the money, worse luck. But of course one might do worse than Covent
Garden, all the lights and the women dressed up to the nines, and the
music. The first act of the _Walküre's_ all right, isn't it? And the end
of _Tristan_. Golly!"
His eyes were flashing now and his face was lit up so that he hardly
seemed the same man. There was a flush on his sallow, thin cheeks, and I
forgot that his voice was harsh and unpleasant. There was even a certain
charm about him.
"By George, I'd like to be in London to-night. Do you know the Pall Mall
restaurant? I used to go there a lot. Piccadilly Circus with the shops
all lit up, and the crowd. I think it's stunning to stand there and
watch the buses and taxis streaming along as though they'd never stop.
And I like the Strand too. What are those lines about God and Charing
Cross?"
I was taken aback.
"Thompson's, d'you mean?" I asked.
I quoted them.
_"And when so sad, thou canst not sadder,_
_Cry, and upon thy so sore loss_
_Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder_
_Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."_
He gave a faint sigh.
"I've read _The Hound of Heaven_. It's a bit of all right."
"It's generally thought so," I murmured.
"You don't meet anybody here who's read anything. They think it's
swank."
There was a wistful look on his face, and I thought I divined the
feeling that made him come to me. I was a link with the world he
regretted and a life that he would know no more. Because not so very
long before I had been in the London which he loved, he looked upon me
with awe and envy. He had not spoken for five minutes perhaps when he
broke out with words that startled me by their intensity.
"I'm fed up," he said. "I'm fed up."
"Then why don't you clear out?" I asked.
His face grew sullen.
"My lungs are a bit dicky. I couldn't stand an English winter now."
At that moment another man joined us on the verandah and Lawson sank
into a moody silence.
"It's about time for a drain," said the new-comer. "Who'll have a drop
of Scotch with me? Lawson?"
Lawson seemed to arise from a distant world. He got up.
"Let's go down to the bar," he said.
When he left me I remained with a more kindly feeling towards him than I
should have expected. He puzzled and interested me. And a few days later
I met his wife. I knew they had been married for five or six years, and
I was surprised to see that she was still extremely young. When he
married her she could not have been more than sixteen. She was adorably
pretty. She was no darker than a Spaniard, small and very beautifully
made, with tiny hands and feet, and a slight, lithe figure. Her features
were lovely; but I think what struck me most was the delicacy of her
appearance; the half-caste as a rule have a certain coarseness, they
seem a little roughly formed, but she had an exquisite daintiness which
took your breath away. There was something extremely civilised about
her, so that it surprised you to see her in those surroundings, and you
thought of those famous beauties who had set all the world talking at
the Court of the Emperor Napoleon III. Though she wore but a muslin
frock and a straw hat she wore them with an elegance that suggested the
woman of fashion. She must have been ravishing when Lawson first saw
her.
He had but lately come out from England to manage the local branch of an
English bank, and, reaching Samoa at the beginning of the dry season, he
had taken a room at the hotel. He quickly made the acquaintance of all
and sundry. The life of the island is pleasant and easy. He enjoyed the
long idle talks in the lounge of the hotel and the gay evenings at the
English Club when a group of fellows would play pool. He liked Apia
straggling along the edge of the lagoon, with its stores and bungalows,
and its native village. Then there were week-ends when he would ride
over to the house of one planter or another and spend a couple of nights
on the hills. He had never before known freedom or leisure. And he was
intoxicated by the sunshine. When he rode through the bush his head
reeled a little at the beauty that surrounded him. The country was
indescribably fertile. In parts the forest was still virgin, a tangle of
strange trees, luxuriant undergrowth, and vine; it gave an impression
that was mysterious and troubling.
But the spot that entranced him was a pool a mile or two away from Apia
to which in the evenings he often went to bathe. There was a little
river that bubbled over the rocks in a swift stream, and then, after
forming the deep pool, ran on, shallow and crystalline, past a ford made
by great stones where the natives came sometimes to bathe or to wash
their clothes. The coconut trees, with their frivolous elegance, grew
thickly on the banks, all clad with trailing plants, and they were
reflected in the green water. It was just such a scene as you might see
in Devonshire among the hills, and yet with a difference, for it had a
tropical richness, a passion, a scented languor which seemed to melt the
heart. The water was fresh, but not cold; and it was delicious after the
heat of the day. To bathe there refreshed not only the body but the
soul.
