince-nez_ and wiped them.
"When he is on the Lord's work I never ask him questions."

She sighed a little.

"What is the matter?"

"He'll wear himself out. He doesn't know what it is to spare himself."

Dr Macphail learnt the first results of the missionary's activity from
the half-caste trader in whose house they lodged. He stopped the doctor
when he passed the store and came out to speak to him on the stoop. His
fat face was worried.

"The Rev. Davidson has been at me for letting Miss Thompson have a room
here," he said, "but I didn't know what she was when I rented it to her.
When people come and ask if I can rent them a room all I want to know is
if they've the money to pay for it. And she paid me for hers a week in
advance."

Dr Macphail did not want to commit himself.

"When all's said and done it's your house. We're very much obliged to
you for taking us in at all."

Horn looked at him doubtfully. He was not certain yet how definitely
Macphail stood on the missionary's side.

"The missionaries are in with one another," he said, hesitatingly. "If
they get it in for a trader he may just as well shut up his store and
quit."

"Did he want you to turn her out?"

"No, he said so long as she behaved herself he couldn't ask me to do
that. He said he wanted to be just to me. I promised she shouldn't have
no more visitors. I've just been and told her."

"How did she take it?"

"She gave me Hell."

The trader squirmed in his old ducks. He had found Miss Thompson a rough
customer.

"Oh, well, I daresay she'll get out. I don't suppose she wants to stay
here if she can't have anyone in."

"There's nowhere she can go, only a native house, and no native'll take
her now, not now that the missionaries have got their knife in her."

Dr Macphail looked at the falling rain.

"Well, I don't suppose it's any good waiting for it to clear up."

In the evening when they sat in the parlour Davidson talked to them of
his early days at college. He had had no means and had worked his way
through by doing odd jobs during the vacations. There was silence
downstairs. Miss Thompson was sitting in her little room alone. But
suddenly the gramophone began to play. She had set it on in defiance, to
cheat her loneliness, but there was no one to sing, and it had a
melancholy note. It was like a cry for help. Davidson took no notice. He
was in the middle of a long anecdote and without change of expression
went on. The gramophone continued. Miss Thompson put on one reel after
another. It looked as though the silence of the night were getting on
her nerves. It was breathless and sultry. When the Macphails went to bed
they could not sleep. They lay side by side with their eyes wide open,
listening to the cruel singing of the mosquitoes outside their curtain.

"What's that?" whispered Mrs Macphail at last.

They heard a voice, Davidson's voice, through the wooden partition. It
went on with a monotonous, earnest insistence. He was praying aloud. He
was praying for the soul of Miss Thompson.

Two or three days went by. Now when they passed Miss Thompson on the
road she did not greet them with ironic cordiality or smile; she passed
with her nose in the air, a sulky look on her painted face, frowning, as
though she did not see them. The trader told Macphail that she had tried
to get lodging elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played
through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth
was obvious now. The ragtime had a cracked, heart-broken rhythm as
though it were a one-step of despair. When she began to play on Sunday
Davidson sent Horn to beg her to stop at once since it was the Lord's
day. The reel was taken off and the house was silent except for the
steady pattering of the rain on the iron roof.

"I think she's getting a bit worked up," said the trader next day to
Macphail. "She don't know what Mr Davidson's up to and it makes her
scared."

Macphail had caught a glimpse of her that morning and it struck him that
her arrogant expression had changed. There was in her face a hunted
look. The half-caste gave him a sidelong glance.

"I suppose you don't know what Mr Davidson is doing about it?" he
hazarded.

"No, I don't."

It was singular that Horn should ask him that question, for he also had
the idea that the missionary was mysteriously at work. He had an
impression that he was weaving a net around the woman, carefully,
systematically, and suddenly, when everything was ready would pull the
strings tight.

"He told me to tell her," said the trader, "that if at any time she
wanted him she only had to send and he'd come."

"What did she say when you told her that?"

"She didn't say nothing. I didn't stop. I just said what he said I was
to and then I beat it. I thought she might be going to start weepin'."

"I have no doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves," said the
doctor. "And the rain--that's enough to make anyone jumpy," he continued
irritably. "Doesn't it ever stop in this confounded place?"

"It goes on pretty steady in the rainy season. We have three hundred
inches in the year. You see, it's the shape of the bay. It seems to
attract the rain from all over the Pacific."

