depended on sailing-ships for their precarious supplies and their
meagre news of the outside world, the Rev. Wesley Cook reached the
Islands to take up the Lord’s work in that troubled field. He was a
good-looking young man with a weak chin, rather regular features,
and an abundance of yellow, fluffy hair, who had trod since earliest
infancy the narrow path that leads to a missionary career. An assiduous
church-member, a devout Sunday-school scholar, he had climbed, rung
by rung, the religious ladder, and his sanguine, sensitive nature
had flowered in an atmosphere which would have stifled a bolder boy.
At nineteen he was fed into a sectarian college like corn into a
mill, and at twenty-two the machine turned him out into the world, an
undistinguishable unit of the church to which he belonged. Then, after
a quiet month with his old mother, whose heart overflowed with the
measure of her son’s success, the Rev. Wesley was bidden to marry and
depart.
There were plenty to advise him at this juncture, and half a
dozen young ladies were entered, so to speak, for the matrimonial
steeplechase. But Wesley, contrary to all expectation and not a
little to the chagrin of the narrow set in which he moved, showed
some determination to have his own way in this important matter, and
after a brief courtship he carried Miss Minnie Chandler to the altar.
She was the proud and defiant beauty of the town, the self-willed,
high-spirited young woman whose name was in every mouth, and whose
rejected suitors numbered half the bachelors in the neighbourhood.
Many wondered at her choice, until it was whispered about that she
was heartsick over her affair with Harry Jardine, the manufacturer’s
son, and that she preferred the missionary wilds to life in the same
country with the man who had broken his troth. Be that as it may, she
was joined to Wesley Cook in the bonds of holy matrimony, and after a
quiet wedding, at which the breakfast was frugal and prayer abundant,
the young couple bade farewell to their relations and departed for the
uttermost isles of the sea.
Six months later the _Morning Star_ hove to off the iron-bound coast
of Savai’i, and her surf-boats landed the Rev. Wesley on the shores of
his new home, together with a ton of provisions, some cheap furniture,
a box of theological books, and a Samoan grammar. He found a concrete
house already prepared for him, a church with sand-bagged windows and
a plank door still studded with bullets,--an alarming reminder of the
unsettled state of his district,--and an obsequious band of church
elders, sticky with oil, and, to his notion of things, almost naked in
their kilts of paper cloth. Bewildered and unhappy, with his wife in
tears beside him, he gazed despairingly at the fast-dwindling ship,
which he could not hope to see again for the space of a year.
The natives hung about like flies, buzzing through the stuffy rooms
of the old mission-house so long closed to their little world, or
bestirred themselves with noisy good will to the task of bringing
up the freight and the pastor’s scanty boxes. He, poor fellow, with
haggard face and eyes smarting with sweat, checked off the tally on an
envelope, and strove to bear himself like the picture of the martyr
Williams in “The Heroes of the Cross.” Numberless old men shook him by
the hand, and talked to him loudly as though he were deaf, or drew him
off to a distance and, leaning on long sticks, barked orations at his
head. Bands of youths staggered in, singing, with loads of squealing
pigs, and unsavoury victuals in baskets, while shaven-headed children
tied chickens to the verandah-posts, and women and girls unfolded
offerings of prawns and snaky eels. There was a live turtle in the
sitting-room, a bull-calf in the kitchen, and at every turn veritable
mountains of half-roasted pork. It was a wild scene for a man new
come from quiet England, and the long, even days of life at sea; the
unceasing press and bustle of the multitude, the squawking of chickens,
and the screams of fettered pigs, all wore on his nerves until his head
was giddy and his pulse throbbing. It was late in the afternoon before
the mob scampered off with the suddenness and decision of a flock of
birds, leaving the missionary and his wife to the peace they so sorely
needed. The poor exiles, with sinking hearts, brewed their tea beside
a packing-case, and wondered (much in the spirit of convicts who have
left another world beyond the prison door) whether the captain had won
his philopena of Mrs. McDougall, or if Miss Mossby had made it up with
young Sturgis.
