I suppose the next three years were the happiest of Strickland’s life.
Ata’s house stood about eight kilometres from the road that runs round
the island, and you went to it along a winding pathway shaded by the
luxuriant trees of the tropics. It was a bungalow of unpainted wood,
consisting of two small rooms, and outside was a small shed that served
as a kitchen. There was no furniture except the mats they used as beds,
and a rocking-chair, which stood on the verandah. Bananas with their
great ragged leaves, like the tattered habiliments of an empress in
adversity, grew close up to the house. There was a tree just behind
which bore alligator pears, and all about were the cocoa-nuts which
gave the land its revenue. Ata’s father had planted crotons round his
property, and they grew in coloured profusion, gay and brilliant; they
fenced the land with flame. A mango grew in front of the house, and at
the edge of the clearing were two flamboyants, twin trees, that
challenged the gold of the cocoa-nuts with their scarlet flowers.
Here Strickland lived, coming seldom to Papeete, on the produce of the
land. There was a little stream that ran not far away, in which he
bathed, and down this on occasion would come a shoal of fish. Then the
natives would assemble with spears, and with much shouting would
transfix the great startled things as they hurried down to the sea.
Sometimes Strickland would go down to the reef, and come back with a
basket of small, coloured fish that Ata would fry in cocoa-nut oil, or
with a lobster; and sometimes she would make a savoury dish of the
great land-crabs that scuttled away under your feet. Up the mountain
were wild-orange trees, and now and then Ata would go with two or three
women from the village and return laden with the green, sweet, luscious
fruit. Then the cocoa-nuts would be ripe for picking, and her cousins
(like all the natives, Ata had a host of relatives) would swarm up the
trees and throw down the big ripe nuts. They split them open and put
them in the sun to dry. Then they cut out the copra and put it into
sacks, and the women would carry it down to the trader at the village
by the lagoon, and he would give in exchange for it rice and soap and
tinned meat and a little money. Sometimes there would be a feast in the
neighbourhood, and a pig would be killed. Then they would go and eat
themselves sick, and dance, and sing hymns.
But the house was a long way from the village, and the Tahitians are
lazy. They love to travel and they love to gossip, but they do not care
to walk, and for weeks at a time Strickland and Ata lived alone. He
painted and he read, and in the evening, when it was dark, they sat
together on the verandah, smoking and looking at the night. Then Ata
had a baby, and the old woman who came up to help her through her
trouble stayed on. Presently the granddaughter of the old woman came to
stay with her, and then a youth appeared—no one quite knew where from
or to whom he belonged—but he settled down with them in a
happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived together.