story he told. When after their long paddle they reached the ship and
Red hailed it, a white man looked over the side and told them to come on
board. They took the fruit they had brought with them and Red piled it
up on the deck. The white man and he began to talk, and they seemed to
come to some agreement. One of them went below and brought up tobacco.
Red took some at once and lit a pipe. The boy imitated the zest with
which he blew a great cloud of smoke from his mouth. Then they said
something to him and he went into the cabin. Through the open door the
boy, watching curiously, saw a bottle brought out and glasses. Red drank
and smoked. They seemed to ask him something, for he shook his head and
laughed. The man, the first man who had spoken to them, laughed too, and
he filled Red's glass once more. They went on talking and drinking, and
presently, growing tired of watching a sight that meant nothing to him,
the boy curled himself up on the deck and slept. He was awakened by a
kick; and, jumping to his feet, he saw that the ship was slowly sailing
out of the lagoon. He caught sight of Red seated at the table, with his
head resting heavily on his arms, fast asleep. He made a movement
towards him, intending to wake him, but a rough hand seized his arm, and
a man, with a scowl and words which he did not understand, pointed to
the side. He shouted to Red, but in a moment he was seized and flung
overboard. Helpless, he swam round to his canoe which was drifting a
little way off, and pushed it on to the reef. He climbed in and, sobbing
all the way, paddled back to shore."
"What had happened was obvious enough. The whaler, by desertion or
sickness, was short of hands, and the captain when Red came aboard had
asked him to sign on; on his refusal he had made him drunk and kidnapped
him."
"Sally was beside herself with grief. For three days she screamed and
cried. The natives did what they could to comfort her, but she would not
be comforted. She would not eat. And then, exhausted, she sank into a
sullen apathy. She spent long days at the cove, watching the lagoon, in
the vain hope that Red somehow or other would manage to escape. She sat
on the white sand, hour after hour, with the tears running down her
cheeks, and at night dragged herself wearily back across the creek to
the little hut where she had been happy. The people with whom she had
lived before Red came to the island wished her to return to them, but
she would not; she was convinced that Red would come back, and she
wanted him to find her where he had left her. Four months later she was
delivered of a still-born child, and the old woman who had come to help
her through her confinement remained with her in the hut. All joy was
taken from her life. If her anguish with time became less intolerable it
was replaced by a settled melancholy. You would not have thought that
among these people, whose emotions, though so violent, are very
transient, a woman could be found capable of so enduring a passion. She
never lost the profound conviction that sooner or later Red would come
back. She watched for him, and every time someone crossed this slender
little bridge of coconut trees she looked. It might at last be he."
Neilson stopped talking and gave a faint sigh.
"And what happened to her in the end?" asked the skipper.
Neilson smiled bitterly.
"Oh, three years afterwards she took up with another white man."
The skipper gave a fat, cynical chuckle.
"That's generally what happens to them," he said.
The Swede shot him a look of hatred. He did not know why that gross,
obese man excited in him so violent a repulsion. But his thoughts
wandered and he found his mind filled with memories of the past. He went
back five and twenty years. It was when he first came to the island,
weary of Apia, with its heavy drinking, its gambling and coarse
sensuality, a sick man, trying to resign himself to the loss of the
career which had fired his imagination with ambitious thoughts. He set
behind him resolutely all his hopes of making a great name for himself
and strove to content himself with the few poor months of careful life
which was all that he could count on. He was boarding with a half-caste
trader who had a store a couple of miles along the coast at the edge of
a native village; and one day, wandering aimlessly along the grassy
paths of the coconut groves, he had come upon the hut in which Sally
lived. The beauty of the spot had filled him with a rapture so great
that it was almost painful, and then he had seen Sally. She was the
loveliest creature he had ever seen, and the sadness in those dark,
magnificent eyes of hers affected him strangely. The Kanakas were a
handsome race, and beauty was not rare among them, but it was the beauty
of shapely animals. It was empty. But those tragic eyes were dark with
mystery, and you felt in them the bitter complexity of the groping,
human soul. The trader told him the story and it moved him.
