Part 21 (1/2)
Apart from this quaint strain of simple satisfaction with himself and his surroundings he was the kindest of men, and I was a.s.sured that when it came to his legal work all his oddities were cast aside and that he was an excellent and capable Commissioner.
[Sidenote: R. L. STEVENSON]
On the evening following our arrival he invited Robert Louis Stevenson and Mrs. Stevenson to dinner, and if we had already felt the fascination of Utopia we then fell under the spell of the Enchanter who evoked all the magic woven round its land and sea. I shall never forget the moment when I first saw him and his wife standing at the door of the long, wood-panelled room in Ruge's Building. A slim, dark-haired, bright-eyed figure in a loose, black velvet jacket over his white vest and trousers, and a scarlet silk sash round his waist. By his side the short, dark woman with cropped, curly hair and the strange piercing glance which had won for her the name in native tongue, ”The Witch Woman of the Mountain.”
Stevenson was never one to keep all the treasures of his imagination and humour for his books. Every word, every gesture revealed the man, and he gave one the impression that life was for him a game to be shared with his friends and played n.o.bly to the end. I think that Matthew Arnold's ”Empedocles on Etna” expressed him when he sang:
”Is it so small a thing To have enjoy'd the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?”
But Stevenson, braver to confront life than Empedocles, would not have leapt into the crater!
At that dinner, which inaugurated our friends.h.i.+p, a very merry talk somehow turned on publishers and publis.h.i.+ng. It began, if I remember rightly, with a reference to Mrs. Humphry Ward's latest book, for which she was reported to have received a number of thousands which both Stevenson and Haggard p.r.o.nounced to be incredible, Haggard speaking from his brother's experience and Stevenson from his own. Thereupon it was suggested by someone, and carried unanimously, that we should form an ”Apia Publis.h.i.+ng Company”; and later on in Haggard's absence the rest of us determined to write a story of which our host should be hero, and the name, suggested, I think, by Stevenson, was to be _An Object of Pity, or the Man Haggard_.
Before this was completed various incidents occurred which were incorporated into the tale. Another friend of Mr. Haggard was the British Consul, Mr. Cusack Smith, and he took us to tea with him and his pretty wife on the Sunday afternoon following our arrival. They lived in a pleasant bungalow of which the compound--or lawn--was enlivened by a good-sized turtle tied to a post, which was being kept ready to be slaughtered and cooked when we came to dine with them!
The question of fresh meat was not altogether easy to solve in Samoa. We, knowing that there were certain difficulties, had brought with us a provision of tongues and similar preserved foods, also of champagne, but there were few cows and oxen, and sheep were impossible to rear on the island--at least so far means had not been found to feed them amongst the luxuriant tangle of tropical vegetation. Preserved provisions, including b.u.t.ter, were mostly brought from New Zealand. Samoa itself provided skinny chickens, some kind of pigeon, yams, taros, and of course fish.
The occasional great treat was pig cooked in the native oven, an excellent kitchen arrangement. A hole was dug in the ground, the object to be cooked was wrapped up in leaves and placed between hot stones; the whole was then covered up with earth and left long enough for the meat to be thoroughly soft and cooked through; when opened nothing could be more tender.
[Sidenote: KING MALIETOA]
Among other entertainments we were invited to dine by King Malietoa, to whom we had already paid a formal visit of ceremony. The banquet, which took place about three in the afternoon, was laid on a long cloth spread on the ground and consisted of all sorts of native delicacies, including a dish of a peculiar kind of worm, and, besides pig and pigeon, of vegetables cooked in various ways. The staff of the monarch included an orator or ”Talking Man,” and a jester, thereby recalling the attendants of the Duke of Austria in _The Talisman_.
The Talking Man, whose badge of office was a fly-whisk, carried over his shoulder, had had his innings at our formal reception, but the jester came in very useful at the banquet. We were told that one of his most successful jokes was to s.n.a.t.c.h away pieces of the food placed before the King. On this occasion he was crouched just behind Malietoa and myself.
Part of the regal etiquette was for the monarch to give me a piece of any delicacy in his fingers, but he always tactfully looked the other way when he had done so, thereby giving me the chance of slipping it into the hands of the jester, who consumed it chuckling with glee.
Malietoa was a gentle, amiable being who seemed rather oppressed by the position into which he had been thrust by the Powers. His rival Mataafa was undoubtedly the stronger character of the two, and appealed to the romantic instincts of Stevenson, who was his personal friend.
Stevenson and Haggard between them therefore concocted a plot whereby I was to visit incognita the camp in the mountains of the rebel potentate.
As it would not do to keep my own name, my husband being then Governor of New South Wales, I was to become Stevenson's cousin, Amelia Balfour, and he wrote beforehand to ask that accommodation should be provided for me with the ladies of this royal house, as I was not well accustomed to Island customs.
This is how Stevenson later on described the encounter in the very fragmentary ”Samoid”:
”Two were the troops that encountered; one from the way of the sh.o.r.e, And the house where at night, by the timid, the Judge[2] may be heard to roar, And one from the side of the mountain. Now these at the trysting spot Arrived and lay in the shade. Nor let their names be forgot.
So these in the shade awaited the hour, and the hour went by; And ever they watched the ford of the stream with an anxious eye; And care, in the shade of the grove, consumed them, a doubtful crew, As they harboured close from the bands of the men of Mulinuu But the heart of the Teller of Tales (Tusitala) at length could endure no more, He loosed his steed from the thicket, and pa.s.sed to the nearer sh.o.r.e, And back through the land of his foes, steering his steed, and still Scouting for enemies hidden. And lo! under Vaca Hill At the crook of the road a clatter of hoofs and a glitter of white!
And there came the band from the seaward, swift as a pigeon's flight.
Two were but there to return: the Judge of the t.i.tles of land; He of the lion's hair, bearded, boisterous, bland; And the maid that was named for the pearl,[3] a maid of another isle, Light as a daisy rode, and gave us the light of her smile.
But two to pursue the adventure: one that was called the Queen Light as the maid, her daughter, rode with us veiled in green, And deep in the cloud of the veil, like a deer's in a woodland place, The fire of the two dark eyes, in the field of the unflushed face.
And one her brother[4] that bore the name of a knight of old, Rode at her heels unmoved; and the gla.s.s in his eye was cold.
Bright is the sun in the brook; bright are the winter stars, Brighter the gla.s.s in the eye of that captain of hussars.”
The adventurous party consisted of R.L.S., his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, his stepdaughter Mrs. Strong (nee Osbourne), and a young native chief Henry Simele, my brother, and myself. It was arranged with infinite, but somewhat futile, secrecy that Mr. Haggard, my daughter and I, with Rupert should ride out in the afternoon and find the Vailima party awaiting us at the Gasi-gasi Ford. This duly came off; we were rather late, and found our companions crouching, excited, at the appointed spot in the att.i.tude proper for conspirators.
[Sidenote: THE ENCHANTED FOREST]
Haggard and my daughter thereupon returned to Ruge's Buildings, and the rest of us pursued our way through the enchanted forest, past groves of bananas, and up the mountain. From time to time little stiles barring the narrow paths had to be negotiated; some Europeans explorers had imagined that these were a kind of fortification to protect Mataafa's quarters, but really they were nothing more romantic than fences to keep pigs from wandering.
Nature in Samoa everywhere erected natural screens for those who desired concealment in the extraordinary luxuriance of her tangled vegetation: overhead, broad-leaved forest trees interlacing their branches so that it was possible to ride even at midday under a tropical sun; below, the long and varied creeping plants which went under the general name of ”vines,”