"Damn the shape of the bay," said the doctor.

He scratched his mosquito bites. He felt very short-tempered. When the
rain stopped and the sun shone, it was like a hothouse, seething, humid,
sultry, breathless, and you had a strange feeling that everything was
growing with a savage violence. The natives, blithe and childlike by
reputation, seemed then, with their tattooing and their dyed hair, to
have something sinister in their appearance; and when they pattered
along at your heels with their naked feet you looked back instinctively.
You felt they might at any moment come behind you swiftly and thrust a
long knife between your shoulder blades. You could not tell what dark
thoughts lurked behind their wide-set eyes. They had a little the look
of ancient Egyptians painted on a temple wall, and there was about them
the terror of what is immeasurably old.

The missionary came and went. He was busy, but the Macphails did not
know what he was doing. Horn told the doctor that he saw the governor
every day, and once Davidson mentioned him.

"He looks as if he had plenty of determination," he said, "but when you
come down to brass tacks he has no backbone."

"I suppose that means he won't do exactly what you want," suggested the
doctor facetiously.

The missionary did not smile.

"I want him to do what's right. It shouldn't be necessary to persuade a
man to do that."

"But there may be differences of opinion about what is right."

"If a man had a gangrenous foot would you have patience with anyone who
hesitated to amputate it?"

"Gangrene is a matter of fact."

"And Evil?"

What Davidson had done soon appeared. The four of them had just finished
their midday meal, and they had not yet separated for the siesta which
the heat imposed on the ladies and on the doctor. Davidson had little
patience with the slothful habit. The door was suddenly flung open and
Miss Thompson came in. She looked round the room and then went up to
Davidson.

"You low-down skunk, what have you been saying about me to the
governor?"

She was spluttering with rage. There was a moment's pause. Then the
missionary drew forward a chair.

"Won't you be seated, Miss Thompson? I've been hoping to have another
talk with you."

"You poor low-life bastard."

She burst into a torrent of insult, foul and insolent. Davidson kept his
grave eyes on her.

"I'm indifferent to the abuse you think fit to heap on me, Miss
Thompson," he said, "but I must beg you to remember that ladies are
present."

Tears by now were struggling with her anger. Her face was red and
swollen as though she were choking.

"What has happened?" asked Dr Macphail.

"A feller's just been in here and he says I gotter beat it on the next
boat."

Was there a gleam in the missionary's eyes? His face remained impassive.

"You could hardly expect the governor to let you stay here under the
circumstances."

"You done it," she shrieked. "You can't kid me. You done it."

"I don't want to deceive you. I urged the governor to take the only
possible step consistent with his obligations."

"Why couldn't you leave me be? I wasn't doin' you no harm."

"You may be sure that if you had I should be the last man to resent it."

"Do you think I want to stay on in this poor imitation of a burg? I
don't look no busher, do I?"

"In that case I don't see what cause of complaint you have," he
answered.

She gave an inarticulate cry of rage and flung out of the room. There
was a short silence.

"It's a relief to know that the governor has acted at last," said
Davidson finally. "He's a weak man and he shilly-shallied. He said she
was only here for a fortnight anyway, and if she went on to Apia that
was under British jurisdiction and had nothing to do with him."

The missionary sprang to his feet and strode across the room.

"It's terrible the way the men who are in authority seek to evade their
responsibility. They speak as though evil that was out of sight ceased
to be evil. The very existence of that woman is a scandal and it does
not help matters to shift it to another of the islands. In the end I had
to speak straight from the shoulder."

Davidson's brow lowered, and he protruded his firm chin. He looked
fierce and determined.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Our mission is not entirely without influence at Washington. I pointed
out to the governor that it wouldn't do him any good if there was a
complaint about the way he managed things here."

"When has she got to go?" asked the doctor, after a pause.

"The San Francisco boat is due here from Sydney next Tuesday. She's to
sail on that."

That was in five days' time. It was next day, when he was coming back
from the hospital where for want of something better to do Macphail
spent most of his mornings, that the half-caste stopped him as he was
going upstairs.

"Excuse me, Dr Macphail, Miss Thompson's sick. Will you have a look at
her."

"Certainly."

