THE WOMAN FINAU.
“The woman knows no shame, she defies the law, she despises your orders, and she says she will never leave the white man.”
“Then let them marry.”
“I told her that, and she said it was not the foreigner’s wish to marry her. But you are the Governor. It is for you to punish evil-doers. All Vavau is ashamed because of this woman.”
“Arrest her, then, and bring her here.”
At sunset the chiefs had met at the ruinous wooden villa that is the Government House. In the central hall, once gay with paint and gilding, they sat cross-legged before the kava-bowl, young Laifone the Governor in the seat of honour. And into this august assembly Ana Finau, the abandoned contemner of public opinion and the law of the land, was led trembling, the only woman in the room. The men stopped talking and looked at her with hard unsympathetic faces. What pity should they have for a countrywoman of theirs who could stoop to one of these vile foreigners, and leave her own kind for the society of a trader—a white man?
The policeman who brought her told her roughly to sit down before the Governor, who glanced at her and bade his companion continue the story the girl’s entrance had interrupted. The chiefs who had come from a distance asked their neighbours who the girl was, and why she had been brought. She meanwhile sat on the floor, her feet doubled under her, as the manner is, her eyes cast down, but with a certain dogged air of resistance about her, as if she was prepared for the worst.
The story was finished. From Laifone’s hearty laugh it might be guessed that it was not over-refined, and the policeman called his attention to Ana Finau. It was no time for business, for the kava was nearly pounded, the two kerosene-lamps were lighted, and Laifone was bored with the cares of office. He held up his hand, and the ringing thud of the pounding kava-stones ceased.
“Ana,” he said, “they say you are living with the white man. You were punished and told to leave him, and you have gone back.”
The girl reached for a straw on the dirty floor, and began to dissect it with her fingers, examining it intently.
“Why don’t you answer?” asked the policeman, roughly. She glanced up for a moment, and resumed her dissection of the straw.
“It is true,” she said.
“Why do you not marry him?”
“That is Falani’s affair. I suppose he is not willing that we should marry.”
“Then you must leave him at once,” said Laifone, with the air of having dismissed the subject, and turned to the story-teller with a question.
The girl did not move. She had pulled her straw to pieces, and now deliberately reached for another. She looked comely in the lamplight which touched the clear red skin, threw deep shadows into the eyes, and glinted through her glistening auburn curls. The kava-stones rang out again, and conversation became general. The policeman touched her arm. She shook him off impatiently, threw her head back, and looking Laifone full in the face, said, “I shall not leave Falani.”
There was a dead silence. The kava-pounder paused with stone uplifted. Laifone stared at her, half amused and half angry.
“You must leave him, or be punished,” he said, and muttered something about a beautiful girl wasted.
But the policeman was scandalised and indignant. “You impudent woman,” he cried, “you have insulted the Governor and the chiefs. You have no shame, and you are impudent.” Then turning to Laifone he cried, “Is Vavau to become heathen because of this evil-minded woman? It has become a by-word. Religion is despised because of her. We look to you, Laifone. I pray you leave her to us, the police, to deal with her. We will bring her to obedience.”
“Take her away then.”
He sprang up, seized her roughly by the arm, lifted her to her feet, dragged her to the door, and, with a sudden jerk, pulled her whimpering out into the darkness. A man at the back of the room followed them out.
“A strong-minded woman,” said Laifone. “Pound the kava.”
The root is pounded, kneaded in the bowl, and strained. “Fakatau,” cries the presiding Matabule. Then as the cocoa-nut is filled, the man at the bowl gives the piercing long-drawn cry, “Kava kuo heka,” and as he ceases, the cry is taken up from the darkness outside—a wail of agony.
“Hark! what is that?” says Laifone. It comes again and ceases in choking sobs—a woman’s voice.
A man runs out, and in a moment returns. “It is Ana Finau,” he says; “the police are doing something to her.”
The wail of agony comes again, mixed with the accents of a man’s voice in anger, and a dull sound like a blow.
“Go and tell them to be quieter,” says the presiding Matabule; “or stay,” he adds, “tell them to take her farther off. Don’t they know we are drinking kava?”
Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered in Vavau when one copra-trader spends the evening with another, for competition is strong and the milk of human kindness watery. There, in the mean little room at the back of the store, they sit at the only table, which is furnished with glasses, a cracked jug, and the inevitable square black bottle. Round the room are ranged a number of half-emptied cases of cheap German prints and cutlery, whose contents are piled about, to be within reach if any of the shelves in the store should need replenishing. Franz Kraft, in a dirty flannel shirt and trousers, unkempt, perspiring, and bibulous, is not a fascinating-looking person, but he is prosperous and refined as compared with his companion. They have reached the quarrelsome stage of the evening,—anon they will be vowing eternal friendship,—and Franz is accusing his boon companion of the heinous crime of underselling him, and emphasising his forcible remarks with heavy blows with his fist upon the table. It is hard to realise that this squalid ruffian, who is content to live on fare that the forecastle of a whaler would reject, is worth ten or twelve thousand pounds, made by his own thrift and hard work.
“You haf for dwenty bounds of kreen cobra one shilling given, I say. Finau, she tell me,” he cries, with emphasis born of gin.
The door behind him opens, and a gust of wind extinguishes the kerosene-lamp. Franz swears as he gropes for the matches. But when they are found the lamp-funnel is too hot to hold, and the match goes out. The boon companion slams the door to with his foot, and in doing so stumbles against a soft body on the floor.
“Who the h—ll is it?” he cries; “some d—d nigger. A woman, by G—d!” he adds, as the body groans in answer to his kick.
Franz having succeeded in lighting the lamp, turns to look at the intruder. A woman lies face downwards on the floor sobbing. The Englishman takes her roughly by the arm, and turns her over.
“By G—d! Kraft, it’s Finau, and badly knocked about too! Here, you’d better see to her. I’m off home.”
Kraft stooped, lamp in hand, saw the torn vala and the poor bruised face, and knew who had done this, and why. But as he raised her, he asked all the same.
“The police,” she answered, “because I would not leave you.”
Long after she has sobbed herself to sleep Kraft was muttering his opinions of the police and the authorities generally in forcible German. To-morrow he will beard the Governor Laifone, and tell him what he thinks of him. He will take Finau away to Samoa or Fiji, where the moral code is less strict, and she will be left in peace; for the girl is a good girl, can cook well, can even be trusted to mind the store, will spy on the doings of the neighbouring traders—is, in short, necessary to him. And she is better than Hinz’s and Schulze’s women, who have children to squall and get in the way. Besides, she will stay with him till he takes his long-projected trip to Hamburg. When that time comes she can go back to her relations, and the police will leave her alone.
But when the morrow came Kraft heard that the Government oranges were to be sold to the highest bidder—a whole season’s crop. There is money in it, and it will never do to quarrel with the Governor; and as for going to Fiji or Samoa in the middle of the copra season—of course that is out of the question. Finau had told him the details of her trial overnight, and the outrage, and she dared to hint that marriage would shield her for the future; but Kraft was too old a bird to be caught in such a trap as young Elliston was, for the chief object of the coming trip to Hamburg was the carrying out of a long-cherished scheme. He would figure in his native town as a wealthy planter, with vast estates in the Pacific, and dazzle the eyes of some young girl with a dot, then settle down as an altogether respectable character. Of this part of the scheme Finau knew nothing.
Christmas, with its feasting and church-going, with its stifling heat and drowning showers, has come and gone. The oranges have turned to gold on the trees as they were in Hesperus’s garden of old, and are falling in thousands among the long grass, because there are not thirsty mouths enough to suck them. The traders have bickered and wrangled all the long season through, till they are scarcely on drinking terms. The monthly steamer is here for her last cargo of oranges. From dawn till sunset carts laden with the golden fruit plough the miry roads, and the tap of the hammer nailing down the fruit-cases is never silent. Once a-month this “sleepy hollow” of the Pacific assumes an air of energy and bustle, and then sinks into coma, exhausted by the effort, as the steamer glides round the point. The fit is upon it now. The whole population is either at work or encouraging the workers,—the girls and children pelting the men with oranges as they sweat under the heavy cases on the wharf. All save one. Up there in Kraft’s store, where the laughter and shouts from the wharf are faintly echoed, a woman, half blinded by her tears, is on her knees before an iron trunk. It is Finau learning the lesson that men teach women,—sometimes when the skin of both is white, generally when one is brown. She only heard last night that Falani was called away to papalagi, and that one of those strange necessities that govern the lives of white men forced him to leave her. But who knows? All her friends prophesied that this would happen when she first came to Falani. And there was Maata, who went to William, the white man, because he said he would marry her; and he kept putting it off, and then, when she had had her first child, he went to papalagi, saying he would return in a month. That was six years ago. And now Falani was going.
