of swift running, and as a falcon stoops to the trembling rabbit, so
did Meli swoop down upon the now frightened Princess. There was the
hurtling of a body through the air, a misty vision of flying draperies
and shining gold, a chinking together of many metals, and the Princess
was in her place in the line, dishevelled and bewildered, but in the
finest rage that it had ever been Meli’s fate to call down upon his
woolly head. The storm burst, and all discipline was at an end. He
succumbed without a murmur, knowing instinctively that to attempt to
check such a torrent would bring down upon him the angry flood of
thirteen other female tongues. His colleague left his gang in the
bananas to look on, and the male prisoners threw down their hoes and
peered, grinning, from among the broad shining leaves, to see his
discomfiture. It is not necessary to repeat all the Princess said. Her
past history, her present wrongs, her opinion of bushmen in general
and Meli in particular, the glories of the Government of India, and
the infamy of the Government of the colony, were all exhaustively
discussed in language more forcible than elegant. Long after Meli had
hustled her companions off to their work, she was still declaiming in
a voice that cut the ear like a knife. But when she became conscious
that her audience had dwindled to five grinning native prisoners who
did not understand her, the outbursts of eloquence became spasmodic,
and at last she fell back upon the jail to brood over her wrongs. Then
Meli’s courage returned to him, and, armed with a murderous-looking
weeding-knife, he followed her to her lair. In two minutes, loudly
protesting, she found herself sitting on the grass path with her
fingers forcibly closed upon the handle of the knife, which, resist
as she would, cut the grass before her with the superior force of
Meli’s arm. When left to herself she furiously flung the knife into the
bananas, and wept tears of impotent rage. But the native warder, who
sat perched on the fork of a dead tree watching the male prisoners as
they weeded the bananas, took no notice of her, and so she dried her
tears and fell to watching him as he threw stone after stone from the
pile in his lap with unerring aim at the prisoners guilty of shirking
their work.
But later in the day two Nepaulese, aspirants for court favour,
appeared on the scene and energetically cut the grass set for
their liege-lady’s task, while she sat listless and indifferent,
condescending now and again to pluck with her slender fingers a
single blade of grass, with an insolent affectation of satisfying the
requirements of the law, whenever the official eye fell upon her. She
may have plucked thirty blades of grass in the working day, perhaps not
quite so many; but it was much to have vindicated the discipline of the
jail, and more to have made the Princess do any work at all. Her spirit
was so far broken, and the romance of her story may be said to have
ended here.
Coolies may buy out their indentures for a round sum, and by some means
this sum was raised among her admirers. There were burglaries in the
neighbourhood about that time; and one indeed of the suite was arrested
on suspicion by the European sergeant of police, who said as usual,
when called upon to produce evidence, “It’s a well-known fact that he’s
a noted scoundrel, and I submit to your worship that that’s evidence.”
LEONE OF NOTHO.
“Ië, Setariki, how long did the foreigner say that I must stay bound?
Until the month January? That is, after the day of the New Year, and
there are four moons to set till then. It is always the way of the
Government--wait, wait--till the bones of those who wait crumble away.
If I _must_ die, let me die now, Setariki. I told the foreigner in the
court that I slew the woman, and the payment is death; therefore, where
is the use of waiting? You are a policeman and know the law?”
“The law is this--that you be judged in the Great Court that is held
but four times every year. Na-vosa-vakadua [He-who-speaks-once] will
judge you, and the foreigners in turbans of sheepskin will dispute and
quarrel about you in their own tongue, so that you cannot understand,
and the witnesses will swear to speak the truth, and will make all
things plain; but one of the foreigners with sheepskin on their heads
will ask them many questions to entrap them, and speak angrily to them,
seeking to hide the truth, so that their senses will fly from them for
fear, and they will lie, and the truth be darkened. Thus did Manoa
escape, and that other woman who drowned the white man, although they
themselves bore witness that they had done the thing of which they were
accused. But they were women, and you, being a man, I greatly fear that
you will not escape. The ways of the foreigners are strange, and you
cannot understand them; but I, being a policeman in the service of the
Government, understand them all; and this I know, Leone, that it is
better to be judged in the Great Court, where the judge knows nothing
of our tongue, than in the court of the province; for in the Great
Court there is much disputing and much darkening of the truth, so that
many of the guilty escape.”
