|IT seemed to me that a Prime Minister who composed poetry impromptu and
played the banjo, was a species never yet examined and classified by me.
But as to Kolosama's entry into my family circle, it seemed to me the
selection of orphans should be made only on strong recommendations.
The next morning Mrs. Ulswater, Susannah, and I started. A well-trodden
path led through the forest, and at the end of a few miles came out into
a pleasant valley, where lay a scattered village of huts for the most
part small, fragile, and consisting generally of a woven roof, posts to
support it, and an occasional mat between posts. The palace was easily
distinguished, standing in a grove on a hill, a long one-storied bamboo
house, surrounded by piazzas. Evidently it had been built by a white
man. In some odd way it suggested the States.
Sadler met us in the village, and brought us to his own dwelling, which
stood at the foot of the palace hill. I judged it had been furnished
from the palace with properties of King Craney. It included five bamboo
huts adjoining each other.
A Kanaka servant, who stood by the door of one of them, shrieked
and vanished. That hut seemed to be the kitchen. A cat of faded and
depressed appearance replaced the Kanaka in the doorway.
“Oh, please!” cried Susannah, “May I have that cat?”
“Dolores is her name,” said Sadler, looking dreamily at the cat,
“which she likes to sleep on pies. She's got a heart sorrow, sort
of indigestion of the spirit, same as me. Some of it comes from
dissipation, some of it on account of sleeping in the oven on pies,
which has varieties of climate pretty stiff, so she's got a seared
and wasted look, as you might say. Besides,” he added after a moment's
thought, “she ain't got no dog to chase her.”
“Goodness!” said Mrs. Ulswater, looking into the kitchen. “Isn't it
awful!”
She was down on Sadler's housekeeping to an extent you'd hardly believe.
Still, it must be admitted that the weeds growing over the floor made
his kitchen look like a pasture lot, and that the kitchen windows were
somewhat untidy on account of the Kanaka cook throwing slops at them
from a distance. There was coffee in a china vase, and tobacco in the
teapot. There was a hen laying an egg in the soup tureen, which fitted
her very neatly and snugly.
“Please!” cried Susannah again, “May I have this cat?”
“Sure!” said Sadler. “It ain't good for her here. She gets bad habits
living along of me. Any cat would that lived along of me.”
We went up to the palace. It was furnished profusely with the kind of
things that seem stuffy in the tropics, for the lamented royalty called
Craney seemed to have had a taste for plush-covered chairs, red-flowered
carpets, portières with fringes and tassels, glass-bangled lamps, and
gilded clocks. For the clocks King Ogel seemed to share King Craney's
weakness. I counted fourteen clocks in the audience room, all going but
three. The king sat on a plush sofa among his clocks, fanning himself.
The largest and gildedest clock stood on the floor in front of him.
He was an elderly man, stout and unwieldy, of morose expression, his
complexion inferior, and his grizzled hair stuck full of chicken bones.
He wore a pink shirt without a collar, a shell necklace, and a kind of
skirt that seemed to have been formerly a lace window curtain. Sadler
introduced us. The king grunted, “How do,” and we sat down on the plush
chairs and discussed Sadler's scheme. Sadler expatiated on the highly
moral qualities in it, the peace that would fall on the distracted
island, when Kolo was thus removed strategically and for his own best
welfare. The king looked pleased. His pleasure seemed to arouse his
hospitality, and his hospitality was startling. He rose, shouted, and
stamped. From far piazzas came scuttling, came running, brown men and
women bearing baskets and platters; in the baskets was fruit, in
the platters fish cooked most messily, and other articles of diet
indescribable, which I had no curiosity to taste. But I thought Mrs.
Ulswater seemed favourably impressed with the king.
Now fell the hour of ten, and the clocks broke out striking noisily.
Over the king's face passed an expression of unutterable delight. His
heavy cheeks wrinkled into smiles. He thumped his chest and chuckled. He
turned from clock to clock, keeping his eye in particular on the great
gilt clock at his feet, from whose ornate front no sound as yet was
come.
The clocks all ceased. But the great gilt clock had not struck.
Suddenly as a crash of thunder the king passed from chuckling happiness
to anger, violent and uncontrolled. He clambered to his feet. He
stamped. He swore in the language of beach combers and decayed mariners,
inexcusable, abominable. He shook his fists at Sadler.
“My clock don' go!” he shrieked. “Arrr! She don' go!” and snatching up
a fruit basket, he fell, in utter and abandoned rage, beating,
kicking, yelling, swearing, scattering fruit, upon the frightened and
frizzle-haired henchmen and henchwomen, who fled with tumult and wailing,
from room to room, from piazza to far piazza, and beyond into the
forest, where the noise of pursuit died distantly away.
I was amazed. Mrs. Ulswater sprang up.
“Is _that_ a king!” she said indignantly, and started for the piazza
followed by myself, by Susannah with the cat, and by Sadler in
deprecation. “He ought to be spanked! That's what he ought,” said Mrs.
Ulswater.
“You're right, ma'am,” said Sadler. “Ain't a doubt it would be a good
thing, and I was thinking, when you spoke, as how, when Kolo was gone
and things was settled, I'd just get that introduced quiet like into the
regular court ceremonial, putting it under the heading of 'Official Care
of the King's Person,' which I was thinking, ma'am, as how it was my
recollection a strap got there better'n a shingle. Yes'm.”
Mrs. Ulswater stopped on the edge of the porch, mollified.
“Would you really do that?”
“Yes'm.”
“Well,” she said, “if you'll catch that king and bring him down to tea
this evening, we'll think it over by that time. Goodness! How do you
know Kolo is any better?” And we returned to the _Violetta_.