Looking up with affectionate eyes that gazed at me steadily for a little time and then dropped as she sighed, she answered: “He say pray to white God; go to your people, and if your Vituo no love you quickly find him who will love you.” And as she said this to me she gazed into my eyes in an appealing way that made me sorry for her.
“Come this way, Mabau,” I said, and she followed me like a little child, till out of earshot she sat under the coco-palms behind the Organization hut. I took her there because I wanted to be alone with her to advise her for her own sake. I liked Mabau exceedingly, for I saw in her something deeper than I had noticed in most native girls. Sitting by me in the jungle fern, with her chin on her knees, she lifted her eyes to me and sang a weird love chant. “Wail O—Wa—O, Mio” it sounded, as she sang tenderly her beseeching plaint.
“Why do you sing, Mabau?” I asked. “Is it the wicked Vituo that makes you so sad?”
“Vituo I hate,” she answered fiercely. “I will kill him, and the white man will be my friend.” But I shook my head and told her not to kill Vituo, but go to her own people, and as I spoke I pointed to the forest. Obediently as a child she rose, and before moving away gave me a shell comb from her hair. I accepted it and smiled kindly at her, for I felt sorry for the brown, forlorn girl. Then with pattering bare feet she went down the forest track, wailing. I went back to the Organization room and practised my violin, as I always did for several hours every day, both on land and sea.
I think it was that same night that a portly gentleman looking like a bank manager came down the river from Suva and hastily entered the door, talking hurriedly to Mr Bones. Opening a little bag he gave him a bundle of what appeared to be banknotes, and so placed himself under the protection of the Organization flag. He was fashionably dressed in a tall hat and frock-coat, the tail of which had a singed hole in it, as though he had been shot at at close quarters. Rubbing his hands genially, as though with great relief, he looked round the secluded room and then asked me if I were English, and inquired if many of my countrymen resided in those parts. My reply allayed his anxiety on that point. He had a big, round, clean-shaven, red face; grey locks protruded from beneath the rim of his tall hat, and fitted his brow and neck so nicely that it was easy to see that he wore a wig. His expression was like his hair, false; his was a face that could look jolly and lascivious, or sedate, at will, or even appear deeply thoughtful and religious should occasion require. Intensely preoccupied, he sat looking at newspaper cuttings, and with a vacant stare said “Em—em,” as I spoke to him. The natives and the scenery round had no interest for him; some life-and-death business had hastened him our way. He stopped only two nights and then left by the next ’Frisco steamer, bound for some port outside the reach of the extradition treaty. I was glad to see him go. Every time anyone opened the door he started so that it got on my nerves. Once when Bones suddenly opened the door with a crash, on purpose, I believe, he gave a leap and lifted the lid of the emergency barrel, upsetting the mugs of rum and causing the whole Organization to swear as one man. As he jumped in I quickly put the lid on before he could lower his shoulders and head, and crash went his tall hat, while I heard a muffled oath beneath the lid. The emergency barrel was a huge ship’s beef-barrel, which stood behind the door, and in it new members of the Organization hid when the overseas police arrived. A cave beneath the floor was a secret known to old members only.
It was a mystery to me how these preoccupied fugitives from justice got to know of Bones’s establishment. My mystification was dispelled by one of the old officials, who let me into the secret, telling me more than he should have done, as he swallowed rum and became loquacious. It appeared that Bones boarded the boats as they arrived at Suva, Vanu Levu or Lakemba, interviewed passengers and spotted likely customers. With years of research and experience he had developed a bloodhound’s instinct for twigging uneasy fugitives, and by devious artifices managed to give them the hint and let them know that he was the man who understood difficult positions, and was willing to be a faithful friend to all those who yearned to remain unknown.
I also learnt that Bones was not above the ruse of getting a confederate on board the boat, who would pose as a detective and suddenly turn round and scrutinise any suspicious passenger, and so deliberately frighten him into hurriedly leaving the ship. By a prearranged signal, when the native canoes brought the flying fugitive ashore, the Organization officials arrested him! Those who confessed offhand were given the straight hint that their captors were not beyond accepting a bribe and letting the prisoner escape. If they had no money Bones behaved well to them, put them up for a time, then shipped them off at the first chance.
Those who had managed to bring wealth with them gave Bones a liberal bribe, and you can imagine it was no hard job to get it out of them. Men from all parts of the world sought the South Seas as a hiding-place; some came to save their necks, many to escape penal servitude. The Charity Organization of the South Seas was not far behind its namesakes in Europe. It was a paying concern, and though the method on which it was conducted was risky and strange, it was run on lines of truth and charity; stolen money only was accepted, the guilty were punished by being robbed, and help was given to the fallen, who were taken in, fed, and finally guided on the road to seclusion and security. Assuredly it did not reverse its creed, as the organizations of Western seas do, where bent old men on tottering feet tap at the door of charity and, apologising for being old, start to earn the crust of charity by lifting the pick-axe and breaking stones—stones as hard as the hearts of the British officials who waddle with fatness and the wealth screwed out of insane charity-givers.
I could tell many distressing details of that South Sea hospitality; fiction pales into insignificance beside the realities, the tragic dramas of life that came to that old shanty. I could tell you how men fell through the lure of gold, and the temptation to appear wealthy and respectable, in the cities of a civilisation that so often defeats its own purpose; for how often men fall in their ambition to gain the good opinion of those who only appear better than themselves.
The unpractical passion of love also brought much wealth to the South Sea Organization’s exchequer. I remember one middle-aged gentleman whose manner brought to that degraded forest homestead a flavour of English society. With him, in the tastefully laid-out little room, wept a girl, obviously brought up in English respectability. She was a pretty, blue-eyed girl, but her face had aged with grief and remorse and the thought of motherhood. Mabau was her ever-tender maid and companion. The bond of sympathy that linked the brown and the white woman together expressed something that had an intense note of poetry in it. Mabau’s wild intuition read the girl’s sorrow and remorse. The two women, so far removed from each other by blood and education, through mutual grief and instinct became equal. Softly Mabau stroked her white sister’s face, and she in turn caressed the brown girl, who also was fast approaching motherhood.