The beach-combers of Papeete--The consuls tell their troubles--A bogus
lord--The American boot-blacks--The cowboy in the hospital--Ormsby,
the supercargo--The death of Tahia--The Christchurch Kid--The Nature
men--Ivan Stroganoff's desire for a new gland.
I played badminton some afternoons at the British consulate. The old
wooden bungalow, with broad verandas, stood in a small garden a dozen
yards from the lagoon, where the Broom Road narrowed as it left the
business portion of Papeete and began its round of the island. There
was just room enough on the salt grass for the shuttlecock to fall
out of bounds, and for the battledores to swing free of the branches
of the trees. The consul, though he wore a monocle, was without the
pretense of officialdom except to other officials and, of course,
at receptions, dinners, and formal gatherings. After the games, with
tea on the veranda, I heard many stories of island life, of official
amenities, and the compound of nationalities in our little world.
Half a dozen intimates of the consul dropped in about four, Willi, the
rich dentist and acting American consul; Stevens, the London broker;
Hobson, who closed an eye for the Moorean, McTavish; and others. All
were British except me, but our home tongue and customs drew us closer
together than to Frenchmen, and we could speak with some freedom on
local affairs. If no woman was present other than the cosmopolitan
wife of the consul, born in Persia, we were quite at ease.
Both consuls were usually worried because of the refusals of crews of
vessels flying their flags to leave Tahiti, complaints of the police
of the misconduct of their nationals, or appeals for assistance from
impecunious or spendthrift tourists. It was an every-week happening
for sailors of American vessels and of the New Zealand steamships to
flee to the distant districts or to Moorea, to live in a breadfruit
grove with dryads who asked no vows, or to escape the grind of work
and discipline at sea.
They must be pursued by the French gendarmes, under the warrant
of their own flag, caught, and sent in irons aboard their ships,
with fees paid by their furious captains. Many times the chase was
futile, so well did the dryads secrete them, and the natives of the
district abet the offense. To a Tahitian an amorous adventure, either
as principal or aid, is half of life, and he would risk his liberty
and property to thwart, in his opinion, hard and stupid officials
who wanted to separate loving hearts.
We talked about the kinds of men, other than these sailors, who made
Tahiti their playground, to the annoyance of their consuls. Crime among
the Tahitians was almost unknown. A petty theft rarely happened. They
were never paupers, for their own people cared for them, and unless
absolutely mat-ridden, they could find food on the trees about
them. The whites--and not the French whites either--caused the trouble,
and but for them M. Lontane might have left off his revolver and club.
"There is a type of Britisher," said the consul, "who thinks Tahiti is
his oyster, to be opened with false pretenses, and a pearl found. This
type has two varieties, impecunious, but well-educated, youths,
younger sons, maybe; and valets and varlets. These scoundrels afflict
me dreadfully, because they all ultimately claim the protection of the
British flag or are reported by the police for skullduggery. There
is a fellow now on my hands who is threatenin' suicide. I wish
to Gog and Magog that he would take to the reef or find a stick
of dynamite. Monsieur Lontane, that busy French gendarme, found
him tryin' to borrow a revolver or a stiletto, and thought he was
going to kill a Frenchman. He put him in the calaboose and brought
his effects to me. They consisted of a book of poems and a letter,
but not a ha'penny."
"What does the bounder look like?" asked Stevens.
"He looks like a beadle in a dissentin' church, with a long, skinny
neck, a pasty face, and a cockney accent. I went to see him, and he
talked like an underdone curate who had had a bad night. When he got
off the ship, where he owed everybody, includin' the smokin'-room,
he came to see me with some crazy papers for me to sign. He said then
he had not a shillin', and I advised him to go to work. He said there
wasn't any work; so knowin' Llewellyn was badly in need of people,
I sent him to his vanilla plantation out Mataiea way. You know here
they haven't the bees or whatever it is that transfers the pollen
from the stigma to the anther or what-d 'ye-call-it, and so they do
it by hand with a piece of bamboo or a stem of grass. The girls do it
mostly, but I thought this jackpuddin' could make an honest pound or
two. He came tearin' back to me sayin' I'd insulted him with the work,
askin' him, a nobleman, to pander in the vegetable kingdom."
"I know him. He was at Lovaina's," I interposed. "He was at the bar all
the time, quoting Pope and Dryden and himself. He said he was going
around the globe on a wager of a fortune. He was a poisonous bore,
and always popped up for a drink. By the way, he wears a monocle."