“Nay, Setariki; even though they darken the truth until none shall know
it from the false, yet cannot I escape, for I have told the bald-headed
magistrate that I slew Lusiana.”
“The foreigners I have told you of, whose business it is to twist the
truth--_loya_ they are called--will come to you in the prison, and
teach you how to lie before the court, and will even lie themselves
on your behalf if you will first give them money. The Indians do this
every day, feeding these _loya_ with money, and they in return save the
Indians from the law. Therefore send to your relations to gather money
together for the _loya_. Send to Vita, who has the rent of your land
where the store is; tell him not to spend that money, but to sell copra
to add to it. Now tell me the manner of the accusation.”
“What is there to tell? I am Leone of Notho, of the fishermen clan. I
did in truth slay the woman Lusiana my wife. It fell thus. I gave the
marriage gifts, and my house was built as the law requires; then I took
her and we were married. This was ten Sabbaths ago. She was of good
report, and none knew aught to her dishonour, so that I feared no other
man when I took her to be my wife. She was a woman of a mild spirit and
obedient, and I rejoiced greatly in her. Then, one night as we lay upon
the one mat under the screen, I, being nearly asleep, heard a tapping
upon the bread-fruit tree that grew near the door--such as a _sese_
makes with its beak upon a branch when it eats grasshoppers, only
louder; and as I lay wondering what it might be, the sound came again,
and from the mat where Lusiana lay there was the sound of tapping as if
in answer, but very softly; and I, feigning sleep, breathed heavily,
but turned my eyes towards her. Now a lamp was burning in the house,
but it was turned low, for the kerosene was nearly dry, and I had no
shillings. She seemed to be asleep, but when the tapping sounded again
I saw the screen shake, for she had her left arm extended beneath it,
and was tapping on the mat with the ends of her fingers. Then I lay
very still to see what would happen, and presently she rose softly and
crawled out of the screen to the fireplace as if to light her _suluka_
from the embers. After a little she went softly to the door and out;
and I, fearing some evil, rose and went swiftly out by another door,
taking my clearing-knife from the leaves as I passed. The moon shone
brightly. And as I looked from the corner of the house I saw Lusiana,
my wife, standing in the shadow of the bread-fruit with a man, who
spoke earnestly to her as if to draw her away. Then my blood flowed
down in my body, and I came upon them suddenly, and the man fled, but
I knew him in the moonlight for Airsai the village constable. But the
woman stood and looked at the ground. And I said, ‘Who is that man?
Is this your habit when I am lying asleep?’ But she looked always at
the ground, and would not answer. Then my anger increased, and I said,
‘Answer me, answer, you light woman!’ But she still was silent. Then I
took her by the hand to lead her to the house--I swear to you that I
only meant to lead her to the house,--but she resisted me, and tried
to draw away her hand from mine. Then I let her go, and great rage
entered into me. ‘Will you neither speak nor come with me?’ I shouted.
But the woman stood with her back to me, still looking at the ground.
And a great strength came upon me, and the knife in my hand became
lighter than a reed, and I swung it once in the air, making it hiss,
and crying, ‘Speak, woman!’ Then I struck--and her head being bowed,
I struck the neck at the back where it looked red in the moonlight
that shone between the bread-fruit leaves. The knife paused not, but
shore through all, for it was a mighty blow; and the head rolled to
the foot of the tree, turning the sand black, and the body sank down
where it stood, and struck my knees, spurting blood. Thus my _sulu_
and my legs and feet were all wet. Then I cried for the others to come
and see what I had done, and they all came running: first the women,
chattering like parrots at sunset, then the men and children, and last
of all the village policeman, Airsai. And they took the knife from me,
and one brought a clean sulu and put it on me, taking mine to show to
the courts; and they went with me to the river to wash the blood from
my legs. But when they would ask me questions, I said, ‘Peace! I slew
Lusiana. Bind me.’ So they bound my hands with sinnet, and brought me
hither, not resisting, for the woman deserved to die.”