A year later the new missionary found himself somewhat at home in
Fangaloa. He had preached a halting sermon in the native tongue, which,
though no one could understand it, had evoked a respectful admiration.
The school was now on its feet, and the children came eagerly,
seemingly pleased with the rudiments of learning he managed to teach
them. His parishioners, too, began to give evidence of their finer and
nobler qualities, and warmed his heart by their kindness, generosity,
and intelligence. Their laborious talks, as they sat at night round the
fires, or on mats beneath the tropic moon, revealed to him a tenderness
and refinement he was little prepared to find; and, from a task, these
gatherings became an entertainment to be prepared for by anxious study
of the phrase-book, and bewildering consultations with an old man who
was supposed to understand English. Cook liked the admiration and
deference of these ragged chiefs; he loved to note the bustle that
heralded his own approach; the shaking out of the finest mats for his
special seat; the polite chorus of “_Maliu mai, susu mai Tutumanaia_”
(“You are high chief come, Cook the Handsome”); the closing up of
the ranks, and the row of expectant faces. He was the little god of
Fangaloa Bay, and in a hesitating, humble way he began to taste the
sweets of power and authority.
But with his wife it was very different. Her beautiful face grew pale
and sharp, as the days rolled on in a blank succession of household
tasks begun and ended. In the long night hours, when the heat made
sleep impossible, and her heart turned to England and those dear ones
she could not hope to see again for years, she would abandon herself
to despair. She never complained, but went about her duties with
sad-eyed patience, mixing very little with the many servants provided
for her--the young men who studied for the ministry in the intervals of
bread-making and waiting at table, and the girls of rank whose fathers
were eager for them to keep pace with the strange new times they lived
in. She never chid them, as most missionaries’ wives would have done,
for trifling faults or petty forgetfulnesses. She never realised the
enormity of breaking a plate, or the crime of tinting the pudding with
washing-blue to enrich the colour; she allowed things to take their
untroubled course in a way that amazed her household. When one’s heart
is slowly breaking, it is hard to count the sugar in the bowl or watch
the soap with housewifely care. In the hot afternoons she would take
her work and seek the shadow of a tall cocoanut-grove which stood on
a hill behind the town, and there remain for hours, gazing out at the
vast shining bosom of the ocean, or at the blue mountains of Upolu,
far across the strait. So regular was her visit to this little grove
that her boys built a bench of _tamanu_ wood for her to sit on, and
raised a roof overhead to protect her from passing showers or the
glancing rays of the sun; and the place was called “_o le Nofoali’i
o Misi Mini_,” or the Throne of Mrs. Minnie, which name it bears to
the present day, though all the actors in this story have long been
laid beneath the sod. Once, after a solitary vigil of more than usual
length, she returned and sought her room, now a little sanctuary of her
irrevocable life; for here were gathered the treasures of her past;
the photographs, mementoes, and keepsakes that she had clung to in her
exile. Here she breathed again the air of home; here she could caress
the fading photographs that were so dear to her, and indulge unstinted
in passionate rebellion against her fate. On the day of which we write
she found no comfort in her shrine. The faces of her friends looked
down mournfully at her from the walls, tormenting her with a thousand
recollections. Existence was unbearable enough without such added
bitterness. These things, inanimate though they were, devoured her
while they pretended to comfort; they broke her heart while she looked
to them for solace. For a moment she saw the truth and trembled for
herself. Madness lay on the road she had begun to follow.
One by one, she gathered them together; the picture of her father
and mother, the photographs of her relations and girl friends, old
Christmas cards, bits of ribbon, little odds and ends that had played
each a part in those bygone days. There were letters, too, precious
bundles of letters tied with ribbon, which she kissed and cried over
before consigning to destruction; and from one such packet dropped the
likeness of a man in uniform, which she pressed to her breast before
tearing it into a hundred pieces. When at last the room was stripped of
everything, she bore the heap of tender rubbish to the fire, and, with
a stony face, fed it to the flames.
