Three years passed. Jack rubbed his eyes and wondered what had become of
them; and he read the answer to his question in his coffee bushes, now
breast high and crimson with fruit, in his trellised vanilla already so
exacting and so profitable, in his sturdy breadfruit trees thickening
with every rain, in the patches of bananas, _taro_, yams, _'ava_,
egg-plant, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and sour-sops that were set out
so trimly in the plantation his ax had won from the primeval forest. His
house, too, had drawn not a little on his capital--his capital of
strength, skill, and perseverance--but he grudged neither time nor labor
in making it the best in Oa. For a house is an important matter to a
family man, even if it weren't a paying thing like vanillar, nor capable
of helping a fellar along like a cow or a boat. It paid you back in its
own way--a mighty good way, too--and it grew to be a part of you, like
your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one.
Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped
concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides
when the cocoanut curtains was hysted. But when these were pulled down
at night, and you were a-setting in one of your own home-made chairs
with your wife on your knee, the night breeze rustling overhead and the
breakers moaning a mile away on the outer reef, it made you sort of feel
like things had come right at last, and that for two cents you'd plank
right down on your knees, then and there, and thank God, by God!
All this had not been accomplished without work, but then it was work
for himself, and not for others. Jack had never known before what it was
to enjoy the fruit of his own labor; he had always been a cog in the
blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much
money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper
beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to
feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had
entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and
watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei
had given them; and when, for a spell, he took a place beside her she
would tenderly wipe the sweat from his forehead and look at him with
perplexity. Work, yes, that, as the preacher said, was the curse of
Adam; but this daily persistency was not understandable. Had not
Faalelei plenty for them both? And if one _taro_ sufficed, why be at the
pains to plant two?
But little by little it began to dawn on her that there was another side
to this feverish devotion to work. Jack took a load of yams to Apia, and
came back with fifteen silver dollars and a bolt of print for a dress.
He went again, and returned with a sewing machine, a pack of cards, and
a bottle of trade scent; still another trip, and lo! he towed behind him
a fine new boat with _Fetuao_ painted on the stern. Then she at last
succumbed to the fascination of the white way. _Paga!_ There were
dollars in the ground, and for the asking they could be made to grow.
This lesson learned, Fetuao threw off her indifference and became as
ardent a planter as her unwearied husband. Lying in his arms at night,
her talk ran continually on the theme of which neither ever tired. Not a
dollar was earned but was thus laid out in advance, with eager
questioning and debate. The cow was bought, the horse, the chickens, the
wire for fencing. It was a game in which each played a part with
enduring zest; a game with a constant round of prizes and enjoyment; a
game in which green nature was the board and every plant and tree a
piece. At sundown they knew no pleasure like that of wandering hand in
hand through the paths of their little estate, two poetic peasants,
filled with love for each other and immeasurably content.
Thus the days passed in increasing satisfaction and prosperity, days so
rare in the life of any man when he says to himself, "I am happy." To
Jack, these three words, never spoken, but somewhere within him
articulate and peremptory, these three words almost overwhelmed him with
their significance. He trembled for this treasure, so elusive, so
transitory, perhaps, so surely ill deserved; he grew humble with the
thought of his own unworthiness, and, though no believer in the
ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When
Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told
him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then,
rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt
he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of
the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open
sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that
seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing no prayer, addressing
no God, he simply gazed above him in the sky, in a rapt, dumb gratitude.
As he walked home he thought of his own parents, long since dead; of
their hopes, their cares, their humble unfulfilled ambitions, now dead
with them. He perceived himself, now for the first time, a link between
the past and the future, the heir of bygone generations, generations
that had loved, and suffered, and struggled, to no other end than that
he might live--he, and the sister he had neither seen nor heard from in
fourteen years. Hell! he ought to write to Amandar. Families oughtn't to
drift apart like that. It was a shame, a durned shame, and it came over
him with a shock that she, too, might be dead. He took a sheet of paper
and a pencil, and with heaving breast and overflowing heart thus broke
the silence of those long years:
OA BAY, SAMOA, May 14, 1899.
DEAR SIS, You will be surprised to get a letter
from me after all this time. I am well and hope you are
enjoying a simillar blessing. I am married now and left the
sea. I suppose Joe is a man along in middle life now and you
a handsome mattron with a family. This is a good country but
hot.
Ever your affectionate brother JACK WILSON.
P. S.--I often think of Pa and Ma and the old days.
Not long after, Jack sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his
letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking
like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as
he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying
underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the
functionary, Jack handed him the letter.
"That's for America," said Jack.
"Five cents," said Leicester.
"What's all this corrobborree?" asked Jack.
"It's war, that's what it is," said Leicester, weighing the letter in a
tin scale.
Jack's jaw fell. For a month past he had heard rumors of a native war,
but he had resolutely closed his ears to all that Fetuao was so
insistent to tell him. It was none of his business, he had said to her
uneasily. He wasn't no politician, and all he asked of anybody was to be
let alone; and with that he had tried to put the matter by as something
imaginary and disquieting, which, if boldly ignored, would disappear of
itself.
"Say, Mr. Leicester, what in hell is it about?" he inquired.
"If you went to the bottom of it you would find Dutchmen," said
Leicester grimly.
Jack cursed the meddling scoundrels.
"They want Mataafa for king, just because he has a majority of two
thousand votes," said Leicester.
"There sounds to be something in that," said Jack faintly.
"Nothing at all!" exclaimed Leicester. "Just speciousness, that's what I
call it. The other fellow, Tanumafili, is a nice-appearing boy from the
missionary college, and being above wire-pulling and promising
everything to everybody, he hasn't any following to speak of. But he's a
good, decent Protestant boy, and will make a fine king."
