his friends as much as any boy should do, but what he loved beyond
anything was novelty, and for this he worshipped Mr. Fortune, whose
every action might reveal some new and august entertainment. The
faces he made in shaving, the patch of hair on his chest, his
ceremonious method of spitting out pips into his hand, the way in
which his bootlaces went round the little hooks, his watch, his
pockets and the things he kept in them--Lueli might grow accustomed
to these daily delights, but he did not tire of them any more than
Wordsworth tired of the Lesser Celandine. And there was more than
this, and much more: prayer, the harmonium, the sewing-machine,
religious instruction and occasional examples of European cookery.
Prayer Lueli had taken to from the start, but the harmonium required
more getting used to. At first when Mr. Fortune played to him he
would sit as close as possible to the instrument, quivering like a
dog and tilting up his chin with such an ecstaticized and woebegone
look that Mr. Fortune almost expected him to howl; and thinking that
he didn’t really enjoy it he would leave off playing. But Lueli would
then edge a little closer and beg for more and Mr. Fortune was only
too glad to comply.
Like the harpsichord, the harmonium has a repertory of its own,
pieces that can only be properly rendered on this instrument.
Naturally I do not speak of the harmonium compositions of such
recent composers as Schoenberg, or Max Reger: these would have been
too difficult for Mr. Fortune to play even if they had been stocked
by the music-shop he had frequented. But without being in any way
a virtuoso--and some think that the harmonium, being essentially
a domesticated instrument, sober and of a religious nature, is
inherently unsuited for displays of skill--Mr. Fortune played quite
nicely and had a repertory of many classical larghettos and loud
marches, besides of course, the usual hymns and chants. Haydn was
his favourite composer; and arrangements from the string quartets go
rather well on the harmonium.
Lueli too was a musician after a simpler fashion. He had a wooden
pipe, rather like a flageolet, of a small compass and a sad squeaky
tone; and the two friends passed many happy evenings entertaining
each other with their performances. First Mr. Fortune obliged,
leaning forward at an acute angle on the music stool, his knees
rising and falling like parts of a machine, his face very close to
the music, his large hands manœuvring among the narrow keys, or
sometimes hovering like a bee in a flower-border over the ranks of
stops, pulling out one, hitting another back with a tap, as though
his fingers could read, though rather short-sightedly, in black
Gothic lettering on the ivory knobs such names as Gamba, Corno di
Bassetto, Bourdon, or Dulciana. And then, when rising he released the
last throbbing chord and stretched himself (for he was a tall man
and in order to adjust his body and legs to the instrument he had
to assume a rather cramped position) it was pleasant to see Lueli
discoursing music in his turn, and a curious study in contrasts. For
the boy sat cross-legged on the floor, or leant against the wall in
the attitude of the boy in the statue, an attitude so physically
nonchalant, so spiritually intent that whoever looks at the statue,
or even a cast of it or a photograph, understands, sometimes with a
kind of jealous horror, how musicians are free of a world of their
own, inhabiting their bodies as it were nominally or by proxy--just
as we say of a house: That is Mr. So and So’s; but the house is empty
save for a sleepy caretaker, the owner is away travelling in Africa.
Lueli’s tunes were very long tunes, though the phrases composing
them were short; the music seemed to waver to and fro, alighting
unexpectedly and then taking another small flight, and listening to
it was like watching a bird flitting about in a bush; the music
ends, the bird flies away; and one is equally at a loss to explain
why the bird stayed so long and seemed so busy or why it suddenly
made up its mind that the time had come for a longer flight, for a
flight that dismisses it from our vision.
To tell the truth, Mr. Fortune was not as much impressed by Lueli’s
music as Lueli was by his. His chin even sank further into his
chest as he sat, his listening flesh was unmoved and he never felt
the least impulse to howl. Mr. Fortune, in spite of his superior
accomplishments, his cultivated taste and enough grasp of musical
theory to be able to transpose any hymn into its nearly related keys,
was not so truly musical as Lueli. For instance, he never had the
least idea whether Lueli’s tunes were lively or sad. They all seemed
alike to him. But Lueli learnt almost immediately to distinguish
between a march and a sentimental piece, and as the harmonies grew
more and more passionate his chin would lift higher, his mouth would
contract, and the shadow of his long eyelashes would shorten up over
his cheek.
