Heart-to-heart Talks with Pauline—My Native Friends—The
Unappreciated Genius—His Views on Art—Father O’Leary’s
Call—Waylao’s Return
FATHER O’LEARY and I became the best of pals. Though we disagreed on
some matters we never argued.
“My son, smoking is a silly habit,” he said.
“I suppose you’re right,” I responded, taking my pipe from my lips.
He at once held my hand, saying: “Smoke on, I know of men who have done
worse.”
By this alone one may gather that he was harmless enough and a truly
religious man.
He often spoke to me of his boyhood as we sat beneath the orange grove
by his little mission-room bungalow. I learnt then that his mother was
Irish and his father French.
He lent me a little book on the philosophy of the senses and I
discovered a beautiful lock of twisted hair in it. When I mentioned my
discovery, the priest coloured slightly and seemed embarrassed. He had
evidently forgotten it was in the book. When he was down with fever a
few days after, I distinctly heard him mention a woman’s name in his
delirium—a pretty French name—and from all that I heard his lips mutter,
it was evident that somewhere back in the past the Father had had a love
affair. As I lay on my trestle bed by his side, I wondered if that
woman’s name had anything to do with his exile out there in the South
Seas, and conjured up quite a host of romantic imaginings over the
discovery of that lock of brown hair. Whose was it? What evil fate had
intervened, that the only tokens of that romance should be the lock of
hair and the feverish ravings on the lips of an old French missionary
priest in the Marquesan cannibal isles? While the Father slept I gazed
at him and thought what a handsome youth he must have been. Even in old
age some aftermath of youth’s charm still lingered on his face. He had a
fine brow and a kind mouth, so different to millions of mouths I’ve
seen.
He was never so happy as when we sat out beneath the bread-fruits by
moonlight and I played tender solos on the violin. Fired by the romance
I had weaved around my discovery of that ringlet, I composed the
following solo. It was a favourite of the priest’s; he asked me to play
it over and over again. Nor did he dream why I had been inspired to
compose that strain.
[Music: LE RÊVE DU MOINE.
(_The Monk’s Dream._)
A. SAFRONI (A. S. M.)
INTRO.
Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. BOOSEY & Co., London, W.
]
He often spoke of Waylao in sorrow, and of the sins and the passions of
the dusky Southern race. Through his hospitality I met Pauline more than
once. She loved to hear me play the violin. The world took on a
different atmosphere as she sang old English songs her father had taught
her. The beauty of those songs was intense, and I became home-sick as I
listened to her voice, accompanied by the monotone of the breaking seas
below and the wild oaths of sunburnt seafaring men in the grog shanty
hard by. None but exiles know how an English song touches the heart and
awakens dreams in a man. I had led a wild life and done many strange
things, and had been influenced by many a chimera, but that white girl
singing a song of England seemed something deeper than I understood, and
took me back home across the seas. I spoke to Pauline in a sacred way of
my mother. I said: “Pauline, I never knew how beautiful my dear mother
was till I met you.” Then I spoke of my father. I told her how even when
I was a little, toddling boy he had a long white beard. I think that
Pauline learnt to love that dear parent of mine. She spoke so gently as
I described to her the various constellations of stars that shone in our
English skies. In the spontaneous utterance of youth I made her see my
old father’s gnarled walking-stick as it trembled, wavered a moment,
then pointed out to me the Great Bear, the Pleiades, Lyra, Alpha
Centauri and remote nebulæ, constellations shining in the heavens as I
walked by his side. I explained to her how I had looked up at that grand
old father of mine as his sombre voice told me those magical names, and
how I thought that _he_ was the first to name the stars.
Nor did I exaggerate in saying this to her. His grey beard had a look of
infinity about it as I walked by his side in those Kentish woods when I
was a boy. Ah! beautiful _when_.
I’ve often felt like jumping over my shoulders and racing back to my
childhood. As I dreamed by those coral seas I came to love the memory of
that child more than life itself. I was young then, so to speak. It was
only a very few years since I had laid that boy in the grave,
disillusioned, dead, with a bruised, cut lip and a black eye. I buried
him in the solitudes of an unknown country, buried him deep, too. Under
his head I pillowed all his childhood dreams. What dreams they’d been!
Ah me! Even now, after so many years, I go back to that grave in the
dead of night, lift the stone slab and gaze on the dead face. He’s as
white as marble. I don’t think he’ll dissolve into dust till I’m dead.
He often creeps out of the forests and shadows into my room by night,
sits at my feet and sings to me. We were twins once; now I stand ashamed
in his divine presence.
I could write a big book about that boy and I, what we thought to do
together when we grew big, when we had crossed the ocean—such wondrous
deeds of chivalry to fair women and comradeship to brave men. He was
plucky, that little pal of mine; would run by my side on the ships’
decks and cheer me in the wild, stormy nights up aloft. It was he who
led me through the vast, tropical forests, telling me to seek Waylao.