"Do you think he'll ever come back?" asked Neilson.
"No fear. Why, it'll be a couple of years before the ship is paid off,
and by then he'll have forgotten all about her. I bet he was pretty mad
when he woke up and found he'd been shanghaied, and I shouldn't wonder
but he wanted to fight somebody. But he'd got to grin and bear it, and I
guess in a month he was thinking it the best thing that had ever
happened to him that he got away from the island."
But Neilson could not get the story out of his head. Perhaps because he
was sick and weakly, the radiant health of Red appealed to his
imagination. Himself an ugly man, insignificant of appearance, he prized
very highly comeliness in others. He had never been passionately in
love, and certainly he had never been passionately loved. The mutual
attraction of those two young things gave him a singular delight. It had
the ineffable beauty of the Absolute. He went again to the little hut by
the creek. He had a gift for languages and an energetic mind, accustomed
to work, and he had already given much time to the study of the local
tongue. Old habit was strong in him and he was gathering together
material for a paper on the Samoan speech. The old crone who shared the
hut with Sally invited him to come in and sit down. She gave him _kava_
to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat
with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the
Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same dear purity
of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal
aspect.
It was not till he had seen her two or three times that he induced her
to speak. Then it was only to ask him if he had seen in Apia a man
called Red. Two years had passed since his disappearance, but it was
plain that she still thought of him incessantly.
It did not take Neilson long to discover that he was in love with her.
It was only by an effort of will now that he prevented himself from
going every day to the creek, and when he was not with Sally his
thoughts were. At first, looking upon himself as a dying man, he asked
only to look at her, and occasionally hear her speak, and his love gave
him a wonderful happiness. He exulted in its purity. He wanted nothing
from her but the opportunity to weave around her graceful person a web
of beautiful fancies. But the open air, the equable temperature, the
rest, the simple fare, began to have an unexpected effect on his health.
His temperature did not soar at night to such alarming heights, he
coughed less and began to put on weight; six months passed without his
having a hæmorrhage; and on a sudden he saw the possibility that he
might live. He had studied his disease carefully, and the hope dawned
upon him that with great care he might arrest its course. It exhilarated
him to look forward once more to the future. He made plans. It was
evident that any active life was out of the question, but he could live
on the islands, and the small income he had, insufficient elsewhere,
would be ample to keep him. He could grow coconuts; that would give him
an occupation; and he would send for his books and a piano; but his
quick mind saw that in all this he was merely trying to conceal from
himself the desire which obsessed him.
He wanted Sally. He loved not only her beauty, but that dim soul which
he divined behind her suffering eyes. He would intoxicate her with his
passion. In the end he would make her forget. And in an ecstasy of
surrender he fancied himself giving her too the happiness which he had
thought never to know again, but had now so miraculously achieved.
He asked her to live with him. She refused. He had expected that and did
not let it depress him, for he was sure that sooner or later she would
yield. His love was irresistible. He told the old woman of his wishes,
and found somewhat to his surprise that she and the neighbours, long
aware of them, were strongly urging Sally to accept his offer. After
all, every native was glad to keep house for a white man, and Neilson
according to the standards of the island was a rich one. The trader with
whom he boarded went to her and told her not to be a fool; such an
opportunity would not come again, and after so long she could not still
believe that Red would ever return. The girl's resistance only increased
Neilson's desire, and what had been a very pure love now became an
agonising passion. He was determined that nothing should stand in his
way. He gave Sally no peace. At last, worn out by his persistence and
the persuasions, by turns pleading and angry, of everyone around her,
she consented. But the day after when, exultant, he went to see her he
found that in the night she had burnt down the hut in which she and Red
had lived together. The old crone ran towards him full of angry abuse of
Sally, but he waved her aside; it did not matter; they would build a
bungalow on the place where the hut had stood. A European house would
really be more convenient if he wanted to bring out a piano and a vast
number of books.