It would have been pleasant if the two musicians could have joined
forces. Mr. Fortune by listening very often and pretty intently to
Lueli’s rambling tunes was able to memorize two of them, as he
believed, perfectly. Sending Lueli down to the village he spent an
afternoon practicing these two melodies on the harmonium and putting
in a part for the left hand. It would make an agreeable surprise for
his boy, he thought, to hear his tunes played by someone else; and
then with Lueli playing his pipe while he supported the melody with
chords and figurations they would achieve a duet. But the surprise
fell quite flat; perhaps Mr. Fortune’s European harmonies had queered
the pitch, perhaps he had misunderstood the time-values, in any
case, Lueli showed no signs of recognizing the tunes, and even when
their identity was pointed out to him he seemed doubtful. As for
the duet plan, it was not feasible, for the harmonium was tuned to
the mean-tone temperament and Lueli’s pipe obeyed some unscientific
native scale; either alone sounded all right but in conjunction they
were painfully discordant.
Finding it impossible to convert Lueli’s pipe, Mr. Fortune next
essayed to train his voice to Christian behaviour. In this he was
more successful; Lueli’s voice was of a nondescript newly-broken
timbre. He couldn’t always control it and Mr. Fortune had to smoke
his pipe very hard in order not to laugh at the conjunction of
Lueli’s expression, so determined in well-doing, and the vagaries of
his voice wandering from the straight path and ricochetting from note
to note.
He also taught him to whistle, or tried to, for he was rather shocked
at the idea of a boy not knowing how to whistle, explaining to him
before hand the secular nature of the act, and forbidding him to
whistle tunes that had any especially sacred associations. But though
Lueli screwed up his lips and almost burst himself taking in breath
his whistling remained of a very girlish incompetent kind. On the
other hand he showed an immediate aptitude for the vulgar kind of
whistling which is done with a blade of grass. The first hearing of
this was one of the pleasantest surprises that his pastor gave him.
He mastered the technique in a few minutes and raced off to show
the new accomplishment to his friends in the village. The fashion
caught on like wildfire, and soon every boy on the island was looking
for the proper blades of grass which are called squeakers. The
woods rang with their performances and the parrots looked down with
awe and astonishment at hearing men producing sounds so much more
ear-splitting than anything they could achieve themselves.
The fashion raged like wildfire and like wildfire burnt itself out.
The groves were peaceful again, that is to say peaceful as any groves
can be with parrots in them (not that the reader should suppose that
the parrots at Fanua were like the parrots in the Zoological Gardens:
oppression makes them much noisier); and every one was out in the
salt-meadows, passionately flying kites.
The islanders were like that; enthusiastic and fickle, they would
wear a whim to shreds and cast it away in the course of a week.
Lueli was as bad, if it had not been for Mr. Fortune he would never
have persevered in anything. It was provoking for a master to find
his pupil so changeable and inconstant, all the more so because of
Lueli’s extraordinary docility and aptitude in learning. Nothing
could have exceeded the readiness with which he accepted a new idea;
and finding him so swift to become a Christian Mr. Fortune used to
wonder why the other islanders would not respond as pleasantly to his
teaching, for at this time he was still in hopes of converting the
whole island. He preached to them, he prayed among them, every night
and morning he prayed for them, he gave them biscuits and showed them
pictures. They behaved themselves to him most charmingly, tactfully
overlooking his blunders in etiquette, accepting him as their friend,
though an unaccountable one. But his message they would not accept,
it slid off them as though their very innocence and guilelessness had
spread a fine impermeable film over their souls.
“After all,” thought Mr. Fortune: “I have not made a single convert
in this island though it is now almost a year since I came. For I did
not convert Lueli, God gave him to me (by the way I must remember to
call him Theodore). And God still withholds the others.”
This was a comfortable point of view. It satisfied Mr. Fortune,
all the more so since it agreed so aptly with his psalm, of which
the last verse runs: “And that Thou, Lord, art merciful: for Thou
rewardest every man according to his work.” And he quoted this verse
of it in the report which he handed to Archdeacon Mason on returning
to St. Fabien to buy more stores and give an account of his ministry.