"You've named him," went on the consul. "That's more of the cockney's
pretense. Here's the poem he wrote in the calaboose. He did it on his
shirt-front because the economical French gave him no paper. Lontane
thought it might be his will or a plot, and brought the shirt here,
and I copied the accursed thing for my record, as I am compelled to
by the rules of the august devils of Downing Street."
THE HOME-LAND CALL
Why wilt thou torture me with unripe call,
Bringing these visions of the dear old land?
Dost think 't is sweet to let thy mock'ry fall?
For me to hear forgotten noises in the Strand?
Insidious voice that will not grant my plea,
The mem'ry of thy pleasures dost remain:
Oxonian-Cantabs club; blue-lit Gaiety!'
"What he needs is a permanent permit to patronize the opium den
the Government runs here for the Chinese," said Hobson. "He's off
his dope."
"Just a minute," continued the consul. "He claims to be a lord and
a millionaire. Here's the letter. He needs no opium to have nightmares:"
Tuesday.
Of course, I will be called coward now, but the same people who
call me this are those who have caused me to seek death, for they
branded me liar and wastrel, simply on an untrue report appearing
in an American newspaper. Chief among these people are that most
despicable cad Hallman, and secondly, the British Consul. Even had
I been guilty of all that has been said, why were they not manly and
generous enough to give or find me congenial employment? They are not
blind and could see how anxious and willing I was to obtain this. No,
they only gloated over my starving and pitiable condition. Well, they
spring from the proletariat class and not much else could be expected.
God only knows how much I want to live and how I dread having to take
my own life, but only for the sake of my people. If I could only see
them again it would be easier. How did I ever fall so low! God help
me! Is there nothing else for me but this ignominious death? But
I must save my people from knowing. I am not using my correct name
here, so it will be useless for any one to make inquiries. A volume
of poems will be found in my pocket. I wonder if the Bishop would
kindly post these to Miss B. Wilmer, Broken Hill, West Australia,
but only telling her I died here, without particulars, and saying I
have written these since leaving home. Oh, why did I ever leave there,
where love and all that is good and pure was lavished on me?
If it is possible, could I be buried in the sea? Just placed in a
coffin and dropped into the peaceful ocean, peace that I have not
known for four years. Please have this done for me.
I do not think I am committing suicide, rather I am being murdered by
men who have none of the nobler feelings, ungenerous, unsympathetic
and cruelly unkind. The fact of my death will not affect one of those
who ruined my reputation here, who deprived me of obtaining food,
and a room to sleep in. They have no more conscience so cannot feel
remorse. I will not sign my true name but only part of it.
Gordon Innes.
"He's off his onion," Stevens commented. "The bally fool needs hard
labor and raw feis."
The consul grinned.
"Wait till you hear me read the document with the suicide note. It's
as good as Marie Corelli."
"All right, old thing," answered Stevens. "Fire the whole broadside!"
"No, no; I'm goin' to spare you the whole official document. It
pretends to be a formal instruction to this beef-headed flunky,
from his guardian, of a test to prove his mettle and gain experience
to fit him for the highest posts of the diplomatic service by going
round the bally world and doin' other people in for their tin. It
is a yard long, and was undoubtedly written by the same dish-washer
who wrote that doggerel on his shirt. It promises him half a million
sterling when he comes back to London after visiting Australasia,
China, India, and other countries, and pickin' up his tucker free as
he goes. Also, the shark is permitted to send back for coin at this
date, and he must get married to a Tahitian. He probably fixes it
different in every country. It's signed, 'Your affectionate guardian,
James Kitson, Baron Airedale of Gledhow.'"
"Whew!" spluttered Hobson, "the blighter has no limits. Do you mean
to tell me he gets away with that folderol?"
"For months he has lived at Lovaina's, Fanny's, and even on the
Chinese. He has borrowed thousands of francs, and spent it for drink
and often for champagne. He did old Lovaina up for money as well as
board. She believes in him yet, and calls him Lord Innes or Sir Gordon,
but says she has no more to risk. He promised to build her a big hotel
where the Annexe is. He's got many of the Tahitian girls and their
mothers mad over his style and his prospects. Finally, he was warned
by me to leave the island, and the result was his tryin' to borrow the
lethal weapon, the poem and the letter. The Baron Airedale document he
showed me when he first landed, to try to get my indorsement. There's
no Burke in the South Seas, and there probably is no such bloomin'
baron. Sounds more like a dog." The consul chuckled.
"Those lairds are as plentiful as brands of Scotch whisky made in
England," Stevens said derisively. "What will you do to uphold the
honor of the British crown? Is the Scotch bastard to go on with his
fairy-tale and do brown the colonials?"