And so the little wooden house was built in which he had now lived for
many years, and Sally became his wife. But after the first few weeks of
rapture, during which he was satisfied with what she gave him he had
known little happiness. She had yielded to him, through weariness, but
she had only yielded what she set no store on. The soul which he had
dimly glimpsed escaped him. He knew that she cared nothing for him. She
still loved Red, and all the time she was waiting for his return. At a
sign from him, Neilson knew that, notwithstanding his love, his
tenderness, his sympathy, his generosity, she would leave him without a
moment's hesitation. She would never give a thought to his distress.
Anguish seized him and he battered at that impenetrable self of hers
which sullenly resisted him. His love became bitter. He tried to melt
her heart with kindness, but it remained as hard as before; he feigned
indifference, but she did not notice it. Sometimes he lost his temper
and abused her, and then she wept silently. Sometimes he thought she was
nothing but a fraud, and that soul simply an invention of his own, and
that he could not get into the sanctuary of her heart because there was
no sanctuary there. His love became a prison from which he longed to
escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door--that was
all it needed--and walk out into the open air. It was torture and at
last he became numb and hopeless. In the end the fire burnt itself out
and, when he saw her eyes rest for an instant on the slender bridge, it
was no longer rage that filled his heart but impatience. For many years
now they had lived together bound by the ties of habit and convenience,
and it was with a smile that he looked back on his old passion. She was
an old woman, for the women on the islands age quickly, and if he had no
love for her any more he had tolerance. She left him alone. He was
contented with his piano and his books.
His thoughts led him to a desire for words.
"When I look back now and reflect on that brief passionate love of Red
and Sally, I think that perhaps they should thank the ruthless fate that
separated them when their love seemed still to be at its height. They
suffered, but they suffered in beauty. They were spared the real tragedy
of love."
"I don't know exactly as I get you," said the skipper.
"The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think
it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is
dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your
heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of
your sight, and realise that you would not mind if you never saw her
again. The tragedy of love is indifference."
But while he was speaking a very extraordinary thing happened. Though he
had been addressing the skipper he had not been talking to him, he had
been putting his thoughts into words for himself, and with his eyes
fixed on the man in front of him he had not seen him. But now an image
presented itself to them, an image not of the man he saw, but of another
man. It was as though he were looking into one of those distorting
mirrors that make you extraordinarily squat or outrageously elongate,
but here exactly the opposite took place, and in the obese, ugly old man
he caught the shadowy glimpse of a stripling. He gave him now a quick,
searching scrutiny. Why had a haphazard stroll brought him just to this
place? A sudden tremor of his heart made him slightly breathless. An
absurd suspicion seized him. What had occurred to him was impossible,
and yet it might be a fact.
"What is your name?" he asked abruptly.
The skipper's face puckered and he gave a cunning chuckle. He looked
then malicious and horribly vulgar.
"It's such a damned long time since I heard it that I almost forget it
myself. But for thirty years now in the islands they've always called me
Red."
His huge form shook as he gave a low, almost silent laugh. It was
obscene. Neilson shuddered. Red was hugely amused, and from his
bloodshot eyes tears ran down his cheeks.
Neilson gave a gasp, for at that moment a woman came in. She was a
native, a woman of somewhat commanding presence, stout without being
corpulent, dark, for the natives grow darker with age, with very grey
hair. She wore a black Mother Hubbard, and its thinness showed her heavy
breasts. The moment had come.
She made an observation to Neilson about some household matter and he
answered. He wondered if his voice sounded as unnatural to her as it did
to himself. She gave the man who was sitting in the chair by the window
an indifferent glance, and went out of the room. The moment had come and
gone.
Neilson for a moment could not speak. He was strangely shaken. Then he
said:
"I'd be very glad if you'd stay and have a bit of dinner with me. Pot
luck."
"I don't think I will," said Red. "I must go after this fellow Gray.
I'll give him his stuff and then I'll get away. I want to be back in
Apia to-morrow."
"I'll send a boy along with you to show you the way."
"That'll be fine."
Red heaved himself out of his chair, while the Swede called one of the
boys who worked on the plantation. He told him where the skipper wanted
to go, and the boy stepped along the bridge. Red prepared to follow him.