“Is that all, Leone?”
“That is all. But one thing is clear, that I cannot escape the law.”
“Nay! Take rest for your mind, Leone. I know a foreigner in the town--a
_loya_--who is skilled in the law, being wont to dispute in the
courts. Of late few have paid him money to dispute, and he is hungry
for money--for foreigners eat money as we eat yams. For him, skilled
as I have said, it will be easy to darken the truth of this thing so
that the judge cannot find it, and will doubt whether it was Airsai
who slew the woman, or you, or whether she slew herself, or whether,
indeed, she was slain at all. Such things has he done for others, and
this he will do for you too, if you but pay him sufficient money before
the trial.”
RALUVE.
Vere did not tell me the story himself. He does not talk about his
past; but squalid as his life is, he cannot help looking like a man
with a history, albeit unkempt and half-starved in the struggle to
keep his half-caste brats from want. Hoskins, the father of district
magistrates, is my authority. He saw no pathos in it, only thought it
“an awful pity”; but years of tinned provisions are apt to dull the
sense of poetry in any man.
Vere was the usual kind of younger son who leaves a public school with
more knowledge of field-sports than Latin, and having passed the limit
of age for the army, straightway joins the hosts of unemployed whose
ultimate refuge is the States or the Colonies. Unlike most of the young
gentlemen who graduate at an army crammer’s, Vere had no vices, and
when his turn came to tackle station-life in Australia, he found no
temptation to take the usual downward plunge, but hated the life with
all his heart. His letters home brought him unexpected relief. The
Colonial Office was asked to find a few young men to recruit the Civil
Service of a South Sea colony, and Vere, in common with half-a-dozen
others, was appointed, through the medium of a friendly chief clerk.
He was kept at headquarters just long enough to wear off the novelty,
and to wonder why English-speaking mankind, especially when they
hail from Australia, succeed so wonderfully in stamping out all that
is picturesque from their surroundings; and then he was sent to
Commissioner Austin to be instructed in the mysteries of the native
language and customs, until such time as he should be fit for the
responsibilities of a Commissioner himself. Now Mr Commissioner Austin
was not a gentleman to be entrusted with the care of youth, and to
do him justice, he was the last person in the world to desire such
a responsibility. The Government had taken him over with the other
fixtures of a former _régime_, and if he had any belongings for whom
he ever cared, he had long ago forgotten them. In his own province the
Commissioner was a very great man indeed--that is to say, the natives
grunted at him when he passed, clapped their hands after touching
his, and generally left his presence smacking that part of the human
frame that is held in least esteem. But the law of the honour paid to
prophets is reversed in the islands, and the Commissioner found that
his importance in the social scheme sensibly diminished with every mile
from the boundaries of his district, and had therefore allowed his
visits to the capital to become very rare. Vere found the great man
affable and not inhospitable. “You will stay with me until you can make
your own arrangements,” he said; and Vere, not caring to prolong his
visit upon such terms, though he had nothing with him but his clothes,
lost no time in invoking the good offices of a friendly storekeeper.
With his help he found himself in a few days established in a small
native house, belonging to a petty chief, without a stick of furniture
but the mats that belonged to his landlord, and a mosquito-screen. He
wanted nothing more. The mats, with dried grass under them, were soft
enough to sleep on, and the floor was cooler and more comfortable than
any chair. For the first few days he attended the office regularly in
the hope of finding work to do, but his chief never seemed to want
him. “No, thanks, Mr Vere, not to-day. This work would be a little
beyond you. Perhaps you could not do better than work at the language.”
Vere realised later on that the Commissioner had the best of reasons
for not finding work for him. He had not enough for himself. There were
no coolies in his district, and the native magistrates disposed of
the court work. So Vere worked at the language in the only effective
way--that is, he spent day after day with his landlord’s family fishing
from a canoe, diving for _figota_, and drinking _yangona_. He bathed in
a stream a few yards from his hut, and had his meals with his native
landlord or with a neighbouring storekeeper. The life was too new to be
monotonous.