The Rev. Wesley Cook and his wife were not the only whites in their
corner of Savai’i, as indeed they had first imagined themselves to
be. There was still another in Fangaloa, an old, white-haired Irish
priest called Father Zosimus. No one could remember how many years
had passed since Father Zosimus came to Fangaloa and built the tiny
house and chapel in the mango-grove; for he was an old, old man, and
had come to that sleepy hollow when his hair was as black and his feet
were as light as those of the nimblest warrior of the bay. He had no
followers to speak of, for Fangaloa was Protestant to the core, and
his congregation numbered no more than one family of eight, three
transient young men who had run away with as many girls from Upolu,
and Filipo, the aged catechist, who acted as his servant. But Father
Zosimus never faltered in the path he had set himself to follow. For
seven and forty years he had daily broken the stillness of the grove
with the tinkle of his little bell, and never failed to carry on the
service of his church. He scarcely heeded the new arrivals, and more
than once he had had to chide old Filipo for gossiping about the
_papalangi_ on the hill. He never gave them a second thought, in fact,
until one day he happened to see Tutumanaia passing on his way to
church. The sight of that fresh, clear-eyed youngster greatly moved
the old priest. He was troubled and uneasy as he walked home, and his
heart ached a little. The new missionary belonged to his own race; he
had the air of a scholar, and the frank, open face and quick eyes of a
man full of enthusiasms and generous impulses; yet, so mused Zosimus
on his homeward way, this charity, this noble purpose, were all for
the aborigines alone. There would be none to spare for an old man to
whom no music was so sweet as his mother-tongue, and whose loneliness
was intensified by the burden of advancing years. For nearly half a
century Father Zosimus had lived in exile, and his soul continually
thirsted for the companionship which had been denied him all his life.
The few whites who had come his way before had been scrubby traders,
a priest or two a year, or some nondescript beach-comber, rough and
foul-mouthed, begging brandy and food. True, he had spent eighteen
years within a furlong of the Rev. Josiah Fison, Cook’s predecessor
in Fangaloa; but that gentleman’s Christian charity stopped short at
what he called a “rank Jesuit,” and they had never exchanged even so
much as a word. In Father Zosimus there was a strain of Irish gaiety;
he loved talk, and laughter, and argument; and the humblest white man
who could speak English was welcomed to his table and treated to the
best that Fangaloa afforded. Indeed, among the “squires of Savai’i” he
was honoured and respected, from Falealupo to the strait. But these
men were, most of them, gross and common. In Wesley Cook he saw a
being of another world, a young man of refinement and spirituality,
a fellow-missionary, a fellow-countryman, with whom all intercourse
was inexorably barred, with whom he should live out the balance of his
days and know no more than if an ocean rolled between them. No longer
did he stem the tide of old Filipo’s gossip; on the contrary, he could
now never learn enough of the new arrivals, and little passed in the
mission-house that was not reported to him at once. He learned, with
a singular feeling of delight, of the young minister’s kindness and
ability; how he had mastered the language in less time than a foreigner
had been ever before known to take; how he had raised the dying, nay,
the breathless dead themselves, back to life with the costly medicines
he never stinted to the poorest. “Oh, he is a minister wise and good,”
said Filipo, “and his heart is not stony against us Catholics like
the last pig-face; only yesterday he said that thou, Zosimus, wert
honourable, and deserving of respect as a man who had trod the narrow
road his whole life long.”
The old priest hung upon his words as though Filipo were inspired.
The next day he went purposely out of his way to gain another look at
Tutumanaia, and came back more affected than he had been before.
“Had I not entered the priesthood, I might have had a son like that,”
he mused to himself, as he trudged homeward. “But that I gave to God,
scarce knowing the sacrifice.” Then he rebuked himself for his impiety.
More than once, as time passed, he turned over in his mind the
possibility of calling at the Protestant mission. But no young girl
could have shown more timidity than Father Zosimus. Many a time he
brought out his best cassock, and brushed his best hat, and took a
long look at himself in the cracked shaving-glass. But he would sigh
as he saw the image of that wrinkled, shaggy-haired old man. “You’re
nothing but a frowsy old frump, Zosimus,” he would say to himself,
“nothing but the husk of what was once a man. Sure, they would have
little use for you, that handsome boy and girl in their elegant home.”