Horn led him to her room. She was sitting in a chair idly, neither
reading nor sewing, staring in front of her. She wore her white dress
and the large hat with the flowers on it. Macphail noticed that her skin
was yellow and muddy under her powder, and her eyes were heavy.

"I'm sorry to hear you're not well," he said.

"Oh, I ain't sick really. I just said that, because I just had to see
you. I've got to clear on a boat that's going to 'Frisco."

She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were suddenly startled. She
opened and clenched her hands spasmodically. The trader stood at the
door, listening.

"So I understand," said the doctor.

She gave a little gulp.

"I guess it ain't very convenient for me to go to 'Frisco just now. I
went to see the governor yesterday afternoon, but I couldn't get to him.
I saw the secretary, and he told me I'd got to take that boat and that
was all there was to it. I just had to see the governor, so I waited
outside his house this morning, and when he come out I spoke to him. He
didn't want to speak to me, I'll say, but I wouldn't let him shake me
off, and at last he said he hadn't no objection to my staying here till
the next boat to Sydney if the Rev. Davidson will stand for it."

She stopped and looked at Dr Macphail anxiously.

"I don't know exactly what I can do," he said.

"Well, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind asking him. I swear to God I
won't start anything here if he'll just only let me stay. I won't go out
of the house if that'll suit him. It's no more'n a fortnight."

"I'll ask him."

"He won't stand for it," said Horn. "He'll have you out on Tuesday, so
you may as well make up your mind to it."

"Tell him I can get work in Sydney, straight stuff, I mean. 'Tain't
asking very much."

"I'll do what I can."

"And come and tell me right away, will you? I can't set down to a thing
till I get the dope one way or the other."

It was not an errand that much pleased the doctor, and,
characteristically perhaps, he went about it indirectly. He told his
wife what Miss Thompson had said to him and asked her to speak to Mrs
Davidson. The missionary's attitude seemed rather arbitrary and it could
do no harm if the girl were allowed to stay in Pago-Pago another
fortnight. But he was not prepared for the result of his diplomacy. The
missionary came to him straightway.

"Mrs Davidson tells me that Thompson has been speaking to you."

Dr Macphail, thus directly tackled, had the shy man's resentment at
being forced out into the open. He felt his temper rising, and he
flushed.

"I don't see that it can make any difference if she goes to Sydney
rather than to San Francisco, and so long as she promises to behave
while she's here it's dashed hard to persecute her."

The missionary fixed him with his stern eyes.

"Why is she unwilling to go back to San Francisco?"

"I didn't enquire," answered the doctor with some asperity. "And I think
one does better to mind one's own business."

Perhaps it was not a very tactful answer.

"The governor has ordered her to be deported by the first boat that
leaves the island. He's only done his duty and I will not interfere. Her
presence is a peril here."

"I think you're very harsh and tyrannical."

The two ladies looked up at the doctor with some alarm, but they need
not have feared a quarrel, for the missionary smiled gently.

"I'm terribly sorry you should think that of me, Dr Macphail. Believe
me, my heart bleeds for that unfortunate woman, but I'm only trying to
do my duty."

The doctor made no answer. He looked out of the window sullenly. For
once it was not raining and across the bay you saw nestling among the
trees the huts of a native village.

"I think I'll take advantage of the rain stopping to go out," he said.

"Please don't bear me malice because I can't accede to your wish," said
Davidson, with a melancholy smile. "I respect you very much, doctor, and
I should be sorry if you thought ill of me."

"I have no doubt you have a sufficiently good opinion of yourself to
bear mine with equanimity," he retorted.

"That's one on me," chuckled Davidson.

When Dr Macphail, vexed with himself because he had been uncivil to no
purpose, went downstairs, Miss Thompson was waiting for him with her
door ajar.

"Well," she said, "have you spoken to him?"

"Yes, I'm sorry, he won't do anything," he answered, not looking at her
in his embarrassment.

But then he gave her a quick glance, for a sob broke from her. He saw
that her face was white with fear. It gave him a shock of dismay. And
suddenly he had an idea.

"But don't give up hope yet. I think it's a shame the way they're
treating you and I'm going to see the governor myself."

"Now?"

He nodded. Her face brightened.

"Say, that's real good of you. I'm sure he'll let me stay if you speak
for me. I just won't do a thing I didn't ought all the time I'm here."