One night as he was dropping off to sleep on his mats, tired out with
doing nothing all day, he heard the distant note of a conch-shell
mingled with the eternal murmur of the reef. “Turtle-fishers returning
with a big bag,” he thought, trying to remember what natives blow
conch-shells for, and turned over on the other side. But presently
distant voices, as of people aroused and hurrying, awoke the lazy
curiosity of one bound to study native customs. A light breeze from
the sea was rustling the great palm-leaves like heavy curtains, and
though the moon had set, the stars gave light enough to show the dim
outline of the rocky island near the anchorage. A light was creeping
in towards the beach, and he could just make out the huge triangular
sail of a double canoe. Then a hoarse voice from the canoe shouted to
the people who were assembling on the beach. Immediately, with a deep
exclamation, the babble of voices ceased, and every figure squatted as
if by word of command. Two or three men ran off into the village, and
Vere drew near the group in the hope of finding some one to explain the
situation. He soon found his landlord, who, in pidgin English, told
him that the dusky potentate who had despoiled the district for many
years had gone to his own place, and that his son reigned in his stead,
and had come to receive their homage. The men who had run to the town
came back with whale’s teeth, and as the canoe grated on the coral sand
the grey-headed village chief squatted with his feet in the sea, and
gave the deep grunt of respect, and delivered in low voice a rapid and
unintelligible harangue. The crew sprang into the water, and standing
waist-deep, dragged the canoe through the yielding sand until her prow
rested above the dry beach, and the old man, still squatting, gave
the whale’s teeth, hanging in a bunch, to the new-comers. A fire of
dead palm-leaves threw a red glare upon the brown faces and glistening
bodies of the strangers as they disembarked. A tall young man,
evidently the new chief, was the first. He was followed by a number
of men and women, who stood aside to wait for another woman who now
rose from the little thatched house on the deck. From her bearing, and
the respect paid to her, Vere saw she was to be classed far above any
he had yet seen. The chief seemed to ask in a whisper who the strange
white man was, and learning probably that he was a Government officer,
stopped to shake hands with him. The girl stopped too, and looked at
Vere as if expecting to be spoken to; but before he could take her
hand, she hurried off after the others. They were followed by the whole
village into the deep shadow of the palms, and Vere was left alone with
the dying fire to watch the crew of the canoe making her snug for the
night.
Vere heard all about the new arrivals next day. Of Nambuto he had heard
before, a good deal that was discreditable, as is natural and proper
to a young leader of the people. The girl was all that an epidemic of
measles had left of a line of chiefs beside whom the present rulers of
the district were _parvenus_. Weakened by the ravages of the disease
that had thinned out his fighting men, her father had succumbed to the
chief who was just dead, and both conquerors and conquered had agreed
that _Andi_ Raluve should heal the hereditary quarrel by marrying
Nambuto, the eldest son of the victor. It was a tribal matter, and in
tribal matters women have no voice, least of all when they are of rank.
The villagers seemed to take their loss with much philosophy. They
cut their hair and beards, it is true, and there was a run on black
cashmere in the nearest store, but they wasted no time in vain regrets
for one whose lightest word a week ago they would have tremblingly
obeyed. They devoted all their energies instead to the entertainment of
the living. Long-nosed slab-sided pigs were dragged by the hind-legs
to the ovens, protesting indignantly, until a few dull thuds clearly
explained the situation to them; and Vere’s friends chopped wood,
butchered, and cooked under a dense cloud of flies as if their lives
depended on their activity. Vere, driven to walk by himself, was
idling about near the sea, thinking how a native canoe, improved on,
would be an ideal sailing craft, when he came suddenly upon a figure
sitting under a great _dilo_-tree, bent almost double, and shaking
with convulsive sobs. Now the natives of these islands are not given
to displaying whatever emotions they have, and seeing that the figure
was a woman’s, all his English chivalry was startled into life; so,
forgetting that she could not understand him, he stooped down, saying,
“What is the matter? Can’t I do anything for you?” In the tear-stained
face that looked up he recognised Raluve, the lady of the previous
night, her big black eyes round with surprise. Reassured by his evident
concern, she gave him rapidly and in a low voice what might have been
an explanation of her distress, but as it was in her own dialect, he
understood not one word of it. With a desperate effort he plunged into
Fijian. “If you are in trouble I will help you,” is not a difficult nor
complicated sentence in any language. He attempted it, and the result
exceeded his expectations, for the girl struggled a moment, and then
burst into ringing peals of laughter. Evidently he had used the wrong
word, and this girl’s manners were no better than any other savage’s.