The world’s too rotten and cynical to hear all that he wished to do or
all the songs he sang.
That little pal still runs by my side. No wonder I love boys. I often
give a hungry-looking kid a penny and smile grimly to myself as he looks
at the coin, stares at the little ghostly pal at my side and runs away
in fright.
Whilst staying with the kind priest I got pally with his dusky converts.
Often I went into the forest villages about half-a-mile from his
mission-room. Never have I played to a more appreciative audience than
to those shaggy native mothers who crept from their huts to hear me.
Some, for all their sins, had handsome faces and eyes. Their little
children would romp about me and mimic the swaying of my violin bow and
the melodies that I played. One old ex-cannibal chief became a most
estimable companion of mine, and though he incidentally confessed that
he liked human flesh on toast, I found him a reliable pal, trustworthy
and deeply religious. He was a close observer of the beauties of nature,
and I cannot recall any civilised white man whose conversation took my
thoughts to a higher plane.
This particular old native, Maro Le Mu, had several bonny sons and
daughters. He invited me to his home, which was situated in a beautiful
spot not far from the lagoons near the shore port of entry near
Tai-o-hae. His wife was a stalwart, deep-bosomed Tahitian, and a most
hospitable woman. I stayed with them for a week and had fine times. The
children of Maro and his relatives (he had four discarded wives of old
standing) were delighted with me, and as I roamed the slopes and
forests, they followed me like a flock of gambolling puppies. They
looked upon me as some mighty white god or witchman. When I played the
violin they would creep up to me and try and peep into the instrument to
find where the music came from. I would run my fingers up the E string,
and as the bow wailed forth the high harmonics they would scream with
fright and spring away from me, regarding me with awe. Had it not been
for Chief Maro and those kiddies, I think I should have got a ship and
cleared before I did.
One of the sons’ children was a little girl about six years of age, a
very pretty child, a mixture of Marquesan and Tahitian blood. She was
beautifully tattooed on the shoulder curves and on the wrists. I think
that O Maro Le Mu was high born and that the child was marked with the
special insignia of the armorial bearings of the Maro Le Mu family’s
blood royal. However, I practically hired little Winga, for so I
pronounced her gimcrack Marquesan name. She would run behind me through
the forest like a little dusky ghost, and when I entered a village she
marched ahead as my advance-guard, so proud was she of being my servant.
It was a sight worth seeing as she lifted her chin, while the forest
flowers fastened in her folds of coral-dyed hair tossed as she marched
disdainfully across some _rara_ (village green), refusing to consort
with or look at the flocks of native kiddies who rushed up to us as we
passed along. They stared with awestruck eyes at that little comrade of
mine, as we saluted the tribal king and his retinue of dusky wives and
then passed away into the forest. She was an affectionate mite, and
reminded me of the Fijian kiddie of the same age whom a pal and I had
taken with us when we went troubadouring for hundreds of miles in the
various isles of Polynesia.
It was at this time that I met a strange old man, who turned out to be
an artist. He lived all alone on an islet just off the coast, not far
from Chief Maro Le Mu’s home, and he invited me to go and see him. I
accepted the invitation with alacrity, and hired a native canoe to take
me across the three or four hundred yards of deep sea that divided his
islet from the wooded mainland. Winga, her grandfather, and about twenty
native youths and girls swam beside my outrigger canoe as I was paddled
across to the isle. I felt like some dusky potentate as I saw those
handsome savage children and old-time chiefs of royal blood swimming
behind me, their dark heads drifting the still water into wavelets,
their bright eyes gleaming with delight. They were all shouting forth in
the musical Marquesan tongue their bright salutations: “Aloah! Awaie!
Tangi me o le solea!”
So well do I know those happy, innocent people, who are true heathens
and supposed to be savage animals, that I must confess that I have long
ago discarded all conventional ideas. Indeed, so far as the normal
outlook on conventional life is concerned, my mind has become completely
reversed. I sometimes think that God’s most sacred agent—he who gains
the most converts for immortality—is the devil himself. It is probable
that some mighty mistake was made somewhere, and I would not be
surprised to find, when I die, that the angels of heaven yearn to
inherit mortality.