"I am going to have the diplomat repair the roads of Tahiti for two
months, and then ship him third-class to New Zealand, where he has to
go to carry out his blasted fate," the consul declared, and ordered
all glasses filled.
We discussed the sudden and abnormal appearance of boot-blacks. One
had set up an ornate stand on the rue de Rivoli. He was an American,
Tom Wilkins, and the first ever known to practise his profession in
the South Seas. He had come like a non-periodic comet, and suddenly
flashed his brass-tagged platform and arm-chair upon the gaping
natives. Most of them being barefooted, one would have thought his
customers not many; but the novelty of a white man doing anything
for them was irresistible to all who had shoes. He did not lower
himself in their estimation. It is noteworthy that the Tahitian does
not distinguish between what we call menial labor and other work. Nor
did we until recently. The kings and nobles of Europe were actually
served by the lords of the bedchamber and the maids in waiting. The
American boot-black was really a boot-white, as all wore white canvas
shoes except preachers and sailors.
The boot-white called out, "Shine!" and the word, unpronounceable
by the native, entered a himene as tina. Within a week he had his
Tahitian consort doing the shining most of the time while he loafed in
the Paris saloon. He lived at the Annexe, and told me that he was not
really a boot-cleaner, but was going around the world on a wager of
twenty thousand dollars, "without a cent." He, too, had a credulous
circle, who paid him often five francs for a shine to help him win
his bet by arriving at the New York City Hall on a fixed date with
a certain sum of money earned by his hands. He raised the American
flag over his stand, and referred to Uncle Sam as if he were a blood
relation to whom he could appeal for anything at any time.
All the foregoing was brought out in our conversation at the British
consul's. Willi, temporarily conducting American affairs in French
Oceanie, gave a denouement.
"The shine isn't a bad fellow," he said, "but he's serious about
the twenty thousand dollars. His statement was doubted to-day by an
English sailor, who called him 'a blarsted Hamerican liar,' and the
shine took off his own rubber leg, and knocked the sailor down. He
could move faster on his one leg than the other on two, and Monsieur
Lontane had to summon two assistants to take him to the calaboose. He
wouldn't resume his rubber leg. I saw him being led and pulled by my
office, calling out, 'Tell the 'Merican consul a good American is in
the grip of the frogs.'"
Within a month of the rubber-legged shiner's début, there were two
other boot-blacks on the streets. A madness possessed the people,
Tahitians and French, who all their lives had cleaned their own shoes,
to sit on the throne-like chairs, and women and girls waited their
turns. John Conroy and a negro from Mississippi were the additions to
the profession, and during the incarceration of the premier artist,
his sweetheart, a former hula danseuse, remained faithful to his
brushes. When a shoeless man or woman regarded the new-fangled
importations interestedly, the proprietors offered to beautify their
naked feet, and, ridiculous as it may seem, attempted it.
Although I heard odd tales at the consulate, it was at the parc de
Bougainville that I met the gentleman of the beach intimately.
There I often sat and talked with whomever loafed. Natives frequented
the parc hardly ever, but beach-combers, tourists, and sailors, or
casual residents in from the districts, awaited there the opening of
the stores or the post-office, or idled. The little park, or wooded
strip of green, named after the admiral, and containing his monument,
skirted the quay, and was between the establishment of Emile Levy,
the pearl-trader, and the artificial pool of fresh water where the
native women and sailors off the ships washed their clothes. From
one's bench one had a view of all the harbor and of the passers-by
on the Broom Road.
In the morning the pool was thronged with the laundresses, and one
heard their paddles chunking as they beat the clothes. The French
warship, the Zélée, was moored close by, and often the linen of
its crew hung upon lines in the parc, and the French sailors came
and went upon their duties, or sat on the coral wall and smoked and
sang chansons. In the afternoon horses were brought down to bathe,
and guests of the Annexe swam in the lagoon. People afoot, driving
carts or carriages, on bicycles and in automobiles, went by on the
thoroughfare about the island, the Frenchmen always talking as if
excited over cosmic affairs, and the natives laughing or calling to
one another.
If there happened to be a shoal of fish near the quays, I was sure
to see Joseph, to whom the wise Dr. Funk had confided his precious
concoction. He would desert the Cercle Bougainville, but still within
hail of a stentorious skipper whose coppers were dry, and with a
dozen other native men and women, boys and girls, lure the fish with
hooks baited with bits of salted shrimp. Joseph was as skilful with
his rod as with a shaker, and he would catch twenty ature, four or
five inches long, in half an hour.