But she got up as he began to move off, and before they reached the
village she had promised to teach him her language.
Next morning he received a visit of ceremony. His door was darkened,
there was a whispering and a rustling outside, and then Raluve came in,
shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms.
She sank gracefully on the mats, doubling her feet under her, and the
matrons giggled. There was a constrained pause. Clearly this girl could
not be amused by the exhibition of a cunningly devised knife or an
alarum-clock. Desperately he fell back on photographs. Raluve took each
one, looked at it indifferently, and handed it to the nearest duenna,
who, being skittish, gazed at it upside down, and poked her companion
in the ribs, chuckling immoderately. But the photographs required
explanations, and then the lesson began in earnest; for every remark
Vere hazarded was first severely corrected, and then criticised by the
two frolicsome dames, with vast amusement to themselves. The system of
education was primitive, but it satisfied both pupil and mistresses.
[Illustration: “_And then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two
attendants of discreet age and mature charms._”]
If her chaperones were flighty, Raluve showed by contrast a deportment
austerely correct. She was by nature and training an aristocrat--well
versed in the traditions of her race, which included the belief in
a natural gulf fixed between her own and the lower orders, and a
vast contempt for the vulgarity of gush. She had been educated on a
mission station, where she learned to take an intelligent interest in
something beyond getting up linen, and the latest scandal. Now reserve,
intelligence, and the manners of a lady are so rare a combination in
a native, that the callow Vere began to fill up the blanks in her
character in his own way, and to miss the lessons on the days she
failed to come, more than he cared to confess to himself. Not many
men can use the eyes God gave them without enlarging or belittling,
unless they have the loan of others’ eyes to correct their vision by.
Some do indeed succeed in viewing life through the wrong end of the
telescope, and in enjoying it hugely; but the majority unscrew the lens
and gaze on a new world--rocky mountains made of dust-specks, trodden
by ants as elephants. Vere, the solitary, was beginning to idealise the
natives, and it is all up with the man who does that, since, for some
occult reason, it is in the feminine side of the race that the finer
qualities are discovered. He was startled to find out for himself
that this brown-skinned girl thought and spoke much in the same way as
did girls with white skins, with the only difference that she was more
natural and _naïve_. He found himself confiding his worries past and
present to her, and asking her advice. He liked her ready sympathy, and
her healthy good sense, and her sense of humour amused him; and when,
after three weeks of almost daily companionship, he heard it hinted
that she would soon leave the island, he knew that she had become a
companion whom he would miss very much indeed.
During these three weeks Nambuto, after the manner of his kind, had
been eating up the land, and he was in no hurry to go away. But a time
comes when the slaughter of pigs and fowls has an end, and at the
village meeting the _mata-ni-vanua_, whose duty it was to apportion
each man’s contribution to the daily feast, pointed out that that time
had arrived. Besides a couple of elderly sows, on whom their hopes of
a future herd were centred, nothing remained to kill. An intimation
must be conveyed to their haughty guest. Now it is a fine thing to be a
chief in these happy isles. Rank and riches in civilised communities
entail responsibilities. We are even told on high authority that the
rich are as unlikely to enjoy happiness in this life, as they are
certain to lose it in the next, which, to say the least of it, would be
rather hard upon the well-to-do if they had not the remedy in their own
hands. But a chief in these islands enjoys not only his own wealth, but
his subjects’ besides, and has neither responsibility nor that product
of civilisation called a conscience to trouble him. He does not sleep
less soundly for fear the crushed worm may turn. The crushing was done
too effectually for that some generations ago.