Part 8 (1/2)
A gentle breeze crept down from the hills and swept its way among the pillars of this peaceful hut and skipped on through the palms out to sea. As far as the eye could reach through the village there was no sign of uncleanliness, no stifling enclosures, no frills to catch the unwary.
The afternoon was well-nigh gone when I moved reluctantly away from this charmed spot. Slowly life was becoming more discontented with ease and bestirred itself to the satisfaction of wants. A few hours of toil, in the gathering of fruits, and one phase of tropical life was rounded out.
It might be more pleasant to believe that that is the only side, but such faith is treacherous. The life of the average South Sea islander is as arduous as any. Fruits there are usually a-plenty, but they must be gathered and stored against famine and storm. Be that as it may, the open life, the things one has which require only wis.h.i.+ng to make them one's own, the uncramped open world,--by that much every man is millionaire in the tropics, and it is pleasant to forget if one can that there is exploitation, despoliation, and oppression as well, both of native and of alien origin. But for the time at least we may as well enjoy that which is lovely.
3
That night I witnessed the usual events at the British Club. The substance of the evening's conversation, every word of which was in my own language, was quite foreign to me. It comprised ”Dr. Funk” and his special services in counteracting dengue fever. The aim and object of every man there seemed to be to make me drink, quite against my will.
A visiting doctor added the weight of his learning to induce me to turn from heedlessly falling a victim to fever by engaging ”Dr. Funk.” I was inclined to dub him ”Dr. Bunk,” but why arouse animosity in the tropics?
there is enough of it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STREET ALONG THE WATERFRONT OF APIA, SAMOA]
[Ill.u.s.tration: I THOUGHT THE VILLAGE BACK OF APIA, SAMOA, WAS DESERTED, BUT IT WAS ONLY THE NOON HOUR]
[Ill.u.s.tration: CONTACT WITH CALIFORNIA CREATED THIS COMBINATION OF SCOWL, BRACELETS AND BOY'S BOOTS--BUT FULAANU BESIDE HER WAS UNCORRUPTIBLE]
[Ill.u.s.tration: TATTOOING OF THE LEGS IS AN ESSENTIAL IN SAMOA]
But I couldn't help contrasting in my own mind the little gathering on the s.h.i.+ngle-paved floor of that corrugated iron hut with the more elaborate club that changed its name from German to British with no little hauteur. More than once I wished that I had had command of the language of those people in the hut where allegory, mixed with superst.i.tion but seasoned with gentle hospitality--and not rum--was the order of the day.
Weary of refusing booze and more booze, I set off for the sh.o.r.e. Though military order forbade either natives or Germans or any one else without a permit to be out after ten o'clock, I had had no difficulty in securing a permit to roam about at will, day or night. The new military Inspector of Police strolled out with me and we took to the road that led out of Apia to the left, past the barracks, past the school, and the church, past all the crude replicas of our civilization.
”Oh, how I loathe it all!” said Heasley to me. ”G.o.d, what wouldn't I give to be back with my wife and kiddies! This everlasting boozing, this mingling with people whom I wouldn't recognize in Wellington, being herded with the riffraff of the world. They talk of the lovely maidens.
Tell me, Greenbie, have you seen any here you'd care to mess about with?
The tropics!--rot!”
I saw that I had to deal with a frightfully homesick man, and there was no point in running counter to him. The fact that to me the tropics were lovely only when seen as an objective thing, not as something to feel a part of, would have made little impression on his mind. He was condemned to an indefinite sojourn, whereas I was foot-loose, had come of my own free will, and was going as soon as I had had enough of it. To him the daily round of drink and cheap disputes, the longing for his wife and kiddies, the heat, the mosquitos, the mold, the cheap beds and unvaried fare, the weeks during which the British troops had virtually camped on the beach in the steady downpouring tropical rains; the inability to dream his way into appreciation of South Sea life; the necessity of looking upon the natives as possible rebels; suspicions of the few Germans there, suspicions of every new-comer, suspicions of even the death-dealing sun,--no wonder there was nothing romantic about it to him!
But as we wandered along, chatting in an intimate way, as only men gone astray from home will chat when they meet on the highways of the world, he seemed to grow more cheerful. Time and again he told me what a relief I was to him, how being able really to talk freely with me was balm to his troubled spirit. I knew that an hour after my departure he would forget all about me, that there was nothing permanent in his regard, that I really meant nothing to him beyond an immediate release for his pent-up mind,--but I felt that he was sincere.