Dr Macphail hardly knew why he had made up his mind to appeal to the
governor. He was perfectly indifferent to Miss Thompson's affairs, but
the missionary had irritated him, and with him temper was a smouldering
thing. He found the governor at home. He was a large, handsome man, a
sailor, with a grey toothbrush moustache; and he wore a spotless uniform
of white drill.

"I've come to see you about a woman who's lodging in the same house as
we are," he said. "Her name's Thompson."

"I guess I've heard nearly enough about her, Dr Macphail," said the
governor, smiling. "I've given her the order to get out next Tuesday and
that's all I can do."

"I wanted to ask you if you couldn't stretch a point and let her stay
here till the boat comes in from San Francisco so that she can go to
Sydney. I will guarantee her good behaviour."

The governor continued to smile, but his eyes grew small and serious.

"I'd be very glad to oblige you, Dr Macphail, but I've given the order
and it must stand."

The doctor put the case as reasonably as he could, but now the governor
ceased to smile at all. He listened sullenly, with averted gaze.
Macphail saw that he was making no impression.

"I'm sorry to cause any lady inconvenience, but she'll have to sail on
Tuesday and that's all there is to it."

"But what difference can it make?"

"Pardon me, doctor, but I don't feel called upon to explain my official
actions except to the proper authorities."

Macphail looked at him shrewdly. He remembered Davidson's hint that he
had used threats, and in the governor's attitude he read a singular
embarrassment.

"Davidson's a damned busybody," he said hotly.

"Between ourselves, Dr Macphail, I don't say that I have formed a very
favourable opinion of Mr Davidson, but I am bound to confess that he
was within his rights in pointing out to me the danger that the presence
of a woman of Miss Thompson's character was to a place like this where a
number of enlisted men are stationed among a native population."

He got up and Dr Macphail was obliged to do so too.

"I must ask you to excuse me. I have an engagement. Please give my
respects to Mrs Macphail."

The doctor left him crest-fallen. He knew that Miss Thompson would be
waiting for him, and unwilling to tell her himself that he had failed,
he went into the house by the back door and sneaked up the stairs as
though he had something to hide.

At supper he was silent and ill-at-ease, but the missionary was jovial
and animated. Dr Macphail thought his eyes rested on him now and then
with triumphant good-humour. It struck him suddenly that Davidson knew
of his visit to the governor and of its ill success. But how on earth
could he have heard of it? There was something sinister about the power
of that man. After supper he saw Horn on the verandah and, as though to
have a casual word with him, went out.

"She wants to know if you've seen the governor," the trader whispered.

"Yes. He wouldn't do anything. I'm awfully sorry, I can't do anything
more."

"I knew he wouldn't. They daren't go against the missionaries."

"What are you talking about?" said Davidson affably, coming out to join
them.

"I was just saying there was no chance of your getting over to Apia for
at least another week," said the trader glibly.

He left them, and the two men returned into the parlour. Mr Davidson
devoted one hour after each meal to recreation. Presently a timid knock
was heard at the door.

"Come in," said Mrs Davidson, in her sharp voice.

The door was not opened. She got up and opened it. They saw Miss
Thompson standing at the threshold. But the change in her appearance was
extraordinary. This was no longer the flaunting hussy who had jeered at
them in the road, but a broken, frightened woman. Her hair, as a rule so
elaborately arranged, was tumbling untidily over her neck. She wore
bedroom slippers and a skirt and blouse. They were unfresh and
bedraggled. She stood at the door with the tears streaming down her face
and did not dare to enter.

"What do you want?" said Mrs Davidson harshly.

"May I speak to Mr Davidson?" she said in a choking voice.

The missionary rose and went towards her.

"Come right in, Miss Thompson," he said in cordial tones. "What can I do
for you?"

She entered the room.

"Say, I'm sorry for what I said to you the other day an' for--for
everythin' else. I guess I was a bit lit up. I beg pardon."

"Oh, it was nothing. I guess my back's broad enough to bear a few hard
words."

She stepped towards him with a movement that was horribly cringing.

"You've got me beat. I'm all in. You won't make me go back to 'Frisco?"

His genial manner vanished and his voice grew on a sudden hard and
stern.

"Why don't you want to go back there?"

She cowered before him.

"I guess my people live there. I don't want them to see me like this.
I'll go anywhere else you say."