The Archdeacon frowned slightly when he laid down the report, which
was a pretty piece of work, for Mr. Fortune had written it in his
neatest hand and Lueli (under his direction) had tinted blue,
fawn-colour and green the little sketch-map of the island which
embellished it as a frontispiece.
The next day Mr. Fortune called upon his superior.
“My dear Fortune,” said he after a few polite questions about the
soil of Fanua and its marriage ceremonies, “this is excellent,” (here
he tapped the report which lay on the table). “Indeed I may say it is
idyllic. But you must allow me to make one comment, you must let me
tell you that there is such a thing as being too modest. Believe me,
conversions at the rate of one _per annum_ are not an adequate reward
of your works. God’s grace is infinite, and I am sure that your
labours have been most truly conscientious; and yet you say you have
only made one convert. This is not enough--mind, I would not speak
a word of blame. I only say--if I may so express myself--that there
must have been a leakage somewhere, a leakage!”
He paused. Mr. Fortune looked at his hands and realized how sunburnt
they had become.
“Compel them to come in, you know.”
Mr. Fortune wondered if he should confess to his superior the one so
nearly disastrous occasion when he had tried to use compulsion. But
the Archdeacon’s metaphor about the leakage had pained him and he
decided not to. Instead he asked the Archdeacon how he would advise
him to act in order to convert the whole island.
It was rather a shock to him to be recommended to take a leaf out of
the Jesuits’ book. However on the first evening of his return to the
island he began to make some discreet enquiries of Lueli about what
gods the islanders worshipped, though being very careful to convey by
his tone and choice of words that he thought it a terrible pity that
they should not worship his.
“Oh, they,” said Lueli, offering him some more fruit, which Mr.
Fortune refused since he had been stuffed with gifts in kind ever
since the moment he got out of the launch. “Oh, they--they only
worship one god.”
This answer did not sound quite as it should: and in deference to his
recent memories of the Archdeacon Mr. Fortune ran his convert through
the Apostle’s Creed before proceeding with his enquiries. It was
quite all right. Lueli remembered the creed without a single lapse,
and on further questioning Mr. Fortune discovered that the islanders
worshipped one god each, a much more suitable state of affairs for
heathens; although on thinking it over before he fell asleep the
missionary reflected that in the island of Fanua conversion must
necessarily be a slow business since he would have to break the
faggot stick by stick. Just before he lost consciousness he began to
wonder what sort of god Lueli had worshipped.
In the morning he remembered his curiosity. He said to Lueli: “What
god had you before I came and taught you to know the true God?”
“I’ll show him to you,” said Lueli; and running into the bushes he
presently returned with an idol about two foot long.
Mr. Fortune looked at the idol very seriously, almost respectfully,
as though he were measuring swords with an adversary. It was a rather
well-looking idol, made of wood and nicely polished, and he was
pleased to note that it was not obscene; but for all that a slight
shudder ran through his flesh, such as one feels on looking at a dead
snake even though one knows that it is a dead one.
“Drop it,” he commanded, and the boy laid it down on the grass
between them. Mr. Fortune remembered the words of a female missionary
from China who had visited St. Fabien on a tour. “The first thing
I make my converts do,” she had said, and as she spoke she clenched
her hands till the knuckles showed up as bones: “is to destroy their
idols. Then I can feel sure of them. And not till then.”
Talking over her lecture afterwards Mr. Fortune had been of the
opinion of the majority: that the lady missionary had been right. “I
don’t agree at all,” said his friend, Henry Merton. “We teach that
idols are the works of men’s hands, things of wood and stone. To
insist on their destruction is to show our converts that we believe
in them ourselves, that we look on them with anxiety and attribute
power to them. No, no, it is silly to take any idol so seriously!”
And Mr. Fortune, who was humble before others, thought that after all
he had judged too hastily and that his friend was in the right of it.
Soon after that, Henry Merton had died, and the words of the dead
have a special value. Mr. Fortune remembered his friend’s opinion,
but he also remembered the female missionary. She had spoken with
an air of authority, and for all he knew she might be dead too, she
might even be a martyr. He stood and looked at Lueli’s idol which lay
on the grass between them and he wondered if he should tell Lueli to
burn it. At last without saying anything he walked into the hut. When
he came out again Lueli was scouring a wooden bowl and the idol was
gone.