The water, about fifteen feet deep near the made embankment, was
alive with the tiny fish, squirming in a mass as they were pursued
by larger fish. The son of Prince Hinoe, a round-shouldered lout,
very tall, awkward, and merry, held a bamboo pole. His white suit was
soiled and ragged, and he whistled "All Coons Look alike to Me!" The
peanut-vender had brought a rod, and was fishing with difficulty
and mostly by feel. He could keep one eye open only, as one hand was
occupied, but he pulled in many ature.
The parc was the occasional assembling-place for the drifting whites
made thoughtful by trolling the jolly, brown bowl, and by those to
whom lack of francs denied the trolling. It was there I first met
Ivan Stroganoff, the aged Russian philosopher, and it was from there
I took Wilfrid Baillon to the hospital. Baillon was a very handsome
cow-boy from British Columbia, and was housed in Papeete with a
giant Scandinavian who owned a cattle ranch in South America. He
was generally called the Great Dane, and was the person meant in the
charge for three cocktails at Lovaina's: "Germani to Fany, 3 feathers."
The cow-boy became ill. I prescribed castor-oil, and Mme. Fanny,
half a tumbler of Martinique rum, with the juice of a lime in it. She
was famous for this remedy for all internal troubles, and I took one
with the cowboy as a prophylactic, as I might have been exposed to
the same germs. He did not improve, though he followed Fanny's regimen
exactly. He was sitting dejectedly in the parc, looking pale and thin,
when I broached the subject.
"As the Fanny physic fails to straighten you out," I said to him,
"why not try the hospital?"
He recoiled.
"Have you ever lamped it?" he asked. "It looks like a calaboose."
"It ain't so bad," said Kelly, the I.W.W., who was proselyting as
usual among the flotsam and jetsam of the waterfront. "I 've been in
worse joints in the United States."
The cow-boy yielding, I escorted him to the institution, carrying
his bag, as what with his disease and his antidote he was weak. The
hospital was a block away from the lagoon. It was surrounded by a
high stone wall, and as it was built by the military, it was ugly and
had the ridiculous effrontery of the army and all its lack of common
sense. The iron gate was shut, and a sign said, "Sonnez s'il vous
plait!" A toothless French portière of thirty years let us in. All the
doctors of Tahiti had left the island for a few days on an excursion,
and the gay scientist who opened the champagne in his pockets at the
Tiare Hotel New Year's eve was in command. He sat in an arm-chair in a
littered office and was smoking a pipe. His beard had a diameter of a
foot, and obviated any need of collar or shirt-band, for it grew from
his shoulder-blades up, so that his forehead, eyes, nose, and lips
were white islands in a black sea, and even his nose was not bare,
for he had been debited by Lovaina for his champagne as "Hair on nose."
He was reading a novel, and asked gruffly what we were there for. I
told him, and Baillon was assigned a room at twelve francs a day,
and was required to pay for ten days in advance.
The next morning I visited him. He could speak no French, so I
questioned Blackbeard in his office, where we had an aperitif. He
was voluble.
"He has amoeban dysentery," said he. "It is contagious and infectious,
specifically, and it is fortunate your friend is attended by me. I
have had that disease and know what's what."
I, too, had had it in the Philippine Islands, and I was amazed that
it was infectious. How could he have got it?
"Alors," replied the physician, "where has he taken meals?"
"Lovaina's, Fanny's, and some with the Chinese."
The Frenchman threw his arms around the door in mock horror. He gagged
and spat, exciting the cowboy into a fever.
"Oh! la! la!" he shouted. "Les Chinois! Certainement, he is ill. He has
eaten dog. Amoeban dysentery! Mais, monsieur, it is a dispensation
of the bon dieu that he has not hydrophobia or the leprosy. Les
Chinois! Sacré nom de chien!"
Lovaina had often accused her rivals, the Chinese restaurateurs, of
serving dog meat for beef or lamb. Perhaps it was so, for in China
more than five millions of dogs are sold for food in the market every
year, and in Tahiti I knew that the Chinese ate the larvae of wasps,
and M. Martin had mountain rats caught for his table.
The cow-boy's room was bare and cheerless, but two Tahitian girls of
fourteen or fifteen years of age were in it. One was sitting on his
bed, holding his hand, and the other was in a rocking-chair. They
were very pretty and were dressed in their fête gowns. The girl on
the bed was almost white, but her sister fairly brown. Probably they
had different fathers. They told me that they had seen Baillon on
the streets, had fallen in love with him, and though they had never
spoken to him, wanted to comfort him now that he was sick. Jealousy
did not rankle in their hearts, apparently. That absence often shocked
non-Polynesians. Brothers shared wives, and sisters shared husbands
all over old Polynesia.