At the hour when Lawson went, there was not a soul and he lingered for a
long time, now floating idly in the water, now drying himself in the
evening sun, enjoying the solitude and the friendly silence. He did not
regret London then, nor the life that he had abandoned, for life as it
was seemed complete and exquisite.
It was here that he first saw Ethel.
Occupied till late by letters which had to be finished for the monthly
sailing of the boat next day, he rode down one evening to the pool when
the light was almost failing. He tied up his horse and sauntered to the
bank. A girl was sitting there. She glanced round as he came and
noiselessly slid into the water. She vanished like a naiad startled by
the approach of a mortal. He was surprised and amused. He wondered where
she had hidden herself. He swam downstream and presently saw her sitting
on a rock. She looked at him with uncurious eyes. He called out a
greeting in Samoan.
"_Talofa._"
She answered him, suddenly smiling, and then let herself into the water
again. She swam easily and her hair spread out behind her. He watched
her cross the pool and climb out on the bank. Like all the natives she
bathed in a Mother Hubbard, and the water had made it cling to her
slight body. She wrung out her hair, and as she stood there,
unconcerned, she looked more than ever like a wild creature of the water
or the woods. He saw now that she was half-caste. He swam towards her
and, getting out, addressed her in English.
"You're having a late swim."
She shook back her hair and then let it spread over her shoulders in
luxuriant curls.
"I like it when I'm alone," she said.
"So do I."
She laughed with the childlike frankness of the native. She slipped a
dry Mother Hubbard over her head and, letting down the wet one, stepped
out of it. She wrung it out and was ready to go. She paused a moment
irresolutely and then sauntered off. The night fell suddenly.
Lawson went back to the hotel and, describing her to the men who were in
the lounge shaking dice for drinks, soon discovered who she was. Her
father was a Norwegian called Brevald who was often to be seen in the
bar of the Hotel Metropole drinking rum and water. He was a little old
man, knotted and gnarled like an ancient tree, who had come out to the
islands forty years before as mate of a sailing vessel. He had been a
blacksmith, a trader, a planter, and at one time fairly well-to-do; but,
ruined by the great hurricane of the nineties, he had now nothing to
live on but a small plantation of coconut trees. He had had four native
wives and, as he told you with a cracked chuckle, more children than he
could count. But some had died and some had gone out into the world, so
that now the only one left at home was Ethel.
"She's a peach," said Nelson, the supercargo of the _Moana_. "I've given
her the glad eye once or twice, but I guess there's nothing doing."
"Old Brevald's not that sort of a fool, sonny," put in another, a man
called Miller. "He wants a son-in-law who's prepared to keep him in
comfort for the rest of his life."
It was distasteful to Lawson that they should speak of the girl in that
fashion. He made a remark about the departing mail and so distracted
their attention. But next evening he went again to the pool. Ethel was
there; and the mystery of the sunset, the deep silence of the water, the
lithe grace of the coconut trees, added to her beauty, giving it a
profundity, a magic, which stirred the heart to unknown emotions. For
some reason that time he had the whim not to speak to her. She took no
notice of him. She did not even glance in his direction. She swam about
the green pool. She dived, she rested on the bank, as though she were
quite alone: he had a queer feeling that he was invisible. Scraps of
poetry, half forgotten, floated across his memory, and vague
recollections of the Greece he had negligently studied in his school
days. When she had changed her wet clothes for dry ones and sauntered
away he found a scarlet hibiscus where she had been. It was a flower
that she had worn in her hair when she came to bathe and, having taken
it out on getting into the water, had forgotten or not cared to put in
again. He took it in his hands and looked at it with a singular emotion.
He had an instinct to keep it, but his sentimentality irritated him, and
he flung it away. It gave him quite a little pang to see it float down
the stream.
He wondered what strangeness it was in her nature that urged her to go
down to this hidden pool when there was no likelihood that anyone
should be there. The natives of the islands are devoted to the water.