If she had had a white skin, and the man did this to her, she would perhaps have been strengthened by the sense of bitter wrong that he could take her all, let her slave for him, and suffer for him, and then lightly cast her aside without even the grace to take her into his confidence till the last morning; or she would have been cast into the black depths of despair by her utter desolation: but being only a native woman with a brown skin, she felt neither of these, and helped him to pack his trunk.
Kraft himself, returning from the steamer, breaks in upon her reverie, bustling and eager. She sees the half-concealed delight in his face, and even that does not repel her, being, as I have said, a native with none of the finer feelings.
“Falani,” she says solemnly, “tell me truly why you are going. Is it because you are weary of me, or because I have borne you no children?”
“Ah, Finau, do not worry, or say foolish things. You know it is because I cannot help myself, and in six months I shall be back with you, and I shall write to you often. Do not be foolish.”
“Falani, you will forget me,” she persists, “and marry some white woman, as Mr Leason did. And you swore so often you would never leave me. Only a week ago you swore it.”
This being true is too much for his patience.
“You will make me tire of you, Finau, if you talk foolishly, and get angry. I have told you the truth. In six months I shall be back, and then we will be married by the missionary—that is, if you are good, and do not talk foolishly.”
This has the desired effect of making Finau cry; and as even a German copra-trader has a soft spot in his composition, a sudden impulse of tenderness and remorse makes the man take her in his arms and try to soothe away her trouble. For the moment he almost realises that this woman has loved him as he never deserved to be loved,—that she has not even shrunk from death itself for his sake, and that in return she only asks him to let her go on serving him; and for all this he is about to stab her in the back, to lie to her, to desert her. Is it too late?
So they sit in the steamy air, laden with the hot smell of rotting fruit, while the laughter and shouts float up to them from the wharf, and he, half wavering, caresses her, and whispers comforting promises into her ear.
But the shrill whistle of the steamer pierces the air, drowning all other sounds in its own vulgar yell. The spell is broken. Kraft has paid his passage, and the steamer is going. All the rest is folly, born of an over-tender heart.
“Finau, I must go!” he cries; “give me the box, and say good-bye, or I shall be late.”
“Oua leva” (wait), she says, and running to the box under pretence of rearranging its contents, she strips off her scented neckerchief, and buries it among the clothes. “He shall take my shadow with him,” she murmurs; and then turning to him, she asks him to throw his handkerchief into the sea when the steamer sails, “to be your shadow with me.” She is so earnest about this little superstition that, half laughing, he promises.
The whistle blows again, a hurried kiss, and he goes off, box on shoulder, while she, stifling her sobs, walks wearily to the hill above the harbour and sits down, covering her head with her vala.
She sees the mate drive the crowd of natives over the gangway on to the wharf, the hawser cast off, and she sees Falani distinctly leaning over the rail and laughing with the other white men with whom he has just parted. She watches him as the steamer glides down the harbour. Now he will throw his handkerchief, and be bound irrevocably to come back to her. Now, surely, he will throw it. What, not yet? Ah! he is waiting till the vessel nears the point. She stands up in her eagerness. “He must throw it,—he promised!” she cries aloud in her agony. But the vessel is half behind the point now—a moment more and she is out of sight—and he never threw it: so he is gone for ever, and will never return to Finau as long as they both shall live.
Kraft had forgotten his promise until, looking up, he saw and recognised a lonely figure, with arms outstretched, upon the hill; but feeling in his pocket, he found he had only one handkerchief, and it was not worth sacrificing a good handkerchief for a silly native superstition.