When I arrived at that old artist’s bungalow, I was surprised to find so
snug a dwelling-place in that heathen-land. It was like an ideal bit of
paradise, and consisted of two rooms, one a sleeping compartment, the
other a living-room. As that solemn old man welcomed me into his little
parlour, I stared in wonder. On the table lay a quantity of books and an
old-fashioned telescope, native goblets made from coco-nut shells, and a
large calabash. In the corner was his easel and palette, where he still
followed the course of his profession. The walls of that cabin were
ornamented with roughly framed paintings. These paintings represented a
variety of subjects—ships fading away into the sunsets of mystical seas;
faery outlines of beautiful women afloat on clouds in wondrous skies,
allegorical faces peeping through mists, with stars shining through
their hair; symbolical pictures portraying human aspirations with a
wonderfully sure touch. One painting was so extensive that it took up
one whole side of the cabin wall. It represented God: a vast white beard
seemed to float on the sky-line of a dark infinity, the Face was a dim,
wonderful outline, only the deep eyes of Creation were visible in the
mystical hollows, mysteriously sprinkled with stars shining from their
infinite depths, as the ages hung heavily on the vast, craggy brows.
“You are a true artist,” said I, as I looked at that masterpiece.
The old man saw that I was greatly impressed. His wrinkled face lit up
with pride as he observed my silent admiration.
After taking refreshments we sat together in the shade of that snug
cabin of art, and the conversation drifted to the homeland. I soon
discovered that his memories of the civilised cities were not pleasant
dreams. I ventured the opinion that if our countrymen afar could see his
paintings his efforts would be greatly appreciated and his fortune
secured. A half-humorous curve flicked across his lips in a sarcastic
smile. Then he coughed, and with a look of deep commiseration in his
clear grey eyes he glanced steadily at me and said:
“Ah, my boy, I too once thought such things, ere I was drastically
disillusioned. You seem not to understand that our countrymen know
nothing of art, that they can rob artists with impunity and drive them,
crushed, broken up and penniless, abroad or into the grave. They are
even applauded for doing these things.”
“Dear me,” quoth I, as the old fellow’s white beard shook through the
emotion that he felt. Then I added: “Why are they applauded?”
“Why, say you?” responded he. “Simply because the laws of our country
are made by the elected of forty million fools, fools that make laws
that allow the enemies of art to rob the children of art. We artists
toil for many years endeavouring to express the truth in art. With what
result? Lo! he whom Nature has mentally equipped so that he might paint
our boots makes some monstrous imitation in vulgar perspective and
colour of our sublimest conceptions. These quacks rush forth and sell
their daubs as works of art.”
“Why, that which you say applies to all the arts: men rob——”
Ere I could proceed further the old man gave such a stern look at this
interruption of his pet theme that I at once stifled my assertive voice
and, shrinking up ashamed into my shell, once more listened as he
continued:
“What is the result of this robbery of our inherited dreams? Why, we
come forward, and though we offer true art, no one wants it, nor will
they pay according to its merits or in proportion to the labour that we
have expended. The walls of the homesteads in our country are covered
with these spurious works that have been painted by the hands that
should not have aspired higher than to paint the boots of Art.”
At saying this, and a good deal more, the sad old artist looked up over
the giant bread-fruit trees, as a flock of parrots swept across the sky,
stroked his massive beard, and went on in this wise:
“Ah! young friend, I could no longer stand being robbed by liars and
hypocrites and fools, so I bade farewell to my brother artists. Yes, I
gazed for the last time into their sunken eyes and on their hollow
cheeks and sailed away for the isles of these Southern Seas. Indeed the
clamouring of my creditors, the fingers of Scorn pointing at my shabby
garments, left nothing else for me to do. Here in these kindly isles I
hope to prolong my days by getting regular nourishment.”
So saying, the strange old fellow took from his capacious pocket half a
ripe coco-nut, bit off a large piece of the white substance and chewed
for a moment in silence. Swallowing the nutritious morsel, he proceeded,
to my delight—for the satire of his delivery was truly exquisite—
“I know of two other artists who, like myself, have emigrated to these
parts.”
“Do you?” quoth I eagerly, intensely interested in so strange, so wise
an old man.
“Yes; one is an author and the other a musician. They live happily
together on a lonely islet of the Paumotus Group. A late cannibal chief,
who is a native of these isles, is their beloved attendant; and with him
they commune in reverent dreams when the nights are long. There, on
their solitary islet, they discuss their experiences among the slaves in
civilised lands and the haunting memories of their childhood’s days.
Dressed in the native costume of these parts, a loin-cloth only, they
have long since resigned themselves to the inevitable. They now see the
pompous boast of civilisation and its brazen virtue as a monstrous,
hypocritical curse, a malignant fungus growth on the soul of truth, of
beauty and true happiness.”
“No!” quoth I in my intense interest, quite forgetting the stern gleam
of those grey eyes of art over my first interruption. I almost trembled
at my foolish assertion. For a moment he ceased speaking, pulled his
beard half viciously, and gazed at me like some towering schoolmaster as
I humbly stood there. Like all men who have lived long in exile, one
syllable of another’s voice was a tremendous interval of rude
interruption. Once more he continued: “These two men whom I spoke of ere
you interrupted still follow their professions. One plays on the violin
to the winds, and the other writes down his aspirations on the sea sands
and thoughtfully watches the tides wash the words away. They chop wood,
grow pine-apples, bananas, sago, taro, tobacco, and lead an ideal
existence.”