They bathe, somewhere or other, every day, once always, and often twice;
but they bathe in bands, laughing and joyous, a whole family together;
and you often saw a group of girls, dappled by the sun shining through
the trees, with the half-castes among them, splashing about the shallows
of the stream. It looked as though there were in this pool some secret
which attracted Ethel against her will.
Now the night had fallen, mysterious and silent, and he let himself down
in the water softly, in order to make no sound, and swam lazily in the
warm darkness. The water seemed fragrant still from her slender body. He
rode back to the town under the starry sky. He felt at peace with the
world.
Now he went every evening to the pool and every evening he saw Ethel.
Presently he overcame her timidity. She became playful and friendly.
They sat together on the rocks above the pool, where the water ran fast,
and they lay side by side on the ledge that overlooked it, watching the
gathering dusk envelop it with mystery. It was inevitable that their
meetings should become known--in the South Seas everyone seems to know
everyone's business--and he was subjected to much rude chaff by the men
at the hotel. He smiled and let them talk. It was not even worth while
to deny their coarse suggestions. His feelings were absolutely pure. He
loved Ethel as a poet might love the moon. He thought of her not as a
woman but as something not of this earth. She was the spirit of the
pool.
One day at the hotel, passing through the bar, he saw that old Brevald,
as ever in his shabby blue overalls, was standing there. Because he was
Ethel's father he had a desire to speak to him, so he went in, nodded
and, ordering his own drink, casually turned and invited the old man to
have one with him. They chatted for a few minutes of local affairs, and
Lawson was uneasily conscious that the Norwegian was scrutinising him
with sly blue eyes. His manner was not agreeable. It was sycophantic,
and yet behind the cringing air of an old man who had been worsted in
his struggle with fate was a shadow of old truculence. Lawson remembered
that he had once been captain of a schooner engaged in the slave trade,
a blackbirder they call it in the Pacific, and he had a large hernia in
the chest which was the result of a wound received in a scrap with
Solomon Islanders. The bell rang for luncheon.
"Well, I must be off," said Lawson.
"Why don't you come along to my place one time?" said Brevald, in his
wheezy voice. "It's not very grand, but you'll be welcome. You know
Ethel."
"I'll come with pleasure."
"Sunday afternoon's the best time."
Brevald's bungalow, shabby and bedraggled, stood among the coconut trees
of the plantation, a little away from the main road that ran up to
Vailima. Immediately around it grew huge plantains. With their tattered
leaves they had the tragic beauty of a lovely woman in rags. Everything
was slovenly and neglected. Little black pigs, thin and high-backed,
rooted about, and chickens clucked noisily as they picked at the refuse
scattered here and there. Three or four natives were lounging about the
verandah. When Lawson asked for Brevald the old man's cracked voice
called out to him, and he found him in the sitting-room smoking an old
briar pipe.
"Sit down and make yerself at home," he said. "Ethel's just titivating."
She came in. She wore a blouse and skirt and her hair was done in the
European fashion. Although she had not the wild, timid grace of the girl
who came down every evening to the pool, she seemed now more usual and
consequently more approachable. She shook hands with Lawson. It was the
first time he had touched her hand.
"I hope you'll have a cup of tea with us," she said.
He knew she had been at a mission school, and he was amused, and at the
same time touched, by the company manners she was putting on for his
benefit. Tea was already set out on the table and in a minute old
Brevald's fourth wife brought in the tea-pot. She was a handsome native,
no longer very young, and she spoke but a few words of English. She
smiled and smiled. Tea was rather a solemn meal, with a great deal of
bread and butter and a variety of very sweet cakes, and the conversation
was formal. Then a wrinkled old woman came in softly.
"That's Ethel's granny," said old Brevald, noisily spitting on the
floor.
She sat on the edge of a chair, uncomfortably, so that you saw it was
unusual for her and she would have been more at ease on the ground, and
remained silently staring at Lawson with fixed, shining eyes. In the
kitchen behind the bungalow someone began to play the concertina and two
or three voices were raised in a hymn. But they sang for the pleasure of
the sounds rather than from piety.