One of the Archdeacon’s first questions about the convert of Fanua
was: Had Mr. Fortune dressed him properly? And Mr. Fortune had
replied with perfect candour that he had been too busy caring for his
soul to think of his clothing. This too the Archdeacon had objected
to, saying that dress made a great difference, and that when the
other islanders saw Lueli dressed befittingly they would become aware
of their nakedness and wish to be converted and wear white raiment.
“But they have seen me, _I_ have never omitted to dress myself since
I have lived at Fanua.”
“No, no, of course not,” answered the Archdeacon, a little testily,
for really the missionary’s simplicity was making him very
argumentative and tiresome. “But that is not to the point, for you
surely don’t suppose that they look on you as one of themselves. You
must clothe that boy, Fortune, you must make him wear trousers and a
tunic. And at night he must wear a nightshirt.”
So now, seeing that the idol was gone, Mr. Fortune called Lueli into
the hut and began to measure him. He had never learnt tailoring,
however he supposed that by taking great care and doing his best he
could turn out a suit of clothes which might insinuate the fact of
their nakedness to the islanders of Fanua, even if it had no other
merit. He measured Lueli, he wrote down the measurements, he made
his calculations and drew a sort of ground plan. Then he fetched a
roll of white cotton and having laid it upon the floor and tethered
it with some books he crawled about on all fours cutting out the
trousers and the tunic with a pair of nail-scissors; for he thought
that the nightshirt might rest in abeyance for the present.
The nail-scissors could only manage very small bites, and by the time
the cutting-out was completed he was rather dizzy and very hot from
taking so much exercise on his knees.
“That will do for the present,” he thought, rolling up the pieces.
“This afternoon I will visit my parishioners. Perhaps as they have
not seen me for a week they will be more inclined to listen to my
teaching. And I must keep my eyes open for idols.”
But early on the morrow Mr. Fortune got out the sewing-machine and
continued his career as a tailor. The sewing-machine was suffering
from the sea-air, it needed a great deal of oil and adjustment before
it could be got to run smoothly, but he mastered it in the end and
began to sew up the seams. As time went on he grew more and more
excited. He worked the treadles faster and faster, he had never, even
for the most spirited march, trodden the pedals of his harmonium
so frantically; the machine rocked under his zeal and all the time
the needle kept darting up and down, piercing the cotton with small
accurate stabs in a way that seemed to express a kind of mechanical
malevolence. The seams were all finished, the hems were turned up;
now it was evening, there was nothing left but the buttons. Those he
must put on by hand.
All day Lueli had sat beside him watching his performance with
rapture. It was the machine which ravished him, he was not so much
interested in the clothes. But when Mr. Fortune called him in a
rather solemn voice and began to dress him, holding up the tunic
above his head as though it were a form of baptism, he too began to
put on looks of solemnity and importance.
The tunic fitted tolerably enough though there was no elegance
about it; but alas! the trousers were a sad blow to Mr. Fortune.
For he had designed them on a two-dimensional basis, cutting out
the back and the front in one operation on a doubled fold of the
cloth, and forgetting that even the slimmest boy is bulkier behind
than in front; so that when attired in these unfortunate garments
it was difficult for Lueli to move and almost impossible for him to
sit down. He, in his innocence, thought the trousers all that they
should be, and late as it was he wished to run down to the village in
order to wake up his friends and show them his fine clothes. But Mr.
Fortune bade him take them off. It made his heart bleed to see his
boy made such a figure of fun, and when the living Lueli emerged from
his white cotton sepulchre he privately called the Archdeacon a fool
and foreswore the idea of the nightshirt for good and all. But on the
next day and on the next again he struggled to make a practicable
pair of trousers, and in the end he produced a pair that were rather
on the baggy side perhaps, but still they were tolerable.
Unfortunately by this time his convert’s ardour was somewhat
quenched. He had been measured so often, he had stood still to be
fitted when he wanted to go fishing, he had had pins run into him
and all this had made this particular novelty seem rather a tedious
example of his pastor’s odd ways. So though he put on his white
raiment at command and walked decorously through the village beside
Mr. Fortune to be an object lesson, his demeanour while admirably
meek and civil, wasn’t much of an advertisement for the happiness of
those who are clothed in the whole armour of God.