Under the first sense of utter loneliness the sneers of her own people were easy enough to bear. They did not understand. And then, when she had returned to the old life at Latu’s house with her own people, living their life, sharing their interests, the sorrow faded (as sorrow always does fade, thank heaven!), and the past became a little hazy and unreal. It is good to be a child, or to have a brown skin, which is the same thing, for with them time will heal in days wounds that cripple us for years, and leave scars behind them: and so the sun shines again as brightly as before, and the growth is not stunted. Only sometimes at the gatu-board Finau’s mallet would stop beating, and her eyes would wander away there to the point in the harbour that shuts out the channel, with a wistful far-off look, until the woman next her, indignant at being left to beat for both, would cry out, “The gatu [bark-cloth] is hardening while Finau is looking for Falani;” and during the coarse laugh that followed Finau would beat the yielding bark with ringing blows, changing her mallet from hand to hand as each tired.
So six months passed away. Finau had long given up asking at the post-office for a letter when the steamer came in; and when young Beni, the post-office clerk, threw her one at the kava-drinking in Latu’s house two days after the steamer had left, she thought for a moment there had been some mistake. Beni, with the privilege appertaining to his office, had as usual opened it and circulated it among his acquaintances for the two days that had intervened since the arrival of the mail; but being in some white man’s language, his curiosity was still ungratified. Finau thrust it into the bosom of her kofu, and contained her soul in patience until the morning. She was at Müller’s door before he was up next morning. After he had promised inviolable secrecy the German letter was produced, read, and translated into dog-Tongan, while Finau sat on the floor with glistening eyes. The joke was altogether too good for Müller to keep to himself, promise or no promise, and before evening all in Vavau who cared to know, whether white or brown, were duly made aware that Franz Kraft could not live without Finau,—that though his body was in Germany his heart was in Vavau,—and that though the German ladies of high degree all made love to him, yet none was so beautiful as Finau, and he was adamant to them. The whole effusion did great credit to Kraft’s wit; and the best of the joke was that Finau swallowed it all, including the paragraph about his tearing himself away from Hamburg because he could not bear the separation any longer, only the chiefs in Hamburg would not let him go for some inscrutable reason of their own. Truly Franz Kraft was a most humorous fellow. The one sentence Müller did not translate was a heading, in execrable Tongan, that she was to get the drunken Wilhelm Kraft, Franz’s brother, to read the letter, and on no account to take it to Müller or any one else.
But what cared Finau that the contents of her letter were public? They might laugh as they would—her husband had not forgotten her: he was coming back to marry her, and she would toil for him all her days, and be happy. Next month would come another letter to say he was starting, and in three months more he would be here. Ah, those months would be so easy to live through now! She gravely dictated to the delighted Müller an answering love-letter. She never ceased to think of him; and she had had no rest since he went; and would the good God guard him, and bring him safely back to her,—a very tame composition beside Kraft’s love-letter, but as Müller never sent it, the lack of style was of no consequence.
But the letter that should have come by the next steamer must doubtless have been lost in the post; or perhaps Kraft was starting, and did not think it worth while to write. Another mail, and still no letter. Ah! it is now clear. Poor Falani must be ill. The old letter was getting quite worn out now, from being carried in the bosom and slept on at night, but the writing was still visible through the oil-stains. It certainly did look shaky,—yes, decidedly Falani must be ill.
And then the third steamer came, and Beni said there was no letter. That evening brother Wilhelm paid Latu a visit, three sheets in the wind, as was usual with him at that time of night. He wanted Finau; he was labouring with a message for Finau. She is fetched from the cook-house. The difficulty is to find words for the message to Finau, for the message requires “breaking gently,” and it is difficult to break news gently under the influence of gin.
“Finau,” hiccoughs brother Wilhelm, “Falani has written. He told me to tell you—he is married.” The instructions were to break the news gently, and having carried them out to the satisfaction of his own conscience, brother Wilhelm takes himself to where the bottles are square and black, and the night may be profitably spent.
Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living; thither go the poets of the lakalaka for inspiration; thither go the girls of Halaufuli for flower-garlands, but not alone, for the spirits of the dead roam among the rocks of Liku, and must be scared away by numbers. Jutting out from the precipice is a single shaft of rock round which, even in calm weather, a furious wind eddies. With a good head one may climb out to this pinnacle, and, holding on firmly, see nothing between his feet and the foaming surf a thousand feet below.