When Lawson walked back to the hotel he was strangely happy. He was
touched by the higgledy-piggledy way in which those people lived; and in
the smiling good-nature of Mrs Brevald, in the little Norwegian's
fantastic career, and in the shining mysterious eyes of the old
grandmother, he found something unusual and fascinating. It was a more
natural life than any he had known, it was nearer to the friendly,
fertile earth; civilisation repelled him at that moment, and by mere
contact with these creatures of a more primitive nature he felt a
greater freedom.
He saw himself rid of the hotel which already was beginning to irk him,
settled in a little bungalow of his own, trim and white, in front of the
sea so that he had before his eyes always the multicoloured variety of
the lagoon. He loved the beautiful island. London and England meant
nothing to him any more, he was content to spend the rest of his days in
that forgotten spot, rich in the best of the world's goods, love and
happiness. He made up his mind that whatever the obstacles nothing
should prevent him from marrying Ethel.
But there were no obstacles. He was always welcome at the Brevalds'
house. The old man was ingratiating and Mrs Brevald smiled without
ceasing. He had brief glimpses of natives who seemed somehow to belong
to the establishment, and once he found a tall youth in a _lava-lava_,
his body tattooed, his hair white with lime, sitting with Brevald, and
was told he was Mrs Brevald's brother's son; but for the most part they
kept out of his way. Ethel was delightful with him. The light in her
eyes when she saw him filled him with ecstasy. She was charming and
naïve. He listened enraptured when she told him of the mission school at
which she was educated, and of the sisters. He went with her to the
cinema which was given once a fortnight and danced with her at the dance
which followed it. They came from all parts of the island for this,
since gaieties are few in Upolu; and you saw there all the society of
the place, the white ladies keeping a good deal to themselves, the
half-castes very elegant in American clothes, the natives, strings of
dark girls in white Mother Hubbards and young men in unaccustomed ducks
and white shoes. It was all very smart and gay. Ethel was pleased to
show her friends the white admirer who did not leave her side. The
rumour was soon spread that he meant to marry her and her friends looked
at her with envy. It was a great thing for a half-caste to get a white
man to marry her, even the less regular relation was better than
nothing, but one could never tell what it would lead to; and Lawson's
position as manager of the bank made him one of the catches of the
island. If he had not been so absorbed in Ethel he would have noticed
that many eyes were fixed on him curiously, and he would have seen the
glances of the white ladies and noticed how they put their heads
together and gossiped.
Afterwards, when the men who lived at the hotel were having a whisky
before turning in, Nelson burst out with:
"Say, they say Lawson's going to marry that girl."
"He's a damned fool then," said Miller.
Miller was a German-American who had changed his name from Müller, a big
man, fat and bald-headed, with a round, clean-shaven face. He wore large
gold-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a benign look, and his ducks were
always clean and white. He was a heavy drinker, invariably ready to stay
up all night with the "boys," but he never got drunk; he was jolly and
affable, but very shrewd. Nothing interfered with his business; he
represented a firm in San Francisco, jobbers of the goods sold in the
islands, calico, machinery and what not; and his good-fellowship was
part of his stock-in-trade.
"He don't know what he's up against," said Nelson. "Someone ought to put
him wise."
"If you'll take my advice you won't interfere in what don't concern
you," said Miller. "When a man's made up his mind to make a fool of
himself, there's nothing like letting him."
"I'm all for having a good time with the girls out here, but when it
comes to marrying them--this child ain't taking any, I'll tell the
world."
Chaplin was there, and now he had his say.
"I've seen a lot of fellows do it, and it's no good."
"You ought to have a talk with him, Chaplin," said Nelson. "You know him
better than anyone else does."
"My advice to Chaplin is to leave it alone," said Miller.
Even in those days Lawson was not popular and really no one took enough
interest in him to bother. Mrs Chaplin talked it over with two or three
of the white ladies, but they contented themselves with saying that it
was a pity; and when he told her definitely that he was going to be
married it seemed too late to do anything.
