I
Early one morning, just as the trade wind began to lift the white
mountain mist which enveloped the dark valleys and mountain slopes of
the island, Denison, the supercargo of the trading schooner _Palestine_,
put off from her side and was pulled ashore to the house of the
one white trader. The man's name was Handle, and as he heard the
supercargo's footstep he came to the door and bade him good morning.
“How are you, Randle?” said the young man, shaking hands with the
quiet-voiced, white-haired old trader, and following him inside. “I'm
going for a day's shooting while I have the chance. Can you come?”
Randle shook his head. “Would like to, but can't spare the time to-day;
but Harry and the girls will be delighted to go with you. Wait a minute,
and have a cup of coffee first. They'll be here presently.”
Denison put down his gun and took a seat in the cool,
comfortable-looking sitting-room, and in a few minutes Hester and Kate
Randle and their brother came in. The two girls were both over twenty
years of age. Hester, the elder, was remarkably handsome, and much
resembled her father in voice and manner. Kate was of much smaller
build, full of vivacity, and her big, merry brown eyes matched the
dimples on her soft, sun-tanned cheeks. Harry, who was Randle's youngest
child, was a heavily-built, somewhat sullen-faced youth of eighteen, and
the native blood in his veins showed much more strongly than it did with
his sisters. They were all pleased to see the supercargo, and at once
set about making preparations, Harry getting their guns ready and the
two girls packing a basket with cold food.
“You'll get any amount of pigeons about two miles from here,” said the
old trader, “and very likely a pig or two. The girls know the way, and
if two of you take the right branch of the river and two the left you'll
have some fine sport.”
“Father,” said the elder girl, in her pretty, halting English, as she
picked up her gun, “don' you think Mr. Denison would like to see ol'
Mary? We hav' been tell him so much about her. Don' you think we might
stop there and let Mr. Denison have some talk with her?”
“Ay, ay, my girl. Yes; go and see the poor old thing. I'm sure she'll be
delighted. You'll like her, Mr. Denison. She's as fine an old woman as
ever breathed. But don't take that basket of food with you, Kate. She'd
feel awfully insulted if you did not eat in her house.”
The girls obeyed, much to their brother's satisfaction, inasmuch as the
basket was rather heavy, and also awkward to carry through the mountain
forest. In a few minutes the four started, and Hester, as she stepped
out beside Denison, said that she was glad he was visiting old Mary.
“You see,” she said, “she hav' not good eyesight now, and so she cannot
now come an' see us as she do plenty times before.”
“I'm glad I shall see her,” said the young man; “she must be a good old
soul.”
“Oh, yes,” broke in Kate, “she _is_ good and brave, an' we all love her.
Every one _mus_' love her. She hav' known us since we were born, and
when our mother died in Samoa ten years ago old Mary was jus' like a
second mother to us. An' my father tried so hard to get her to come and
live with us; but no, she would not, not even fo' us. So she went back
to her house in the mountain, because she says she wants to die there.
Ah, you will like her... and she will tell you how she saved the ship
when her husband was killed, and about many, many things.”
*****
Two hours later Denison and his friends emerged out upon cultivated
ground at the foot of the mountain, on which stood three or four native
houses, all neatly enclosed by low stone walls formed of coral slabs.
In front of the village a crystal stream poured swiftly and noisily over
its rocky bed on its way seaward, and on each thickly wooded bank the
stately boles of some scores of graceful coco-palms rose high above the
surrounding foliage. Except for the hum of the brawling stream and the
cries of birds, the silence was unbroken, and only two or three small
children, who were playing under the shade of a breadfruit-tree, were
visible. But these, as they heard the sound of the visitors' voices,
came towards them shouting out to their elders within the huts that
“four white people with guns” had come. In a moment some grown people of
both sexes came out and shook hands with the party.
“This is Mary's house,” said Hester to Denison, pointing out the
largest; “let us go there at once. Ah, see, there she is at the door
waiting for us.”
“Come, come inside,” cried the old woman in a firm yet pleasant voice,
and Denison, looking to the right, saw that “Mary,” in spite of her
years and blindness, was still robust and active-looking. She was
dressed in a blue print gown and blouse, and her grey hair was neatly
dressed in the island fashion. In her smooth, brown right hand she
grasped the handle of a polished walking-stick, her left arm she held
across her bosom--the hand was missing from the wrist.
“How do you do, sir?” she said in clear English, as, giving her stick to
Kate Randle, she held out her hand to the supercargo. “I am so glad
that you have come to see me. You are Mr. Denison, I know. Is Captain
Packenham quite well? Come, Kitty, see to your friend. There, that cane
lounge is the most comfortable. Harry, please shoot a couple of chickens
at once, and then tell my people to get some taro, and make an oven.”