"Don't fall in," said Neilson.
"Not on your life."
Neilson watched him make his way across and when he had disappeared
among the coconuts he looked still. Then he sank heavily in his chair.
Was that the man who had prevented him from being happy? Was that the
man whom Sally had loved all these years and for whom she had waited so
desperately? It was grotesque. A sudden fury seized him so that he had
an instinct to spring up and smash everything around him. He had been
cheated. They had seen each other at last and had not known it. He began
to laugh, mirthlessly, and his laughter grew till it became hysterical.
The Gods had played him a cruel trick. And he was old now.
At last Sally came in to tell him dinner was ready. He sat down in front
of her and tried to eat. He wondered what she would say if he told her
now that the fat old man sitting in the chair was the lover whom she
remembered still with the passionate abandonment of her youth. Years
ago, when he hated her because she made him so unhappy, he would have
been glad to tell her. He wanted to hurt her then as she hurt him,
because his hatred was only love. But now he did not care. He shrugged
his shoulders listlessly.
"What did that man want?" she asked presently.
He did not answer at once. She was old too, a fat old native woman. He
wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all
the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste,
what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His
patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.
"He's the captain of a schooner. He's come from Apia."
"Yes."
"He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must
go back."
"Will you be gone long?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
V
_The Pool_
When I was introduced to Lawson by Chaplin, the owner of the Hotel
Metropole at Apia, I paid no particular attention to him. We were
sitting in the lounge over an early cocktail and I was listening with
amusement to the gossip of the island.
Chaplin entertained me. He was by profession a mining engineer and
perhaps it was characteristic of him that he had settled in a place
where his professional attainments were of no possible value. It was,
however, generally reported that he was an extremely clever mining
engineer. He was a small man, neither fat nor thin, with black hair,
scanty on the crown, turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his
face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was
but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame
building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt
Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined
air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her,
and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her
fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been
known after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours
to his own room, and then he could be seen, afraid to leave his prison,
talking somewhat pathetically from his verandah to people in the street
below.
He was a character, and his reminiscences of a varied life, whether true
or not, made him worth listening to, so that when Lawson strolled in I
was inclined to resent the interruption. Although not midday, it was
clear that he had had enough to drink, and it was without enthusiasm
that I yielded to his persistence and accepted his offer of another
cocktail. I knew already that Chaplin's head was weak. The next round
which in common politeness I should be forced to order would be enough
to make him lively, and then Mrs Chaplin would give me black looks.
Nor was there anything attractive in Lawson's appearance. He was a
little thin man, with a long, sallow face and a narrow, weak chin, a
prominent nose, large and bony, and great shaggy black eyebrows. They
gave him a peculiar look. His eyes, very large and very dark, were
magnificent. He was jolly, but his jollity did not seem to me sincere;
it was on the surface, a mask which he wore to deceive the world, and I
suspected that it concealed a mean nature. He was plainly anxious to be
thought a "good sport" and he was hail-fellow-well-met; but, I do not
know why, I felt that he was cunning and shifty. He talked a great deal
in a raucous voice, and he and Chaplin capped one another's stories of
beanos which had become legendary, stories of "wet" nights at the
English Club, of shooting expeditions where an incredible amount of
whisky had been consumed, and of jaunts to Sydney of which their pride
was that they could remember nothing from the time they landed till the
time they sailed. A pair of drunken swine. But even in their
intoxication, for by now after four cocktails each, neither was sober,
there was a great difference between Chaplin, rough and vulgar, and
Lawson: Lawson might be drunk, but he was certainly a gentleman.
At last he got out of his chair, a little unsteadily.
"Well, I'll be getting along home," he said. "See you before dinner."
"Missus all right?" said Chaplin.
"Yes."
He went out. There was a peculiar note in the monosyllable of his answer
which made me look up.
"Good chap," said Chaplin flatly, as Lawson went out of the door into
the sunshine. "One of the best. Pity he drinks."
This from Chaplin was an observation not without humour.
"And when he's drunk he wants to fight people."
"Is he often drunk?"
