THE world went very well with Higginson; and about that time—say fifteen
years ago—he found himself, his fortune made, settled down in Noumea.
The group of islands which he had, as he said, rescued from barbarism,
and in which he had opened the mines, made all the harbours, and laid out
all the roads, looked to him as their Providence; and to crown the work,
he had had them placed under the French flag. Rich, _décoré,_ respected,
and with no worlds to conquer in particular, he still kept adding wealth
to wealth; trading and doing what he considered useful work for all
mankind in general, as if he had been poor.
Strange that a kindly man, a cosmopolitan, half French, half English,
brought up in Australia, capable, active, pushing, and even not devoid of
that interior grace a speculative intellect, which usually militates
against a man in the battle of his life, should think that roads, mines,
harbours, havens, ships, bills of lading, telegraphs, tramways, a
European flag, even the French flag itself, could compensate his
islanders for loss of liberty. Stranger in his case than in the case of
those who go grown up with all the prejudices, limitations,
circumscriptions and formalities of civilization become chronic in them,
and see in savage countries and wild peoples but dumping ground for
European trash, and capabilities for the extension of the Roubaix or the
Sheffield trade; for he had passed his youth amongst the islands, loved
their women, gone spearing fish with their young men, had planted taro
with them, drunk kava, learned their language, and become as expert as
themselves in all their futile arts and exercises; knew their customs and
was as one of them, living their life and thinking it the best.
’Tis said (Viera, I think, relates it) that in the last years of fighting
for the possession of Teneriffe, and when Alonso de Lugo was hard pressed
to hold his own against the last Mencey, Bencomo, a strange sickness
known as the “modorra” seized the Guanches and killed more of them than
were slain in all the fights. The whole land was covered with the dead,
and once Alonso de Lugo met a woman sitting on the hill-side, who called
out, “Where are you going, Christian? Why do you hesitate to take the
land? the Guanches are all dead.” The Spanish chroniclers say that the
sickness came about by reason of a wet season, and that, coming as it did
upon men weakened by privation, they fell into apathy and welcomed death
as a deliverer. That may be so, and it is true that in hill-caves even
to-day in the lone valleys by Icod el Alto their bodies still are found
seated and with the head bowed on the arms, as if having sat down to
mourn the afflictions of their race, God had been merciful for once and
let them sleep. The chroniclers may have been right, and the wet season,
with despair, starvation and the hardships they endured, may have brought
on the mysterious “modorra,” the drowsy sickness, under which they fell.
But it needs nothing but the presence of the conquering white man, decked
in his shoddy clothes, armed with his gas-pipe gun, his Bible in his
hand, schemes of benevolence deep rooted in his heart, his merchandise
(that is, his whisky, gin and cotton cloths) securely stored in his
corrugated iron-roofed sheds, and he himself active and persevering as a
beaver or red ant, to bring about a sickness which, like the “modorra,”
exterminates the people whom he came to benefit, to bless, to rescue from
their savagery, and to make them wise, just, beautiful, and as apt to
differentiate evil from good as even he himself. So it would seem, act
as we like, our presence is a curse to all those people who have
preserved the primeval instincts of our race. Curious, and yet
apparently inevitable, that our customs seem designed to carry death to
all the so-called inferior races, whom at a bound we force to bridge a
period which it has taken us a thousand years to pass.
In his prosperity, and even we may suppose during the Elysium of dining
with sous-préfets in Noumea, and on the occasions when in Melbourne or in
Sydney he once again consorted with Europeans, he always dreamed of a
certain bay upon the coast far from Noumea, where in his youth he had
spent six happy months with a small tribe, fishing and swimming, hunting,
spearing fish, living on taro and bananas, and having for a friend one
Tean, son of a chief, a youth of his own age. The vision of the happy
life came back to him; the dazzling beach, the heavy foliage of the palao
and bread-fruit trees; the grove of cocoa-nuts, and the zigzag and
intricate paths leading from hut to hut, which when a boy he traversed
daily, knowing them all by instinct in the same way that horses in wild
countries know how to return towards the place where they were born. And
still the vision haunted him; not making him unhappy, for he was one of
those who find relief from thought in work, but always there in the same
way that the remembrance of a mean action is ever present, even when one
has made atonement, or induced oneself to think it was not really mean,
but rendered necessary by circumstances; or, in fact, when we imagine we
have put to sleep that inward grasshopper which in our bosoms, blood,
brain, stomach, or wheresoever it is situated, is louder or more faint
according to our state of health, digestion, weakness, or what it is that
makes us hear its chirp.
And so it was that cheap champagne seemed flat to him; the company of the
yellow-haired and faded _demi-mondaines_ whom Paris dumps upon New
Caledonia insipid; the villas on the cliff outside Noumea vulgar; and the
prosperity and progress of the place to which he had so much contributed,
profitless and stale. Not that for a single instant he stopped working,
planning and improving his estates, or missed a chance to acquire “town
lots,” or if a profitable 10,000 acres of good land with river frontage
came into the market, hesitated for a moment to step in and buy. Now,
though by this time he had long got past the need of actually trading
with the natives at first hand, and kept, as rich men do, captains and
secretaries and lawyers to do his lying for him, and only now and then
would condescend to exercise himself in that respect when the stake was
large enough to make the matter reputable, yet sometimes he would take a
cruise in one of his own schooners and play at being poor. Nothing so
tickles a man’s vanity as to look back upon his semi-incredible past, and
talk of the times when he had to live on sixpence a day, and to recount
his breakfast on a penny roll and glass of milk, and then to put his
hands upon his turtle-bloated stomach, smile a fat smile and say, “Ah,
those were the days, then I was happy!” although he knows that at that
halcyon period he was miserable, not perhaps so much from poverty, as
from that envy which is as great a curse to poor men as is indigestion to
the rich.