There was a faint light in the western horizon where the moon had set. The stars were veiled by fleecy clouds—only where Venus hung low in the sky, casting a silver trail over the sea, was the night clear. The strong south-east trade-wind was turning cold, as it does before dawn, and Finau, breathless from her unconscious journey, instinctively wrapped her vala round her shoulders. As she ran from the shelter of the roaring palms on to the cliff’s edge, the thunder of the surf made the rock on which she stood tremble, and the south wind, wet with spray, drenched her with tiny particles of water. The path ended here: it was only used for the last journey of the dead, who slept all around her in their shrouds of white sand glistening in the dim starlight. The sight of the precipice before her brought reflection to her maddened brain. She was on the Liku where the spirits are, and at night, when the spirits oftenest are abroad. But she felt no fear now, for a sudden thought had taken possession of her. She remembered how, not many months since, Laubasi, the beauty of Neiafu, had disappeared; how they had searched for her, following the girlish footprints in the muddy path; how Palu the fisherman had crept down the cliff-face at Anamatangi, and seen far below him a body lying on a rocky ledge; how at first it was thought that she had been swept down by the furious wind that roars across the cave’s mouth in all weathers, boisterous or calm, until the body was brought back, and then the women gave another reason—for Laubasi was a Wesleyan class-leader, much regarded for her character, and in a month or two that would have been gone had she lived. The Anamatangi was scarce half a mile from where Finau stood. With set purpose in her dark face she walked quickly along the narrow path, hedged in by overhanging trees that led along the edge of the cliff. In half a mile she emerged upon a grassy plain sloping down towards Neiafu, whence in the daytime the thousand isles of Haafulu Hao could be seen as in a map. Here she turned seawards, and passed down a stony narrow path among the trees. The path became narrower and steeper, then rose a little, and suddenly Finau found herself standing upon a razor edge of rock, the apex of a buttress jutting many feet beyond the main cliff, whose base had been worn away by the surf of ages.
It was too dark to see below, but as every long roller crashed into the caves at the cliff’s base the pinnacle trembled, and she knelt, grasping the rugged moss with her fingers. Only not to think—not to think of what she had come here to do,—not to think of what lay below her in the darkness,—not to think of what was beyond if she passed the gate! She remembered Paula’s sermon when Laubasi’s fate was known,—how he described her burning in the flames, as if he had been there to see; but he had said that of so many people, and Falani said it was all an invention of the missionaries to make the people give them money. How white, how still and restful, those graves had seemed, in one of which Laubasi lay; but how the sharp-pointed rocks must have torn her flesh when she fell! It must have been a worse agony than the police inflicted, and that was too much to bear! So she lay face downward on the rocky pinnacle, her courage waning, filled with despair, and with a terror that was worse than despair. The east turned grey, and the morning star was quenched by the growing light which flecked the sea with foaming wave-tops, unseen till now. And with the dawn the wind grew stronger, till it would have been unsafe for Finau to stand up, even if she would. The face of the cliff, too, behind her became visible, and she saw with terror the dangers of the path she had traversed by the dim light of the stars. One false step and her body would have fallen down there, where ledge upon ledge and pinnacle upon pinnacle of grey limestone-rock are half hidden by ferns and creepers, as the thorns of the matolu are hidden by its velvet leaves, and beneath all a white hell of roaring waters.
As the light grew, she saw in the face of the precipice behind her a black hole large enough to admit the body of a man. To reach it one must creep along a ledge, slanting from the place where she lay. This was the cave of the winds, into which only Tubou the fleet-footed had penetrated, and Lolohea, who, tradition said, had fled when Feletoa was taken, and who, after peace was made, still dwelt in the wild Liku, communing with the spirits, and accumulating wisdom. It was on this very spot he stood when King Finau’s men brought him to bay till their chief should speak with him; and it was here that he was offered lands, slaves, and the choice of the fairest maidens of Vavau, only to refuse them for the solitude of this awful place. The wind was increasing in force, and it boomed across the mouth of the cave like a great organ-pipe. In the lulls a hollow roar seemed to come from the very bowels of the island. Somewhere far below the great ocean-rollers poured in, driving the imprisoned air through the mouth with terrific force. Surely no living man could dare the feats of those old heroes of tradition?
No! Death in such a place, and in such a way, were too horrible, and Finau, trembling and weak, looked round for a way of escape. The ridge she had crossed was now vibrating like a tense wire. She tried to rise, clinging to the rotten fern with her hands, and nearly lost her balance in a sharp gust of wind. It was hopeless. So she must die after all! And she lay there, dazed and bewildered, with all other desire gone but that of living.