"Why don't you want to go back to San Francisco?"

"I've told you."

He leaned forward, staring at her, and his great, shining eyes seemed to
try to bore into her soul. He gave a sudden gasp.

"The penitentiary."

She screamed, and then she fell at his feet, clasping his legs.

"Don't send me back there. I swear to you before God I'll be a good
woman. I'll give all this up."

She burst into a torrent of confused supplication and the tears coursed
down her painted cheeks. He leaned over her and, lifting her face,
forced her to look at him.

"Is that it, the penitentiary?"

"I beat it before they could get me," she gasped. "If the bulls grab me
it's three years for mine."

He let go his hold of her and she fell in a heap on the floor, sobbing
bitterly. Dr Macphail stood up.

"This alters the whole thing," he said. "You can't make her go back when
you know this. Give her another chance. She wants to turn over a new
leaf."

"I'm going to give her the finest chance she's ever had. If she repents
let her accept her punishment."

She misunderstood the words and looked up. There was a gleam of hope in
her heavy eyes.

"You'll let me go?"

"No. You shall sail for San Francisco on Tuesday."

She gave a groan of horror and then burst into low, hoarse shrieks which
sounded hardly human, and she beat her head passionately on the ground.
Dr Macphail sprang to her and lifted her up.

"Come on, you mustn't do that. You'd better go to your room and lie
down. I'll get you something."

He raised her to her feet and partly dragging her, partly carrying her,
got her downstairs. He was furious with Mrs Davidson and with his wife
because they made no effort to help. The half-caste was standing on the
landing and with his assistance he managed to get her on the bed. She
was moaning and crying. She was almost insensible. He gave her a
hypodermic injection. He was hot and exhausted when he went upstairs
again.

"I've got her to lie down."

The two women and Davidson were in the same positions as when he had
left them. They could not have moved or spoken since he went.

"I was waiting for you," said Davidson, in a strange, distant voice. "I
want you all to pray with me for the soul of our erring sister."

He took the Bible off a shelf, and sat down at the table at which they
had supped. It had not been cleared, and he pushed the tea-pot out of
the way. In a powerful voice, resonant and deep, he read to them the
chapter in which is narrated the meeting of Jesus Christ with the woman
taken in adultery.

"Now kneel with me and let us pray for the soul of our dear sister,
Sadie Thompson."

He burst into a long, passionate prayer in which he implored God to have
mercy on the sinful woman. Mrs Macphail and Mrs Davidson knelt with
covered eyes. The doctor, taken by surprise, awkward and sheepish, knelt
too. The missionary's prayer had a savage eloquence. He was
extraordinarily moved, and as he spoke the tears ran down his cheeks.
Outside, the pitiless rain fell, fell steadily, with a fierce malignity
that was all too human.

At last he stopped. He paused for a moment and said:

"We will now repeat the Lord's prayer."

They said it and then; following him, they rose from their knees. Mrs
Davidson's face was pale and restful. She was comforted and at peace,
but the Macphails felt suddenly bashful. They did not know which way to
look.

"I'll just go down and see how she is now," said Dr Macphail.

When he knocked at her door it was opened for him by Horn. Miss Thompson
was in a rocking-chair, sobbing quietly.

"What are you doing there?" exclaimed Macphail. "I told you to lie
down."

"I can't lie down. I want to see Mr Davidson."

"My poor child, what do you think is the good of it? You'll never move
him."

"He said he'd come if I sent for him."

Macphail motioned to the trader.

"Go and fetch him."

He waited with her in silence while the trader went upstairs. Davidson
came in.

"Excuse me for asking you to come here," she said, looking at him
sombrely.

"I was expecting you to send for me. I knew the Lord would answer my
prayer."

They stared at one another for a moment and then she looked away. She
kept her eyes averted when she spoke.

"I've been a bad woman. I want to repent."

"Thank God! thank God! He has heard our prayers."

He turned to the two men.

"Leave me alone with her. Tell Mrs Davidson that our prayers have been
answered."

They went out and closed the door behind them.

"Gee whizz," said the trader.

That night Dr Macphail could not get to sleep till late, and when he
heard the missionary come upstairs he looked at his watch. It was two
o'clock. But even then he did not go to bed at once, for through the
wooden partition that separated their rooms he heard him praying aloud,
till he himself, exhausted, fell asleep.