For to Father Zosimus the whitewashed, coral-built mission-house, with
its shining windows and its trim garden laid out in plots, was a fairy
palace resplendent with luxury and filled with a thousand treasures.
In his simple heart, half prepared as it was to believe anything
that redounded to the honour of his hero, he had received with all
confidence the glowing tales the natives brought him; and the very
glamour with which his imagination endowed the spot helped to keep him
back. “If the boy cares to know me, he will come himself,” he said; and
the camphor-wood chest would close, perhaps for the twentieth time, on
the father’s Sunday best.
But the boy never came. He, too, was timid, and though he often noticed
the gaunt old priest, and longed also to speak his mother-tongue
with the only creature save his wife who could understand it in all
Fangaloa, the opportunity never came to break the ice. A whole year
passed, and the Rev. Wesley Cook and the Rev. Father Zosimus, S. J.,
were no nearer an acquaintance than before. Yet there was seldom a day
but they saw each other from afar, the one shy and kind, half hoping
to receive the first advances, the other no less eager and no less
restrained.
One day Filipo brought a rumour to his master which the latter listened
to with deep concern. For a whole afternoon he gave up his usual
digging in the garden and paced his little verandah to and fro. Once
he even washed and dressed himself in his best, and trimmed his ragged
beard; but he took off his clothes again and smoked another pipe
instead of paying the visit he had so nearly decided to make. He called
in Filipo from the taro-field, and bade him waylay Misi’s girls every
day and bring news of Mrs. Cook’s condition.
Day by day the two old men discussed the coming event, and Father
Zosimus grew by turns glad and fearful at the prospect. The news came
to him one morning in October, as he was kneeling to implore divine aid
in the hour of a woman’s agony. Dawn was breaking as Filipo rushed into
the chapel, coughing and panting. “It is all over,” he cried,--“the
mother well and happy, and the child a little chief, of a strength and
beauty the like of which has never been seen in Fangaloa.”
“God be thanked!” cried Father Zosimus, throwing himself once more on
his knees.
With the later hours there came less assuring news of the mother and
the little chief. There was a devil in Misi, said Filipo; a devil that
caused her to lie as dead, or to burst forth furiously into strange
tongues, so that all about her stood amazed and trembling. The little
chief lay helpless in old Sisimaile’s arms, and the flame of its
tiny life was that of a flickering torch. Yes, the _papatisonga_ had
not been neglected. Old Tuisunga and Leotele, the speaking-man, were
the godfathers at the font; and Tutumanaia read fast, with tears in
his voice, lest the babe should die before it had been joined to the
Tahitian religion. For Master Wesley Chandler Cook was not destined
long to be a member of Christ’s church on earth. As they bore him back
to the room where his mother lay, he closed his eyes for ever.
Father Zosimus was stunned when the news first reached him, and the
tears rolled down his cheeks as he listened to Filipo. Then he went
indoors and rummaged the old chests where he kept his treasures,
turning out some trashy velvet with which he had meant to decorate
the chapel, a bottle of varnish, some brass nails, and a bundle of
well-seasoned, well-polished _maalava_ boards that he had laid away
to build himself a desk. He spread them out on the rough table, and
studied them long and earnestly. In his youth he had been a joiner and
a worker in wood, and though his hand was palsied with age, and his
eye not so true as it once had been, he was still more than a fair
craftsman. He brought out his tools, clamps, and measures, and asked
Filipo what he judged to be the bigness of the chief-son of Tutumanaia.
“Not very long,” said the old retainer,--“scarcely more than the half
of your Highness’s arm.”
Father Zosimus put on his spectacles, measured off the velvet, scanned
his materials and tools with a workmanlike eye, and then, when all
lay ready to his hand, he went outside and began to pace up and down
his verandah. The devil of irresolution and doubt was again gnawing
at his heart. Unsought and unasked, what business was it of his to
make a coffin for the dead child? There was not a soul in Fangaloa but
knew that Father Zosimus was skilled in such matters, as his house and
chapel so abundantly testified. Were his help required, they would
come and seek it. Would it not look strange for him to make a coffin
unbidden? Would it not appear forward, grasping, perhaps as though
he expected payment for his work? For an hour he wrestled with the
problem. Finally he told Filipo to spread the news about the village
that the old priest looked to undertake this task for nothing, and
was waiting only to be asked. With that he shut himself up in the
chapel, and spent the forenoon in reciting prayers for the dead. But,
devout though he ordinarily was in everything touching the services of
his church, Father Zosimus found it hard, on this occasion, to dwell
on things heavenly when all the while his body was quivering with
suspense, and his soul hearkened for that footfall on the coral floor.