This pair of love-lorn maidens had never exchanged a word with Baillon,
for he spoke only English. The whiter girl wore a delicate satin gown,
a red ribbon, and fine pearls in her hair. The cow-boy lay quietly,
while she sat with her bare feet curled under her on the counterpane,
looking actually unutterable passion.
"Shucks!" said he to me, safe in their ignorance of his tongue,
"this is getting serious. They mean business, and I was foolin'. I
got a little girl in the good ol' United States that would skin her
alive if she saw her sittin' like that on my sheets. A man's takin'
chances here that bats his eye at one o' these T'itian fairies. Do
you know, their mother came here with them this morning?"
"They mean to have you in their family," I said. "That mother may
have had a white husband or lover, and aids in the pursuit of you
for auld lang syne."
Wilfrid Baillon was out of the hospital in just ten days. His release,
as cured by the doctor, coincided curiously with his payment in
advance. I saw him off for New Zealand by the steamship leaving the
next day.
"Those people were awful good to me," he said in farewell. "It hurts
me to treat those girls this way, but I'm scairt o' them. They're
too strong in their feelings."
He ran away from a mess of love pottage that many men would have gone
across seas to gain.
Ormsby, an Englishman in his early twenties, good-looking and
courteous, with an air of accustomedness to luxury, but of being
roughened by his environment, was sitting on a bench one morning with
a girl. He called me over to meet her.
"You are an old-timer here now," he began, "and I've got to go away on
the schooner to the Paumotus to-morrow. Drop in at Tahia's shack once
in a while and cheer her up. She lives back of the Catholic mission,
and she's pretty sick."
Tahia was desperately ill, I thought. She was thin, the color of the
yellow wax candles of the high altar, and her straight nose, with
expanded nostrils, and hard, almost savage mouth, features carved as
with the stone chisel of her ancient tribe, conjured up the profile
of Nenehofra, an Egyptian princess whose mummy I had seen. She was
stern, silent, resigned to her fate, as are these races who know the
inexorable will of the gods.
"Is she your girl?" I asked Ormsby.
He colored slightly.
"I suppose so, and the baby will be mine if it's ever born. At any
rate, I'm going to stick to her while she's in this fix. I'll tell you
on the square, I'm not gone on her; but she had a lover, an Australian
I knew, and he was good to her, but he got the consumption and couldn't
work. Maybe he came here with it. They hadn't a shilling, and Tahia
built a hut in the hills up there near where the nature men live,
and put him in it, and she fed and cared for him. She went to the
mountains for feis she came down here to the reef to fish, and she
found eggs and breadfruit in other people's gardens. She kept him
alive, the Lord knows how, until he could secure money from Sydney
to go home and die. Now, she's got the con from him, I suppose, and
it would be a shabby trick to leave her when she's dying and will be
a mother in two months, according to Doctor Cassiou!"
He made a wry face and lit his pipe. The girl could not understand
a word and sat immovable.
"She's Marquesan," he went on. "Her mother has written through a
trader in Atuona, on Hiva-Oa, to send her to her own valley, but she's
quit. She sits and broods all day. I 'd like to go back to my own home
in Warwickshire. I know I'm changing for the bad here. I live like a
dam' beach-comber. I only get a screw of three hundred francs a month,
and that all goes for us two, with medicines and doctors. She'd go
to Atuona if I'd go; but I can't make a living there, and I'm rotten
enough now without living off her people in the cannibal group. She's
skin and bones and coughs all night."
Ormsby puffed his pipe as Tahia put her hand in his. Her action
was that of a small dog who puts his paw on his master's sleeve,
hesitating, hopeful, but uncertain. She regarded me with slightly
veiled hostility. I was a white who might be taking him away to
foreign things.
"She's heard us talking about Atuona and Hiva-Oa, and she thinks
maybe I 've concluded to go. I can't do it, O'Brien. If I go there,
I'll go native forever. I've got a streak of some dam' savage in
me. Listen! I've got to go on the Etoile to Kaukura tojmorrow. Now,
the natives are always kind to any one, but sickness they are not
interested in. You go and see her, won't you? She's about all in,
and it won't hurt you."
Ormsby went to the Dangerous Isles on the Etoile, and did not return
for three weeks. He did not find Tahia in her shack on the hill. She
was in the cemetery,--in the plot reserved for the natives of other
islands,--and her babe unborn. She had died alone. I think she made
up her mind to relieve the Englishman of her care, and willed to die
at once. Dr. Cassiou, with whom I visited her, said:
"She ought to have lasted several months. Mais, c'est curieux. I
have treated these Polynesians for many years, and I never found one
I could keep alive when he wanted to die. She had already sent away
her spirit, the âme, or essence vitale, or whatever it is, and then
the body simply grows cold."