When he saw him next morning he was surprised at his appearance. He was
paler than ever, tired, but his eyes shone with an inhuman fire. It
looked as though he were filled with an overwhelming joy.

"I want you to go down presently and see Sadie," he said. "I can't hope
that her body is better, but her soul--her soul is transformed."

The doctor was feeling wan and nervous.

"You were with her very late last night," he said.

"Yes, she couldn't bear to have me leave her."

"You look as pleased as Punch," the doctor said irritably.

Davidson's eyes shone with ecstasy.

"A great mercy has been vouchsafed me. Last night I was privileged to
bring a lost soul to the loving arms of Jesus."

Miss Thompson was again in the rocking-chair. The bed had not been made.
The room was in disorder. She had not troubled to dress herself, but
wore a dirty dressing-gown, and her hair was tied in a sluttish knot.
She had given her face a dab with a wet towel, but it was all swollen
and creased with crying. She looked a drab.

She raised her eyes dully when the doctor came in. She was cowed and
broken.

"Where's Mr Davidson?" she asked.

"He'll come presently if you want him," answered Macphail acidly. "I
came here to see how you were."

"Oh, I guess I'm O. K. You needn't worry about that."

"Have you had anything to eat?"

"Horn brought me some coffee."

She looked anxiously at the door.

"D'you think he'll come down soon? I feel as if it wasn't so terrible
when he's with me."

"Are you still going on Tuesday?"

"Yes, he says I've got to go. Please tell him to come right along. You
can't do me any good. He's the only one as can help me now."

"Very well," said Dr Macphail.

During the next three days the missionary spent almost all his time with
Sadie Thompson. He joined the others only to have his meals. Dr Macphail
noticed that he hardly ate.

"He's wearing himself out," said Mrs Davidson pitifully. "He'll have a
breakdown if he doesn't take care, but he won't spare himself."

She herself was white and pale. She told Mrs Macphail that she had no
sleep. When the missionary came upstairs from Miss Thompson he prayed
till he was exhausted, but even then he did not sleep for long. After an
hour or two he got up and dressed himself, and went for a tramp along
the bay. He had strange dreams.

"This morning he told me that he'd been dreaming about the mountains of
Nebraska," said Mrs Davidson.

"That's curious," said Dr Macphail.

He remembered seeing them from the windows of the train when he crossed
America. They were like huge mole-hills, rounded and smooth, and they
rose from the plain abruptly. Dr Macphail remembered how it struck him
that they were like a woman's breasts.

Davidson's restlessness was intolerable even to himself. But he was
buoyed up by a wonderful exhilaration. He was tearing out by the roots
the last vestiges of sin that lurked in the hidden corners of that poor
woman's heart. He read with her and prayed with her.

"It's wonderful," he said to them one day at supper. "It's a true
rebirth. Her soul, which was black as night, is now pure and white like
the new-fallen snow. I am humble and afraid. Her remorse for all her
sins is beautiful. I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment."

"Have you the heart to send her back to San Francisco?" said the doctor.
"Three years in an American prison. I should have thought you might have
saved her from that."

"Ah, but don't you see? It's necessary. Do you think my heart doesn't
bleed for her? I love her as I love my wife and my sister. All the time
that she is in prison I shall suffer all the pain that she suffers."

"Bunkum," cried the doctor impatiently.

"You don't understand because you're blind. She's sinned, and she must
suffer. I know what she'll endure. She'll be starved and tortured and
humiliated. I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to
God. I want her to accept it joyfully. She has an opportunity which is
offered to very few of us. God is very good and very merciful."

Davidson's voice trembled with excitement. He could hardly articulate
the words that tumbled passionately from his lips.

"All day I pray with her and when I leave her I pray again, I pray with
all my might and main, so that Jesus may grant her this great mercy. I
want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at
the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse. I want her
to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that
she places at the feet of our Blessed Lord, who gave his life for her."

