Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (443 page)

“There’s a boat coming now,” said I.  “She’s right in the pass; looks to be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern sheets.”

“That’s the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!” cried the Captain; “let’s see the glass.  Yes, that’s Case, sure enough, and the darkie.  They’ve got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a place the beach is for talking.  My belief, that Whistling Jimmie was the worst of the trouble; and he’s gone to glory, you see.  What’ll you bet they ain’t after gin?  Lay you five to two they take six cases.”

When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of them at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of one.  I was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the line, which I always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and going down to the Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying gin and going on a break, and then repenting; sitting in the house at night with the lamp for company; or walking on the beach and wondering what kind of a fool to call myself for being where I was.  There were no other whites upon my island, and when I sailed to the next, rough customers made the most of the society.  Now to see these two when they came aboard was a pleasure.  One was a negro, to be sure; but they were both rigged out smart in striped pyjamas and straw hats, and Case would have passed muster in a city.  He was yellow and smallish, had a hawk’s nose to his face, pale eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors.  No man knew his country, beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good family and was splendidly educated.  He was accomplished too; played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional.  He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a Kanaka.  The way he thought would pay best at the moment, that was Case’s way, and it always seemed to come natural, and like as if he was born to it.  He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat; and if he’s not in hell to-day, there’s no such place.  I know but one good point to the man: that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her.  She was a Samoa woman, and dyed her hair red, Samoa style; and when he came to die (as I have to tell of) they found one strange thing — that he had made a will, like a Christian, and the widow got the lot: all his, they said, and all Black Jack’s, and the most of Billy Randall’s in the bargain, for it was Case that kept the books.  So she went off home in the schooner
Manu’a
, and does the lady to this day in her own place.

But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly.  Case used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to Falesá, and put his services at my disposal, which was the more helpful from my ignorance of the native.  All the better part of the day we sat drinking better acquaintance in the cabin, and I never heard a man talk more to the point.  There was no smarter trader, and none dodgier, in the islands.  I thought Falesá seemed to be the right kind of a place; and the more I drank the lighter my heart.  Our last trader had fled the place at half an hour’s notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship from up west.  The captain, when he came, had found the station closed, the keys left with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway, confessing he was fairly frightened of his life.  Since then the firm had not been represented, and of course there was no cargo.  The wind, besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island by dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was gone about lively.  There was no call for me to fool with it, Case said; nobody would touch my things, everyone was honest in Falesá, only about chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and the best I could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then come straight to his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of the beach, take pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark.  So it was high noon, and the schooner was under way before I set my foot on shore at Falesá.

I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and the ground heaved under me like a ship’s deck.  The world was like all new painted; my foot went along to music; Falesá might have been Fiddler’s Green, if there is such a place, and more’s the pity if there isn’t!  It was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to see the men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright dresses, red and blue.  On we went, in the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking both; and all the children in the town came trotting after with their shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer in our wake, like crowing poultry.

“By-the-bye,” says Case, “we must get you a wife.”

“That’s so,” said I; “I had forgotten.”

There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and looked among them like a Bashaw.  They were all dressed out for the sake of the ship being in; and the women of Falesá are a handsome lot to see.  If they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was just thinking so when Case touched me.

“That’s pretty,” says he.

I saw one coming on the other side alone.  She had been fishing; all she wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through.  She was young and very slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead, and a shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat’s and a baby’s.

“Who’s she?” said I.  “She’ll do.”

“That’s Uma,” said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in the native.  I didn’t know what he said; but when he was in the midst she looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down again, and presently smiled.  She had a wide mouth, the lips and the chin cut like any statue’s; and the smile came out for a moment and was gone.  Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end, spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the face, heard him again in answer, and then with an obeisance started off.  I had just a share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye, and there was no more word of smiling.

“I guess it’s all right,” said Case.  “I guess you can have her.  I’ll make it square with the old lady.  You can have your pick of the lot for a plug of tobacco,” he added, sneering.

I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back sharp.  “She doesn’t look that sort,” I cried.

“I don’t know that she is,” said Case.  “I believe she’s as right as the mail.  Keeps to herself, don’t go round with the gang, and that.  O no, don’t you misunderstand me — Uma’s on the square.”  He spoke eager, I thought, and that surprised and pleased me.  “Indeed,” he went on, “I shouldn’t make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of your jib.  All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother my own way; and I’ll bring the girl round to the captain’s for the marriage.”

