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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."