"Oh, ho!" said Jack, beginning to see how the wind lay, "and so the
other dodger's a Catholic?"
"A rank, bigoted Catholic," said Leicester hotly. "That's what makes
the missionaries so wild against him, and likewise the British and
American officials."
"They won't let him be king, then?" asked Jack.
"He's a rebel," said Leicester, "and they've posted proclamations
against him on every cocoanut tree around the beach."
"And the natives, they won't let Tanumafili be king neither?" said Jack.
"That's him they're chasing into the sea this minute," explained
Leicester.
Jack looked perplexed. "I don't see why the Kanakas shouldn't have the
king they fancy," he remarked.
"To hear you talk, one would think you was a bloody Dutchman yourself,"
said Leicester.
"But the majority--" said Jack, "them two thousand----"
"The Chief Justice ruled them out on a technicality," said Leicester,
"and if the Supreme Court ain't right, who is? Do you think he's going
to give over this country to a papist? No, the only king here is
Tanumafili, and the men-of-war will reinstate him at the muzzle of their
guns. Then we'll see who's who in Samoar!"
Jack made his way across the street to the store where he usually sold
his copra. Bullets were pattering on the roof, and the trader himself, a
portly German in gold spectacles, was palpitating in a bomb-proof.
"I hope Mrs. Meyerfeld is well," said Jack, who in Samoa had grown
punctilious.
"Oh, mein Gott!" exclaimed Meyerfeld.
"And the children?--" inquired Jack, "Miss Hilda and Miss Theresa?"
"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
"I have brought you forty bags of copra," said Jack.
"Oh, mein Gott!" said Meyerfeld.
"Don't you want it, then?" inquired Jack.
"Hear the pullets," quavered Meyerfeld.
"But forty bags," said Jack.
"I've no man, no noding," groaned the trader.
"Gome again negst week. Gome again after de war."
"I'll put it in the shed myself," said Jack.
He went out into the empty street and looked about him. The firing was
going on as hotly as ever, but except for a single limp figure, face
down in the dust, he failed to see the least sign of the contending
parties. From the direction of the Mulivai bridge he heard bursts of
cheering, with intermittent lulls and explosions as the battle rolled to
and fro. War on so small a scale is startlingly like murder, and Jack
shuddered as he went up to the corpse and turned it over. He returned to
his boat, and in a fever of activity unloaded his forty bags and
trundled them in batches into Meyerfeld's copra shed across the road. It
took half a dozen trips of the little flat-car to accomplish this task
single-handed, and then there was the further delay in weighing each bag
and checking off the contents on a bit of paper. Nor was this all, for
he had to make a copy, besides, and tack it on the warehouse door with
the inscription, "Taly and find correct John Wilson."
This done, he dropped into his boat and hoisted the sails, weary,
heartsick, and anxious for what the future might have in store for him.
Passing to leeward of the British man-of-war, he saw her decks swarming
with refugees, her crew grouped about the guns, and an officer in the
fore-crosstrees sweeping the town with his glass. A gust of wind carried
down to him the sound of children crying, and with it an
indistinguishable humming, at once menacing and dejected, like the sigh
of an impending gale. It echoed in his ears long afterwards, the most
poignant note in war, the voice of the herded, helpless multitude.
He reached Oa in the gray of the morning, and the grating of his boat's
keel in the sand brought out Fetuao to meet him. She could not restrain
her joy at the sight of him, kissing his hands and clinging to him as he
took out the sails and oars and carried them up to the house. She never
seemed so sweet to him, never so girlish and charming in her fresh
young womanhood as in that dawn of his home-coming. To hear her laugh,
to see her eyes sparkle, to feel her warm breath against his cheek, all
transported him into a state of unreasoning security. Apia and its
blood-stained streets faded into the immeasurable distance; the war, and
all the attendant horrors that had haunted him, now seemed for a moment
too remote to even think of. What had he to fear, here on his own
hearthstone, with his dear wife beside him, in another world from that
he had so lately quitted? If there was trouble, wouldn't the consuls
settle it, them and the treaty officials whose job it was to run the
blessed group? He had never been no politician himself, and he wasn't
agoing to begin now. Let them worry as was paid to worry.
"Fetuao," he said, "where is the flag the _faamasino_ gave us when we
were married in Apia?"
"_O i ai pea i le pusa_," she returned.
"Get it out, my pigeon," he said, "for I mean to hoist it above the
house for a protection. And tell me, Fetuao," he went on, "what before I
have never asked thee: on what side are thy people in this misa of
Mataafa and Tanumafili?"
"For Mataafa," she returned. "Dost thou think that Samoa wants this
untattooed boy from the missionary college? Why else did Faalelei and
the young men go last month to Apia to be numbered for Mataafa, the
whites promising that he who had most voices should be king? And when
all Samoa cried out 'Mataafa!' at the numbering place (all except the
little handful of the Tuamasanga), lo! the word was given that
Tanumafili was appointed after all, and that the white manner of choice
was to be disregarded!"
Jack sighed as he took the flag and went out with it. He realized that
his old life was at an end, and that a new one, full of uncertainty and
danger, was to date from the time he hoisted this bit of bunting. He
trimmed a straight piece of _fuafua_ for a staff, and as he did so he
cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy
fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to
get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they
watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills
behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag,
bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her hands with delight.
"Is it not beautiful!--" she cried, "as starry as the nights before we
were married, Jack, when we used to walk together, here and there, like
uncaring children."
Her husband did not answer; and as she turned and looked up into his
face she saw that his eyes were wet with tears.