Ormsby and I talked it all over in the parc. He was deeply affected,
and he uncovered his own soul, as men seldom do.
"I 'm dam' glad she's dead," he said, with intense feeling. "I might
have failed, and she died before I did fail. I'm going back to Warwick
now at first chance, and whatever I do or don't do, I've got that
exception to my credit. It's one, too, to the credit of the whites
that have cursed these poor islanders."
He had chalked it down on a record he thought quite black, but which
I believe was better than our average. He and I went to the cemetery
and had a wooden slab put up:
Tahia a Atuona
Tamau te maitai.
Tahia of Atuona
She held fast.
The Christchurch Kid and I were friendly, and he allowed me once a day
during his training periods to put on the gloves with him for a mild
four rounds. He was an open-hearted fellow, with a cauliflower ear and
a nose a trifle awry from "a couple of years with the pork-and-beaners
in California," as he explained, but with a magnificent body. He also
lived at the Annexe, and did his training in the garden under Afa's
clever hands. The Dummy must have admired him, for he would watch him
exercising and boxing for hours, and make farcical sounds and grotesque
gestures to indicate his understanding of the motions and blows.
The Kid asked me if I knew Ernest Darling, "the nature man," and
identified the too naked wearer of toga and sandals on the San
Francisco wharf as Darling.
"'E looked like Christ," said the boxer. "'E was a queer un. How'd
you like to chyse up there to his roost in the 'ills?"
The next morning at five--it was not daybreak until six--we met at Wing
Luey's for coffee and bread, which cost four cents. Prince Hinoe was
there as usual, and asked us whither away. He laughed when we told
him, and said the nature men were maamaa, crazy. The Kid was of the
same mind.
We went up the rue de Sainte Amelie to the end of the road, and
continued on up the valley. We could see far above us a small
structure, which was the Eden that Darling had made for the Adamic
colony he had established.
The climb was a stiff one on a mere wild pig-trail.
"The nyture man would 'ike up 'ere several times a day, after the
frogs closed his road," said the New Zealander. "There was less
brush than now, though, because 'e cut it aw'y to carry lum'ber and
things up and to bring back the things 'e grew for market. 'E and
'is gang believed in nykedness, vegetables, socialism, no religion,
and no drugs. The nytives think they're bug-'ouse, like Prince Hinoe,
and I don't think they 're all there, but you couldn't cheat him. 'E'd
myke a Glasgow peddler look sharp in buyin' or sellin'."
The Christchurch Kid was himself strictly conventional, and had
been genuinely shocked by Darling's practices, and especially by his
striking resemblance to the Master as portrayed by the early painters,
and by Munkácsy in Christ Before Pilate.
"'E was all right," he explained to me as we climbed, "but 'e ought
to been careful of 'is looks. I was 'ard up 'ere in Papeete once, and
was sleepin' in an ole ware'ouse along with others. Darling slept on
a window-sill, and 'e used to talk about enjoyin' the full sweep o'
the tradewind. We doubted that, an' so one night we crept upstairs
and surprised him. 'E was stretched out on a couple o' sacks, and a
reg'ler gale was blowin' on him. 'E bathed a couple o' times a day in
the lagoon or in fresh water, but 'e believed in rubbin' oil on his
skin, and when a bloke is all greasy and nyked, 'e looks dirty. 'Is
whiskers were too flossy in the tropics."
It took all my wind to reach the Eden, a couple of miles from our
starting-point, and we were on all fours part of the way.
"'E could run up here like an animal," declared the fighter. "Once when
a crowd of us went to visit 'im, 'e ran up this tr'il a'ead of us,
and when we arrived all winded, blow me up a bloomin' gum-tree if 'e
'ad n't a mess of feis and breadfruit cooked for us."
We came to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo,
or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade
any one to enter upon his land.
"'E's a cryzy Frenchman with long whiskers," said the Kid. "'E
'as a grudge against any one who speaks English and also against
the world. They s'y that 'is American wife ran aw'y from 'im, or an
American took 'is nytive wife aw'y. 'E packs a revolver."
Everywhere the mountain-side was terraced, and planted in cocoanuts,
breadfruits, bananas, flowers, and other plants, more than two
thousand growths. Darling's toil had been great, and my heart bled
at the memory of his standing on the piling as we steamed away. He
had intended to have a colony, with bare nature-worshipers from all
over the world. He had written articles in magazines, and tourists
and authors had celebrated him in their stories. A score of needy
health-seekers had arrived in Papeete and joined him, but could not
survive his rigid diet and work. He had talked much of Eves, white,
in the Eden, but none had offered.