Delighted with my obvious interest, he meandered on:
“I know of another exile who lives near Guadalcanar, in the Solomon
Isles. Clothed in rags that covered an emaciated body, he escaped from
his own country by stowing away on a sailing-ship. He was a poet.
“After years of adventurous wandering he has settled in a wild, lonely
spot near a tribal village where not so long since the folk were
ferocious cannibals and addicted to the horrors of sacrificial heathen
ceremonies. I saw this poet myself, for I happened to go that way two
years agone.
“He had learnt the native tongue, and so makes a good living by
engraving his rhymes and improvisations on the brains of the islanders.
He dresses as the natives dress, in the scantiest of attire, and lives
and eats as they do. The last I saw of him was when he dwelt in a
comfortable parvanue near the mountain villages. He has reached the
zenith of his ambitions: he wears long hair, and, standing on his
lecture-stump in the native villages, he retells, in emotional, eloquent
verse, their old legends and glorious tales of far-off barbarian
battles, and thanks God that at last he has found a tribe of men who
understand his special gift, and who wildly applaud his efforts.”
“Well now!” was all that I could utter as he ceased.
He gave a little cough as he finished his discourse, a cough that almost
musically expressed the contemptuous exasperation that embittered his
mind.
I would not assert that the foregoing is an exact verbal account of all
that the old artist said to me, but I vouch that it is a faithful
reproduction of his central ideas and all that my memory retains and
which seems worth the recording. And I give it here as an illustration
of the strange characters that are to be found living an isolated life
in the wide spaces, the far-scattered isles of the North and South
Pacific.
I stayed with that strange man for several hours. He was delighted when
I played my violin to him. To my astonishment he commenced to sing some
old song—_Scenes that are Brightest_, if my memory does not fail me. He
had a fine voice, and looked annoyed when the dusky kiddies of my
retinue shrieked with laughter as he sang.
[Illustration: BY APIA HARBOUR]
When I left him he was packing up his few essential requirements for a
trip to Papeete, where he would often go when the trader streamer called
into the harbour from Hivaoa. My last remembrance of him is when he
stood at his hut door by the banyans, waving his hand to me as I went
down the little shore by the pauroe-trees and met my dusky comrades. The
memory of it all stands out like some experience that I had in another
world beyond the stars, some little islet by an immortal mainland, as I
paddled my own outrigger canoe and went back to the bread-fruit groves
of the opposite shores with a group of singing, dusky cherubims swimming
behind me.
* * * * *
The stars were crowding the sky in their millions when the unexpected
occurred. I was sitting near the mission-room at the time. It so
happened that there was a great commotion in the grog shanty, for a
schooner had just arrived in the port of Tai-o-hae. Also, I was feeling
a bit out of sorts. John L—— had just been buried in the cemetery by
Calaboose Hill. He had succumbed to gout and the best rum—at least that
was what they said in the shanty.
I had been comforting Pauline—she was weeping, and I thought things were
as bad as they could be.
Though I’d travelled far, lived with the world’s worst men, sought
fortunes on gold-fields, been down with fever, lived on bananas and
orange peel, buried old pals, I never got such a sorrowful surprise as
came to me on this particular night.
Suddenly Father O’Leary poked his face out of the cloistered shadows and
said: “My son, my son, come!”
I at once responded. When I arrived in the little room wherein he dwelt,
I found he had a companion with him. At first I thought it was some
native girl who had come to confess.
The light from his hanging oil-lamp was burning very dimly.
“My son, look!” he cried. I noticed that his voice trembled.
I could hardly believe my eyes as I looked again and saw that outcast by
his side. Notwithstanding the wasted form and the terrible look on the
face, I recognised Waylao.
The Father closed the door as I entered.
We never slept a wink that night. The old priest ran his fingers through
his beads and went on his knees as Waylao wept and told us all that had
happened to her since I had lost sight of her in Samoa, and her
experiences seemed incredible. I do not mind confessing that I was a bit
overcome as I heard that tale of sorrow. It was something that
outrivalled everything I’d read—Louis Beck, Robert Louis Stevenson and
all the romances of the South Seas. The surprise of the Father was even
greater than my own, for I knew much about the girl’s doings till the
time she had arrived at the Matafas’ in Apia.
As I would like to tell the facts of the case, I will revert to the
period when Waylao disappeared from the Matafas’.
I can only hope to give the faintest outline of all that really
happened, and this I will attempt in the following narrative.
------------------------------------------------------------------------