The days passed slowly. The whole household, intent on the wretched,
tortured woman downstairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement. She
was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a
bloody idolatry. Her terror numbed her. She could not bear to let
Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had
courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a
great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was
exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal,
for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish
she was enduring. She could not bear much longer the vague terrors
which now assailed her. With her sins she had put aside all personal
vanity, and she slopped about her room, unkempt and dishevelled, in her
tawdry dressing-gown. She had not taken off her night-dress for four
days, nor put on stockings. Her room was littered and untidy. Meanwhile
the rain fell with a cruel persistence. You felt that the heavens must
at last be empty of water, but still it poured down, straight and heavy,
with a maddening iteration, on the iron roof. Everything was damp and
clammy. There was mildew on the walls and on the boots that stood on the
floor. Through the sleepless nights the mosquitoes droned their angry
chant.

"If it would only stop raining for a single day it wouldn't be so bad,"
said Dr Macphail.

They all looked forward to the Tuesday when the boat for San Francisco
was to arrive from Sydney. The strain was intolerable. So far as Dr
Macphail was concerned, his pity and his resentment were alike
extinguished by his desire to be rid of the unfortunate woman. The
inevitable must be accepted. He felt he would breathe more freely when
the ship had sailed. Sadie Thompson was to be escorted on board by a
clerk in the governor's office. This person called on the Monday evening
and told Miss Thompson to be prepared at eleven in the morning. Davidson
was with her.

"I'll see that everything is ready. I mean to come on board with her
myself."

Miss Thompson did not speak.

When Dr Macphail blew out his candle and crawled cautiously under his
mosquito curtains, he gave a sigh of relief.

"Well, thank God that's over. By this time to-morrow she'll be gone."

"Mrs Davidson will be glad too. She says he's wearing himself to a
shadow," said Mrs Macphail. "She's a different woman."

"Who?"

"Sadie. I should never have thought it possible. It makes one humble."

Dr Macphail did not answer, and presently he fell asleep. He was tired
out, and he slept more soundly than usual.

He was awakened in the morning by a hand placed on his arm, and,
starting up, saw Horn by the side of his bed. The trader put his finger
on his mouth to prevent any exclamation from Dr Macphail and beckoned to
him to come. As a rule he wore shabby ducks, but now he was barefoot and
wore only the _lava-lava_ of the natives. He looked suddenly savage, and
Dr Macphail, getting out of bed, saw that he was heavily tattooed. Horn
made him a sign to come on to the verandah. Dr Macphail got out of bed
and followed the trader out.

"Don't make a noise," he whispered. "You're wanted. Put on a coat and
some shoes. Quick."

Dr Macphail's first thought was that something had happened to Miss
Thompson.

"What is it? Shall I bring my instruments?"

"Hurry, please, hurry."

Dr Macphail crept back into the bedroom, put on a waterproof over his
pyjamas, and a pair of rubber-soled shoes. He rejoined the trader, and
together they tiptoed down the stairs. The door leading out to the road
was open and at it were standing half a dozen natives.

"What is it?" repeated the doctor.

"Come along with me," said Horn.

He walked out and the doctor followed him. The natives came after them
in a little bunch. They crossed the road and came on to the beach. The
doctor saw a group of natives standing round some object at the water's
edge. They hurried along, a couple of dozen yards perhaps, and the
natives opened out as the doctor came up. The trader pushed him
forwards. Then he saw, lying half in the water and half out, a dreadful
object, the body of Davidson. Dr Macphail bent down--he was not a man to
lose his head in an emergency--and turned the body over. The throat was
cut from ear to ear, and in the right hand was still the razor with
which the deed was done.

"He's quite cold," said the doctor. "He must have been dead some time."

"One of the boys saw him lying there on his way to work just now and
came and told me. Do you think he did it himself?"

"Yes. Someone ought to go for the police."

Horn said something in the native tongue, and two youths started off.

"We must leave him here till they come," said the doctor.

"They mustn't take him into my house. I won't have him in my house."

"You'll do what the authorities say," replied the doctor sharply. "In
point of fact I expect they'll take him to the mortuary."

They stood waiting where they were. The trader took a cigarette from a
fold in his _lava-lava_ and gave one to Dr Macphail. They smoked while
they stared at the corpse. Dr Macphail could not understand.

"Why do you think he did it?" asked Horn.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. In a little while native police came
along, under the charge of a marine, with a stretcher, and immediately
afterwards a couple of naval officers and a naval doctor. They managed
everything in a businesslike manner.

"What about the wife?" said one of the officers.