For a year Lawson was happy. He took a bungalow at the point of the bay
round which Apia is built, on the borders of a native village. It
nestled charmingly among the coconut trees and faced the passionate blue
of the Pacific. Ethel was lovely as she went about the little house,
lithe and graceful like some young animal of the woods, and she was gay.
They laughed a great deal. They talked nonsense. Sometimes one or two of
the men at the hotel would come over and spend the evening, and often on
a Sunday they would go for a day to some planter who had married a
native; now and then one or other of the half-caste traders who had a
store in Apia would give a party and they went to it. The half-castes
treated Lawson quite differently now. His marriage had made him one of
themselves and they called him Bertie. They put their arms through his
and smacked him on the back. He liked to see Ethel at these gatherings.
Her eyes shone and she laughed. It did him good to see her radiant
happiness. Sometimes Ethel's relations would come to the bungalow, old
Brevald of course, and her mother, but cousins too, vague native women
in Mother Hubbards and men and boys in _lava-lavas_, with their hair
dyed red and their bodies elaborately tattooed. He would find them
sitting there when he got back from the bank. He laughed indulgently.
"Don't let them eat us out of hearth and home," he said.
"They're my own family. I can't help doing something for them when they
ask me."
He knew that when a white man marries a native or a half-caste he must
expect her relations to look upon him as a gold mine. He took Ethel's
face in his hands and kissed her red lips. Perhaps he could not expect
her to understand that the salary which had amply sufficed for a
bachelor must be managed with some care when it had to support a wife
and a house. Then Ethel was delivered of a son.
It was when Lawson first held the child in his arms that a sudden pang
shot through his heart. He had not expected it to be so dark. After all
it had but a fourth part of native blood, and there was no reason really
why it should not look just like an English baby; but, huddled together
in his arms, sallow, its head covered already with black hair, with huge
black eyes, it might have been a native child. Since his marriage he had
been ignored by the white ladies of the colony. When he came across men
in whose houses he had been accustomed to dine as a bachelor, they were
a little self-conscious with him; and they sought to cover their
embarrassment by an exaggerated cordiality.
"Mrs Lawson well?" they would say. "You're a lucky fellow. Damned pretty
girl."
But if they were with their wives and met him and Ethel they would feel
it awkward when their wives gave Ethel a patronising nod. Lawson had
laughed.
"They're as dull as ditchwater, the whole gang of them," he said. "It's
not going to disturb my night's rest if they don't ask me to their dirty
parties."
But now it irked him a little.
The little dark baby screwed up its face. That was his son. He thought
of the half-caste children in Apia. They had an unhealthy look, sallow
and pale, and they were odiously precocious. He had seen them on the
boat going to school in New Zealand, and a school had to be chosen which
took children with native blood in them; they were huddled together,
brazen and yet timid, with traits which set them apart strangely from
white people. They spoke the native language among themselves. And when
they grew up the men accepted smaller salaries because of their native
blood; girls might marry a white man, but boys had no chance; they must
marry a half-caste like themselves or a native. Lawson made up his mind
passionately that he would take his son away from the humiliation of
such a life. At whatever cost he must get back to Europe. And when he
went in to see Ethel, frail and lovely in her bed, surrounded by native
women, his determination was strengthened. If he took her away among his
own people she would belong more completely to him. He loved her so
passionately, he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he
was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the
native life, she would always keep something from him.
He went to work quietly, urged by an obscure instinct of secrecy, and
wrote to a cousin who was partner in a shipping firm in Aberdeen, saying
that his health (on account of which like so many more he had come out
to the islands) was so much better, there seemed no reason why he should
not return to Europe. He asked him to use what influence he could to get
him a job, no matter how poorly paid, on Deeside, where the climate was
particularly suitable to such as suffered from diseases of the lungs. It
takes five or six weeks for letters to get from Aberdeen to Samoa, and
several had to be exchanged. He had plenty of time to prepare Ethel. She
was as delighted as a child. He was amused to see how she boasted to her
friends that she was going to England; it was a step up for her; she
would be quite English there; and she was excited at the interest the
approaching departure gave her. When at length a cable came offering him
a post in a bank in Kincardineshire she was beside herself with joy.