Again and again he seemed to hear the sound of voices, Filipo answering
with soft deliberation, the minister agitated and saying with mournful
earnestness, “Tell the _ali’i patele_ I must see him instantly.” But
no message came; no discreet cough or dog-like scratching against the
door warned him that his attention was desired; and the stillness of
the chapel remained untroubled save for the murmuring surf and the coo
of wild pigeons in the forest.
It was late in the afternoon, and the fierce heat of day was already
melting into the softness of night, when the minister’s little son was
borne to his rest. Under the equator burial follows swiftly on the
heels of death, and life no sooner leaves the body than the diggers
must sweat and the hammers fly. There can be no decorous pause to
soften the blow or strengthen the bereaved for that last farewell
beside the grave. Ashamed, he knew not why, with a desolate sense of
defeat, Father Zosimus was drawn to gaze on the burial from afar,
crouching on a knoll that overlooked the spot. He watched, with an
emotion not to be expressed in words, the affecting scene which played
itself out before him. Across the strait blue Upolu sparkled in the
setting sun; the foaming breakers outlined the coast like a fringe of
silver, and thrilled faintly on the ear; the evening star quivered in
the blackening sky, and the constellation of the Southern Cross gleamed
in the heavens, the bright solace of many a Christian heart.
The coffin lay on a rough bier of mingled boughs and flowers, borne
in procession by eight solemn little boys all of a size, who were
tricked out in a uniform of white cotton. Behind them, very pale and
handsome, walked Tutumanaia, in duck clothes and a pith helmet. On his
one hand was the smug-faced native pastor from the next bay; on the
other, Tuisunga, the towering old chief, imperious of eye, stately
in manner, as befitted the occasion and the man. Behind these again,
and at the head of the elders and speaking-men with their fly-flappers
and Bibles, strode the _taupou_ of Fangaloa, in a striped silk _apana_
and a skirt made of a fine mat. The village matrons made up the middle
of the procession, with their hands full of hibiscus, frangipani,
stephanotis, and _moso’oi_, followed by groups of young girls and young
men, decorously apart, as convention demands; the former in bright
_lavalavas_ and little shirts of flowers and leaves, or with their
brown bosoms glistening through entwined _laumaile_ and necklaces of
scarlet _singano_; the latter with lime-whitened heads and flaming
_aute_-blossoms behind their ears. Throughout swarmed the village
children, with shaven heads and eager faces, and ears all unmindful of
the click-click of their warning parents, romping, quarrelling, and
chasing one another through the crowd.
The pall-bearers laid down their burden beside the empty grave, and
knelt on the grass in a little semicircle. Tutumanaia and his two
companions threw themselves on a mat which a woman unrolled and spread
out for them. The _taupou_ took her position at the head of the coffin,
and raised her silken parasol, less to shade her eyes than to display
a cherished possession. At a respectful distance, the chiefs, elders,
and speaking-men formed the first rank of a great circle, their deeply
lined faces overcast and solemn. The silence was first broken by a
shrill hymn, and then Cook rose to his feet, drew a Testament from his
pocket, and began to address the village. What he said was commonplace
enough, and only the echo of what he had said a hundred times before,
but the stress of a deep emotion ennobled his ready phrases and
impassioned the narrow vocabulary of Samoan woe. It seemed to Father
Zosimus that he was listening to an angel, or to one of those inspired
beings on whom the church is founded; and, indeed, a painter would have
found a saint to his hand in the tall, shining white figure of the
young minister, with his aureole of golden hair, his hand uplifted to
the sky, and his pale, rapt face raised to God.