* * * * * * *
“Here is the woman Finau. Her mind is foolish, but I have brought her back alive. Take better care of her, lest we of the Liku be again obliged to save her and carry her these four miles. Next time she goes to the cave of the winds she will fall perhaps where Laubasi did, and then we shall have to bury your dead.”
Finau’s uncle is awakened by a pinch on the leg, and goes out sulkily into the darkness with the man to where his cart stands. The jolting over the stony roads from Halaufuli has wakened Finau from her stupor, and she talks wildly and incoherently as her helpless body is lifted from the cart and laid on the mats near the lamp.
“The police will come to ask questions, for they stopped me as I was coming. I don’t want to get into trouble, so I shall go.” The cart rumbles away into the night.
It is weary work tending Finau week after week, for there are limits even to the claims of kinship. A relation may be ill and helpless for a week, or even two, and who would complain? But when it passes into months, and the relation has fits of blind anger, and talks foolishly, and is ungrateful, who can be blamed for wishing to get rid of her? Thus reasoned Ana, Finau’s aunt by marriage, after the manner of her kind, and not being ashamed of her opinions, she gave them to all Neiafu, including John Mason, the drunken carpenter, a grass-widower three times deep. And when Ana understood that there was a vacancy in the Mason household, and that the householder himself had had great difficulty in supplying the vacancy, she enlarged upon the charms and attractions of Finau,—her washing and ironing, her cooking, and her undoubted experience in providing for the comfort of a husband overcome with nocturnal convivialities. To Finau, in Mason’s absence, she made returning life a burden. It is better to die than to lie weak and helpless, eating food grudgingly given, and sheltered by an unfriendly roof. And after each of Mason’s friendly visits Ana would say, “Why does he come here? Why? because he desires you, of course! I heard him say that your face was beautiful, and that he wanted you to live with him. Drunken? Not more than Falani or the other white men, and when he is drunk he would not ill-treat you. Used to beat Mele, did he? Ah, that was another of Mele’s lies! She was always seeking an excuse to leave him, because she liked Lavuso better. No. Jone Mesoni was not the man to beat his wife unless she deserved it, and even then not hard with a stick, but with his hand!”
And so at last, when one evening Mason came with a bigger kava-root than usual, and took his bowl from Finau’s hands, and stayed after the others had gone, she, feeling bitter anger in her heart towards the man, but a greater bitterness towards the relations who drove her from their door, would resist no more. Mason wasted no time over courtship. He crawled over to where she sat, and roughly threw his arm round her in the presence of them all. She pushed him away with a gesture of disgust.
“Finau,” he said, in a voice broken with vinous emotion, “it is well that we should live together. You will come to my abi to-morrow?”
Finau sat with her face hidden in her hands, but Ana, the matchmaker, answered for her.
“Yes. I will bring her before mid-day, so that she may prepare dinner.”
* * * * * * *
The steamer is in again from New Zealand. After the miscellaneous crowd of natives from the southern islands have disembarked, and sniffed and wept over their friends of Vavau, there is a flutter of excitement among the onlookers.
“Dies kann doch nicht Franz Kraft sein, Pots Tausend! was für ein eleganter Herr!” cries Karl Müller; for lo! Franz Kraft, the dishevelled, the disreputable, shaved, transfigured, and glorified in a black coat and billycock hat, silver-mounted walking-stick in hand, is there. And more than this, Franz Kraft is leading a lady over the gangway, for all the world as if he were handing her out of a tram-car at the Thiergarten-gate His old boon companions whisper together in derisive curiosity as Franz, affecting not to see them, paces the wharf with dignity, his companion on his arm. She, poor thing, makes a curious figure against the palm-trees and white sand—for black satin, white cotton stockings, and German hats do not go well with palm-trees.