“Oh, that is just like you, Mary,” said Kate, laughing, “before we have
spoken three words to you you begin cooking things for us.”
The old woman turned her sunburnt face towards the girl and shook her
stick warningly, and said in the native tongue--
“Leave me to rule in mine own house, saucy,” and then Denison had an
effort to restrain his gravity as Mary, unaware that he had a very fair
knowledge of the dialect in which she spoke, asked the two girls if
either of them had thought of him as a husband. Kate put her hand over
Mary's mouth and whispered to her to cease. She drew the girl to her and
hugged her.
Whilst the meal was being prepared Denison was studying the house and
its contents. Exteriorly the place bore no difference to the usual
native house, but within it was plainly but yet comfortably furnished
in European fashion, and the tables, chairs, and sideboard had evidently
been a portion of a ship's cabin fittings. From the sitting-room--the
floor of which was covered by white China matting--he could see a
bedroom opposite, a bed with snowy white mosquito curtains, and two
mahogany chairs draped with old-fashioned antimacassars. The sight of
these simple furnishings first made him smile, then sigh--he had not
seen such things since he had left his own home nearly six years before.
Hung upon the walls of the sitting-room were half a dozen old and faded
engravings, and on a side-table were a sextant and chronometer case,
each containing instruments so clumsy and obsolete that a modern seaman
would have looked upon them as veritable curiosities.
From the surroundings within the room Denison's eyes wandered to the
placid beauty of the scene without, where the plumes of the coco-palms
overhanging the swift waters of the tiny stream scarce stirred to the
light air that blew softly up the valley from the sea, and when they did
move narrow shafts of light from the now high-mounted sun would glint
and shine through upon the pale green foliage of the scrub beneath.
Then once again his attention was directed to their hostess, who was
now talking quietly to the two Randle girls, her calm, peaceful features
seeming to him to derive an added but yet consistent dignity from the
harmonies of Nature around her.
What was the story of her infancy? he wondered. That she did not know it
herself he had been told by old Randle, who yet knew more of her history
and the tragedy of her later life than any one else. Both young Denison,
the supercargo of five-and-twenty, and Randle, the grizzled wanderer and
veteran of sixty-five, had known many tragedies during their career in
the Pacific; but the story of this half-blind, crippled old woman, when
he learnt it in full, appealed strongly to the younger man, and was
never forgotten in his after life.
*****
They had had a merry midday meal, during which Mary Eury--for that was
her name--promised Denison that she would tell him all about herself
after he and the Randles came back from shooting, “but,” she added, with
her soft, tremulous laugh, “only on one condition, Mr. Denison--only
on one condition. You must bring Captain Packenham to see me before the
_Palestine_ sails. I am an old woman-now, and would like to see him. I
knew him many years ago when he was a lad of nineteen. Ah, it is so long
ago! That was in Samoa. Has he never spoken of me?”
“Often, Mrs. Eury----”
“Don't call me Mrs. Eury, Mr. Denison. Call me 'Mary,' as do these dear
friends of mine. 'Mary'--'old' Mary if you like. Every one who knew me
and my dear husband in those far, far back days used to call me 'Mary'
and my husband 'Bob Eury' instead of 'Mrs. Eury' and 'Captain Eury.' And
now, so many, many years have gone... and now I am 'Old Mary'... and I
think I like it better than Mrs. Eury. And so Captain Packenham has not
forgotten me?”
Denison hastened to explain. “Indeed he has not. He remembers you very
well, and would have come with me, but he is putting the schooner on the
beach to-day to clean her. And I am sure he will be delighted to come
and see you to-morrow.”
“Of course he must. Surely every English and American in the South Seas
should come and see me; for my husband was ever a good friend to every
sailor that ever sailed in the island trade--from Fiji to the Bonins.
There now, I won't chatter any more, or else you will be too frightened
to come back to such a garrulous old creature. Ah, if God had but spared
to me my eyesight I should come with you into the mountains. I love
the solitude, and the sweet call of the pigeons, and the sound of
the waterfall at the side of Taomaunga. And I know every inch of
the country, and blind as I am, I could yet find my way along the
mountain-side. Kate, and you, Harry, do not keep Mr. Denison out too
late.”
By sunset the shooting party had returned, and after a bathe in the cool
waters of the mountain stream Denison returned to the house. Kate Handle
and her sister, assisted by some native women, were plucking pigeons for
the evening meal. Harry was lying down on the broad of his back on the
grassy sward with closed eyes, smoking, and their hostess was sitting on
a wide cane bench outside the house. She heard the young man's footstep,
and beckoned him to seat himself beside her. And then she told him her
story.