So running down the coast of New Caledonia in a schooner, trading in
pearls and copra, he came one evening to a well-remembered bay. All
seemed familiar to him, the low white beach, tall palm-trees, coral reef
with breakers thundering over it, and the still blue lagoon inside the
clump of breadfruit trees, the single tall grey stone just by the beach
all graven over with strange characters, all struck a chord long dormant
in his mind. So telling his skipper to let go his anchor, he rowed
himself ashore. On landing he was certain of the place; the tribe, about
five hundred strong, ruled over by the father of his friend Tean, lived
right along the bay, and scattered in palm-thatched huts throughout the
district. Then he remembered a certain cocoa-nut palm he used to climb,
a spring of water in a thicket of hibiscus, a little stream which he used
to dam, and then divert the course to take the fish, and sitting down,
all his past life came back to him. As he himself would say, “C’etait le
bon temps; pauvre Tean il doit être Areki (chef) maintenant; sa soeur
peut-être est morte ou mariée . . . elle m’aimait bien . . . ”
But this day-dream dispelled, it struck him that the place looked
changed. Where were the long low huts in front of which he used to pass
his idle hours stretched in a hammock, the little taro patches? The
zigzag paths which used to run from house to house across the fields to
the spring and to the turtle-pond were all grown up. Couch-grass and
rank mimosa scrub, with here and there ropes of lianas, blocked them so
that he rubbed his eyes and asked himself, Where is the tribe? Vainly he
shouted, cooeed loudly; all was silent, and his own voice came back to
him muffled and startling as it does when a man feels he is alone. At
last, following one of the paths less grown up and obliterated than the
rest, he entered a thick scrub, walked for a mile or two cutting lianas
now and then with his jack-knife, stumbling through swamps, wading
through mud, until in a little clearing he came upon a hut, in front of
which a man was digging yams. As many of the natives in New Caledonia
speak English and few French, he called to him in English, “Where black
man?” Resting upon his hoe, the man replied, “All dead.” “Where Chief?”
And the same answer, “Chief, he dead.” “Tean, he dead?” “No, Tean
Chief; he ill, die soon; Tean inside that house.” And Higginson, not
understanding, but feeling vaguely that his dream was shattered in some
way he could not understand, called out, “Tean, oh, Tean, your friend
Johnny here!” Then from the hut emerged a feeble man leaning upon a long
curved stick, who gazed at him as he had seen a ghost. At last he said,
“That you, John? I glad to see you once before I die.” Whether they
embraced, shook hands, rubbed noses, or what their greeting was is not
recorded, for Higginson, in alluding to it, always used to say, “C’est
bête, mais le pauvre homme me faisait de la peine.”
This was his sickness. “Me sick, John; why you wait so long? you no
remember, so many years ago when we spear fish, you love my sister, she
dead five years ago . . . When me go kaikai (eat) piece sugar-cane,
little bit perhaps fall on the ground, big bird he come eat bit of
sugar-cane and eat my life.”
Poor Higginson being a civilized man, with the full knowledge of all
things good and evil contingent on his state, still was dismayed, but
said, “No, Tean, I get plenty big gun; you savey when I shoot even a
butterfly he fall. I shoot big bird so that when you go kaikai he no eat
pieces, and you get well again.” Thus Higginson from his altitude argued
with the semi-savage, thinking, as men will think, that even death can be
kept off with words. But Tean smiled and said, “Johnny, you savey heap,
but you no savey all. This time I die. You go shoot bird he turn into a
mouse, and mouse eat all I eat, just the same bird.” This rather
staggered Higginson, and he felt his theories begin to vanish, and he
began to feel a little angry; but really loving his old friend, he once
more addressed himself to what he now saw might be a hopeless task.
“I go Noumea get big black cat, beautiful cat, all the same tiger—you
savey tiger, Tean?—glossy and fat, long tail and yellow eyes; when he see
mouse he eat him; you go bed sleep, get up, and soon quite well.” Tean,
who by this time had changed position with his friend, and become out of
his knowledge a philosopher, shook his head sadly and replied, “You no
savey nothing, John; when black man know he die there is no hope.
Suppose cat he catch mouse, all no use; mouse go change into a big, black
cloud, all the same rain. Rain fall upon me, and each drop burn right
into my bones. I die, John, glad I see you; black man all die, black
woman no catch baby, tribe only fifty ’stead of five hundred. We all go
out, all the same smoke, we vanish, go up somewhere, into the clouds.
Black men and white men, he no can live. New Caledonia (as you call him)
not big enough for both.”
What happened after that Higginson never told, for when he reached that
point he used to break out into a torrent of half French, half English
oaths, blaspheme his gods, curse progress, rail at civilization, and
recall the time when all the tribe were happy, and he and Tean in their
youth went spearing fish. And then bewildered, and as if half-conscious
that he himself had been to blame, would say, “I made the roads, opened
the mines, built the first pier, I opened up the island; ah, le pauvre
Tean, il me faisait de la peine . . . et sa soeur morte . . . she was so
pretty with a hibiscus wreath . . . ah, well, pauvre petite . . . je
l’aimais bien.”