On a platform fifteen hundred feet above the sea Darling had built a
frame of beams, boards, and branches, with bunks and seats, much like
a woodcutter's temporary shelter in the mountains, a mere lean-to. The
view was stupendous, with the sea, the harbor, Moorea, and Papeete
hardly seen in the foliage. He had thought his work in life to be
peopling these hills with big families of nature children and the
spread of socialism and reformed spelling.
His dream was transient. He had been treated with contempt, and had
been driven from his garden, as had his first father, and without an
Eve or a serpent. The whiskered Frenchman had bought Eden for a song,
and had made it taboo to all.
We shouted in vain for the Frenchman, so we searched the premises. The
boxer was afraid that after we left he might roll a rock down our trail
because of our breaking his taboo. We found the spring from which
he drank, and a pool dug by Darling for bathing, now only a mass of
vegetation. Evidently the present tenant was not an ablutionist.
"There's a beastly German down on that next level," remarked the
Christchurch Kid. "'E 'ates this Frenchman. Now they don't speak,
but they sent warnin' to each other o' trouble. The frog carries the
revolver for the sauer-kraut. Some day they'll kill each other right
'ere. They're both 'ermits, and 'ermits are terrible when they get
excited."
It was almost a straight drop to the German's, a small promontory, with
an acre of land, a platform raised eight feet on poles for a roof, and
under it a berth. A chest held his belongings. He lived on the fruit
he raised and the fish he caught in the sea, to which he went every
day. He tried to keep chickens, but the mountain rats, of which Darling
had trapped more than five thousand, ate most of them. The German,
too, was away from his simple home. Both these men sought in life
only peace and plain living, yet were consumed with hate. One day the
upper dweller had accidentally caused a small stone to roll down upon
the other's roof. The German had shouted something to the Frenchman,
hot words had passed, and now they carried revolvers to intimidate
or shoot each other. Their days and nights were spent on plans to
insult or injure. And because of their feud they hated the whole world.
Once again in Papeete, we met the Swiss of the Noa-Noa who had intended
to eat raw foods in the Marquesas. He was to return to America on
the next steamer.
"De wegetables in Tahiti have no wim in dem," he said. "In California
I ead nudds und raisins mit shtrent' in dem. I go back."
The fighter pointed out the "cryzy" Frenchman of Eden. He was the
customs employee who had provoked the American consul by refusing to
understand English.
I asked M. Lontane, the second in command of the police, why Darling
had gone.
The hero of the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes, looked at
me fiercely.
"Is the French republic to permit here in its colony the whites who
enjoy its hospitality to shame the nation before the Tahitians by
their nakedness? That sacrée bête wore a pareu in town because the law
compelled him to, but, monsieur, on the road, in his aerial resort,
he and all his disciples were as naked as--"
"I have seen artistes at the music-halls of Paris," I finished.
"Exactement," he spluttered. "Are we to let Tahiti rival Paris?"
Ivan Stroganoff I met two or three times a month. He stayed in his
chicken-coop except when the opportunities came for gaining a few
francs, at steamer-time, and when sheer boredom drove him to Papeete
for converse. With his dislike for the natives and his disdainful
attitude toward the French, he had to seek other nationals in town,
for there were none at Fa'a except a Chinese storekeeper. Stroganoff
at eighty was as keen for interesting things as a young man, but his
philosophy was fatal to his enjoyment. He saw the flaw in the diamond
the sunbeam made of the drop of water on the leaf. He had lived too
long and was too wise in disappointments. He was generous in his
poverty, for he brought me a tin of guava-jelly he had made and a box
of dried bananas. These had had their skins removed, and were black
and not desirable-looking, but they were delicious and rare. In turn,
not wishing to exaggerate the difference between our means, I gave
him a box of cigars I had brought from America. I visited him at Fa'a,
and found his coop had been a poultry shelter, and was humble, indeed;
but I had slept a hundred nights in many countries in worse. He had a
box for a table for eating and writing, and a rude cot. A few dishes
and implements, and a roost of books and reviews in Russian, English,
French, German, and other languages, completed his equipment.
He had several times reiterated his earnest wish to leave Tahiti, and
his longing rested heavily on my heart. Upon lying down at night I had
felt my own illiberality in not making it possible for him to realize
his desire. A hundred dollars would send him there, with enough left
over for a fortnight's keep. But my apology for not buying him a ticket
was the real fear of his unhappiness. What could a friendless man of
eighty do to exist in the United States other than become the inmate
of a poorhouse? The best he could hope for would be to be taken in by
the Little Sisters of the Poor, who house a few old men. They were,
doubtless, kind, but probably insistent on neatness and religiosity.