She was looking timidly and wonderingly at the mean iron-roofed houses that line the beach, for the cunning Franz had crammed her flaxen head with pictures of South Sea splendour, in which Neiafu appeared as a city, and Franz himself as a benevolent planter of great possessions. Of her future home Franz had been reticent, but she had formed a mental picture of a mansion she had seen in a printseller’s window in the Unter den Linden, all colonnades, and cool palms, and haunted by numbers of dusky servants. The city must be farther inland, she thought, as they passed up the beach. They were opposite a tumble-down wooden house, larger than the rest. It might be, she thought, a small wirthhaus, where they drank beer in the back garden. She timidly asked Franz. “It’s the king’s house,” he answered roughly. Surely he must be joking, for he had told her so much about the king’s palace, and the soldiers, and the rest of it. Yes; certainly Franz must be joking, for her great strong Franz could make jokes sometimes.
A few steps more, and Franz stopped—stopped at the meanest hovel of them all,—a rickety wooden cottage, with iron roof, perched above the sea, without even a tree to give shade or a fence to hide its ugly squalor from the road. Telling her to wait, he went to the next cottage and returned with a key. She was speechless with astonishment and a vague fear. The door swung back, and he beckoned her to follow. Within was a damp, ill-smelling, little shop, with dirty stained counter, and shelves tenanted only by a few rusty tins of meat. Beyond this a small unceiled room, furnished with a bare deal-table, and dirty like the shop; and beyond this again a room containing a canvas stretcher, overhung by a rotting mosquito-screen. That was all, and the all was pervaded by the sickening rancid smell of copra, and unspeakably dirty. The windows showed a large iron shed in which copra, the currency of the country, was stored. This was the home he had brought her to! And away there in Berlin her father, the stationer, was still boasting of the brilliant marriage she had made.
It took two days for Franz to appear in his usual oily shirt-sleeves at the counter, and he did not respond to the inquiries about his wife. Thenceforth she became a person of mystery, for she was not seen at all for two months; and when she did leave the house, there were lines about the meaningless mouth, and the blue eyes were dull and red. Franz now ventured on his first social entertainment. The guests were bidden, and Franz, in a clean shirt, received them in the sitting-room,—nine in all, including the two ladies of the place. There was an awkward pause, for Frau Kraft had not appeared. Then Franz went into the bedroom to bring their hostess. There was a whispered altercation, then silence, then a burst of sobbing—and before he returned his guests had all fled. Not even the faithful Müller stayed to break the square black bottle that was to have been the gist of the entertainment. Scandal was now satisfied, for it was evident that Franz did not get on with his wife, and was not above striking her.
But the copra season had begun, and Kraft, if he would live, must buy copra like the rest. Early one morning he started with his wife for Halaufuli, where Fisher, a friendly rival, had a station. Fisher’s house adjoined John Mason’s modest establishment. The Krafts were given the only bedroom in the house—a long low room, in which a platform filling up the end and covered with a pile of mats and a mosquito-screen formed the bed.
When Mason, the man who could not beat his wife, steered an oblique course towards his door, stumbled in, and, being a little less drunk than usual, succeeded in finding his walking-stick, he was at that stage of inebriation when the punishment of somebody for something seems to a man a solemn and sacred duty. Unluckily poor Finau had heard him coming, and ran to his rescue. He fell upon her savagely. Her shrieks broke through the wooden walls, and interwove themselves with Kraft’s dreams. Suddenly he hears his own name, and starts from his sleep to listen to a voice he knows crying in an agony of need. It is Finau calling to him, and without thinking where he is, he springs up to go to her rescue. A blow or two directed by the dim light of the kerosene lamp disposes effectually of Mason, and Franz, furious with anger, yet not knowing what to do, creeps back to his room. His wife is still asleep, as he can hear by her regular breathing; but Finau has followed him, and whimpering she creeps into the room, and leans sobbing against the wall. What could he do—this man who has so injured her? She had loved him and suffered for him. Was he to cast her out when she came to him in her need? And what harm was there in protecting her? He whispers to her not to be afraid and to stop crying, but she only sinks to the ground and sobs the louder. When he speaks again she creeps towards him, as if in bodily fear of the man who has been left outside the door. Franz looks at the screen: his wife still sleeps. And so he speaks to her in a low voice, and strokes her bowed head, and she, in the abandonment of her wretchedness, puts her arm round him. And as he murmurs comforting words to her in her own tongue, he chances to look towards the bed where the dim light is burning, and as he looks there is a movement, a hand from within lifts up the screen, and eyes with a life’s tragedy written in them look out at him.