"Dead drunk, three or four days a week. It's the island done it, and
Ethel."
"Who's Ethel?"
"Ethel's his wife. Married a half-caste. Old Brevald's daughter. Took
her away from here. Only thing to do. But she couldn't stand it, and now
they're back again. He'll hang himself one of these days, if he don't
drink himself to death before. Good chap. Nasty when he's drunk."
Chaplin belched loudly.
"I'll go and put my head under the shower. I oughtn't to have had that
last cocktail. It's always the last one that does you in."
He looked uncertainly at the staircase as he made up his mind to go to
the cubby hole in which was the shower, and then with unnatural
seriousness got up.
"Pay you to cultivate Lawson," he said. "A well read chap. You'd be
surprised when he's sober. Clever too. Worth talking to."
Chaplin had told me the whole story in these few speeches.
When I came in towards evening from a ride along the seashore Lawson was
again in the hotel. He was heavily sunk in one of the cane chairs in the
lounge and he looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he had
been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his face
was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment, but I
could see that he did not recognise me. Two or three other men were
sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His
condition was evidently too usual to attract attention. I sat down and
began to play.
"You're a damned sociable lot," said Lawson suddenly.
He got out of his chair and waddled with bent knees towards the door. I
do not know whether the spectacle was more ridiculous than revolting.
When he had gone one of the men sniggered.
"Lawson's fairly soused to-day," he said.
"If I couldn't carry my liquor better than that," said another, "I'd
climb on the waggon and stay there."
Who would have thought that this wretched object was in his way a
romantic figure or that his life had in it those elements of pity and
terror which the theorist tells us are necessary to achieve the effect
of tragedy?
I did not see him again for two or three days.
I was sitting one evening on the first floor of the hotel on a verandah
that overlooked the street when Lawson came up and sank into a chair
beside me. He was quite sober. He made a casual remark and then, when I
had replied somewhat indifferently, added with a laugh which had in it
an apologetic tone:
"I was devilish soused the other day."
I did not answer. There was really nothing to say. I pulled away at my
pipe in the vain hope of keeping the mosquitoes away, and looked at the
natives going home from their work. They walked with long steps, slowly,
with care and dignity, and the soft patter of their naked feet was
strange to hear. Their dark hair, curling or straight, was often white
with lime, and then they had a look of extraordinary distinction. They
were tall and finely built. Then a gang of Solomon Islanders, indentured
labourers, passed by, singing; they were shorter and slighter than the
Samoans, coal black with great heads of fuzzy hair dyed red. Now and
then a white man drove past in his buggy or rode into the hotel yard. In
the lagoon two or three schooners reflected their grace in the tranquil
water.
"I don't know what there is to do in a place like this except to get
soused," said Lawson at last.
"Don't you like Samoa?" I asked casually, for something to say.
"It's pretty, isn't it?"
The word he chose seemed so inadequate to describe the unimaginable
beauty of the island, that I smiled, and smiling I turned to look at
him. I was startled by the expression in those fine sombre eyes of his,
an expression of intolerable anguish; they betrayed a tragic depth of
emotion of which I should never have thought him capable. But the
expression passed away and he smiled. His smile was simple and a little
naïve. It changed his face so that I wavered in my first feeling of
aversion from him.
"I was all over the place when I first came out," he said.
He was silent for a moment.
"I went away for good about three years ago, but I came back." He
hesitated. "My wife wanted to come back. She was born here, you know."
"Oh, yes."
He was silent again, and then hazarded a remark about Robert Louis
Stevenson. He asked me if I had been up to Vailima. For some reason he
was making an effort to be agreeable to me. He began to talk of
Stevenson's books, and presently the conversation drifted to London.
"I suppose Covent Garden's still going strong," he said. "I think I miss
the opera as much as anything here. Have you seen _Tristan and Isolde_?"
He asked me the question as though the answer were really important to
him, and when I said, a little casually I daresay, that I had, he seemed
pleased. He began to speak of Wagner, not as a musician, but as the
plain man who received from him an emotional satisfaction that he could
not analyse.