Never did a man fall on his feet more surely than Lygon.
Captain Jourdain had lost his wife only the year before and he was in
need of a friend. He had married a native woman fourteen years ago and
being a straight, simple-minded man with an idea, somehow, that Kanakas
have souls just the same as Christians, and that love once found is the
only thing worth finding, and the only thing worth guarding, he had
stuck to her faithfully as she to him.
Now when a white man marries an island woman he marries a woman with a
past, a being with an ancestry as remote from his as Sirius from Rigel.
Nalia, the wife of Captain Jourdain, and the mother of Kineia, a
tender-eyed, gentle, soft-voiced woman, had exhibited this fact once in
a flash. A ruffian named Havermuth, who had been fired off a ship and
had become at once the beach comber and terror of the island, had gone
for Jourdain with intent to kill. He had got the captain down and was
trying to gouge when a tiger cat intervened. It was Nalia, and she was
armed with Havermuth’s knife that had been dropped in the struggle, and
the feel of the knife dividing his lumbar muscles and abdominal aorta
was the last thing Havermuth knew.
Jourdain often thought of that and of how a European woman would have
acted in the same situation--screamed, most likely, and run for help
that would have been too late in coming. He had loved Nalia before, but
after that he worshiped her, and when she died his worship was
transferred in part to Kineia. Kineia took after her mother, the same
hair, the same eyes, the same soft voice, the same mysterious charm,
heightened, in some curious way, by the touch of European in her. She
had the direct gaze of her father, and she spoke French without any
clipping of the words, and like her father she seemed to take to the
newcomer from the first, so that in a few months they were like one
family, Lygon helping in the work of superintending the copra getting
and sharing Jourdain’s house.
“It is good you have come,” said the old man one evening, as they sat on
the veranda watching a canoe putting out for fishing, “but the hard work
will not begin till my ship comes in. Then we will all be busy--I do not
know how you will like it, but you shall be paid.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of work,” said Lygon, “and I’m not thinking of
payment. It seems to me that I have a big debt to wipe off before I talk
of payment.”
“We will see,” said Captain Jourdain.
In the long run payment was not talked of; the captain gave Lygon a
fourth share in the business and Lygon earned it. There was plenty to
do. The _Haliotis_ was the name of Jourdain’s schooner, and every time
she called there was endless work writing letters to the San Francisco
agent, taking tally of trade goods, going over accounts as to payments
of crew, and so forth, to say nothing of the business of getting the
copra on board.
At the end of a year Jourdain had proved Lygon and found him
trustworthy, and he raised his position to an equal partnership with an
equal share in the business.
“I have no relations,” said Jourdain, “no one but Kineia and you.
Captain Morris of my schooner is a good man, but he is almost a stranger
to me, though I have known him some years--some men are like that; one
never gets to know them beyond a certain point. You have become to me
almost as a relation. When I am dead, if we go on as we are going,
perhaps you will have the whole business.”
“I hope that will never be,” said Lygon, and he meant it.
One day at the end of the second year the old man took Lygon by the arm
and walked him off into the woods till they reached a charming spot,
where a seat had been placed under a breadfruit tree, and with a view of
a little leaping cascade and a glen wonderful with ferns.
“I want to speak to you about Kineia,” said the captain.
Lygon’s color rose.
“You have made her love you.”
“I love her,” said Lygon.
“That goes without saying,” replied the other. “What is on my mind is
this--are you worthy of her? She is all to me, more than life, and I
shall die soon. I have known you two years and I would trust you with my
last sou. Can I trust you with Kineia? It is a father that is speaking,
and I ask myself, are you worthy of her?”
“No,” said Lygon, “I am not. But she is worthy of the love I have for
her. For her I would let myself be cut in pieces.”
Jourdain nodded as though to say, “I hear--and I believe.”
Then Lygon went on.
“I want to tell you everything. You asked me the first day I met you
what brought me on board that whaler, and I answered, ‘Foolishness.’ I
did not lie, but my foolishness led me further than most men go. I
killed a man in a fight in a gambling den of New York. He was a German
Jew. The quarrel was about money, and I was excited with drink and he
struck me, then I struck him. I am a powerful man, and the blow took him
on the point of the chin and broke his neck. I can see him still as a
man held him up on one knee. He was quite dead. Then before they could
seize me I jumped from a window. It was a hot night and the window was
open and the room on the ground floor. I reached a yard and then a
street. It was on the East Side. I had luck and got clear away on board
a ship bound for New Orleans. I kept to the sea for a year and then
found myself in New Bedford, where I joined that whaler. I tell you this
because I love Kineia. It is the only thing the world has against me.”
Jourdain was silent for a moment. Then he spoke: “You did not mean to
kill.”
“I did not, but if they had caught me I might have paid the penalty, for
that crowd would have sworn anything.”
“Are you a gambler?”
“No. I have gambled, but I am not a gambler.”
“And you do not drink?”
“No. I hate drink.”
Again the old man was silent, his eyes resting on the little cascade and
his thoughts far away.
“That was four years ago,” said he at last.
“Yes.”
“And in New York. They will not be looking for you now, and if they were
they would not find you--the Pacific is wide, the islands are many. Ah,
well, many a man has done worse, but I am glad you told me. I believe in
you and I trust you. You shall marry Kineia. For the last year the thing
has been growing in my mind. I have said to myself: ‘Your end is
approaching, and here is a man who will take care of Kineia if he only
learns to love her and if he proves worthy of her.’ That is what I have
said. And I have said to myself: ‘You will make a will and every sou you
possess they shall possess--schooner and all.’ I made that will last
night. It was attested by Ramura and Tonga. It is in my bureau. Had this
interview not been satisfactory, I would have torn it up and I would
have said to you: ‘Lygon, my friend, take half I possess, if you will,
but leave this island.’ There remains only one thing. You love Kineia,
does she love you?”
“She does,” said Lygon.
The _Haliotis_ was due to call in a week’s time, and when she put into
the lagoon Captain Morris found some business awaiting him other than
discharging cargo. He was called upon to officiate at the marriage of
Lygon and Kineia.
A month later Jourdain, who had prophesied his own end, died. He died of
no special disease. He had lived long enough and he wanted to rejoin
Nalia and his mind was at ease about Kineia. His business in life was
over. He lost clutch of things--and retired.
Had he not been happy and sure about Kineia’s future, he might have gone
on a for a considerable time just for her sake.