As we kicked our way along the dusty road we came to a stretch where the palm-trees stood wide apart. The smooth waters covered the reefs, and a million moonbeams danced over them. Within the palm groves camp-fires blazed beneath domes of moon-splattered thatch, and from all directions deep, clear voices quickened the night air. We of the Northern lands do not know what communal life is. We move in throngs, we crowd the theaters, we crowd the summer resorts,--but still we do not know what communal life is. We are separate icicles compared with the people of the tropics. Only to one adrift at night within a little South Sea village is the meaning of human commonalty revealed. It seemed to touch Heasley as nothing had done before. After our little conversation he appeared relieved and receptive. We wandered about till long after midnight, long after the village had sung itself to sleep, even then reluctant to take to our musty beds.
Thus did one day pa.s.s in Samoa, and every day is like the other, and my tale is told.
4
I tapped one man after another in Samoa for some personal recollections of Stevenson, but without success. At last I heard of an American trader who had been an intimate friend of R. L. S. and knew more about him than any other. So to him I went. He was a round-headed, red-faced, bald individual in the late fifties, deeply engrossed in the sumptuous acc.u.mulations he had made during more than a quarter-century of residence in Samoa. His reactions to my declaration of interest in Stevenson made me think he was turning to lock his safe and order his guard, but instead he really opened the safe and dismissed all pretense.
In other words, he realized, it seemed to me, that he had another chance of adding l.u.s.ter not to Stevenson, but to himself. Stevenson he dismissed with, ”Well, you know, after all he was just like other men.
Often he was disagreeable, ill-tempered,” etc. The thing worth while was the fact that _he_ had written a book about Stevenson, in which _he_ had exhausted all he knew of the man, so why did I not read that and not bother him about it! I felt apologetic, almost inclined to bow myself out, backward, when he announced that he too had written stories of the South Seas. My interest was whetted. I asked to be shown. He drew from among his bills and invoices a packet of ma.n.u.scripts, and handed one to me to read. I thought of Setu and his enthusiasm at the recognition at sea of the light from Vailima, and felt that, as far as Stevenson's own life went, Setu was, to me at least, more important.
Notwithstanding all the cynics who laugh at those who come to Samoa to climb to Stevenson's grave, I was determined to make the ascent. I could get no one to make it with me. At five o'clock in the morning I mustered what energy I had left from the North, ready to spend it all for the sake of seeing Stevenson's grave. By six, the wind was already warm and dragged behind it heavy rain-clouds. Hot and brain-f.a.gged, I pressed on, my body pus.h.i.+ng listlessly forward while my mind battled with the temptation to turn back. Near the end of European Apia I turned toward the hills, into a wide avenue cut through the growths of s.h.a.ggy palms.
Suddenly opening out from the main street, it as suddenly closes up, an oblong that dissipates in a narrow, irregular roadway farther on. It was too overgrown to indicate any great usefulness, yet in the history of roads, none, I believe, is more unique. In the days when Samoa was the scene of cheap international squabbles among England, France, Germany, and America, Stevenson, the Scotsman, mindful of the fate of Scotland and of the similarity between his adopted and his native land, stood by the natives as against the foreign powers (Germany in particular). He took up the challenge for Mataafa, courageously cuddled these children while in prison, and won their everlasting good-will. Later, as a mark of grat.i.tude, they decided voluntarily to build a wide road to Vailima, Stevenson's home. Their ambitions did not live long. The road was never finished. But this is indicative not of diminished grat.i.tude, but of the overwhelming hopelessness of their situation in face of foreign pressure and native temperature.
For everything in the tropics seems on the verge of exhaustion, a keen enthusiasm in life which finds its ebb before it has reached high tide.
Only a supreme endeavor, a will sharper than nature, can overcome the spirit of non-resistance which condemns native life from very birth. And it was the remnant of determination bred in another climate that carried me on toward the remains of the object of that grat.i.tude which this road symbolized.
Vailima was four miles from Apia, hidden within a rich tropical growth well up the mountain side. Half the time I rested in the shade, taking my cue from my idol that it was better to travel than to arrive. No one was about, except here and there a child in search of fruit dropped from the tall trees. Presently I came to a set of wooden buildings on the road which upon investigation turned out to be the temporary barracks for the guard of Colonel Logan, commander of the forces of occupation.