I didn’t care for the word marriage, and I said so.

“Oh, there’s nothing to hurt in the marriage,” says he.  “Black Jack’s the chaplain.”

By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white men; for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a strange idea, but common in the islands.  It was a board house with a strip of rickety verandah.  The store was to the front, with a counter, scales, and the poorest possible display of trade: a case or two of tinned meats; a barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of cotton stuff, not to be compared with mine; the only thing well represented being the contraband, firearms and liquor.  “If these are my only rivals,” thinks I, “I should do well in Falesá.”  Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch me, and that was with the guns and drink.

In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor native fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger, and his eyes set with drink.  His body was covered with grey hair and crawled over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye — he never heeded; and the mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees.  Any clean-minded man would have had the creature out at once and buried him; and to see him, and think he was seventy, and remember he had once commanded a ship, and come ashore in his smart togs, and talked big in bars and consulates, and sat in club verandahs, turned me sick and sober.

He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he reached me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.

“Papa’s  pretty full this morning,” observed Case.  “We’ve had an epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic — don’t you, Papa?”

“Never took such a thing in my life!” cried the captain indignantly.  “Take gin for my health’s sake, Mr. Wha’s-ever-your-name — ’s a precautionary measure.”

“That’s all right, Papa,” said Case.  “But you’ll have to brace up.  There’s going to be a marriage — Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get spliced.”

The old man asked to whom.

“To Uma,” said Case.

“Uma!” cried the captain.  “Wha’s he want Uma for?  ‘s he come here for his health, anyway?  Wha’ ‘n hell’s he want Uma for?”

“Dry up, Papa,” said Case.  “‘Tain’t you that’s to marry her.  I guess you’re not her godfather and godmother.  I guess Mr. Wiltshire’s going to please himself.”

With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the marriage, and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner and (to speak truth) his gull.  Trade and station belonged both to Randall; Case and the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon him like the flies, he none the wiser.  Indeed, I have no harm to say of Billy Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose at him, and the time I now passed in his company was like a nightmare.

The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade.  The three men’s beds were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes.  There was no standing furniture; Randall, when he was violent, tearing it to laths.  There I sat and had a meal which was served us by Case’s wife; and there I was entertained all day by that remains of man, his tongue stumbling among low old jokes and long old stories, and his own wheezy laughter always ready, so that he had no sense of my depression.  He was nipping gin all the while.  Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again, whimpering and shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I wanted to marry Uma.  “My friend,” I was telling myself all day, “you must not come to be an old gentleman like this.”

It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the house almost on her belly.  She was swathed in black stuff to her heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy.  These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting.  She said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding.  She came straight across the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and purred and crooned over it like a great cat.  From this she slipped into a kind of song.

“Who the devil’s this?” cried I, for the thing startled me.

“It’s Fa’avao,” says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor into the farthest corner.

“You ain’t afraid of her?” I cried.

“Me ‘fraid!” cried the captain.  “My dear friend, I defy her!  I don’t let her put her foot in here, only I suppose ‘s different to-day, for the marriage.  ‘s Uma’s mother.”

“Well, suppose it is; what’s she carrying on about?”  I asked, more irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise because I was to marry Uma.  “All right, old lady,” says I, with rather a failure of a laugh, “anything to oblige.  But when you’re done with my hand, you might let me know.”

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I followed her to the door she had already vanished.

“These are rum manners,” said I.

“‘s a rum crowd,” said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the sign of the cross on his bare bosom.

“Hillo!” says I, “are you a Papist?”

He repudiated the idea with contempt.  “Hard-shell Baptis’,” said he.  “But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha’ ‘s one of ‘em.  You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or Fa’avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o’ the priests, and do what I do.  Savvy?” says he, repeated the sign, and winked his dim eye at me.  “No,
sir
!” he broke out again, “no Papists here!” and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.

I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean sea, or some convenient river — though, it’s true, I was committed to Case; and, besides, I could never have held my head up in that island if I had run from a girl upon my wedding-night.

The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some time lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro.  She was dressed and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds than any silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark honey, she wore bare only for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds and flowers; and behind her ears and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus.  She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still; and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before that grinning negro.  I thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was dressed with a big paper collar, the book he made believe to read from was an odd volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be set down.  My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she got her certificate I was tempted to throw up the bargain and confess.  Here is the document.  It was Case that wrote it, signatures and all, in a leaf out of the ledger: —