“My son, what brings you this way?” he said, and his grey eyes gazed kindly at me.
“Father,” I said respectfully, “I heard of you from Mabau, the native girl who sorrows over her faithless lover, and since hearing of you it has been my wish to meet you, and here I am.”
Hearing my answer, the old man looked intently at me, and to my great pleasure I saw that I had impressed him favourably. “Art thou hungry, lad?” he said. “No, not hungry, but I am exceedingly thirsty, Father,” I answered; and at that he at once brought out, from a little wooden cupboard by his side two coco-nuts, and with trembling fingers pierced the holes with a screw. Very thankful I was as I drank off a tin pannikin full to the brim of the refreshing fruit milk. After that I felt much refreshed and more at my ease, as I talked to my host.
At his bidding I took my violin from its case and played the Ah che la morte from Il Trovatore to him. As the strain died away, and silently I laid the fiddle down, he crossed his hands over his breast and sat in the gloom, for night was falling fast. He looked like an old, grey-bearded apostle carved in stone as he sat there.
“My son, thou playest well, and I am thankful for thy visit,” he murmured; and I was touched and highly pleased, for deep in my heart I suddenly felt a tenderness for the lonely old missionary. I saw by the way he crossed his hands that he was a Roman Catholic. I am a Protestant by birthright, but his sincerity made me feel more attached to his denomination than my own.
As night fell and the stars came out he became more talkative and unburdened himself to me, a fact which I always remember with pride, for he would not have done so if he had not felt instinctively that my heart was in sympathy with his.
Rising and lighting an old oil lamp, he stood it on the window-shelf, and its faint flicker lit up his room. In the corner was a sleeping-mat, for he slept on the floor in native fashion. His furniture consisted of two wooden stools, a small bench table and a few cooking utensils. Outside the door in a cage was a large grey parrot; it looked as old as its master, was almost featherless and seldom spoke. But now and again it would gaze sideways at me and without opening its tuneless beak say in a sepulchral voice, “Good-bye, good-bye,” as though it were jealous of my conversation with its lonely master. It was a wise old bird, mistrusted strangers and realised that old age could be tempted and led away from old friendships by the voice of youth.
As we sat there together the moon came out and shone brilliantly over the sea, outdoing the dimness of his oil lamp; so brightly did it shine over the palms that one could easily have read ordinary print.
Taking an old flute down, he started to play upon it, and then with a sigh laid it back on the shelf and asked me if I should care to stay the night. “Yes,” I immediately answered. We went out and strolled in the moonlight, and he told me much of Fiji in the old days. Though he was a poor and aged man, with only the moonlit forest flowers as his friends, flowers that would some day blossom over his fast-dissolving dust, the largess of his sincere heart, all that he told me, has been vast wealth to my memories through the years, and his dead voice has haunted my dreams at times.
He too told me of Thakambau; he had known him in his worst days, and spoke with the famous warrior king when he had at length, after many councils with his chiefs, decided to embrace Christianity.