Part 21 (1/2)

”Where's Ethel?” he said, as he jumped on sh.o.r.e.

”She's down at the bungalow. She's living with us.”

Lawson was dismayed, but he put on a jovial air.

”Well, have you got room for me? I daresay it'll take a week or two to fix ourselves up.”

”Oh, yes, I guess we can make room for you.”

After pa.s.sing through the custom-house they went to the hotel and there Lawson was greeted by several of his old friends. There were a good many rounds of drinks before it seemed possible to get away and when they did go out at last to Brevald's house they were both rather gay. He clasped Ethel in his arms. He had forgotten all his bitter thoughts in the joy of beholding her once more. His mother-in-law was pleased to see him, and so was the old, wrinkled beldame, her mother; natives and half-castes came in, and they all sat round, beaming on him. Brevald had a bottle of whisky and everyone who came was given a nip. Lawson sat with his little dark-skinned boy on his knees, they had taken his English clothes off him and he was stark, with Ethel by his side in a Mother Hubbard. He felt like a returning prodigal. In the afternoon he went down to the hotel again and when he got back he was more than gay, he was drunk. Ethel and her mother knew that white men got drunk now and then, it was what you expected of them, and they laughed good-naturedly as they helped him to bed.

But in a day or two he set about looking for a job. He knew that he could not hope for such a position as that which he had thrown away to go to England; but with his training he could not fail to be useful to one of the trading firms, and perhaps in the end he would not lose by the change.

”After all, you can't make money in a bank,” he said. ”Trade's the thing.”

He had hopes that he would soon make himself so indispensable that he would get someone to take him into partners.h.i.+p, and there was no reason why in a few years he should not be a rich man.

”As soon as I'm fixed up we'll find ourselves a shack,” he told Ethel.

”We can't go on living here.”

Brevald's bungalow was so small that they were all piled on one another, and there was no chance of ever being alone. There was neither peace nor privacy.

”Well, there's no hurry. We shall be all right here till we find just what we want.”

It took him a week to get settled and then he entered the firm of a man called Bain. But when he talked to Ethel about moving she said she wanted to stay where she was till her baby was born, for she was expecting another child. Lawson tried to argue with her.

”If you don't like it,” she said, ”go and live at the hotel.”

He grew suddenly pale.

”Ethel, how can you suggest that!”

She shrugged her shoulders.

”What's the good of having a house of our own when we can live here.”

He yielded.

When Lawson, after his work, went back to the bungalow he found it crowded with natives. They lay about smoking, sleeping, drinking _kava_; and they talked incessantly. The place was grubby and untidy. His child crawled about, playing with native children, and it heard nothing spoken but Samoan. He fell into the habit of dropping into the hotel on his way home to have a few c.o.c.ktails, for he could only face the evening and the crowd of friendly natives when he was fortified with liquor. And all the time, though he loved her more pa.s.sionately than ever, he felt that Ethel was slipping away from him. When the baby was born he suggested that they should get into a house of their own, but Ethel refused. Her stay in Scotland seemed to have thrown her back on her own people, now that she was once more among them, with a pa.s.sionate zest, and she turned to her native ways with abandon. Lawson began to drink more.

Every Sat.u.r.day night he went to the English Club and got blind drunk.

He had the peculiarity that as he grew drunk he grew quarrelsome and once he had a violent dispute with Bain, his employer. Bain dismissed him, and he had to look out for another job. He was idle for two or three weeks and during these, sooner than sit in the bungalow, he lounged about in the hotel or at the English Club, and drank. It was more out of pity than anything else that Miller, the German-American, took him into his office; but he was a business man, and though Lawson's financial skill made him valuable, the circ.u.mstances were such that he could hardly refuse a smaller salary than he had had before, and Miller did not hesitate to offer it to him. Ethel and Brevald blamed him for taking it, since Pedersen, the half-caste, offered him more. But he resented bitterly the thought of being under the orders of a half-caste.

When Ethel nagged him he burst out furiously:

”I'll see myself dead before I work for a n.i.g.g.e.r.”

”You may have to,” she said.

And in six months he found himself forced to this final humiliation. The pa.s.sion for liquor had been gaining on him, he was often heavy with drink, and he did his work badly. Miller warned him once or twice and Lawson was not the man to accept remonstrance easily. One day in the midst of an altercation he put on his hat and walked out. But by now his reputation was well known and he could find no one to engage him. For a while he idled, and then he had an attack of _delirium tremens_. When he recovered, shameful and weak, he could no longer resist the constant pressure and he went to Pedersen and asked him for a job. Pedersen was glad to have a white man in his store and Lawson's skill at figures made him useful.