The Archdeacon’s theory was not borne out by events. The islanders
were too much struck and roused to speculation by the sight of
Lueli’s apparel to spare a thought for their own nakedness. At first
they were of the opinion that this was some new and powerful taboo
invented by the stranger. They shrank back, and averted their eyes as
if from some improper spectacle. Lueli’s mother was actually moved
to a display of maternal feeling. She rushed weeping from the crowd,
hurled herself at Mr. Fortune’s knees and began to implore him not to
ruin the boy’s prospects. Disentangling himself a little pettishly
from her pleadings Mr. Fortune explained that clothing such as this
would do Lueli nothing but good: indeed, she herself would be none
the worse for something of the sort. She took him at his word,
before he could stay her she had torn the clothes off her son and was
squirming into them. She was several sizes too fat and Mr. Fortune
saw his seams being rent open in all directions. He had to bribe her
with a promise of the blue glass mulberries from his Christmas tree
selection before she would consent to undress. Finally he had to ease
her out himself. It was a good thing that the Archdeacon was not
present, but for all that Mr. Fortune half wished that he had been.
On their return he sewed up the seams once more and called Lueli.
The boy began to protest and argue. Then he changed his methods and
started coaxing. Mr. Fortune had his own ideas as to how Lueli should
be managed. Rising discreetly he opened the harmonium and said that
it was time to study another hymn.
That night he lay awake, wondering what he would do if his convert
rebelled. He had already decided to drop the Archdeacon’s tactics at
the first seemly opportunity: but he wished to choose the opportunity
and do the dropping himself. He might have spared himself this
anxiety. On the morrow Lueli donned the trousers and the tunic with
a very matter of course air, and half an hour later went off to
bathe. And it was a sure thing that if formerly he had bathed twice
or thrice a day he now bathed as often again, undressing with a bland
smile and folding up his white raiment with the utmost neatness. Of
course it was a pretext; and the missionary wondered if his charge
was learning to be deceitful. But Lueli’s deceitfulness was so very
open and unconcerned that it could scarcely be reckoned as the
genuine article.
The clothes were always deposited very carefully in some place where
they would have every opportunity of happening to fall into the sea.
At the end of a week they were so saturated with brine as to be quite
unwearable. Exercising his authority Mr. Fortune forbade Lueli to
wear them any more.
Lueli would bathe anywhere; he seemed equally happy lolling on the
Pacific Ocean or folded up in a pool the size of a bedroom basin
with a little waterfall splashing on his head. Mr. Fortune was more
ceremonious. It was he who instituted the bathing-pool as a regular
adjunct to their life.
About a half mile from the hut and near the cloud observatory was a
small rocky cove with a half-moon of white shell-beach and a slope of
fine sward running back into the woods. A small rivulet debouched
here, very convenient for washing off the sea-salt in; and as the
mouth of the cove was guarded by a barrier of coral-reef the water
within was almost as still as a lake and so clear that one could look
down and see the weeds twenty feet below slowly twirling their vast
brown or madder-coloured ribbons, and the fish darting among them.
Mr. Fortune often thought of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday as
he sat on the rocks watching Lueli at his interminable diversions in
the pool. Living on an island alone with his convert, spiritually
alone at any rate, for though he had not given up hope of the other
Fanuans and still visited them pretty frequently he could never
feel the kinship with them which he felt so securely with Lueli,
the comparison could scarcely fail to occur to him. And he thought
gratefully how much happier he was than the other man. _He_ was
ideally contented with his island and with his companion, he had come
there by his own wish and he liked the life so well that he proposed
to continue in it until his death. So little did it distress him to
be away from civilization that he was of his own will paring away
the slender bonds that tied him to the rest of the world. For after
the first visit to St. Fabien he had paid no more, and for the last
twelve-month he had not even bestirred himself to write a report to
be sent by canoe to the island of Maikalua, where a local steamer
touched once a month. But poor Crusoe had no such contented mind. His
is a tragic story, albeit considered so entertaining for school-boys:
and though his stay on the island taught him to find religion it did
not teach him to find happiness, but whether at work or at leisure
he was always looking with a restless and haggard stare at the rigid
horizon, watching for a sail, enemy or friend, he knew not.