"Now that you've come I'll go back to the house and get some things on.
I'll see that it's broken to her. She'd better not see him till he's
been fixed up a little."

"I guess that's right," said the naval doctor.

When Dr Macphail went back he found his wife nearly dressed.

"Mrs Davidson's in a dreadful state about her husband," she said to him
as soon as he appeared. "He hasn't been to bed all night. She heard him
leave Miss Thompson's room at two, but he went out. If he's been walking
about since then he'll be absolutely dead."

Dr Macphail told her what had happened and asked her to break the news
to Mrs Davidson.

"But why did he do it?" she asked, horror-stricken.

"I don't know."

"But I can't. I can't."

"You must."

She gave him a frightened look and went out. He heard her go into Mrs
Davidson's room. He waited a minute to gather himself together and then
began to shave and wash. When he was dressed he sat down on the bed and
waited for his wife. At last she came.

"She wants to see him," she said.

"They've taken him to the mortuary. We'd better go down with her. How
did she take it?"

"I think she's stunned. She didn't cry. But she's trembling like a
leaf."

"We'd better go at once."

When they knocked at her door Mrs Davidson came out. She was very pale,
but dry-eyed. To the doctor she seemed unnaturally composed. No word was
exchanged, and they set out in silence down the road. When they arrived
at the mortuary Mrs Davidson spoke.

"Let me go in and see him alone."

They stood aside. A native opened a door for her and closed it behind
her. They sat down and waited. One or two white men came and talked to
them in undertones. Dr Macphail told them again what he knew of the
tragedy. At last the door was quietly opened and Mrs Davidson came out.
Silence fell upon them.

"I'm ready to go back now," she said.

Her voice was hard and steady. Dr Macphail could not understand the look
in her eyes. Her pale face was very stern. They walked back slowly,
never saying a word, and at last they came round the bend on the other
side of which stood their house. Mrs Davidson gave a gasp, and for a
moment they stopped still. An incredible sound assaulted their ears. The
gramophone which had been silent for so long was playing, playing
ragtime loud and harsh.

"What's that?" cried Mrs Macphail with horror.

"Let's go on," said Mrs Davidson.

They walked up the steps and entered the hall. Miss Thompson was
standing at her door, chatting with a sailor. A sudden change had taken
place in her. She was no longer the cowed drudge of the last days. She
was dressed in all her finery, in her white dress, with the high shiny
boots over which her fat legs bulged in their cotton stockings; her hair
was elaborately arranged; and she wore that enormous hat covered with
gaudy flowers. Her face was painted, her eyebrows were boldly black, and
her lips were scarlet. She held herself erect. She was the flaunting
quean that they had known at first. As they came in she broke into a
loud, jeering laugh; and then, when Mrs Davidson involuntarily stopped,
she collected the spittle in her mouth and spat. Mrs Davidson cowered
back, and two red spots rose suddenly to her cheeks. Then, covering her
face with her hands, she broke away and ran quickly up the stairs. Dr
Macphail was outraged. He pushed past the woman into her room.

"What the devil are you doing?" he cried. "Stop that damned machine."

He went up to it and tore the record off. She turned on him.

"Say, doc, you can that stuff with me. What the hell are you doin' in my
room?"

"What do you mean?" he cried. "What d'you mean?"

She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her
expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.

"You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs!
Pigs!"

Dr Macphail gasped. He understood.




VIII

_Envoi_


When your ship leaves Honolulu they hang _leis_ round your neck,
garlands of sweet smelling flowers. The wharf is crowded and the band
plays a melting Hawaiian tune. The people on board throw coloured
streamers to those standing below, and the side of the ship is gay with
the thin lines of paper, red and green and yellow and blue. When the
ship moves slowly away the streamers break softly, and it is like the
breaking of human ties. Men and women are joined together for a moment
by a gaily coloured strip of paper, red and blue and green and yellow,
and then life separates them and the paper is sundered, so easily, with
a little sharp snap. For an hour the fragments trail down the hull and
then they blow away. The flowers of your garlands fade and their scent
is oppressive. You throw them overboard.

THE END

*       *       *       *       *


BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

OF HUMAN BONDAGE
THE MOON AND SIXPENCE
THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF
MRS. CRADDOCK
THE EXPLORER
THE MAGICIAN

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY







*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF: LITTLE STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS ***


    

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