The cold, the brutal policemen and guards, the venial justice, the
crystallized charity in the name of a statistical Christ, arrested
my hand. I had known it all at first hand, asking no favor. I
believed that he would be worse off than in his chicken-coop. He
could wear anything or nearly nothing in Tahiti, and his old Prince
Albert comforted him; but he would have to conform to dress rules
in a stricter civilization. Nature was a loving mother here and a
shrewish hag there, at least toward the poor. And yet I was uneasy
at my own argument.
For a month or two he had led the talk between us and any others in
the parc to new discoveries in medicine. From his Fa'a seclusion he
followed these very closely through European publications, for which
his slender funds went. He had a curiously opposed nature, quoting
with enthusiasm the idealistic philosophers, and descending into such
abject materialism as haunting the bishop's palace for the cigar-stubs.
He would say that the purest joy in life is that which lifts us out
of our daily existence and transforms us into disinterested spectators
of it.
"This divine release from the common ways of men can be found only
through art," Stroganoff would apostrophize. "The final and only
true solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True
morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy into
asceticism. Renunciation only offers a complete release from the
evils and terrors of existence."
Kelly was on the bench one day when the Russian uttered this rule of
the cenobite school. They were good friends, but differed. They agreed
that the world was sick and needed a radical medicine. Kelly was for a
complete cure by ending private business through the workers seizing it
when the time was ripe, which he believed would be soon. Stroganoff was
for an empery of wise men, of scientists, philosophers, and artists,
who would kick out the statesmen and politicians, and manage things
by enlightened pragmatism. For the individual man who sought happiness
his formula was as above--retirement to an aery.
When Kelly was gone to practise on his accordion,--he had opened
a dancing academy at Fa'a,--the octogenarian asked me if I had
read of the recent achievements of the scientists who were making
the old young. He elaborated on the discoveries and experiments of
Professor Leonard Huxley in England with thyroid gland injections,
of Voronoff in France with the grafting of interstitial glands of
monkeys, and of Eugen Steinach in Austria and Roux in Germany, with
germ glands and X-rays. Steinach, especially, he discoursed on, and
drew a magazine picture of him from his Prince Albert. The Vienna
savant had a cordon of whiskers that made him resemble Stroganoff,
and his eyes in the photograph peered through all one's disguises.
"That is what grates me," said Stroganoff. "I am far from all these
worth-while things, these men of brain. I knew Ilya Ilich Metchnikoff
before he became director of the Pasteur Institute. Here I am a rotting
hulk. In the Caucasus I had kephir, and I used to carry kephir grains,
and in America I, at least, could have kumiss or Ilya Ilich's lait
caille. Look! I came here as Ponce de León to Florida to find youth,
or to keep from growing older; in a word to escape anno Domini."
I turned and looked at him. He was a venerable figure, but there was
no sign of eighty years in him. Rid of that white, hirsute mask,
so associated with age, Stroganoff might have been twenty years
younger. I said so, but it did not allay his yearning.
"I am well enough," he said, "because I have not dissipated for
thirty years. I turned a leaf, as did Leo Nikolaievitch, after 'War
and Peace.' Now I feel myself slipping into the grave."
He gazed ruminantly away from the lagoon to the pool of Psyche,
where the Tahitian women squatted on their shapely haunches and
thumped their clothes.
"See," he said earnestly. "I am old and useless. Why should not
Steinach or the others make the grand experiment on me? If they
succeed, very good; if they fail, there is no loss. They say those
glands make a man over, no matter what his age. I offer myself
freely. I am not afraid of death. Me, I am a philosopher."
He spoke excitedly. His eyes were fixed on distance, and I followed
them.
Auro, the Golden One, as her name meant, had been washing her muslin
slips in the pool of Psyche, and now stood in the entrance to it. She
was for a fleeting second in her pareu only, her tunic raised above
her head to pull on, and her enravishing form disclosed from her
waist to her piquant face, over which tumbled her opulent locks.
It flashed on me that, wise and old as he was, the spectrum of the
philosopher's soul had all the colors of the ignorant and the young. I
looked from the nymphs of the pool to his darkening eyes, and I had a
revelation of the persistence of common humanity in the most learned
and the most philosophical. My castigation of myself for not buying
his steamship ticket ceased in a moment, though not the less did I
continue to enjoy his fount of learning and experience.